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Programme
A7 -
The Labour-Intensive Path of Development in South Asia: Environment, Division of Labour and the Quality of Life Session abstract: Show Session abstract: Hide
South Asia has been home to probably one fourth of world population for the last few centuries. Thus it is natural to assume that its historical path of modern economic development can be characterized as labour-intensive. However, the character of labour-intensity in South Asian development is quite different from that in East Asia. While labour absorption in agriculture was not so high in South Asia, the typical rural economy was highly labour-intensive, if we include proto-industry and service sector. Although attention has been paid to the labour-intensive character of the proto-industry sector in recent historiography, we need a more balanced approach for the understanding of the traditional industrial structure, including the study of the service sector. We should also note the fact that the region’s developmental path was determined by hard ecological conditions. South Asia suffered from many severe famines and epidemics. Risk factors, especially uncertain climatic conditions, ordained the development, and necessitated a social structure with a thick layer of landless and service castes. In this respect the caste system functioned as a specific type of division of labour. And it affected the quality of life of ordinary people. The market economy gradually interacted with the caste system since early modern period. This session examines the character of labour-intensity in the modern economic development of South Asia in comparative perspective with the East Asian experience. We invite experts on East Asia as paper givers and discussants. A preliminary workshop will be held on December 19-20, 2008 in Kyoto, Japan. Organizers: • - Scarcity of Land, Division of Labour and the Service Sector: The Labour-Intensive Path of Development in Modern South Asia This paper consists of three sections. The first section examines the issue of land scarcity in South Asia from a long-term perspective. We clarify that land scarcity became a serious issue in the late 19th century. In the second section, we argue that the response of Indian rural societies to the scarcity of land was not of the ‘labour-intensive’ type in agriculture, because climatic conditions did not allow this sort of path. If we look at the labour-intensity in the rural society as a whole, however, we can conclude that it was rather high during this period. There was a thick layer of landless labourers who were categorized as being employed in agriculture. But in one sense we had better think that they belonged to the service sector rather than the agricultural sector. Here we propose a working hypothesis on the South Asian path of development, namely ‘division of labour in community’. This path tended to be service-sector-oriented. In these two sections so far, we have relied mainly on studies by Japanese scholars on South India. Their research was motivated by a comparative perspective on East Asian cases, focussing on labour absorption in agriculture and division of labour in community. The third part is concerned with the particular group of people and the division of labour in community in South Asian urban settings. This group consists of people employed as scavengers by the municipal corporation of Calcutta, who were a typical product of South Asian social development. We would argue that this example clearly shows the service-sector-oriented path of social development. • Kaoru Sugihara - The South Asian Path of Economic Development: A Comparison with East Asia
This paper sketches the long-term path of economic development in South Asia, in comparison with East Asia. The starting point of this comparison is the notion that the both regions followed a “labour-intensive” path, with a relatively low land-labour ratio and labour-intensive technology and labour-absorbing institutions. Haruka Yanagisawa argued that there was a labour-intensive pattern of agricultural development in South India, similar in character to Japan, since the nineteenth century, while Tirthankar Roy traced the development of labour-intensive (or skill-intensive) industries such as cotton textiles, which grew in the sixteenth century or earlier, had survived colonial rule and remain as an important sector to this day. Although in general land was not as scarce in South Asia as in East Asia till the end of the nineteenth century, there were regional variations. In any case, there was a clear similarity between the two regions since the end of the nineteenth century. Participants: • Linda Grove • Sayako Kanda - Fuel Crisis and Conditions of Salt Workers in Early Nineteenth Century Bengal
This study examines the working conditions of salt workers, known as malangis, under the East India Company’s monopoly in early nineteenth century Bengal. The malangis are considered to be one of the most oppressed class of workers in Bengal, and this was largely due to the Company’s exploitative policies towards them. This paper suggests that their conditions were determined not only by the Company’s monopoly but also by wider environmental, economic and social changes surrounding the salt industry over the period. • Takeshi Nishimura - Railways, Exports of Primary Products and the Commercialisation of Forests in British India, 1890-1913 Paper summary: Show Paper summary: Hide
Ramachandra Guha and others have argued that railway construction, especially the need for sleepers, was largely responsible for the initial deforestation in British India, mainly on the evidence taken from sources relating to the development of forest administration. The movement of wooden sleepers and timber, recorded in trade statistics and railway reports, have never been systematically examined with the issue of forest commercialisation in mind. This paper traces the development of external and internal trade of sleepers and timber, and show how sleepers were secured through long-distance trade across the subcontinent for the period from 1890 to 1913. • Takashi Oishi - Workmen, Machines, Schemes Shifted from Japan to India: Mobility of Labour Intensive Production in the Cases of Matches and Glass wares, 1900-1940.
This paper takes up the economy of match and glass ware in Japan as well as in India, and puts focus on the mobility of its labour intensive production between those two countries. Through illuminating the historical facts around migration of manufacturing engineers/workmen, relocation of technology/production scheme, and modulation of consumption preference, between Japan and India, I emphasize that the labour intensive production did not necessarily develop in accordance with conditions within a single specific area, but was molded under the dynamic intra-Asian interactions involving the nature of industry, labour, entrepreneurship, institutions, commodity, consumption, and natural environment. • Tirthankar Roy - Labour Intensity and Indian Industrialization: An integrated view Paper summary: Show Paper summary: Hide
Indian industrialization in the first half of the twentieth century was labour-intensive in two senses: factories were characterized by a relatively high employment-elasticity, and the ordinarily more labour-intensive crafts made a positive contribution to income growth in manufacturing. Individually, these two characteristics are well-known to historians, and have inspired much debate and controversy. Central to labour history is the low labour-productivity, or the ‘inefficiency’ of the mill worker. This stylized fact has been seen in cultural terms by a segment of scholarship explaining the emergence of international economic inequality, whereas Southasianists have vehemently argued against culturalist descriptions of the worker. The ‘survival’ of the crafts, on the other hand, is central to analytical narratives of the link between trade and industrialization in the non-western world. In most received stories, the survival of the crafts would appear to be counterintuitive, and call for special assumptions about consumption and technology. • Masayuki Tanimoto - The Evolution of Export-oriented Industries in Japan's Economic Development:From ‘Labour-intensiveness’ to ‘Skill-intensiveness’(Reference Paper for comment) This paper explores the role of small-scale industries in Japan’s industrialization by focusing on the changing patterns of the export trade from the late nineteenth century to after World War II. Arguably, this is the best arena to examine this issue as entering export markets entails facing severe competition. It is well known that textile goods occupied the largest part of Japan’s export continuously until the 1960s. Although the individual categories only accounted for small proportions, the sum of various consumer goods other than textiles contributed a considerable proportion of manufactured exports, with changing the patterns in the composition after World War I. We can assume that there was an evolutionary process in production and that the small-scale industries played a central role in it. In other words, the foundation of the competitive-edge of Japan’s export-oriented industries transformed from cheap female labourers at the large textile factories to the skilled or semi-skilled male workers in the small workshops. We exemplify this process by focusing on the development of urban toy industry in the interwar period and suggest that this form of industrial rivalry—competing for the affluent market in industrial finished goods—appears to have pioneered an important type of world trade, which expanded after World War II. • Haruka Yanagisawa - Village Common Land, Manure, Fodder and the Intensification of Agricultural Practices: South Indian Agriculture since the Middle of the Nineteenth Century
In the early decades of the nineteenth century only a small part of village land in Tamilnadu, a region in South India, was used as farmland. The uncropped land, however, played an important role in sustaining the lives of villagers, as it produced manure, fodder, fuelwood and house-building materials and served as grazing land for cattle and other household animals. In this sense, such uncultivated land served as village common land, indispensable for sustaining agricultural production in the village, although it was often classified as “waste land” by the colonial administration. B7 -
Early Christianity and the Ancient Economy Session abstract: Show Session abstract: Hide
“Early Christianity and the Ancient Economy” is a new international, interdisciplinary research project involving ancient and economic historians, classicists, New Testament scholars, patristic experts, and scholars of Late Antiquity. The project seeks to delineate the relationship between early Christianity and the ancient economy in the period from Jesus to Justinian, demonstrating both similarities and differences in attitudes, approaches to problems, and attempted solutions. The project was launched last November with an address by Walter Scheidel, one of the co-editors of The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World (2007), and sessions devoted to this topic have already been held this year at conferences in New Zealand, South Africa, and the United States, and more are planned for 2009. Organizers: • - The Early Christianity and Ancient Economy Project: An Introduction and Overview Paper summary: Show Paper summary: Hide
This paper provides an introduction to, and overview of, the “Early Christianity and Ancient Economy Project,” which seeks to delineate the relationship between early Christianity and the ancient economy in the period from Jesus to Justinian. During this period, early Christianity went through an incredible metamorphosis both demographically and geographically. It began as a tiny Jewish sect centered in Jerusalem, yet by the end of the first century its adherents were largely non-Jews drawn from the large urban centers of the Greco-Roman world. At that point it was still a small and statistically insignificant religion, but by the end of the fourth century it had become the official religion of the Roman Empire. Throughout this period, it dealt with different economic issues, though the role that it played in the overall Roman economy was constantly changing and becoming more substantial, especially after Constantine. Yet the economic life of Rome was by no means static during this period, for it also underwent numerous changes. The aim of the project is to establish the economic history of early Christianity, which will involve assessing its relationship to the ancient economy as a whole and demonstrating similarities and differences in attitudes, approaches to problems, and attempted solutions. • David B. Hollander - Illness, Death, and Precautionary Demand in the Late Republic and Early Empire Paper summary: Show Paper summary: Hide Historians who view the ancient economy as ‘primitive’ often point to the phenomenon of hoarding as corroboration. Meikle (2002: 242), for example, concludes that Greek and Roman hoarding precludes the existence of investment opportunities and markets for capital and labor in the ancient world. Jongman (2003: 191), however, suggests that “an important reason for rich Romans to hold large reserves in cash was the need to alleviate the complexities and unpredictability of property transfers from one generation to the next.” The prospect of illness and death created two additional categories of precautionary demand extending well beyond the Roman elite. An unexpected illness or injury might necessitate cash for doctors, medicine, or even votive offerings for the gods. The structures and inscriptions to be found on the outskirts of Rome and other Roman cities indicate that a tremendous number of Romans, wealthy and otherwise, wanted themselves or their loved ones memorialized and their remains treated honorably. Death was often an unexpected event that could require the bereaved to spend considerable amounts of money on short notice. Funerals might involve the purchase of frankincense, wood to fuel cremation, land for a monument or space for an urn, as well as wine and food to be offered to the dead or consumed at the tomb. One might hire pollictores to wash and anoint the body, praeficae to wail at the funeral, vespillones to carry the corpse, ustores to cremate the body, and fossores to dig space in a catacomb. In this paper I will consider the dimensions of these precautionary demands and how they might have changed in the late Republic and early Empire. Participants: • Marta Garcia Morcillo - Distribution and Consumption of high-valued goods in the Roman World: Patterns of Continuity and Change Paper summary: Show Paper summary: Hide
Being basically defined as something desirable but not utilitarian, luxury has been commonly associated with sumptuous goods, conspicuous consumption and typical expressions of social status. In ancient Rome, material luxury further involved ideas of moral decadence, laxity and negligence, as Latin terms such as luxuria, opulentia and desidia illustrate Beyond moral and rhetorical uses, this paper explores the impact of the phenomenon in the Roman economy from the early Principate to Late Antiquity, focusing on particular key questions and scholar debates: Did the Roman market of high-valued goods contribute to economic stimulus, or should it be regarded as a symptom of economic decline or fatigue? Can this be explored as an indicator for the dynamics of production, distribution, marketing and consumption? To what extent did Rome experience fundamental changes or patterns of continuity in the processes of supply and demand of costly goods? How did political, military or social evolutions and transformations influence them? • Willem M. Jongman • Constantina Katsari - The Morality of Money in the Roman World Paper summary: Show Paper summary: Hide Economists study rational human behaviour with a focus on the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services. When the irrational aspects of human attitude come into force, then, the discipline of economics changes and becomes another form of art. The study of these aspects should not be neglected but should be incorporated in the mainstream analysis of rational data. Historians of the Roman empire tend to consider the illogical features of the economy as evidence for its underdevelopment, hence following Polanyi’s substantivist views. Such features include moral attitudes, religious beliefs, psychological factors or habits formed by long lasting traditions. In this article I intend to show that these characteristics are, in fact, potent economic determinants and they co-exist harmoniously with other more ‘rational’ factors. • Charo Rovira - THE FIRST CHRISTIANS?: TRADE AND TRADERS IN THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA Paper summary: Show Paper summary: Hide During his journeys along the Mediterranean Sea Paul travelled through different harbours such as Cesarea or Puteoli. Communities of traders from several Roman provinces were living in these ports sometimes, on a permanent basis. These communities in charge of the trade of goods along the Mediterranean would probably be the first gentiles that would listened to Paul’s preaching and would help to spread Christianity. We see it in the case of Lydia in Thyatyra. This had already happened with other religions; in Italy the first place where the cult of Isis is documented is Puteoli, the major trade centre of the Mediterranean after Alexandria and also the first Italian city that Paul visited in his journey to Rome. A necessary stop since all the Alexandrian ships ended their journey there; here it is then one of the first place where he would have encountered his first listeners, either Jews, since there was an important community in the city, or gentiles. By studying the communities of traders in the ports visited by Paul we can grasp the activities of the early Christians and their involvement in economic activities since these economic centres worked also as cultural magnets and as places for the exchange of ideas. • Arjan Zuiderhoek - Good citizens? Citizenship and the economy in the Greco-Roman world Paper summary: Show Paper summary: Hide
Citizenship formed the basis of Greek and Roman socio-political organisation. Yet did it also have economic significance? Inspired by the ideas of Max Weber and especially M.I. Finley on the ancient economy, scholars have argued that ancient citizenship constituted a barrier to economic development, because it frustrated the effective functioning of factor markets. There are, however, alternative ways of looking at citizenship. In this paper, I shall discuss a number of theoretical viewpoints that might help us to reconceptualise ancient citizenship as an economically efficient institution. C7 -
China’s Southwest Frontier Areas in Early Economic Globalization Session abstract: Show Session abstract: Hide
Geographically consisting of Yunan,Sichuan, Guizhou, Guangxi and Tibet, China’s southwest frontiers region is one of the most diverse regions in the world, ecologically, ethically, culturally and economically. Its location as the intersection of East, Southeast and South Asia increases this diversity. Organizers: • - Yunnan in the Early Economic Globalization ( 1492-1945 ) Paper summary: Show Paper summary: Hide
Ever since the great voyage times at the end of 15th century, the economy links all over the world including Americas and Australia had been being strengthened, which unfolded the globalization of economy. Yunnan, which lies in the east of the Tibetan Plateaus and belongs to one of the important proponents of the South-West China, also initiated increasingly-closer-and-broader links with the inner-China as well as with other areas such as Southeast and south Asia, Europe, Americas and Australia. This thesis inquired briefly into the following three issues: the development of the links, transportation and communication, between Yunnan and the world; the main role of Yunnan’s in the early economic globalization; and the impacts of the early economic globalization on the Yunnan economy. So as to get a comparatively-full knowledge of the diversity and complexity of the early economic globalization. • Wenxun Lin - The Economic Interaction Between Yunnan and the World Paper summary: Show Paper summary: Hide
• Xiaoliang Wu - Yunnan in the early twentieth-century economic globalization: Paper summary: Show Paper summary: Hide
Abstract Participants: • Pengsheng Chiu - Enquiring the Early Economic Globalization through the Mining and Selling of Yunnan Copper in Eighteenth-century China Paper summary: Show Paper summary: Hide The early economic globalization might be engined by western navigations after the sixteenth century onwards, but this process was certainly embedded in the specific economic and social development occurred in each area or country which encountered with those western foreigners. This paper will delve into the China's encounter with western trades in the eighteenth century from the angle of the growth of economic network of the southwestern China. The mining and selling of Yunnan copper constituted one of the crucial commodities in the growth of the southwestern China’s economic network, to understand this growth may shed light on the crux of the embeddedness of China’s early economic globalization. • Jeffrey Y.F. Lau • Yi Xu - The Overseas Trade, Nation and Borderland Society in 16th to 19th Century: Paper summary: Show Paper summary: Hide Based on the national policies to govern frontier regions, this paper examines the socioeconomic significance of overseas trade towards Fujiang Area. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the Ming government made full use of the opportunities of overseas trade to suppress the turmoil in Fujiang area. Subsequently, the Qing government used an open and positive policy to fit the development of overseas trade in Fujiang area, which represented by the increasing Guangdong merchants and the rapid development of interprovincial trade, mainly food trade. Encouraged by these exterior economic factors, an unprecedented prosperity appeared in Fujiang Area. However, this kind of prosperity was at the price of that Fujiang area was brought into the South China market system and became the economic hinterland of Guangdong. At first, the nation was able to limit the negative influences of “hinterlandization” by its policies to guarantee the benefit of local people and to maintain the stability of borderland society. However, with the deepening of hinterlandization and the decreasing administrative efficiency of the nation, much more serious problems appeared both in economic and social fields. The nation was exhausted to deal with these problems and finally the situation became out of control. It can be said that the prosperity of Fujiang area in the 18th Century is the outcome of the mutual interaction between nation and overseas trade, while the social conflicts in the 19th Century is the result of independent action by overseas trade to release from the control of nation. The historic process, from turmoil to stability then to prosperity and finally back to turmoil, in Fujiang area reflects the special meaning of early economic globalization towards China’s southwest frontier regions. D7 -
The Welfare State in Capitalism Revisited Session abstract: Show Session abstract: Hide
In the 1970s and early 1980s one of the big themes in welfare state research was the relationship between welfare state and capitalism. One the hand classical variants of Marxist theory, arguing that the welfare state (historically and contemporary) had to be empirically analysed as part of the capitalist system and its domination of the working class. Social policies were to be understood as instruments for meeting the requirements of the reproduction of capital and labour and the regulation of the antagonisms inherent in the capitalist mode of production. On the other hand, “social democratic” or reformist approach saw the welfare state as the concrete historical victory of organized labour movement over capital. We also find a number of studies on “the political economy of the welfare state” (Gough) trying to take a more theoretical and analytical position. In this line we find numerous economist, historians, and sociologists. Especially after the declaration of the “crisis of the welfare state” from the early 1970 (structurally associated to the break down of the Bretton Woods system and the so-called oil crisis) was started a year long academic debate asking if the welfare state and capitalism could co-exist also in the future? One of the most influential studies in this respect was the German sociologist Claus Offe's “Contradictions of the Welfare State” (1984) with its famous dictum that “capitalism could neither live with or without the welfare state.” Organizers: • • Pauli Kettunen • Christopher Lloyd - Models of the Relationship Between The Welfare State and Capitalism
Welfare States are usually understood as the product of advanced western industrial capitalism, emerging first in a few places before the First World War, further developing in some countries in the 1930s, and becoming widespread after the Second World War. But the close connection that such states are presumed to have with liberal democracy is a central issue that needs exploring in the age of the global spread of dynamic capitalist industrialization. Social Democratic Welfare Capitalism (SDWC), which is the convergent western model that has a close connection with liberalization, may not be the only possible trajectory of the capitalist/welfare trajectory in the long run. Participants: • Paola Azar - Fiscal and welfare state regimes: the case of Uruguay, from a regional perspective (1970-2000) Paper summary: Show Paper summary: Hide
Fiscal management, as an expression of State “institutionalized engagements”, has been applied to identifiy the existence of different “fiscal regimes” in Uruguay, during the XXth. century. This paper analyzes the performance and characteristics of the social public expenditure in the framework of the fiscal regime prevaling during the last thirty years. Through a comparative perspective, it addresses the changes in the revenue structure, the evolution of the social public expenditure and the management of fiscal results for Uruguay, Argentine, Chile and Costa Rica (countries which have historically shared similar patterns of development). The period of reference is the one when economic liberalization, trade openness and structural reforms, including the macroeconomic management, were strongly implemented in the Latin American region. • Reto Bertoni • Luther P. Carpenter - The French Welfare State in the Economic Crisis of 1974-84 It worked. Not perfectly, but in the pragmatic way that social systems succeed. In 1974-83, successive French governments expanded features of the existing welfare state, especially unemployment benefit. They used the minimum wage to preserve the purchasing power of ordinary working people. They invented 'early retirement' and started to share the available amount of work to new entrants to the job market. They ran modest deficits in total public spending, not a full-fledged Keynesian policy. Viewing the economic crisis as a structural, not merely one of macroeconomic policy, the Mitterrand government tried to use nationalizations of major industries to make the economy competitive in the long run. The international context (and opposition of the employers' federation) forced them to retreat in 1982-3. Nonetheless, they had expanded the existing bargain and defended it politically; it survived into the next stage of capitalism. Now as we face another economic crisis, analogies with 1974-83 are useful. • Kumar Das • Matti Hannikainen - Improving Social Capability. Social Contract and Structural Change in the 20th Century Finland
The transformation into the modern wage-work society has to a great extent happened in Finland after the Second World War – in European comparison late but on the other hand quite rapidly. Fol-lowing Moses Abramovitz’s (1986) famous concept of social capability it is possible to argue that Finland avoided institutional and technological obstacles of development. Social capability refers to the facilities for the diffusion of knowledge, conditions facilitating structural change, and macro-economic and monetary conditions encouraging and sustaining capital investment. • Bob Jessop • Sarojini Mishra • N.K. Palai • Göran Therborn • Wessel Visser - From RDP to GEAR to Post-Polokwane: The ANC and the Provision of Social Security for Post-Apartheid South Africa
Under minority rule a South African social security system was established along the lines of early social security in Western Europe where it evolved mainly as social insurance, first for the industrial workforce and later for the whole population. The expansion of this system to other racial groups ironically put South Africa in the uncommon situation of a semi-industrial country having the trappings of a modern welfare state, the core of which is the provision of a basic pension for everyone in need. E7 -
Empirical studies in African Economic History Session abstract: Show Session abstract: Hide
Studying the historical development of an economy provides a context for existing challenges and a source of hypotheses to explain the trajectory and slope of that evolution. Data and its usability are one of the key tools in understanding the past and an even more important tool for addressing current and future dilemmas. However, one of the main problems for doing research in African economic history is the availability of data and also its usability. Data are scarce and often unreliable in many Sub-Saharan African countries, even South Africa. Organizers: • - Happy in the service of the Company: the purchasing power of VOC salaries at the Cape in the 18th century Paper summary: Show Paper summary: Hide
This paper investigates the empirical basis for perceptions of rising affluence at the Cape of Good Hope during the 18th century. Recent scholarship (for example, Allen 2005) have calculated and compared the levels and evolution of real wages in various European and Asian economies since the early modern period. This paper extends that literature to the Dutch East India Company’s colony at the Cape of Good during the 18th century. We follow Allen (2005) in calculating two measures of real wages in the colony, the first based on a simple relation between nominal wages and the cost of a calorie and the second based on a broader index of goods as an approximation to the cost of living. We are able to perform these calculations for both skilled and unskilled categories of labour, which will allow a comparison to trends observed in European and Asian economies where real wages were either stagnant or on a downward trend in this period. • Stan A. du Plessis Participants: • Jutta Bolt - Indigenous Slavery in Africa’s History: Conditions and Consequences This paper is the first study to conduct an econometric analysis of indigenous slavery in Africa. We distinguish indigenous slavery from export slavery and survey the literature in order to identify the factors that shaped its prevalence and its impact on Africa’s long-term development. We present data collected from anthropological records and utilize these in a statistical analysis. The results show that indigenous slavery was more common in Equatorial and West Africa (specifically the Belgian colonies) and in societies with more developed states. Our analysis also shows that indigenous slavery is robustly and negatively associated with long-term income development. . We find evidence that this effect runs via less political development, especially lower democratic accountability. • Frans Buelens - Profits, stock returns and evolution of the capital structure of Belgian based Congo companies during the era of colonisation. A unique quantitative assessment of a former African colony.
Studying the profitability of the Congo companies during the colonization period reveals that this was extremely high. We report the profitability as witnessed by accounting data as well as by stock market data, and compare the stock market data with international data. The colonisation of the Congo proved to be a highly lucrative business. • Estian Calitz - Institutions and the sustainability of fiscal policy in South Africa, 1960-2008
In recent decades, mounting evidence of the deleterious effects of excessive fiscal deficits on macroeconomic performance has fueled interest in mechanisms to maintain fiscal sustainability. These include institutional innovations such as numerical fiscal rules, budget-process reforms and transparency frameworks to enhance the accountability of policymakers. Their widespread adoption should not, however, be interpreted as a consensus on the effectiveness of institutional mechanisms for ensuring fiscal discipline. Indeed, the empirical evidence is decidedly mixed – with considerable variation in the effectiveness of fiscal institutions between countries and over time – and consequently the debate about the efficacy of institutional reform continues. • Sandra Domingos Costa • Johan Fourie - The dynamics of inequality in a newly settled, pre-industrial society: The case of the Cape Colony One reason for the relatively poor development performance of many countries around the world today may be the high levels of inequality during and after colonisation. Evidence from colonies in the Americas suggests that skewed initial factor endowments could create small elites that owned a disproportionate share of wealth, human capital and political power. The Cape Colony, founded in 1652 at the southern tip of Africa, presents a case where a mercantilist company (the Dutch East India Company) settles the land and establishes a unique set of institutions within which inequality and development evolve. This paper provides a long-run quantitative analysis of trends in asset-based inequality (using Principle Components' Analysis on tax inventories) during the seventeenth and eighteenth century, allowing, for the first time, a dynamic rather than static analysis of inequality trends in a newly settled and pre-industrial society over this period. While theory testing in other societies has been severely limited because of a scarcity of quantitative evidence, this study presents a history with evidence, enabling an evaluation of the Engerman-Sokoloff and other hypotheses. • Bill Freund - The Social Context of Economic Growth 1960-2008
Abstract • Morten Jerven - The African Growth Evidence: Accuracy, Reliability and Volatility of National Income Estimates. It has been argued that the fundamental cause of Africa's current relative poverty is a lack of pro-growth institutions deriving either from the colonial system, the period of slavery, or from particular African geographic/population characteristics. This paper takes a fresh look at the African income estimates. It subjects the available datasets to tests of accuracy, reliability and volatility and finds that there is very little to explain in terms of income diversity. Apart from some resource rich enclaves and islands and the exception of South Africa, the income of one African economy is not meaningfully different from another. • Rita Martins de Sousa • Alexander Moradi - Referral and Job Performance: Evidence from the Ghana Colonial Army
Using data compiled from army archives, we test whether the referral system in use in the British colonial army in Ghana served to improve the unobserved quality of new recruits. We find that it did not. If anything, referred recruits were more likely to desert and be dismissed as inefficient or unfit. We find instead evidence of referee opportunism. • Franz Krige Siebrits • Nuno Valério - Banking in the Portuguese Colonial Empire (1864-1975)
Abstract • Dieter von Fintel F7 -
Origins and early years of the International Economic History Congresses: Discussion Forum and Oral History Session abstract: Show Session abstract: Hide
A group of economic historians led by M.M. Postan and Fernand Braudel met in Paris in the winter of 1959 to organize an international gathering of economic historians. Their initiative was followed by the first international conference held in Stockholm in 1950. This year in Utrecht we participate in the fourteenth world congress and celebrate fifty years of international association in the discipline. This interview forum with some of the early Presidents and key members of the Secretariat provides an opportunity to discover the origins and development of the congresses, the ways the agendas were set and how these connected with the big issues of the discipline over this past half century. The forum opens discussion of the institutional and cultural framework of the congresses across the Cold War divide, and their growing internationalism. Organizers: • • Pat Hudson Participants: • Leonid Borodkin • Sushil Chaudhury • Jan DeVries • Patrick Fridenson • Riitta Hjerppe • Bozhong Li • Peter Mathias • Larry Neal • Vera Negri Zamagni • Om Prakash • Osamu Saitō • Richard Sutch • Herman Van der Wee - The International Economic History Association in the Mirror of its Past G7 -
The Economic Dimension of the Cold War in the Third World Session abstract: Show Session abstract: Hide
The impact of the Cold War on the economic relations with developing countries is an area that requires further research. In this field the distinct yet inter-related issues of decolonisation, Cold War politics and expropriations are only treated jointly in high-profile cases. Yet these issues were relevant in most instances of economic cooperation between developed and developing countries. As decolonisation proceeded in the empire, Western and Eastern powers vied for the support of the new states, often through the medium of development aid and foreign investment. Nevertheless, as Frederick Cooper and Randall Packard have argued, development operated on many levels, ranging from the local to the global. Development was propagated by very different actors: by community leaders; by nationalists who framed their vision of the nation state in modernist concepts and language; by Europeans who transformed discredited notions of the ‘civilizing mission’ into European-defined concepts of modernity; and by Cold War actors who competed for sympathies and allegiances. It spawned a number of organisations and programmes, which became the experts in development and aid, such as the World Bank, various United Nations organisations, non-governmental organisations. The aim of the session is to contribute to a transnational economic research of the decolonisation process. Therefore we invite scholars to contribute with papers on the inter-relations of decolonisation, Cold War and nationalisation as well as case studies concerning Africa, Asia, Latin-America and the Middle-East. The following topics could be addressed: economic consequences of decolonisation, influences of elites, economic and military aid, role of local business and multinationals. Organizers: • - Playing the Cold War Game: Kaisers, Nkrumah & the Volta River Project in newly independent Ghana In its attempts to revamp the British Empire after World War II, the Colonial Office fell back on older plans for exploiting bauxite in the Gold Coast (later Ghana). In the following years, this initial idea formed the core to one of the largest post-war development projects of its kind: a hydro-electric dam was to be constructed at the river Volta, creating a massive new lake and enough power for Ghana’s limited electricity consumers, as well as a new fishing industry and irrigation for agriculture. The surplus power was to go towards the creation of an integrated aluminium industry that would use local bauxite to create finished aluminium ingots. Beyond the capacity of any single company or government to fund, it eventually became a joint commitment of the governments of the UK, US, and Ghana, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), the Eximbank as well as Kaiser Industries and Reynolds Aluminium Company (the latter only held a ten percent stake compared to Kaisers 90 percent ownership of the aluminium smelter VALCO). As a quintessential mega-project of the Cold War era, it is a good example of how the ‘fashions’ and trends of its day shaped not only the geography, but also the political and economic room to manoeuvre for an entire country. • Stefanie Van de Kerkhof - Military Aid and Marketing of European Arms Producers in the Cold War
The Cold War shaped cultural and social phenomena in the fields of fine arts, media, literature and in the spheres of images, discourses and memories. How this process influenced war or peace cultures in Eastern and Western Europe have yet not been researched sufficiently. Besides images of high technology, economic development and dominant virility, there were two main fields of discourse, on which marketing strategies of firms like Rheinmetall focussed: security and trust. Participants: • Ragna Boden - Modernization – Soviet Style: Soviet Aid to Indonesia By combining classical and recent modernization concepts, I will analyze the obstacles to Soviet engagements in Indonesia as a case study for modernization projects. I will focus on typical spheres of modernization such as the economic-technical, the military and the societal-ideological fields with special regard to the Soviet rivalry with the U.S. as well as with the People’s Republic of China. A comparison between Soviet, Western and Chinese modernization strategies for developing countries can reveal which of them was most successful in applying its own model of modernization to non-European cultures and acted according to the idea of “multiple modernities” (Eisenstadt). The paper is based on archival documents from Russia, Germany and the Netherlands. • Larry Butler - African mining in a Cold War context: the case of late-colonial Zambia Taking the example of copper mining during the last years of colonial rule, this paper examines the interaction of increasingly important questions concerning the role of the state, the strategies adopted by business in response to political change and rival visions of ‘development’ against the background of intensifying ideological rivalry in the Cold War. In Zambia’s case, all of these questions had a particularly acute significance because of the country’s heavy dependence on a single export – copper, making Zambia unusually vulnerable to fluctuations in world demand. • Dr. Anja Kruke H7 -
The Hanse: a typical and an atypical medieval mercantile phenomenon Session abstract: Show Session abstract: Hide
The Hanse was once famously described as a mollusc: a strong, yet changeable and fluid body. As a medieval organisation of traders and towns, it was a phenomenon difficult to grasp fully in standard contemporary legal, organisational and even mercantile terms. However, it was at the same time deeply rooted in the commercial culture of northwestern Europe. In a host of issues, the trade of its members underwent the same developments which changed European commerce in the Middle Ages. This session aims to disclose some aspects of the idiosyncrasies of the Hanse, and set them in a general context. The typical and atypical traits of the Hanse will be discussed in papers on Hanseatic trade, Hanseatic legal and organisational structure, as well as questions of politics and culture which shaped the Hanse. Organizer: • - Hansards and the ‘Other’. Perceptions and strategies in late medieval Bergen. Hanseatic traders formed the largest and most prominent group of foreigners in Bergen, Norway, in the Late Middle Ages. In practice, they gained a hegemony in the trade of this Norwegian economic capital. Hansards had attained this position through the acquisition of privileges from the Norwegian rulers, through the organisation of their trade and settlement in the town in the form of the Kontor, and through being part of the efficient trade network of the Hanse. However, it has to be recognised that the process of becoming the prime players on the Bergen market did not happen in a void, but in interaction with other groups: Norwegians, Englishmen and Hollanders. The relations with these groups took a different shape, and were conditioned by changing temporal and situational contexts. Still, all these groups had one thing in common from the Hanseatic point of view: they were the ‘Other’, non-Hansards. In this paper, the various perceptions the Hansards in Bergen held of the ‘Other’, and the strategies they developed in contacts with them, will be analysed, and a model of classifications will be constructed. Moreover, the question will be addressed to what extent Hanseatic perceptions of the ‘Other’ converged with or differed from medieval notions of alterity. In other words, whether the comportment of Hansards in Bergen was typical or atypical of their time. The case of Bergen will thus set the Hanse into the general discussion on alterity in the Late Middle Ages. Participants: • Mike Burkhardt - Business as usual? – A critical investigation on the hanseatic pound toll lists
Pound toll lists are one of the most important sources for the calculation of quantities in Late Medieval Hanseatic trade. Often they are regarded as comparatively objective and complete mirrors of a towns’ gross trade or of certain merchants’ trade activities within one or several towns. This assumption led as far as a comparison of Lübeck’s gross trade with that of Genua, which was solely based on the pound toll registry in Lübeck’s case. • Geir Atle Ersland - The Handelsgericht of the Kontor in Bergen
THE HANDELSGERICHT OF THE KONTOR IN BERGEN • Edda Frankot - ‘Der ehrbaren Hanse-Städte See-Recht’: Diversity and Unity in Hanseatic Maritime Law Overseas trade was the basis of all Hanseatic activities. In order to secure smooth relations between all parties involved in this trade as regards any problems occurring during sea voyages, maritime laws were formulated. Paradoxically, a comprehensive Hanseatic maritime law did not come into being until the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries when the Hanse had lost the power to implement such a law, whereas at the height of its power, in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, a myriad of local laws and jurisdictions existed. This paper will analyse this paradox by considering the development of maritime law and its administration in individual Hanseatic towns, such as Lübeck, Danzig, Reval and Kampen, and by examining attempts within the Hanse at creating common regulations, from irregular statutes starting in 1365, via the Schifferordnung of 1482, to the 1591/1614 general sea law. This analysis will allow us to establish why a comprehensive Hanseatic sea law only came into existence after the Hanse’s demise and how the shared special needs of Hanseatic merchants, for example with regards to gaining justice outside their home towns, were catered for nonetheless. • Carsten Jahnke - The city of Lübeck and the internationality of early hanseatic trade
Since the beginning of the 20th century the “foundation” of the city of Lübeck and the beginnings of the Hanseatic League were seen as two sides of the same coin, or as the most famous German historian Fritz Rörig has said: “The whole existed earlier than the parts. The development of the proud Hanseatic cities in the Baltic Sea Area […] was not a whim of fate, but was the consequence of a wilful economic program: the economic dominance of the Baltic Sea by German merchants.” The development as well of the Baltic Sea area as of its western partner at the North Sea area was foreseen by a nearly divine plan, and those who gained the most profit were (certainly) the German merchants. • James M. Murray - The well-grounded error: Bruges as An all too typical error among historians is to label the Flemish city of Bruges as a member of the German Hanse. This is entirely understandable in one sense because Bruges was the most important settlement and exchange point (Kontor) of the Hanse in western Europe, and became closely identified with products imported by Hanse members. In this paper I will detail the many new findings of research projects undertaken in the last decade that illustrate this atypical relationship of Bruges and its Hanse residents across the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. • Jens E. Olesen - The Hanse and the Kalmar Union 1435-1481 Paper summary: Show Paper summary: Hide This paper deals with the politics of the Hanse towards the nordic Kalmar-Union during the period from 1435 up to 1481. These years are central in Scandinavian and finnish history, covering problems like the expulsion of Eric of Pomerania 1439-1441, his piracy from Gotland up to 1449, the reign of king Christopher of Bavaria (1440-1448), the presence of two kings ruling Denmark-Norway (Christian I) and Sweden (Karl Knutsson Bonde) and the Union-wars from 1451. The Hanse and their different groups had to decide their positions towards the three Nordic countries and the establishment of a new king restoring the Kalmar-Union after the crisis 1434-1436. The combat between the Wendish Hanse-cities and the Hollanders 1438-1441 created possibilities for the new king Christopher to strengthen his own futural position, had it not been for the harsh proto-national viewpoints of the Norwegian Council of the Realm on the background of the dominant Hanseatic position in Bergen. The Danish King Christian I, who from 1448 fought Karl Knutsson for several years, almost at the end won Sweden by the help of Lübeck and the Wendish Hanse-Towns, who reached a salt monopoly towards Sweden. In short, the paper deals with the strategies and complicated internal interests and relations inside the Hanse towards the thre nordic countries inkl. Finland and Iceland with their different trade-profiles in a crucial period of Scandinavian late-medieval history. • Marie-Louise Pelus-Kaplan - Mobilité et entreprise dans le monde hanséatique: des entreprises commerciales Dans le contexte d'un "long XVIe siècle" plutôt favorable, globalement, au commerce hanséatique, il est intéressant d'étudier, grâce à des archives d'entreprises plus nombreuses que celles dont on dispose pour l'époque médiévale, comment les marchands de la Hanse adaptent à ce contexte nouveau leurs formes ancestrales d'organisation et de mobilité. La communication s'attachera à montrer, d'abord, comment migrations et moblité sont deux éléments constitutifs de l'identité hanséatique, puis de quelle manière la culture technique des entreprises commerciales hanséatiques constitue une réponse originale aux conditions spécifiques de leur commerce; enfin, à partir de l'exemple des entreprises lubeckoises, comment les entreprises traditionnelles se maintiennent tout en s'adaptant aux conditions nouvelles des XVIe et XVIIe siècles. Tout en conservant leur structure complexe et éclatée, tout en restant fidèles à leur pratique ancestrale de la mobilité, les entreprises lubeckoises pendant et après la Guerre de Trente Ans vont se convertir progressivement à de nouvelles techniques, comme la comptabilité en partie double, et se montrer capables d'opérer des reconversions spectaculaires(par exemple en misant très fortement sur le commerce avec la France au moment de la Guerre de Hollande). Ces constatations vont dans le sens du regard neuf posé sur les "petites" entreprises hanséatiques par une nouvelle génération d'historiens qui s'attache à réévaluer les réseaux des petites entreprises européennes, à la lumière des études consacrées à l'histoire des réseaux commerciaux des autres continents. • Richard W. Unger - The Hanse Beer Trade: the norm of nothern European commerce The beer trade was a staple of a number of Hanse towns along the south coast of the North Sea and the Baltic. The development of reliable methods to produce beer with hope as the principal flavouring in the early years of the thirteenth century created a durable good that could remain drinkable for up to six months and more. The new additive meant that a lower alcohol content was required to preserve the drink and that in turn translated into less grain needed for each barrel. Hopped beer could cost less to brew and could travel without violent damage to the taste. Hopped beer then became an export product first for Bremen and soon thereafter for Hamburg. In the Baltic Wismar surprisingly was the source of beer for Scandinavia while Gdañsk sent beer throughout Prussia and further east. Beer was bulky so most of the trade went by sea. The towns involved in production set regulations to promote production and even, in the case of Lübeck, built systems to supply water to breweries. Towns also colluded to standardize barrel size to ease interchangeability and increase the chances that brewers would get barrels back to use again. The volume of the trade proved to be considerable. That remained true in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries after population fel. Brewers probably took advantage of consumers having more spare money to spend on what was, among foodstuffs, a relative luxury. Prices indicate that beer held up and that it was a significant source of income for the residents of the major Hanse exporting towns. It was a source of income for the rulers of importing jurisdictions as well. The Hanse had diplomatic bouts with, for example, the Count of Flanders over the taxes on imported beer. At Bruges the building that housed merchants was specially equipped for the storage and easy handling of beer. While the total value of the beer trade may have been impressive the units were relatively small and so apparently no special instruments were required to finance the trade. Difficulties of producing wine in the region of Hanse towns made beer the drink of choice. Brewers in north German towns were able to develop an industry and, in conjunction with shippers, exploited the relatively efficient bulk carrying cargo ships Hanse ports to establish export markets. In the process they eroded the area where wine dominated as a drink. Brewers and merchants trading in beer exploited existing legal and organizational structures, some of which they promoted, to protect and develop their industry. The result was what became by the fifteenth century a standard component of the typical Hanse pattern and practice of trade. As brewers in other parts of northern Europe perfected the art of making beer as good or better than the producers in Hanse towns the trade in beer declined and at the same time so too did the Hanse trading network and Hanse political influence. I7 -
Converging varieties of capitalism; towards a global competition policy, 1930-2000 Session abstract: Show Session abstract: Hide
Cartels are as old as the hills. The current approach to strict anti-trust legislation developed slowly after World War II and replaced a system in which cartels were not seen as a threat to the functioning of the economy. A transition from a cartelised to a decartelised economy seems to be a global phenomenon and will be the focus of this session of the IEHA-congress. One of the major goals of the session is to promote a deeper understanding about the historical and institutional context of competition policies, both on the national level and from an international perspective. The first objective is to make an historical comparison of national perspectives on competition and competition policy and the influence of international institutions. The position of the firm will be emphasized. The second objective is to connect institutional changes to the performance and strategies of the firms at the national and international level. The third goal focuses on the efficiency and/or performance of cartels. This links the phenomenon to questions of stability and the success of cartel agreements. Organizers: • - The invisible handshake; cartelisation in the nETHERLANDS, 1930-1980 Cartels were among the most important phenomena shaping market structures in the 20th century. For a long time cartels were not forbidden. The anti-cartel legislation dates from the 1950s, but even then it took a long time before it was enforced. The attitude towards cartels was remarkably consistent during a large part of the century. In this paper we want to explain the adjustments in Dutch policy towards cartels in the European framework during the 20th century. • Susanna Fellman - The “Finnish model of capitalism” and transforming competition policies, 1930-1992.
In this paper, the Finnish competition policies and legislation over a long time period is analysed. Transforming competition policies and cartel/competition legislation will be illuminated against transformations in the broader economic and institutional context. Antitrust policies and doctrines have been an international phenomenon in the post-war period, but national policies have also been deeply embedded in the local ideological, political and economic context. It is evident that the Finnish competition legislation and the prevailing doctrines and attitudes towards cartels, were closely linked to the Finnish economic and institutional environment. I will discuss the motivation behind transformations in competition policies and the cartel legislation, which groups influenced the process and which were the targets of the reforms. • Martin Shanahan - Anti-cartel or anti-foreign? Australian attitudes to cartels,cartel policy and anti-competitive behaviour in the first half of the 20th century
Australian cartel policy, like many other countries, has been influenced by the attitudes of foreign countries for many years. From the influence of the Sherman anti-trust act at the beginning of the century to legislative changes in the mid 1970s and later, Australian policy makers have frequently responded to external influences. What makes Australian policy development different from policies in Europe or the US over the 20th century, however, has been some of the motivation behind those policies. Participants: • Dominique Barjot • Bengtaake Berg - Industrial Cartels and Monopolies in Sweden before 1950: The Food Industry - Which role did the Government and the Consumer Cooperatives play?
The Swedish variety of capitalism has been well researched by economic historians as regards factor markets like capital (banking and ownership) and labor (“the Swedish model”). The way the capitalist system worked in the product markets has however gained less attention. A large part of the industrial production took place in firms with markets where price competition was either absent or severely restricted. Tobacco and Spirits were state monopolies. Sugar, Yeast, Dairies and Slaughter houses were controlled by private monopolistic organizations. Breweries and Flour milling had cartels dividing markets into exclusive regions i.e. local monopolies. In the margarine and starch industries, there were price cartels with syndicates. In still others, there were no formal agreements but informal norms of “fair”, i.e. non-price, competition. Productivity growth seems to have been high in the monopolized industries but lower than average in the cartelized ones. Available profitability data show the highest values for the cartelized industries. • Marco Bertilorenzi - Cartels and Competition. The dynamics of the international cartelisation in the interwar aluminium industry, 1926-1939.
According with Jeffrey Fear, cartels are not the opposite of competition and “the question is not cartels or competition, but cartels and competition. Historically, cartels provided participating firms a range of market-ordering options” and “they reshape the rules of the game on which competition rests” [J.Fear 2007 and 2008]. Even if we can not exclude a partial working of demand and supply law, economic conditions of interwar period influenced a general tendency toward a “coordinate market”, as it is called by Hall & Soskice, in which “the equilibria [...] are more often the result of strategic interaction among firms and other actors”. [Hall & Soskice, 2001]. Financial difficulties, monetary fluctuations, governments’ policies and the progressive destruction of international trade, however, were at the same time the main cause of the infectiveness of international cartels pushing firms toward un-fair attitudes and competitive behaviours. • Joost Dankers • Thomas David - Still “the unmatched world champions of cartels”? Paper summary: Show Paper summary: Hide
According to Hall and Soskice (2001), Switzerland can be classified among the coordinated market economies where non-market mechanisms of coordination between economic actors play a major role. In particular, Switzerland exhibited a high degree of cartelization in the domestic product market. Three major periods can be distinguished concerning the development of cartels in Switzerland: World War I, the depression of the thirties and World War II. However, an anti-cartel tendency manifested itself from the 1950s on, but this dynamic remained very feeble until the 1980s. The Swiss were thus, at that time, declared “the unmatched world champions of cartels” (Schröter 1999: 149) • Stephanie Ginalski - Still "the unmatched world champions of cartels"? Cartels in Switzerland, 1910-1980
According to Hall and Soskice (2001), Switzerland can be classified among the coordinated market economies where non-market mechanisms of coordination between economic actors play a major role. In particular, Switzerland exhibited a high degree of cartelization in the domestic product market. Three major periods can be distinguished concerning the development of cartels in Switzerland: World War I, the depression of the thirties and World War II. However, an anti-cartel tendency manifested itself from the 1950s on, but this dynamic remained very feeble until the 1980s. The Swiss were thus, at that time, declared “the unmatched world champions of cartels” (Schröter 1999: 149) • Birgit Karlsson - Towards a regulated economy. Swedish wood, iron and steel in the inter-war period Sweden is regarded as a co-ordinated market economy. This implies that the interaction between state and industry is crucial for understanding the process of cartelization. Wood products and iron and steel products are classical Swedish export commodities. During the inter-war period they underwent processes of international cartelization. The Swedish forest industry was an active part in the forming of international cartels, while the Swedish iron and steel industry was more of a reactor. This also implied different strategies towards the state. The forest industry organisations were reluctant to allow state interference while the iron- and steel industry was more eager to ask for help from the Swedish state. The need for help was actualised when dumping occurred, but in the end the state was quite passive and private regulation had the upper hand over state regulation. • Margrit Muller • Andreas Nybø - Scandinavian carbide and ferroalloys producers and the international cartels in the 1920s The paper examines how a Norwegian group of carbide and ferroalloys producers and its Swedish collaborators contributed to the establishing and consolidation of international cartels in the 1920s. During the last decades there have been published many studies of international cartels in the interwar years. Only a few have analysed the process of establishing cartels. Even fewer have studied cartelisation from the perspective of the firm. The paper deals primarily with the Scandinavian groups’ role in the cartelisation of the markets. In addition, it analyses the relations between cartelisation, market structure and strategic behaviour in the European interwar carbide and ferroalloys business. • Peter Sandberg - On the road to competition – the evolution of the cartel register and competition legislation in Sweden up until the 1950’s
The decartelisation in many West European countries started in the aftermath of the Second World War. It has been rightly stressed that the growing economic influences from the Anglo-Saxon world after the war put pressure to liberalise the cooperative capitalism that had been a main feature in many European states before and during the interwar period, Sweden included. But it is important to keep in mind that cartel- and trust organisations were an important topic and were closely connected to the discussions concerning monopolistic behaviour. In Sweden, the phenomenon was already on the agenda before the First World War but it was not until the 1920´s that the debate took of and engaged all levels of the political-economic establishment. One of the major reasons for the increased interest in cartels was the growth of monopolistic enterprises and their effects on price levels and competition. • Paal Sandvik • Harm G. Schröter • Keetie Sluyterman • Espen Storli - A Small State and International Cartels, The Case of Norway 1919-1939 The paper examines the relationship between the Norwegian State and international cartels in the interwar period. Norway was on the forefront with regard to implementing legislation regulating cartels. The Norwegian authorities used the legislation first and foremost to further two aims in relation to international cartels. The first aim was to promote economic nationalism and to combat foreign ownership; the second was to protect the interests of the export industries. Unlike the Sherman anti trust laws in the United States, the Norwegian laws were not primarily used to support the interests of the consumers. This was not because the State was uninterested in consumer interests; it was more that export interests and national control over industries was deemed to be far more important. • Frans van Waarden J7 -
States, institutions, and development: Standardization and enforcement of trades in diverse markets. Session abstract: Show Session abstract: Hide
Market economy based on impersonal trades governed by Western institutions has been the driving force of the modern economic growth in the last two centuries. Organizer: • - The governance of trade in the labor market: An experience of the Japanese silk-reeling industry Protection of the property right and governance of trades of the property right by the state are the institutional basis of the modern market economy. However, it could face difficulty to settle the governance of the labor market in this context. While the owner of labor is the worker him/herself, a employment contract provides employer with a claim to discretionary use of and investment in the labor, a residual-control-like right. Under the slavery, the problem did not appeared to exist from the viewpoint of slave owners, because their investment in slaves were protected in the slave market. While the free labor market arguably enhance efficiency through both-sided freedom of contracts, employers' investment and other expenses should be protected by some institutional arrangement. If the state court provides governance that satisfies the condition but does not contradicts the free labor, it would be a solution. Alternatively, the judicial system with the third party enforcement sometimes makes favorable environment for private governance by making the off-path actions less profitable. This paper focuses on this kind of experience in the silk-reeling industry in early twentieth century Japan. Participants: • Gareth Austin - Coercion and Markets: Integrating Economic and Social Explanations of Slavery in Precolonial West Africa, c1450-c1900 Enslavement and slave trading were the main source of labour recruitment, apart from the slower process of marriage and child-rearing, in the economies of precolonial West Africa. As elsewhere in the world, first-generation slaves in African societies were mostly foreigners. Unlike the forms of slavery practised by Europeans, however, indigenous African slavery was usually assimilative, in that the descendants of slaves tended to be integrated into the society concerned on increasingly more equal terms over subsequent generations, with varying rates and degrees of completion. The conjunction of slave labour and partial assimilation has generated a long-running debate between ‘economic’ and ‘social’ interpretations of the institution in its West African settings. This paper aims to reconcile and integrate these traditionally rival interpretations, and to explore the economic implications. I argue that, in radical ways, it was the interaction of economic and social (and cultural and political) dimensions of slavery that was central to the history of slavery in precolonial West Africa. On the one hand, the growth in the volume of slavery and the specific uses to which slaves were put within the region cannot be explained without reference to the demand for slaves as labourers producing commodities. On the other hand, without organized coercion, and the political and ideological conditions for applying it, there could have been no slavery and no slave trade. Indeed, it will be argued here that, without such coercion, there would have been no market in labour at all in the economic conditions that prevailed in most of West Africa during this era. Moreover, the assimilative tendency in African slavery should be seen both as responding to the political circumstances of the region (the severe constraints on state formation) and, ironically, as underpinning the continuation of the internal slave trade. • Dan Bogart - Were Statutory Authorities Second-best? Examining the benefits, costs, and alternatives to British Institutions in the eighteenth century
British institutions differed from those in Continental Europe and throughout the world in the • Gerhard Kling • Claire Lemercier - Regulating apprenticeship in 19th-century France Recent research has stressed the complementarity of and ties between "public" and "private" institutions implied in economic regulations in 19th-century France. I try to describe this complex "co-regulation" in the case of apprenticeship, by focusing on a study of Parisian labor courts. • Mayo Morimoto - The technological progress and the transformation of labor organization: Modernization of the Japanese coal mining from the 1900s to the 1930s This paper focuses on the interaction between the changes in production technology and the transformation of labor organization in the coal mining. Along with the introduction of modern technology, the Japanese coal mining indstry experienced drastic changes both in the labor organization and the labor market. Coal mining firms moved from indirect employment to direct employment and built up the internal labor market in which investment in human capital was conducted by each firm, as new skills were required for operating machines newly introduced. At the same time, when traditional skills being less useful, intermediary bodies that had supplied workers with firms disappeared and firms directly came in the labor market to hire freshmen. • Naofumi Nakamura - Personnel Management, Business Organisation, and Internal Labour Market: A Case of the Nippon Railway Company in Meiji Japan The purpose of this paper is to present the history of organisational reforms in Nippon Railway Co., the largest railway company in Meiji Japan, focussing mainly on the relationship between the personnel management and the internal labour market of the company. Through this work, I intend to have some insights into the background and implications of the formation of modern business enterprises in Japan. • Patrick O'Brien - Concluding discussant • Yasuo Takatsuki - Informational Efficiency under the Shogunate Governance: Concentration and Integration of the Rice Market in Tokugawa Japan
In the Tokugawa period, market transactions grew explosively and the local markets of Japan were effectively integrated into a national market. This is the common view shared among historians. An important question is how these markets performed. • Takenobu Yuki K7 -
Industrial agglomeration and urbanization in comparative historical perspectives Session abstract: Show Session abstract: Hide
Development of the theoretical spatial economics (New Economic Geography) along with the spatial information science has brought about the renaissance of economic geography, and the wave has reaching to the economic history research. The researchers proposing this session, whose fields include spatial economics, spatial information science and development economics as well as economic history, has been working on compiling and analyzing historical spatial data of Japan. The first purpose of this session is to present and discuss the results of our research. The titles of the papers already confirmed are “Urbanization and size distribution of industrial plants,””Identifying the sources of agglomeration economy: Plant-level analysis of the silk industry,” “Spatial relationship between old industries and emerging industries,””Impact of a natural disaster on industrial clusters: A case of the Great Kanto Earthquake, 1923” At the same time, we plan to invite scholars working on the same issue on other areas including Europe, North America South East Asia for a comparative study. We expect that this session will be a starting point of the global network on comparative historical study on industrial agglomeration and urbanization. Organizer: • - Impact of Natural Disasters on Industrial Agglomeration: A Case of the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake
In this paper, the effect of a temporary shock on the industrial agglomeration Participants: • Maarten Bosker - City seeds: the geographical origins of the European city system This paper empirically disentangles the important roles of geography in shaping the European city system. To do this we employ a, largely new, database covering all actual European cities as well as potential city locations over the period 800-1800, during which the foundations for the European city system were laid out. We relate each location’s urban chances to its physical, 1st nature geography characteristics, and develop a new empirical strategy to assess the importance of the 2nd nature geography characteristics of the urban system surrounding each location as well. Instead of the, up to now, largely narrative historical accounts on the role of geography in determining the location of cities in Europe, we provide quantitative empirical evidence into the important, and changing, role of geography in creating the European city system. First nature geography is the dominant explanation from the 9th until the 16th century, but, second nature geography gains in importance from the 17th century onwards. • Peter Howlett - Income convergence across the US states in the postwar period: a distribution dynamics approach Paper summary: Show Paper summary: Hide
In their classic paper (‘Convergence across States and Regions’, Brookings Papers 1991) Barro and Sala-i-Martin argued that among the factors that were important for understanding the income convergence process across the US states were the existence of regional clubs (they identified 4 regional clubs - East, South, West and Midwest) and the share of personal income originating in the agricultural sector. In this paper we borrow these stylised facts to re-examine the convergence of income across the U.S. states in the postwar period but do so by using a distributional dynamics approach. This approach allows us to examine the empirical cross-sectional income distribution as it evolves over time and also allows us to use this to derive the steady–state solution for this system. • Asuka Imaizumi - Determinants of Industrial Agglomeration: A Case of Japan, 1900-1935
This article aims at exploring historical patterns of industrial location and their determinants, focusing on industrial agglomerations. • Tomohiro Machikita - The Determinants of Size Distribution of Plants in the Early Stage of Agglomeration and Industrial Development: Japan, 1904-1921 Paper summary: Show Paper summary: Hide This paper proposes a new mechanism linking size distribution of plants and urbanization in developing economies to detect the location choices and investigates its empirical implications in micro data on manufacturing plants in Japan. In a model with economies of urbanization, smaller plants utilize more production linkages in urban area in terms of number of different types of firms than larger plants, and also success to sell product to local market. In a model with plant-level scale economies, plants have geographic proximity to large market in terms of local population would produce more, and also success to be large plants. First, we find that the number of local (neighbourhood) firms decreases size of plants only for plants located in urban area. Second, we find that the size of local population increases size of plants for plants. This effect is also bigger for plants located in urban area than plants located in less urbanized area. Third, historical trends of urbanization stimulate these two effects, i.e., both of urbanization impacts of plant size and population impact of plant size are larger for area where are also previously urbanized area. These findings support the hypothesis that agglomeration economies of different types of firms only for urban area. These findings support the hypothesis that plants become larger when plants have geographic proximity to larger market. • Kentaro Nakajima - Agglomeration or Selection? The Case of the Japanese Silk-Reeling Industry in 1909-1916 Paper summary: Show Paper summary: Hide Plants in clusters are often more productive than those located in non-clusters. This has been explained by agglomeration effects that improve productivity of all plants in a region. However, recent theoretical development of trade and spatial economic theories with heterogeneous firms has shed light on another channel of productivity improvement in clusters, "plant-selection effects". This paper uses plant-level data on the Japanese silk reeling industry in 1909-1916 and distinguishes between these two effects. We identify the plant-selection effect by using the fact that the two effects have different implications on the distribution of plant-level productivity of the two effects. We confirmed that plants in clusters were indeed more productive. At the same time, we found that the widths of distribution of plant productivity in clusters were narrower and more severely truncated than those in non-clusters. Our results imply that the plant-selection effect was at least one of the sources of the higher plant-level productivity in clusters. • Joan Rosés L7 -
Entrepreneurial Minorities and the Modern Economic Growth, XIX - early XX Centuries Session abstract: Show Session abstract: Hide
The history of compact ethno confessional groups of entrepreneurs in non-coreligional entourage (“trade or entrepreneurial minorities”) has been lately the point of research interest in different countries. As a methodological impact is used a well-known Max Weber’s thesis about the forming of specific business ethics of religious minorities (according to Weber – protestant ethics) as a spiritual source of modern capitalism. The question is how far this thesis can be applied to other ethno confessional groups both within Christianity and out of it (Islam, Judaism)? To which extent these groups served as a catalyst for the modern economic growth in different countries during the early industrialization, i.e. before the WW1? How much did they manage to secure their national and religious identity or did they undergo the process of acculturation being influenced by the western modernist style? Organizers: • • Yuri A. Petrov Participants: • Rita Bredefeldt - Early Jewish entrepreneurs in Sweden. Economy, identity and assimilation 1782-1930. Jews were not allowed in Sweden before 1782. After that legislation defined the Jewish minority totally as a special kind of economic men. Sweden needed foreign capital, to get rid of impeding guild regulations, a enhanced turover and know-how from European financial networks. Jews were allowed to to occupy themselves within a limited range of economic activities and to settle down in four cities only. The first Western Jews that immigrated to Sweden accepted the economic role given to them, expanded their economic activities and worked for their emancipation, a goal that was reached in 1870. Swedish citizens of the Jewish confession established themselves during the 19th century as an economic and cultural elite. Many came to belong to Swedish bourgeoisie and contributed to modern economic growth. They were bankers, large scale wholesale dealers, entrepreneurs in trade and industry, publishers, art dealers and philanthropists. The second wave of Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire 1850-1914 played another economic role in Sweden than the Western European Jewish immigrants a hundred years before. In spite of contradictions between the two Jewish groups, both exhibited upward social moblity in their economic activities as a central motif. Aside from the traditional traits of Jewish identity, other central dimensions of identity were the cultural, the economic and the cautiousness against anti-Semitism creating a need to overemphasize economic and cultural success. • Valery Kerov - GOVERNMENTAL PERSECUTION, CONFESSIONAL VALUES OR COMMUNAL CORPORATIVISM? Factors of the Old Believer’s entrepreneurship forming and development in Russia in the 18th–19th centuries
The modern foreign historiography doesn’t find anything in the religion of the Old Faith” that could explain Old Believers’ extraordinary accomplishments in the economic sphere. The majority of historians consider social position of a persecuted group (the society’s “outcast”) as the main factor of Old Believers’ entrepreneurship forming. • Thomas Owen • Wolfgang Sartor - German entreprenurs in St. Petersburg Family and Confessional Structure 1815-1914
German entreprenurs in St. Petersburg Family and Confessional Structure 1815-191 • Huibert Schijf - Global and local Networks of International Jewish Bankers. The Koenigswarters and Bischoffsheims in Amsterdam, 1817-1862
In the nineteenth century, many of the Jewish bankers who operated internationally were of German descent and they played an important and innovative role in banking, the foundation of industries and new railway companies. This paper purports to discuss the various networks used by Jewish bankers in the nineteenth century to create cooperation and trust between partners and to minimise transaction costs in their global and local financial relations, where the global links are restricted mainly to the political, economic and cultural space of Europe. Two time-honoured concepts from network analysis, ‘strong ties’ and ‘weak ties,’ will be applied to examine the various connections. Intermarriage within the group of already strongly intertwined international bankers was a strategy to guarantee cooperation and trust, and these marriages made it possible not only to keep capital within the family but also to keep their financial partners abroad in line. In the end, success of these banks remained precarious because solving the problem of continuity was far from easy, as there are no conclusive strategies to guarantee success over several generations. • James West - Max Weber in the Shadow of the Anti Christ The history of Old Belief (Staroverie, Staroobriadchestvo) is full of paradoxes, not the least of which is the pioneering role played by Old Believer entrepreneurs in the early economic development of Russia. As one historian has mused, how could “the worshippers of religious immobility, the fanatical enemies of ecclesiastical reforms, the irrational adherents to letter and gesture, appear as energetic modernizers in their very rational economic pursuits”? Attempts to answer this question almost inevitably involve references to Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. This paper will examine the entrepreneurial role of Old Believers in Russia through the lense of the Weber Thesis. N7 -
The development of the rural economy and the ‘demesne lordship’ (Gutsherrschaft): East-central Europe, c. 1500-c. 1800 Session abstract: Show Session abstract: Hide
This session aims at summarizing and extending recent research on rural economic development in early modern East-central and Eastern Europe, which in the last twenty years succeeded in overcoming the notion that this area was a compact entity of a ‘second serfdom’. Rather than taking a ‘general backwardness’ and a long-term stagnation of rural societies for granted, studies now focus on regional variation and the concrete economic consequences of regional structures of lordship. All papers will have a strong empirical basis and will test new hypotheses that rural power relations in East-central and Eastern Europe were more flexible and did not generally suppress economic innovation and development in the landlord and peasant economies. They will form a first contribution to a more general debate on revising existing theories of a ‘second serfdom’. Papers will concentrate on the following issues: Organizers: • - The development of the rural economy and the ‘demesne lordship’ (Gutsherrschaft): East-central Europe, c. 1500-c. 1800: Introduction This session aims at summarizing and extending recent research on rural economic development in early modern East-central and Eastern Europe, which in the last twenty years succeeded in overcoming the notion that this area was a compact entity of a ‘second serfdom’. Rather than taking a ‘general backwardness’ and a long-term stagnation of rural societies for granted, studies now focus on regional variation and the concrete economic consequences of regional structures of lordship. The introduction argues that forms of subjection need to be separated from outright ‘serfdom’ conceptually and analytically. A brief summary of the main research results over the past two decades emphasizes that agrarian society of early-modern east-central and eastern Europe was not dominated by ‘serfdom’. On this basis, it will be important to strengthen existing new comparative research approaches towards economic development during the early modern period and towards building a new general model. • William W. Hagen - EUROPEAN YEOMANRIES: A NON-IMMISERATION MODEL OF AGRARIAN SOCIAL HISTORY, 1350-1800
The neo-classical and political economy literatures view the post-medieval history of the European peasantry as one of economic dispossession and legal disability. Against this vision, this paper propose a model of early modern European rural history which concentrates foremost on the maintenance and reproduction of the medium-size or large, partly self-sufficient though also market-integrated family farm. Its proprietors figure here, ideal-typically, as working farmers employing as laborers a mix of family members, farm servants, and wage-workers. Such farms must be conceptualized in an historical setting in which European villagers were everywhere subject to seigneurial lordship or landlordism, whether as serfs, manorial subjects, or freemen. So too were landholding family farmers universally, if variously, subject to rents (whether market or feudal rents), taxes, and often conscription too. They occupied their farms under widely differing tenures, with correspondingly varying property rights, though never altogether without some degree of ownership in fixed capital, farm stock, or other mobile goods. Participants: • Piotr Guzowski - The demesne economy in Poland in the 16th-18th centuries: myths and reality The paper presents a variety of social and economic phenomena which accompanied the process of transformation from rent to demesne economy. Special emphasis is placed on investigating medieval origins of enforced unpaid labour (labour services) and its growing popularity in the early modern period. The paper considers also legal circumstances of serfdom and of the status of serfs as labourers bound to the land. Regional differences in the system of lordship, and economic situation of Polish gentry and peasants are also discussed. The author presents results of the latest research into the origins and development of demesne lordship in early modern Poland, but simultaneously, an attempt is made to challenge some stereotypical images and persistent myths about these issues. It is in this context that the author considers the influence of economic boom at home and of growing demand for grain abroad on Polish economy, the share particular social groups had in a rapidly expanding grain market, and critical moments in the creation and development of Polish demesne lordship with its periods of prosperity and crisis • Heinrich Kaak - Agrarian politics in an area of personal serfdom - the Order of St John in the Neumark Brandenburg from 1650 to 1811
Since about 1570, Brandenburg can be characterised as being the first area possessing a • Erich Landsteiner - Demesne Lordship and the Early Modern State in Central Europe. The Struggle for Labour Rent in Lower Austria in the Second Half of the 16th Century
Demesne lordship and the early modern state in Central Europe. The struggle for labour rent in Lower Austria in the second half of the 16th century. • Edgar Melton • Mats Olsson - Peasant productivity and lordship economy. A comparative study of south Sweden 1700–1860
The impact of the agrarian system of demesne lordship on the productivity and prosperity of peasant farmers has engaged a lot of researchers through the years. It was already in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries an area of debate among contemporary writers. But due to lack of sources very few comparative analyses of economic outputs between e.g. freeholders and subject tenants have been done. So, our idea of the economic impact of demesne lordship on peasants is to a large extent influenced by contemporary opinions, either from critics or defenders. • Aleksander Panjek - Feudal Economy in a Comparative Perspective: Western Slovenia between Central and Southern Europe The paper aims to present an interpretation of the fundamental economic and social characteristics of the feudal estates in the southern Hapsburg lands (today South-Western Slovenia) by adopting a comparative perspective. The work concentrates on the last decades of the 16th and first decades of the 17th centuries. Specific attention is dedicated to the attempt of evaluating the presence, nature and extent of an active landlords’ approach to the economic activities within their estates. • Carsten Porskrog Rasmussen - Innovative Feudalism. Gutsherrschaft and Koppelwirtschaft in Schleswig-Holstein in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Manors in 18th century Schleswig-Holstein are a challenge to simple dichotomic concepts of progressive and backwards forms of economic organisation. On the one hand they are examples of the most extreme Gutsherrschaft with a very large proportion of demesne land, one of the highest levels of corvee demands from dependant serfs known anywhere in Europe, and an extensive manorial jurisdiction. On the other hand its large scale farming was seen as a model for adjoining territories to the north and east, admired for its productivity and innovation. P7 -
Coin circulation in Central Europe Session abstract: Show Session abstract: Hide
The study of economy is mainly linked to the study of the extension of the influences of the main Empires. For the Antiquity, the main axis of study is to understand the relations between the Mediterranean Empires and the Barbaricum, considering specially the general evolution of the importance of the economic relations and the conflicts between the main states and economic centers. Since 1995, international scientific programs try to understand the evolution of the importance of the economic relations of the Mediterranean states and the rest of the World and to analyze the evolution of the integration of the "other states" in the Mediterranean economy. Organizers: • - Presentation of the current cooeration in Europe • Aleksander Bursche Participants: • Alenka Miskec • Delia Moisil • Francois Planet
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