{"title":"70 years of Scottish National Accounts: 1948–2018","authors":"Graeme Roy, Niall G. MacKenzie, Sandy Stewart","doi":"10.1111/ehr.70098","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.70098","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper provides a comprehensive time series of historical National Accounts for Scotland (onshore and offshore) from 1948 to 2018. It includes a detailed breakdown by income component and industrial sector using methods that are forward and backward compatible. Through this work we offer new insights on the performance of the post-war Scottish economy, including its relative performance to the UK and its industrial makeup. Our findings also provide, for the first time, a full picture of the totality of Scotland's economy over the last 70 years by incorporating an estimate of North Sea oil and gas gross value added from within Scotland's territorial waters.</p>","PeriodicalId":47868,"journal":{"name":"Economic History Review","volume":"79 3","pages":"1210-1234"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2026-07-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ehr.70098","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148532891","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Competition and payments to African chiefs on the Gold Coast during the slave trade, 1679‒1704","authors":"Jose Rowell Corpuz","doi":"10.1111/ehr.70053","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.70053","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The manuscript records of the Royal African Company show that the Company paid African chiefs for access to trade along the caravan routes on the Gold Coast in the seventeenth century. This paper documents and examines these payments. Using an event study, I establish that after the Glorious Revolution in 1688 when the Company's monopoly in trade over West Africa became uncertain, it resulted in greater competition from other English merchants, making the Company increase its payments to African chiefs whose cooperation was essential to deter other English merchants from competing with the Company. The highest-ranking chiefs received the highest value of payments per capita. Company records show that firearms (including gunpowder), alcohol, and an expensive type of cloth were the most sought-after types of payment, and head chiefs received most of these items.</p>","PeriodicalId":47868,"journal":{"name":"Economic History Review","volume":"79 3","pages":"1052-1081"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2026-07-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ehr.70053","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148534093","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Golden weapons and golden fetters: From the gold standard to the new geopolitics","authors":"Harold James","doi":"10.1111/ehr.70055","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.70055","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper explores the historical relationship between monetary regimes, security concerns, and geopolitical tensions, particularly focusing on the role of gold. Throughout history, monetary systems have been deeply intertwined with international state systems and security provisions. Credibility in monetary regimes is affected by security challenges, often resulting in major systemic restructuring. In the past, military spending and security considerations have often driven debt-financed expenditure and influenced the choice of monetary policies. After the mid-twentieth century, as non-military (socially driven) government expenditure rose, the old considerations faded, but reemerged in the early twenty-first century. The paper then addresses the weaponization of the dollar and the resurgence of gold as a strategic reserve asset in the face of geopolitical tensions, depolarization efforts, and concerns about asset seizure. The analysis finally investigates how deep-seated beliefs and historical traumas shape the monetary and geopolitical landscapes.</p>","PeriodicalId":47868,"journal":{"name":"Economic History Review","volume":"79 3","pages":"900-921"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2026-07-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ehr.70055","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148533824","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Irish regional GDP since independence","authors":"Alan de Bromhead, Seán Kenny","doi":"10.1111/ehr.70054","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.70054","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper constructs the first long-run estimates of Irish regional gross domestic product (GDP) over the twentieth century and traces the relative economic performance of Ireland's regions since independence. Using an array of data sources available at a county level, output in agriculture, industry, and services in benchmark census years is estimated. Applying a variety of alternative measures, we find a reduction in regional inequality over the period that resembles the broader European pattern. Regional convergence over the period 1926–91 was driven by both within-sector convergence in productivity and structural change. Our paper helps us understand the regional dimensions of Irish economic development from the birth of a newly independent state up to the eve of Ireland's growth ‘miracle’ in the 1990s, when the first official efforts were initiated to construct these figures. Finally, we connect our regional estimates to the first official figures to study the evolution of Irish regional development up to 2021.</p>","PeriodicalId":47868,"journal":{"name":"Economic History Review","volume":"79 3","pages":"1175-1209"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2026-07-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ehr.70054","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148533881","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"An economic history of Europe: Knowledge, institutions and welfare, prehistory to the present Karl Gunnar Persson, Paul Sharp, and Markus Lampe, ( 3rd edition, Cambridge University Press, 2026. Pp. 314. ISBN 9781009613989. Sbk £35).","authors":"Christopher L. Colvin","doi":"10.1111/ehr.70136","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.70136","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47868,"journal":{"name":"Economic History Review","volume":"79 3","pages":"1268-1269"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2026-07-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148534411","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Between famine and freedom: Food prices during the Indonesian War of Independence, 1945–9","authors":"Ingrid de Zwarte, Helmi Moret, Pim de Zwart","doi":"10.1111/ehr.70084","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.70084","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper investigates how the Indonesian War of Independence (1945‒9) influenced staple food prices, and how fluctuations in those prices, in turn, shaped the trajectory and dynamics of the conflict. We compiled a dataset comprising more than 8600 prices for staple foods covering the entire Indonesian archipelago from 1939‒49, allowing us to estimate the effects of wartime conditions and the main Dutch military campaigns on food prices. We find that wartime price peaks were much more severe and prolonged than studies previously assumed, both in and outside Java. We show that the first large military operation, Operation Product, was partly motivated by high rice prices and demonstrate that these prices were significantly reduced across Java and Sumatra after the end of the military campaign. We then use a second dataset on wartime wages to estimate nutritional standards. These combined data suggest a very low nutritional status of urban unskilled wage labourers – often below the family subsistence level – in 1946 and the first half of 1947. Our results point to broader entitlement failures driven by weak market connectivity amidst military and economic warfare.</p>","PeriodicalId":47868,"journal":{"name":"Economic History Review","volume":"79 3","pages":"1082-1107"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2026-07-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ehr.70084","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148522895","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Alan de Bromhead, David Jordan, Francis Kennedy, Jack Seddon
{"title":"Managed decline: Muddling through with the Sterling (dis)Agreements, 1968–74","authors":"Alan de Bromhead, David Jordan, Francis Kennedy, Jack Seddon","doi":"10.1111/ehr.70057","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.70057","url":null,"abstract":"<p>How do policymakers manage the decline of an international currency? This paper revisits the view that the ‘Sterling Agreements’ of 1968–74 – bilateral contracts between the UK and sterling-holding governments – marked a successful paradigm shift towards sterling's managed ‘retirement’. Archival evidence reveals no strategic coherence to British policy in this period, a case of ‘muddling through’. Phased reductions in the amount of sterling protected by ‘guarantee’ were presented as steps on a path to ‘winding down’ sterling. But, when given options, British officials prioritized maintaining, rather than reducing, international sterling holdings, and the Agreements, if anything, tended to encourage their increase. Sterling's relative decline resulted more from sterling area countries seeking financial freedom, as the Bank of England – the Agreements’ designer and defender – lost policy influence.</p>","PeriodicalId":47868,"journal":{"name":"Economic History Review","volume":"79 3","pages":"1108-1135"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2026-07-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ehr.70057","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148533825","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The slow emergence of the rational investor: Grain markets and grain storage of rural estates in western Germany, eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries","authors":"Matthias Hartermann, Ulrich Pfister, Friederike Scholten-Buschhoff","doi":"10.1111/ehr.70060","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.70060","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We develop new datasets of monthly grain prices in 14 urban markets and of the storage and marketing of grain by 5 rural estates located in western Germany between the late seventeenth century and <i>c</i>. 1860. We explore whether observed patterns of monthly prices, sales, and storage of grain are consistent with the rational competitive storage model (RCSM). Results establish, first, that the crop year was divided into two seasons characterized by processing and marketing, respectively. Monthly prices of wheat during the marketing season (from February to summer) showed a pattern consistent with the rational competitive storage model. In the case of rye, which was a subsistence crop, a pattern of monthly prices consistent with the RCSM emerged only in the nineteenth century and was confined to urban markets. Second, grain price movements in spring and early summer predicted November prices, which implies the presence of inter-annual arbitrage. Whereas carry-over stocks held by rural estates partly served to provision a large household, tentative evidence suggests that some rural estates indeed also engaged in inter-annual arbitrage, but they do not seem to have been able to earn a profit from holding carryover stocks.</p>","PeriodicalId":47868,"journal":{"name":"Economic History Review","volume":"79 3","pages":"1235-1264"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2026-07-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ehr.70060","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148522910","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Chris Briggs, Ben Jervis, Alice Forward, Tomasz Gromelski, Matthew Tompkins
{"title":"Felons’ chattels and English living standards in the later fourteenth and fifteenth centuries","authors":"Chris Briggs, Ben Jervis, Alice Forward, Tomasz Gromelski, Matthew Tompkins","doi":"10.1111/ehr.70052","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.70052","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The later fourteenth and fifteenth centuries have long occupied an intriguing and contested place in discussions of England's long-run economic development. One key issue around which debate has coalesced is the living standards of the population as a whole and of different groups within it. We contribute to this debate by bringing forward new evidence on the material living standards of peasants, artisans, and wage-earners in the countryside and small towns. This consists of lists of goods and chattels forfeited to the crown by felons, fugitives, and outlaws. This material, found in the archive of the royal escheator, is not without its problems. Yet, a careful quantitative analysis of both the overall valuations of forfeited goods and the incidence of specific items in such lists of forfeitures shows that there was relatively little change in the later fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This is surprising, given the traditional characterization of this period as a time of rising consumption during the ‘golden age of the labourer’. This later medieval evidence is contextualized through the analysis of similar forfeiture data relating to the sixteenth century.</p>","PeriodicalId":47868,"journal":{"name":"Economic History Review","volume":"79 3","pages":"1024-1051"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2026-07-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ehr.70052","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148532994","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Víctor A. Luque de Haro, Francisco J. Marco-Gracia
{"title":"Social inequality in mortality in rural Spain (1860–2010): The role of education and human capital","authors":"Víctor A. Luque de Haro, Francisco J. Marco-Gracia","doi":"10.1111/ehr.70056","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.70056","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This study investigates the role of education in shaping social disparities in mortality in rural Spain over the past 150 years. On the basis of individual-level life-course microdata on around 40,000 individuals, it examines variables such as socio-economic status, age at death, and various family, cultural, and environmental factors. An event history analysis tracks the lifespans of all individuals who died at age 25 or older in 17 villages. Our findings indicate that literacy and higher levels of education were positively associated with longevity. This beneficial effect extends in multiple directions: human capital not only enhanced individual longevity, but also improved the survival and wellbeing of children and parents. Therefore, investing in one's own or one's children's education boosted not only personal longevity, but also the wellbeing of those around them. The reasons behind these patterns could be diverse, including the ability to adapt lifestyles to medical and health advancements (evidenced by the intensified effect of literacy from the late nineteenth century when hygiene knowledge became widespread) and higher purchasing power, together with higher skill levels and less physically demanding occupations.</p>","PeriodicalId":47868,"journal":{"name":"Economic History Review","volume":"79 3","pages":"987-1023"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2026-07-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148533880","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}