{"title":"Secret leviathan: Secrecy and state capacity under Soviet Communism. Mark Harrison, (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2023. pp. 372. 9 figs. 23 tabs. ISBN: 9781503628892 $65)","authors":"Yoram Gorlizki","doi":"10.1111/ehr.13384","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13384","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47868,"journal":{"name":"Economic History Review","volume":"77 4","pages":"1544-1546"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142435856","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":"Peasants making history: Living in an English region 1200–1540 Christopher Dyer, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. pp. 396. 55 figs and tabs. ISBN: 9780198847212, Hbk. £81)","authors":"Jordan Claridge","doi":"10.1111/ehr.13381","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13381","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47868,"journal":{"name":"Economic History Review","volume":"77 4","pages":"1535-1536"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142435858","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":"Carbon technocracy: Energy regimes in modern East Asia. Victor Seow, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021. pp. 376. 25 figs. ISBN: 9780226826554. Pbk. $27.50)","authors":"Hiroki Shin","doi":"10.1111/ehr.13380","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13380","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47868,"journal":{"name":"Economic History Review","volume":"77 4","pages":"1541-1543"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142435832","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":"Irish GDP since independence","authors":"Seán Kenny","doi":"10.1111/ehr.13373","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13373","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper constructs annual gross domestic product (GDP) estimates for Ireland (1924–47) to join the first complete official aggregates. The new series is deployed to revisit Ireland's economic performance in the post-independence decades. Ireland's economy grew at just under 1.5 per cent per annum and average living standards improved by 40 per cent. The bulk of this was due to labour productivity improvements. Starting in 1924 captures the civil war recovery and paints a more positive picture of the 1920s, whilst the traditional narrative of a ‛mild’ Great Depression is upheld. The 1930s recovery was aided by strong contributions from services and industry, whilst the economy contracted by almost 7 per cent during the ‛Emergency’. Though supporting O'Rourke's view that Irish growth was not unique against European peers, the new data provide evidence of stronger convergence against UK regions. Industry contributed most to growth during the period, growing at 3.6 per cent per annum. The equivalent rate for services was 1.3 per cent, though it contributed substantially during recovery periods. Agricultural output hardly changed due to its post-war contraction. This paper joins a growing number of studies that suggest that Ireland was poorer at independence than previously believed.</p>","PeriodicalId":47868,"journal":{"name":"Economic History Review","volume":"78 3","pages":"877-906"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-08-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ehr.13373","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144520250","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":"Back to the future: How economic history can gain more relevance by abandoning modernization thinking","authors":"Bas van Bavel","doi":"10.1111/ehr.13378","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13378","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Economic history has built a solid scientific foundation over the past decades but runs a risk of becoming marginalized. This paper suggests various ways to enhance its academic and societal relevance. It proposes taking pressing societal issues as clear starting points and using history as a ‘laboratory’ to address them. To effectively do so, a sharper focus on the social and environmental contexts of economic development would be needed. This may be furthered by closer involvement in multidisciplinary teams, where economic historians would bring in the chronological dimension, making use of their historical skills. Relevance will also be increased by abandoning modernization thinking. This would encourage more openness to processes of contestation, reversal, and divergencies, and more fully using the research opportunities offered by periods further back in time and all across the globe, not because these are different from the ‘modern’, Western situation but because they are relevant as sources of knowledge in themselves – knowledge that may be vital in light of the grave challenges present societies are facing.</p>","PeriodicalId":47868,"journal":{"name":"Economic History Review","volume":"78 2","pages":"401-423"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-08-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ehr.13378","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143809931","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}
Ann M. Carlos, Erik Green, Calumet Links, Angela Redish
{"title":"Early modern globalization and the extent of indigenous agency: Trade, commodities and ecology","authors":"Ann M. Carlos, Erik Green, Calumet Links, Angela Redish","doi":"10.1111/ehr.13376","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13376","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper examines the responses of Indigenous nations and European companies to new trading opportunities: the Cree nations with the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) and the Khoe nations with the Dutch East India Company [Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC)]. This case study is important because of the disparate outcomes. Within a few decades the Cree standard of living had increased, while Khoe nations had lost cattle and land. Standard histories begin with the establishment of trading posts, but this elides the decades of prior intermittent contact which played an important role in the disparate outcomes in these two regions. The paper emphasizes the significance of Indigenous agency in trade.</p>","PeriodicalId":47868,"journal":{"name":"Economic History Review","volume":"78 3","pages":"721-748"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-08-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144519841","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":"A U-shaped curve of female entrepreneurs? The development of women's entrepreneurship in the Netherlands, 1899–2020","authors":"Selin Dilli, Corinne Boter","doi":"10.1111/ehr.13377","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13377","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Many economic historians have shown that the relationship between female labour force participation and economic development is U-shaped. However, most studies on this phenomenon do not differentiate between female wage labourers and entrepreneurs. We argue that this is problematic because standard explanations of women's wage work do not necessarily apply to entrepreneurs. To demonstrate this, this paper studies female entrepreneurship in the Netherlands between 1899 and 2020. We show that the U-shaped curve of female labour force participation does not hold for entrepreneurs because life-cycle events – such as marriage and having children – stimulated rather than discouraged women to take up entrepreneurial activities. Moreover, structural change of the economy did not equally affect the demand for female wage labourers and entrepreneurs. By integrating an entrepreneurship perspective, this research provides a more complete understanding of the diversity in women's occupational choices when constrained by institutional and individual conditions.</p>","PeriodicalId":47868,"journal":{"name":"Economic History Review","volume":"78 3","pages":"693-720"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-08-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ehr.13377","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144519668","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":"Stationary steam power in the United Kingdom, 1800–70: An empirical reassessment","authors":"Sean Bottomley","doi":"10.1111/ehr.13375","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13375","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The conventional view that the industrial revolution was premised on the unprecedented supply of mechanical power delivered via steam engines has been undermined by econometric work, purporting to show that their adoption outside the cotton and mining sectors was extremely limited until at least 1870. This was largely because water and wind power remained viable and cost-competitive substitutes long into the nineteenth century. Using evidence from a newly compiled ‘census’ of stationary power installations in Suffolk, this paper demonstrates instead that the adoption of steam power was far greater than previously thought, especially in manufacturing. Moreover, the assumption that steam could be invariably substituted with environmental forces is untenable. Depending on circumstances, even very modest power requirements could only be met with steam. Although the quantitative picture remains incomplete, steam power was likely an indispensable sustentative factor for industrialization.</p>","PeriodicalId":47868,"journal":{"name":"Economic History Review","volume":"78 3","pages":"825-848"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-07-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ehr.13375","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144520208","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":"Moving from opportunity: Intergenerational mobility of rural–urban return migrants in Sweden, 1890s–1940s","authors":"Jonatan Andersson","doi":"10.1111/ehr.13374","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13374","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Using a novel longitudinal dataset, we study the intergenerational mobility of rural–urban migrants who returned to the countryside in due course. By examining pairs of brothers during the entire migration lifecycle – from childhood until age 34 – we estimate the effect of temporarily relocating to an urban area on occupational income over the mature working ages of 35–44 between the 1890s and the 1940s in Sweden. The results show that rural–urban migrants who returned to the countryside were not failures who did not improve their social position, but instead experienced substantial gains compared with their non-migrant brothers. These gains were similar to those of migrants who had permanently settled in urban areas. This pattern is mainly attributed to their capacities to leave farming and enter white-collar positions to a greater extent than non-migrants. The extent of temporary rural–urban migration, combined with the high levels of intergenerational mobility of return migrants in Sweden during the period examined, suggests that rural–urban migration to towns resulted in positive feedback effects for the countryside.</p>","PeriodicalId":47868,"journal":{"name":"Economic History Review","volume":"78 3","pages":"802-824"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-07-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ehr.13374","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144520207","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":"Banking on railroads: The effect of market access on banking provision during the Gilded Age","authors":"Jeff Chan","doi":"10.1111/ehr.13372","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13372","url":null,"abstract":"<p>I examine the effect that market access, induced by the railroad network expansion, had on banking provision in nineteenth-century America. I find that market access increased the number of national banks. This effect operated via the extensive margin, with market access increasing the probability of having a national bank for affected counties. I find that counties had more national bank activity, with increased assets, loans, deposits, and other outcomes. I do not, however, find any effect of market access on banks already in operation. Market access therefore increased banking provision chiefly through the increased entry of national banks.</p>","PeriodicalId":47868,"journal":{"name":"Economic History Review","volume":"78 3","pages":"776-801"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-07-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ehr.13372","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144519654","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}