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  3. Cambridge Studies in Economic History - Second Series

The aim of Cambridge Studies in Economic History is to publish stimulating and accessible economic history which actively builds bridges to other disciplines. Books in the series will illuminate why the issues they address are important and interesting, place their findings in a comparative context, and relate their research to wider debates and controversies. The series will combine innovative and exciting new research by younger researchers with new approaches to major issues by senior scholars. It will publish distinguished work regardless of chronological period or geographical location.

  • Editorial Boards: Gareth Austin, University of Cambridge, Stephen Broadberry, University of Oxford, Naomi R. Lamoreaux, Yale University, Connecticut, Sheilagh Ogilvie, University of Oxford, Şevket Pamuk, Bosphorus University, Istanbul, Gavin Wright, Stanford University, California

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27 results in Cambridge Studies in Economic History - Second Series

Page 1 of 2

The Experience of Work in Early Modern England
  • Jane Whittle, Mark Hailwood, Hannah Robb, Taylor Aucoin
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    August 2025
    Print publication:
    31 August 2025
  • This book applies the innovative work-task approach to the history of work, which captures the contribution of all workers and types of work to the early modern economy. Drawing on tens of thousands of court depositions, the authors analyse the individual tasks that made up everyday work for women and men, shedding new light on the gender division of labour, and the ways in which time, space, age and marital status shaped sixteenth and seventeenth-century working life. Combining qualitative and quantitative analysis, the book deepens our understanding of the preindustrial economy, and calls for us to rethink not only who did what, but also the implications of these findings for major debates about structural change, the nature and extent of paid work, and what has been lost as well as gained over the past three centuries of economic development. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

An Economic History of India
  • Growth, Income and Inequalities from the Mughals to the 21st Century
  • Bishnupriya Gupta
  • Published online:
    06 February 2025
    Print publication:
    13 February 2025
  • This book offers a major new economic history of India from the reign of Akbar in the sixteenth century to India's post-independence integration into the global economy. Using concepts and theories from economics and economic history alongside extensive new data, Bishnupriya Gupta builds a new framework for understanding the economic impacts and legacies of British rule. She charts India's transition from precolonial economy to colonial rule and evaluates its economic performance from a comparative perspective, particularly in the context of the Great Divergence between Europe and Asia. Finally, she examines India's post-independence economy and the evolution of social and economic inequality through to the turn of the twenty-first century. By taking a long view, the book sheds new light on the persistent effects of historical institutions as well as the impacts of policy-driven changes. It will be essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the long-run evolution of the Indian economy.

Before Banks
  • The Making of Credit and Debt in Preindustrial France
  • Elise M. Dermineur
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    January 2025
    Print publication:
    23 January 2025
  • This innovative work delves into the world of ordinary early modern women and men and their relationship with credit and debt. Elise Dermineur focuses on the rural seigneuries of Delle and Florimont in the south of Alsace, where rich archival documents allow for a fine cross-analysis of credit transactions and the reconstruction of credit networks from c.1650 to 1790. She examines the various credit instruments at ordinary people's disposal, the role of women in credit markets, and the social, legal, and economic experiences of indebtedness. The book's distinctive focus on peer-to-peer lending sheds light on how and why pre-industrial interpersonal exchanges featured flexibility, diversity, fairness, solidarity and reciprocity, and room for negotiation and renegotiation. Before Banks also offers insight into factors informing our present financial system and suggests that we can learn from the past to create a fairer society and economy.

The Age of Paper
  • The Bank Note, Communal Currency and British Society, 1790s–1830s
  • Hiroki Shin
  • Published online:
    19 December 2024
    Print publication:
    02 January 2025
  • In the first detailed examination of Britain's transition to paper currency, Hiroki Shin explores how state, nation and community each played their respective role in its introduction. By examining archival materials and personal accounts, Shin's work sheds fresh light on societal, institutional, communal and individual responses to the transformation. The dominance of communal currency during the Bank Restriction period (1797–1821) demonstrates how paper currency derived its value from the community of users rather than the state or the intrinsic value of precious metal. Shin traces the expanded use of the Bank of England note – both geographically and socially – in this period, revealing the economic and social factors that accelerated this shift and the cultural manifestations of the paper-based monetary regime, from everyday politics to bank-note forgeries. This book serves as an essential resource for those interested in understanding the modern monetary system's historical origins.

Maritime Metropolis
  • London and its Port, 1780–1914
  • Sarah Palmer
  • Published online:
    21 November 2024
    Print publication:
    28 November 2024
  • Nineteenth-century London was not only the greatest city of its time but it had an equally immense port. Although the relationship between the two physically shaped the city and profoundly affected the lives and livelihoods of its inhabitants, historians have always told their stories separately. Sarah Palmer's authoritative work instead paints a picture of London as a maritime hub driven by trade, shipping, marine insurance, shipbuilding and meeting the needs of seafarers ashore. Drawing on disparate archival materials from dock company records, the National Archives, the London Metropolitan Archives and more, she reveals both the economic importance of international and domestic sea-borne trade and the unique urban geography it created. In creating this more interconnected understanding of Britain's capital, Palmer argues that the nineteenth-century transition from sail to steam didn't just affect London's port, but transformed the city and its economy with an impact comparable to that of the railways.

Imperial Borderlands
  • Institutions and Legacies of the Habsburg Military Frontier
  • Bogdan G. Popescu
  • Published online:
    09 November 2023
    Print publication:
    23 November 2023
  • What are the institutions which govern border spaces and how do they impact long-term economic and social development? This book focuses on the Habsburg military frontier zone which originated in the sixteenth century as an instrument for protecting the empire's southern border against the threat of the Ottoman Empire and which lasted until the 1880s. The book outlines the conditions under which this extractive institution affected development, showing how locals were forced to work as soldiers and exposed to rigid communal property rights, an inflexible labor market, and discrimination when it came to the provision of public infrastructure. While the formal institutions set up during the military colony disappeared, their legacy can be traced in political attitudes and social norms even today with the violence and abuses exercised by the imperial government transformed into distrust in public authorities, limited political involvement, and low social capital.

Capital Shortage
  • Credit and Indian Economic Development, 1920–1960
  • Maanik Nath
  • Published online:
    08 September 2023
    Print publication:
    10 August 2023
  • The great majority of the population in colonial and postcolonial India lived in the countryside and were poor. Many were unable to find gainful work outside agriculture and remained dependent on a livelihood that provided only subsistence, and a precarious one. Seeking the roots of persistent poverty, Maanik Nath finds that the pervasive high cost and shortage of capital affected the peasant's ability to invest in land. The productivity of land, as a result, remained small and changed little. Bridging economic theory and historical evidence, Capital Shortage shows that climate, law, policy design, and interactions between these factors, perpetuated a stubborn cycle of low investment and widespread deprivation over several decades. These findings can be tested against credit and development in preceding and succeeding periods as well as positioned in comparative global context.

Sovereignty without Power
  • Liberia in the Age of Empires, 1822–1980
  • Leigh A. Gardner
  • Published online:
    27 October 2022
    Print publication:
    03 November 2022
  • What did independence mean during the age of empires? How did independent governments balance different interests when they made policies about trade, money and access to foreign capital? Sovereignty without Power tells the story of Liberia, one of the few African countries to maintain independence through the colonial period. Established in 1822 as a colony for freed slaves from the United States, Liberia's history illustrates how the government's efforts to exercise its economic sovereignty and engage with the global economy shaped Liberia's economic and political development over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Drawing together a wide range of archival sources, Leigh A. Gardner presents the first quantitative estimates of Liberian's economic performance and uses these to compare it to its colonized neighbors and other independent countries. Liberia's history anticipated challenges still faced by developing countries today, and offers a new perspective on the role of power and power relationships in shaping Africa's economic history.

Why Democracy Failed
  • The Agrarian Origins of the Spanish Civil War
  • James Simpson, Juan Carmona
  • Published online:
    17 April 2020
    Print publication:
    07 May 2020
  • In this distinctive new history of the origins of the Spanish Civil War, James Simpson and Juan Carmona tackle the highly-debated issue of why it was that Spain's democratic Second Republic failed. They explore the interconnections between economic growth, state capacity, rural social mobility and the creation of mass competitive political parties, and how these limited the effectiveness of the new republican governments, and especially their attempts to tackle economic and social problems within the agricultural sector. They show how political change during the Republic had a major economic impact on the different groups in village society, leading to social conflicts that turned to polarization and finally, with the civil war, to violence and brutality. The democratic Republic failed not so much because of the opposition from the landed elites, but rather because small farmers had been unable to exploit more effectively their newly found political voice.

Fiscal Capacity and the Colonial State in Asia and Africa, c.1850–1960
  • Edited by Ewout Frankema, Anne Booth
  • Published online:
    15 November 2019
    Print publication:
    05 December 2019
  • This book examines the evolution of fiscal capacity in the context of colonial state formation and the changing world order between 1850 and 1960. Until the early nineteenth century, European colonial control over Asia and Africa was largely confined to coastal and island settlements, which functioned as little more than trading posts. The officials running these settlements had neither the resources nor the need to develop new fiscal instruments. With the expansion of imperialism, the costs of maintaining colonies rose. Home governments, reluctant to place the financial burden of imperial expansion on metropolitan taxpayers, pressed colonial governments to become fiscally self-supporting. A team of leading historians provides a comparative overview of how colonial states set up their administrative systems and how these regimes involved local people and elites. They shed new light on the political economy of colonial state formation and the institutional legacies they left behind at independence.

The Price of Bread
  • Regulating the Market in the Dutch Republic
  • Jan de Vries
  • Published online:
    15 April 2019
    Print publication:
    25 April 2019
  • A prime contemporary concern - how to maintain fair market relations - is addressed through this study of the regulation of bread prices. This was the single most important economic reality of Europe's daily life in the early modern period. Jan de Vries uses the Dutch Republic as a case study of how the market functioned and how the regulatory system evolved and acted. The ways in which consumer behaviour adapted to these structures, and the state interacted with producers and consumers in the pursuit of its own interests, had major implications for the measurement of living standards in this period. The long-term consequences of the Dutch state's interventions reveal how capitalist economies, far from being the outcome of unfettered market economics, are inextricably linked with regulatory fiscal regimes. The humble loaf serves as a prism through which to explore major developments in early modern European society and how public market regulation affected private economic life.

The Lion's Share
  • Inequality and the Rise of the Fiscal State in Preindustrial Europe
  • Guido Alfani, Matteo Di Tullio
  • Published online:
    04 February 2019
    Print publication:
    07 February 2019
  • This is the most in-depth analysis of inequality and social polarization ever attempted for a preindustrial society. Using data from the archives of the Venetian Terraferma, and compared with information available for elsewhere in Europe, Guido Alfani and Matteo Di Tullio demonstrate that the rise of the fiscal-military state served to increase economic inequality in the early modern period. Preindustrial fiscal systems tended to be regressive in nature, and increased post-tax inequality compared to pre-tax - in contrast to what we would assume is the case in contemporary societies. This led to greater and greater disparities in wealth, which were made worse still as taxes were collected almost entirely to fund war and defence rather than social welfare. Though focused on Old Regime Europe, Alfani and Di Tullio's findings speak to contemporary debates about the roots of inequality and social stratification.

The Economic Consequences of the War
  • West Germany's Growth Miracle after 1945
  • Tamás Vonyó
  • Published online:
    02 February 2018
    Print publication:
    22 February 2018
  • The 'German Question' dominated much of modern European history. In 1945, Germany was defeated and conquered. Yet, the Second World War did not destroy the foundations of her economic power. Dr Tamás Vonyó revisits Germany's remarkable post-war revival, tracing its roots not to liberal economic reforms and the Marshall Plan, but to the legacies of the war that endowed Germany with an enhanced industrial base and an enlarged labour force. He also shows that Germany's liberal market economy was in reality an economy of regulated markets, controlled prices and extensive state intervention. Using quantitative analysis and drawing on a rich historiography that has remained, in large part, unknown outside of Germany, this book reassesses the role of economic policy and the importance of wartime legacies to explain the German growth miracle after 1945 and the sharply contrasting experiences of East and West Germany.

Economic Development in Early Modern France
  • The Privilege of Liberty, 1650–1820
  • Jeff Horn
  • Published online:
    05 March 2015
    Print publication:
    26 February 2015
  • Privilege has long been understood as the constitutional basis of Ancien Régime France, legalizing the provision of a variety of rights, powers and exemptions to some, whilst denying them to others. In this fascinating new study however, Jeff Horn reveals that Bourbon officials utilized privilege as an instrument of economic development, freeing some sectors of the economy from pre-existing privileges and regulations, while protecting others. He explores both government policies and the innovations of entrepreneurs, workers, inventors and customers to uncover the lived experience of economic development from the Fronde to the Restoration. He shows how, influenced by Enlightenment thought, the regime increasingly resorted to concepts of liberty to defend privilege as a policy tool. The book offers important new insights into debates about the impact of privilege on early industrialization, comparative economic development and the outbreak of the French Revolution.

Banking in Crisis
  • The Rise and Fall of British Banking Stability, 1800 to the Present
  • John D. Turner
  • Published online:
    05 July 2014
    Print publication:
    10 July 2014
  • Can the lessons of the past help us to prevent another banking collapse in the future? This is the first book to tell the story of the rise and fall of British banking stability over the past two centuries, shedding new light on why banking systems crash and on the factors underpinning banking stability. John Turner shows that there have only been two major banking crises in Britain during this time - the crises of 1825–6 and 2007–8. Although there were episodic bouts of instability in the interim, the banking system was crisis free. Why was the British banking system stable for such a long time? And, why did the British banking system implode in 2008? In answering these questions, the book explores the long-run evolution of bank regulation, the role of the Bank of England, bank rescues and the need to hold shareholders to account.

Trade and Institutions in the Medieval Mediterranean
  • The Geniza Merchants and their Business World
  • Jessica L. Goldberg
  • Published online:
    05 September 2012
    Print publication:
    23 August 2012
  • The Geniza merchants of the eleventh-century Mediterranean - sometimes called the 'Maghribi traders' - are central to controversies about the origins of long-term economic growth and the institutional bases of trade. In this book, Jessica Goldberg reconstructs the business world of the Geniza merchants, maps the shifting geographic relationships of the medieval Islamic economy and sheds new light on debates about the institutional framework for later European dominance. Commercial letters, business accounts and courtroom testimony bring to life how these medieval traders used personal gossip and legal mechanisms to manage far-flung agents, switched business strategies to manage political risks and asserted different parts of their fluid identities to gain advantage in the multicultural medieval trading world. This book paints a vivid picture of the everyday life of Jewish merchants in Islamic societies and adds new depth to debates about medieval trading institutions with unique quantitative analyses and innovative approaches.

Markets and Measurements in Nineteenth-Century Britain
  • Aashish Velkar
  • Published online:
    05 July 2012
    Print publication:
    25 June 2012
  • Measurements are a central institutional component of markets and economic exchange. By the nineteenth century, the measurement system in Britain was desperately in need of revision: a multiplicity of measurement standards, proliferation of local or regional weights and measures, and a confusing array of measurement practices made everyday measurements unreliable. Aashish Velkar uncovers how metrology and economic logic alone failed to make 'measurements' reliable, and discusses the importance of localised practices in shaping trust in them. Markets and Measurements in Nineteenth-Century Britain steers away from the traditional explanations of measurement reliability based on the standardisation and centralisation of metrology; the focus is on changing measurement practices in local economic contexts. Detailed case studies from the industrial revolution suggest that such practices were path-dependent and 'anthropocentric'. Therefore, whilst standardised metrology may have improved precision, it was localised practices that determined the reliability and trustworthiness of measurements in economic contexts.

Institutions and European Trade
  • Merchant Guilds, 1000–1800
  • Sheilagh Ogilvie
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    17 March 2011
  • What was the role of merchant guilds in the medieval and early modern economy? Does their wide prevalence and long survival mean they were efficient institutions that benefited the whole economy? Or did merchant guilds simply offer an effective way for the rich and powerful to increase their wealth, at the expense of outsiders, customers and society as a whole? These privileged associations of businessmen were key institutions in the European economy from 1000 to 1800. Historians debate merchant guilds' role in the Commercial Revolution, economists use them to support theories about institutions and development, and policymakers view them as prime examples of social capital, with important lessons for modern economies. Sheilagh Ogilvie's magisterial new history of commercial institutions shows how scrutinizing merchant guilds can help us understand which types of institution made trade grow, why institutions exist, and how corporate privileges affect economic efficiency and human well-being.

The Institutional Framework of Russian Serfdom
  • Tracy Dennison
  • Published online:
    03 May 2011
    Print publication:
    28 April 2011
  • Russian rural history has long been based on a 'Peasant Myth', originating with nineteenth-century Romantics and still accepted by many historians today. In this book, Tracy Dennison shows how Russian society looked from below, and finds nothing like the collective, redistributive and market-averse behaviour often attributed to Russian peasants. On the contrary, the Russian rural population was as integrated into regional and even national markets as many of its west European counterparts. Serfdom was a loose garment that enabled different landlords to shape economic institutions, especially property rights, in widely diverse ways. Highly coercive and backward regimes on some landlords' estates existed side-by-side with surprisingly liberal approximations to a rule of law. This book paints a vivid and colourful picture of the everyday reality of rural Russia before the 1861 abolition of serfdom.

Food, Energy and the Creation of Industriousness
  • Work and Material Culture in Agrarian England, 1550–1780
  • Craig Muldrew
  • Published online:
    04 February 2011
    Print publication:
    03 February 2011
  • Until the widespread harnessing of machine energy, food was the energy which fuelled the economy. In this groundbreaking 2011 study of agricultural labourers' diet and material standard of living, Craig Muldrew uses empirical research to present a much fuller account of the interrelationship between consumption, living standards and work in the early modern English economy than has previously existed. The book integrates labourers into a study of the wider economy and engages with the history of food as an energy source and its importance to working life, the social complexity of family earnings, and the concept of the 'industrious revolution'. It argues that 'industriousness' was as much the result of ideology and labour markets as labourers' household consumption. Linking this with ideas about the social order of early modern England, the author demonstrates that bread, beer and meat were the petrol of this world, and a springboard for economic change.

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