2. History

Abstract

Poverty is an ancient problem. In the pre-modern period, poverty was synonymous with hunger, but the kind of poverty we recognize today arose with the emergence of the market economy. ‘History’ considers the range of factors acting within and across societies that had negative effects on vulnerable people in different historical periods: the agricultural societies before the 16th century; societal and governmental responses to poverty during the 16th and 17th centuries; the effects of colonialism in the 18th and 19th centuries; globalization, industrialization, and the expansion of international trade in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; and the precursors to modern anti-poverty programs after the Great Depression of the 1930s.