A Comparative Historical Approach to the Structure of Livelihood1600-2000: Household/Market/Public Finance

Abstract

When studying history, in order to understand our present situation and how human structures have changed over time, it is necessary to delve into granular details. Historical economic studies looking at the period spanning the early modern era to the current day tend to focus on macroeconomics. However, a majority of people were not supported by the welfare state but rather inhabited small communities where necessities were conducted on a local level, and there is a lack of research on the exact nature of these public goods. Professor Masayuki Tanimoto, University of Tokyo, Japan, is collaborating with a large, interdisciplinary team of economic historians to understand how everyday life has been sustained in the centuries since the 1600s, with a particular focus on the 20th century. Tanimoto is employing a comparative historical approach, which involves comparing the historical facts and data within a common recognition framework, in the same level for the same period in order to identify differences, similarities and universal logic. The team's current research project is comparing Japan and Germany (Prussia pre-unification). The idea is that Japan will be used as a benchmark and will be compared with China and Europe with a view to relativising the previously Eurocentric cognitive framework by comparisons with the differing development process of Asia.