Regional change in a pre-industrial economy: wealth and population in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

Abstract

Relatively little empirical research exists on large-scale regional changes in the early modern English economy, although local historiography is strong. This paper seeks to establish a method by which long-run changes in regional structure can be examined, through a discussion of movements in population and aggregate wealth. Considerable discussion is devoted to questions of appropriate source material, and arguments are advanced to suggest that the 1524/5 lay subsidy returns and the hearth taxes of the 1660s and 1670s provide a basis from which long-run changes can be examined. Two statistical indices of redistribution are proposed. The paper then outlines a broad discussion of the redistribution of wealth and population over the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, centring on the twin themes of urban development and proto-industrialization and their consequences. In conclusion, major theoretical explanations of spatial change in the early modern economy are reviewed and found to offer inadequate conceptualizations of a complex and uneven process.