Early Modern Economy Research Articles

Explaining major shifts in early-modern economies: the causes for the decline of the North Sea Fisheries of Southwest Denmark, 1537–1657

ABSTRACT In the early modern period, the region of southwest Jutland, Denmark, faced international competition and climate change. By the early sixteenth century, the region enjoyed remarkable wealth thanks to a booming fish trade. Catches peaked at levels not surpassed before the twentieth century, and the trade in North Sea herring, haddock, cod, plaice, and skate supported thousands of fishers and merchants. Fishing benefitted from favourable environmental conditions and strong demand from the nearby German market. In the seventeenth century, the region began to decline, primarily because of changes in the international market with competing supplies and declining prices for whitefish relative to agricultural products. Environmental forces had both positive and negative effects on the fishery. The shocks of the Swedish occupation of 1628–29 and the flood of 1634 exacerbated the decline. The demise of North Sea fishing coincided with a shift in urban wealth from middle-class fish merchants to a small group of cattle-trading patricians and led to a general contraction and emigration of the human population along the North Sea coast. The study shows that economic factors and environmental forces must be considered to get a full picture of the region as it faces international competition and climate change.

Newfoundland Cod and English Piracy in the Early Seventeenth Century

Newfoundland’s cod fisheries were a vital resource in the development and sustenance of Europe’s early modern maritime economies. As the fisheries preyed on cod, they in turn were preyed upon by a new threat in the form of pirates. The pattern of piracy in Newfoundland in the first decades of the seventeenth century provides an insightful foil to English activity in the region as a whole, exposing patterns of European rivalry, national collaboration, and resource extraction. This article uses Newfoundland’s relationship with piracy as a focus to explore those issues, weaving together the histories of pirates, fishermen, and cod in an environmental approach that appreciates their interacting roles in the political ecology of Jacobean England, as well as the wider environment of the North Atlantic world.

Putting women back into the early modern economy: Work, occupations, and economic development

AbstractA dataset of just under 10,000 work tasks gleaned from court depositions that records women's as well as men's work, and unpaid as well as paid activities, prompts a reassessment of the transformation of the early modern economy and women's role within it. Rather than sectoral change in production activities with a growth of manufacturing at the expense of agriculture, the evidence suggests that work tasks changed little over time despite occupational specialization increasing. Women's labour force participation is shown to contribute 44 per cent of work in the economy, rather than 30 per cent as in previous estimates. This is partly because of the importance of commercialized housework and care work, which has been largely overlooked in existing models of the early modern economy. Turning to waged work, findings confirm that men's and women's participation in paid agricultural work were linked, with women being employed in greater numbers when men were not available. However, these trends had a strong relationship with access to land, a factor that has been neglected in comparison with demographic trends and the cost of consumables. The organization of work was transformed in the seventeenth century as the number of completely landless households increased rapidly.

Masayuki TANIMOTO and R. Bin WONG, editors: Public Goods Provision in the Early Modern Economy: Comparative Perspectives from Japan, China, and Europe

Previous studies regarding the emergence and development of social systems have often been based on the study of European nations, which largely ignores the fact that other nations also underwent the process in patterns that are either similar or strikingly different from the European one. Contemporary researchers have identified this flaw and thus sought to address it by studying the emergence and development of social systems in non-European nations rather than assuming that the European model is the standard. It is in line with this new school of thought that Bin Wong and Masayuki Tanimoto explore social development in Japan and compare it with Europe. In their book Public Goods Provision in the Early Modern Economy: Comparative Perspectives from Japan, China, and Europe, the authors provide readers with a general overview of the systems for public goods provision in early modern Japan, while also offering comparison examples from Europe, primarily from Prussia.

Shaping Southeast Asian Taste: Curry as Historical Evidences of Muslim Trade Networks in the Indian Ocean

Though most spices originated from and were mostly consumed nowadays in areas in the Indian Ocean, discussion about the history of spices always started with European exploration in the 15th and 16th centuries. For these spiceproducing-and-consuming areas, such a Eurocentric view undermined their role in the spice route and gave them nothing but uneasy memory when remembering spice, because the majority of people there knew it only as a fortune looted by the Europeans. In these spice-producing areas, dishes similar to what modern society now identify as curry were found since the early modern period. By using historical methods and utilization of secondary sources like studies about the early modern economy and regional food history of Asia, this paper attempts to know more about the relationship between spices and people in the Indian Ocean, for I am sure that millennia aged contact between them must result from far more complex relation than just a relation between commodity and the people who cultivate and sell it. Scrutinizing curry resulted in a conclusion that spice masters of the Indian Ocean were neither spoiled cultivators nor lazy hosts. Curry was a happy memory of an era of economic boom, where people all over the Indian Ocean competitively took part in the expanding network of Muslim trade and profited greatly from the lucrative maritime spice trade.

The Consumer Revolution, 1650–1800 by Michael Kwass

This book presents itself as a critical overview of the historical literature about the emergence of a consumer society in Europe and its colonial appendages during the period from 1650 to 1800. Since the groundbreaking work of McKendrick, who in 1982 identified a “consumer revolution” in this era—albeit one confined to Britain—this theme has attracted the attention of multiple historians in many countries who have both deepened our knowledge of the dynamic material world of this era and proposed explanations for its emergence and interpretations of its meaning.1 Kwass’ synthesis, which introduces readers to what is now a vast literature, seeks to identify the places where earlier interpreters have fallen short, proposing an agenda for a history of consumption that satisfies current requirements.Kwass interweaves two approaches to his topic. He begins and ends by treating the consumer revolution as a product of political and economic forces. He claims that the topic is important today because consumption is at the root of contemporary society’s most pressing problems, most notably global warming, income inequality, and racism. In his view, it is no accident that consumption is the source of so many evils today, given its creation at the intersection of imperialism and slavery. This fatal synergy “increased the influx of low-priced consumer goods into Europe,” which “is now seen as central to the consumer revolution” (73). The consumer society of the modern world has a lot to answer for, both in the circumstances of its birth and in its contemporary consequences. Kwass wants to convince readers that it should be brought to an end and replaced with ethical consumption practices (222).But, to return to Kwass’ historical topic, through which channels and which chains of causation did an influx of low-priced goods produce a revolution in consumer behavior in societies where, as Kwass notes, real wages did not rise and most people struggled to survive? Furthermore, by what standard was this influx “low priced”? Such claims require more rigorous forms of analysis than Kwass provides; his discussion tends to float on the surface of things.Fortunately, most of the book is not actually about external, supply-side shocks to Europe’s Early Modern economy. The bulk of the book is a fairly conventional discussion of selected aspects of the consumer cultures of the long eighteenth century, with particular attention paid to the elite material world of ancien régime France. Four of the book’s seven substantive chapters delve into the novel retail venues of the time, as well as the salons, cafes, and public promenades frequented by elite consumers. They also explore the so-called “reading revolution” of the age of Enlightenment and the uses of consumer goods in furthering the revolutionary movements of the age on both sides of the Atlantic.These chapters are all well referenced and well argued. The high point is chapter 4, in which Kwass discusses the cultural meaning of consumption. He begins with the premise that “there is no innate propensity to consume.” Therefore, “it is important to explore the cultural contexts in which meanings are forged and desires take shape” (99). “Consumption has a history” (4)—a history that accelerated in the long eighteenth century, tightly linked to the Enlightenment project. The consumer revolution of this age, which constituted an important step on the road to modernity, led directly to the creation of today’s universal consumer culture. Kwass might have elaborated more about the interrelationships to which he alludes between consumption, enlightenment, revolution, and the shaping of desires.Consumer behavior as a historical agent is not an easy topic for academic analysis, perhaps because it seems so obvious to us. We are all consumers, and we all have doubts and anxieties about our consumption choices. Indeed, consumption is the locus of everyday politics for most people today. Kwass is correct to claim that a historical analysis of how modern consumer society emerged is essential to understanding the options that now stand before us. Unfortunately, two distinct strands of analysis are essayed in this volume without being brought to satisfactory conclusions.

A Study of Aromatic Woods in Seventeenth-Century India: Circulation of Aloewood and Sandalwood through Facilitating Port Cities and Trade Networks

Abstract During the seventeenth century, various commodities carved out an economic sphere for themselves across the littoral parts of the Indian Ocean through the interconnectedness of its port cities. The present article focuses on two significant aromatic woods: aloewood and sandalwood, both plant-based materials, and locates them as “commodities” in commercial networks across the maritime space. Various port cities like Surat, Patna, Mausalipatam and Cambay, all central to the trading activities of the European companies, served as chief nodes in the grid of circulation that enabled their mobility, value addition and economic exchanges. Revisiting English factory records, Dutch East India Company documents and European travel accounts, this article explores the neglect of ephemeral objects in the material hierarchy of trading items. It also accounts for the thriving presence of these aromatic woods in the Indian Ocean maritime networks as two key materials in European trading interests and as facilitators of the early modern economy.

Freedom and Capitalism in Early Modern Europe: Mercantilism and the Making of the Modern Economic Mind

Freedom and Capitalism in Early Modern Europe: Mercantilism and the Making of the Modern Economic Mind

도시희극 속 위기의 청년들: 크레딧 경제의 틈새 찾기

This paper aims to define and analyze young men’s credit crisis and their differentiated strategies in rebuilding their damaged credit by reading closely the two city comedies, Eastward Ho and A Trick to Catch the Old One. Theoretically, the early modern credit economy was based on the harmonious correspondences between moral credit and economic credit, thus orienting toward a “moral economy.” However, as moral credit could be constructed by performance or deceit, the credit economy based on the moral credit could also be manipulated to one’s interest by the clever use of the loopholes inherent in the credit economy. In Eastward Ho, Quicksilver, a “bad” apprentice, ruins his credit and is locked up in the Counter, a debtor’s prison, by his master and creditor, Touchstone. To get released from prison and to regain his credit, Quicksilver must receive a pardon from his former master. For that purpose, Quicksilver performs the role of a penitent prisoner and becomes an icon of penitence in the prison. Golding, a “good” apprentice, silently joins him in the plot as the director of Quicksilver’s performance, thus constructing his own credit as a merciful administrator. Touchstone, a shrewd merchant, also agrees to become a spectator of the show and admits Quicksilver as his apprentice again, thus helping to construct the moral economy of the world in the play. In A Trick, Witgood, a bankrupt prodigal, cannot rebuild his career so easily, because he has multiple creditors and his own uncle, Lucre, is the one who confiscated his land. As his credit cannot be easily rebuilt by mere performances and role-playing, Witgood appropriates the lusty widow stereotype and uses the marriage with a rich widow as leverage to get the assistance of his uncle. He also needs the power of papers and legal contracts, along with cunning manipulation of the hostility and rivalry between Lucre and Hoard, to navigate through the hostile world of London and retrieve his land and reputation. Quicksilver and Witgood, the young men in credit crisis, reveal the loopholes and dilemmas of the credit economy, and show how moral credit and economic credit defined and negotiated each other in the early modern England.

Hunting by Early Modern Lule Sami Households

Hunting was one of three pillars, along with fishing and reindeer husbandry in the early modern Sami economy, and understanding of Sami hunting has increased during recent decades. However, most research has concentrated on time periods before AD 1600. After AD 1600 and the initial formation of modern Nordic countries, hunting ceased to be the backbone of the overall Sami economy but continued as an integral part of household economies. Our aim is to advance understanding of early modern hunting in northwestern interior Fennoscandia. Using source materials including court rulings and historical accounts, we set out from a self-governance perspective focusing on how actors solved resource distribution with regards to hunting. We show that ecological differences between mountains and forest impacted decisions about hunting. From the 1500s to the end of the 1700s, hunting led to the extinction of wild reindeer and depopulation of fur animals, while small-game hunting for subsistence continued to be important. In the forest region, strong property rights to game developed when skatteland (tax land) was established and hunting became a private enterprise. We suggest that the institution of skatteland was a response to changes in Sami economy, and the transition from collective to individual hunting was a contributing factor.

Public Goods Provision in the Early Modern Economy: Comparative Perspectives from Japan, China, and Europe

Public Goods Provision in the Early Modern Economy: Comparative Perspectives from Japan, China, and Europe

Public Goods Provision in the Early Modern Economy: Comparative Perspectives from Japan, China, and Europe ed. by Masayuki Tanimoto and R. Bin Wong

Public Goods Provision in the Early Modern Economy: Comparative Perspectives from Japan, China, and Europe ed. by Masayuki Tanimoto and R. Bin Wong

Intimate Connections: Marie Marguerite Biheron and Her "Little Boudoir".

This essay considers the pursuits and occupational trajectory of the Parisian anatomical modeler Marie Marguerite Biheron (1719-95), who was celebrated for her anatomical cabinet. It highlights the role of Biheron's circle of friends and supporters in nourishing her place in the anatomical world. I argue that a focus on social and affective relations, such as friendship, can enhance our understanding of the careers of female medical practitioners and medical artists like Biheron. Her case provides a useful vantage point to reconstruct how a woman, who could not rely on the support of her family nor, for most of her life, on royal patronage, could successfully engage in anatomical practice and become renowned. Casting light on early modern economies of care, Biheron's story also helps illuminate the broader significance of amicable and affective relations in the histories of medicine and natural inquiry.

Taking Forward Roger's Interest in the Relationship between the Early Modern Family, Demography, Economy and Government Policy

This paper describes how Roger Schofield came to characterise the English social system of the early modern period as 'individualist-collectivist', in which individualism is located within a larger structure and context of collectivism. It discusses this in the context of his contributions to the book he co-edited with John Walter in 1989, entitled Famine, Disease and the Social Order in Early Modern Society. Roger's work related the evidence of demographic and epidemiological change not only to family structures, ideological belief systems and government policy, as saliently represented by effects of the poor laws, but also to economic productivity as a dependent variable. That was quite the opposite of the dominant orthodoxy of the post-war era, which was that demography and epidemiology were driven by economics, not vice versa. This has the implication for our own era that constructive government policy has repeatedly played an important positive role in the economic productivity of the nation and that tax-funded generous support for the poor is a central part of that, which citizens should positively support.

Capitalism, Christianity, and Slavery: Jesuits in New Spain, 1572–1767

Abstract The Jesuits arrived in New Spain in the 1570s and soon became participants in a dynamic world of silver capitalism at the center of the early modern global economy. They launched money-making enterprises to sustain their missions, churches, and schools (colegios) that relied upon enslaved African producers alongside indigenous workers in complex labor arrangements. The diversity of labor at the Jesuit-run Santa Lucía and Xochimancas estates contrast with the heavier reliance on enslaved African labor at Jesuit sugar plantations in Brazil. The article analyzes a key eighteenth-century Jesuit text, the Instrucciones a los hermanos jesuitas administradores de haciendas, to show how the Jesuits in New Spain conceived of their management of enslaved people and negotiated the contradictions between the spiritual and secular challenges of the boom era of silver capitalism.

With a little help from his friends

Around 1617, Caravaggio’s Rosary Madonna (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) was gifted to the Dominican church in Antwerp by a quadrumvirate of art-lovers – Rubens, Jan Brueghel I, Hendrick van Balen and the merchant Jan Cooymans – who were joined together by the love that is friendship (amor amicitiæ). By enacting the virtues of friendship within Antwerp’s elite circles, the art-lovers could persuade wealthy burghers to sponsor the Rosary Madonna as a civic investment. This process is examined through Rubens’ relationship with Brueghel, the election of Cooymans as ‘prince of the Violieren’ chamber of rhetoric, the artists’ deanships of the Romanists’ guild and their personal acquaintance with Hendrick Goltzius. In the Dominican church, the Rosary Madonna became part of the early modern political economy like few other artworks. As the author demonstrates, the altarpiece indexed the cultural capital of the quadrumvirate, but also their amor amicitiæ, to which it stood as an enduring testament.

The Archival Epistemology of Political Economy in the Early Modern British Atlantic World

This article explores the origins, applications, and demise of a hitherto-overlooked technique of producing political economic knowledge in the early modern British Atlantic world: arguing from the authority of official paperwork contained in bureaucratic archives. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, archival records figured as powerful sources for generating and substantiating policy arguments about imperial political economy. Developed out of the practices of early modern statecraft, such archival methods were applied to the generation of both policies of imperial governance and interpretations of the empire's commercial constitution. The epistemological foundations of early modern political economy thus emerged through both practices of paperwork and debates about the truth-value of documents. By the early nineteenth century, however, new concepts of political knowledge redefined the meanings of "political economy" and "history" in ways that removed archives from both the technologies of administration and the practices of economic reasoning.

Masayuki Tanimoto & R. Bin Wong著『Public Goods Provison in the Early Modern Economy:Comparative Perspective from Japan, China, and Europe』

Masayuki Tanimoto & R. Bin Wong著『Public Goods Provison in the Early Modern Economy:Comparative Perspective from Japan, China, and Europe』

Fish on the Move: Transporting and Processing Fish as Part of the Castle Economy in the Northern Baltic Sea

The importance of fish for the medieval and early modern economy in the Baltic Sea is known through separate studies by historians and archaeologists. This article aims to combine zooarchaeological data with account books from castles in Kastelholm (Åland Islands) and Raseborg (south-western coast of Finland) in order to understand the processing and transport of fish in the area. Fish was paid as tax by the peasants but was also fished by the castle fishermen and brought to the castles to be consumed there. Here, the preserved fish products are primarily studied through pike and cod, which represent the main economically important larger fish species in the Baltic Sea. The study reveals some differences between the castles studied and the importance of fish for the castle economy.

The Preservation of Pau Brazil in the Late XVIII Century in an Economical Perspective

This paper's subject is the deforestation of Pau-Brazil in late XVIII century Brazil witch can be integrated in the academic inquiry into the question of the natural and cultural heritage. In this subject the author has written this paper not only in a statistic data, but in connection with the history of environmental ideas. The author has obtained some percentage values that allowed him to provide some realistic dimension to the lack of the woods in this area, and connecting the same data with the ecological and economical thought dimension. About the subject in the end of the XVIII century (1796 – 1798), there is a shortage of Pau-Brazil timber in Pernambuco, that takes an effort both of searching for new forests and a strong effort also of developing preservation measures in that period. The trade of Pau-Brazil in the late XVIII century could reach as profit the percentage values of (778, 71%) in the European markets of the end of the XVIII Century. In this case, the author's argumentation concerns – in this historical context – how an economical interest paradox has triggered an interest about environmental protection to save an important accent. This involves at the beginning to identify the species of Pau-Brazil that were in use at the time in the same region to, in a second stage, integrate the same in the economic importance in Portuguese trade economy. The third step is to understand the correlation between economy and environment in the search of new forests and preservation of the already known ones. In this part, it is important to remember that early modern economies were natural commodity based and thus very dependent on the environment. That (should have) urged them to insure that they had a continuity on the access, and to ensure the existence of the same resources. This enters in Richard Groove's theories about environmental history in connecting them with economy. And also Wades' theories, that cross ecology with other sciences. Being a work in history, the main propose here is not to give a solution of mine, but rather to present the question in which the context were occurred and how and what solutions were found in the same period, and to what degree.