Pre-industrial Economy Research Articles

Fishing and the Rural Economy Farmer-Fishermen and the Merrimack River 1800–1846

During the early nineteenth century, rural New England communities consistently strove to manage river fisheries to ensure sustainable returns. While agriculture provided a strong foundation for the region's pre-industrial economy, this paper explores the place of rivers and fish within New England's socio-economic landscape and the ways in which locals sought to defend their way of life from the destructive potential of over-fishing and industrial dams.

Clans, Guilds, and Markets: Apprenticeship Institutions and Growth in the Pre-Industrial Economy

Clans, Guilds, and Markets: Apprenticeship Institutions and Growth in the Pre-Industrial Economy

Personal Traits of the Entrepreneurs to Start the Enterprises at Industrial Estates in Southern Districts of Tamilnadu

The problem of entrepreneurial shortage as it affects the growth of industry in the less developed countries would seem to have two mutually reinforcing aspects i) The economic environment not generally conducive to the emergence and training of the persons likely to prove successful in initiating industrial activities, and (ii) That even if there was a good supply of such persons, their task as industrial entrepreneurs in a pre-industrial economy would tend to be an extremely difficult one. They shall have to start from the scratch. The personal traits of the respondents represent the psychological framework of the respondents to know the business opportunities and to start and manage the business. The personal traits consist of so many psychological aspects. Entrepreneurship is essential function and behaviour manifestation of a person for shifting resources from areas of low productivity to higher productivity. It is traits like willingness to take risk, high economic achievement motivation, self-confidence, problem solving disposition, adequate knowledge and skill, ability to face uncertainty and good managerial ability. This study will be of immense use for the policy makers and administrators engaged in the development of the small scale industrial sector in the southern districts of Tamilnadu. This study may also be of good use to the academic fraternity engaged in the state’s industrial development studies.

Engineering Philosophy: Theories of Technology, German Idealism, and Social Order in High-Industrial Germany.

During the so-called "Second Industrial Revolution," engineers were constituting themselves as a new social and professional group, and found themselves in often fierce competition with existing elites-the military, the nobility, and educated bourgeois mandarins-whose roots went back to medieval and early modern pre-industrial social orders. During that same time, engineers also discovered the discipline of philosophy: as a means to express their intellectual and social agendas, and to theorize technology and its relationship to art, history, culture, philosophy, and the state. This article analyzes engineers' own philosophical writings about technology as well as the institutions in which they composed them in 1910s and 1920s Germany. It emphasizes engineers' contributions to well-known discourses founded by canonical philosophers, the role of preindustrial economies and their imagination in such philosophies, and the role of both the history and the philosophy of technology in engineers' desire for upward social mobility.

Стадії еволюції просторового розвитку міста

The factors influencing the change of urban space were considered. Key stages of urban geohistory were emphasized and in accordance with that the main historical types of cities were grouped. Each evolution stage of the spatial urban development was in detail analyzed. The main features, processes, and superior system of settlement for all historical types of cities were defined. Outstanding characteristics of all historical types of cities of all ages were determined and described. A table for features of historical types of cities on key indicators was designed. A decisive influence of economic systems on urban form and its social geography was defined. The influence of the transition of settlements from the early preindustrial economy to the classical industrial city through a capitalist economy, and later to modern approaches and trends in the so-called theory of “post-industrial” city through research of urban geohistory was traced. The way of decay of urban planning of preindustrial age from the rigidly regulated by the state, however well-ordered and well-thought-out planning on the basis of an orthogonal grid in ancient cities, to the spontaneous and disordered development in the Middle Ages, when the core of the city was the fortress and monastery, was studied. Typicality of the cities of the industrial age of the return from the uncontrolled growth, when the decisive role was played by differentiated rents for land in the early models of the industrial city, to the functional zoning in the age of modernism was defined. Urban planning in the post-industrial age in terms of the traditional city through the global processes of urbanization, which create new socio-spatial forms of settlements (metropolitan region, multicentered metropolitan regions) were described. The impact of globalization on the urban space and on creation of new forms of urban settlements was considered. Social and economic features that indicate the development of postmodern metropolis were considered.

Negotiated Subjugation: Maritime Trade and the Incorporation of Chincha Into the Inca Empire

ABSTRACTBefore Francisco Pizarro began the conquest of the Inca empire in AD 1532, he had already heard of the great maritime trading power of Chincha, a privileged Inca client state on the central Peruvian coast. Here, we review relevant ethnohistoric and archaeological data about late prehispanic Chincha with particular reference to maritime trading and recent work on pre-industrial economies. Our analysis supports an earlier proposal that Chincha was not engaged in long-distance exchange of Spondylus (a ritually powerful mollusk) prior to incorporation into the empire, contrary to others’ assertions. Rather, the data strongly suggest that Spondylus trade was formerly in the hands of the rival north coast Chimu empire. After conquering Chimu ∼AD 1470 (a few years before incorporating Chincha), the Inca carefully dismantled Chimu territory and privileges. The source of Spondylus was the Ecuadorian coast, which remained free of Inca control until the 1520s. We propose that the Inca offered Chincha the Spondylus franchise in exchange for peaceful incorporation into the empire and to cut Chimu contact with unconquered peoples. This made geopolitical sense: Chincha's size and location nearer to the Inca heartland meant that it posed no threat while at the same time it was perfectly situated to transship cargo from southbound rafts to porters headed inland to Cusco, the Inca capital.

The Role of Rural Textile Production in South-West German Emigration: Württemberg Communities in the Early Nineteenth Century

The economic causes of European emigration to the United States in the nineteenth century enjoy an established historiography, which considers many aspects of the pre-industrial economy from agriculture to the collapse of traditional industries. This paper examines the link between pre-industrial home textile manufacture and emigration from the German south-west. It draws on data from communities and households in the state of Württemberg, and finds that pre-industrial textile production was not a major determinant of migration patterns in the nineteenth century; instead, the localised rise and fall of textile work was influenced by the availability of emigration pathways, an inversion of results seen elsewhere.

Entrepreneurship, Knowledge, and the Industrial Revolution

Abstract This paper constructs a two-sector unified growth model. Learning-by-doing in agriculture eventually allows the preindustrial economy to leave its Malthusian trap. But entrepreneurs in the manufacturing sector do not attempt invention if not much is known about natural phenomena. This delays the industrial revolution. Since entrepreneurs identify new useful knowledge at all times in a serendipitous way, the industrial revolution is an inevitable outcome. The paper characterizes the equilibrium path from ancient times to the infinite future. According with this characterization, the model economy successfully captures the qualitative aspects of England’s unified growth experience.

Climatic Conditions and Productivity: An Impact Evaluation in Pre-Industrial England

In this paper, we bridge economic data and climatic time series to assess the vulnerability of a pre-industrial economy to changes in climatic conditions. We propose an economic model to extract a measure of total productivity from English data (real wages and land rents) in the pre-industrial period. This measure of total productivity is then related to temperatures and precipitations. We find that lower (respectively higher) precipitations (resp. temperatures) enhance productivity. Further, temperatures also have non-linear effects on productivity: large temperature variations lower productivity. We perform counterfactual exercises and quantify the effects of large increases in temperatures on productivity, GDP and welfare.

Book Reviews

Roger Fouquet of the London School of Economics reviews “Power to the People: Energy in Europe over the Last Five Centuries”, by Astrid Kander, Paolo Malanima, and Paul Warde. The Econlit abstract of this book begins: “Examines the relationships between energy consumption and economic development in Europe over the last five centuries. Discusses preindustrial economies--traditional sources and constraints and dynamics; the first industrial revolution--a modern energy regime, the coal development block, and energy and industrial growth; and the second and third industrial revolutions--energy transitions in the twentieth century, major development blocks in the twentieth century and their impacts on energy, the role of energy in twentieth-century economic growth, and implications for the future. Kander is Professor of Economic History at Lund University. Malanima is Director of the Institute of Studies on Mediterranean Societies at the National Research Council in Italy. Warde is Reader in Early Modern History at the University of East Anglia and Research Associate at the Centre for History and Economics at Magdalene College, University of Cambridge.”

Procurement and Distribution of Pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican Obsidian 900 BC–AD 1520: a Social Network Analysis

Ancient economies have been characterized by many researchers as localized, highly controlled by political actors, and static over long periods of time. In Mesoamerica, recent research has cast doubt on these views, with the recognition of early market place exchange, production by households for exchange, and the wide-ranging integration of communities into regional trade networks. Here, we expand on an earlier network analysis of obsidian assemblages from the Maya region during the Classic and Postclassic periods to incorporate data for all of Mesoamerica between 900 BC and AD 1520. Using both visual graphical representations and formal network metrics, we find that the Mesoamerican economy was dynamic and generally not highly centralized over time. The topology of this interactive network underwent significant changes over time. In particular, trends towards decreasing network hierarchy and size culminated in the highly commercialized “international” economy of Late Postclassic period as noted in previous studies. Based on this analysis, we make the case that the ancient Mesoamerican economy was neither predominantly top-down nor static, and so does not conform with oft-held presumptions regarding preindustrial economies.

Taxes, Lawyers, and the Decline of Witch Trials in France

How is rule of law established? We address this question by exploring the effect of increases in fiscal capacity on the establishment of well-enforced, formal, legal standards in a preindustrial economy. Between 1550 and 1700, there were over 2,000 witch trials in France. Prosecuting a witch required local judges to significantly deviate from formal rules of evidence. Hence, we exploit the significant variation across time and space in witch trials and fiscal capacity across French regions between 1550 and 1700 to show that increases in fiscal capacity were associated with increased adherence to the formal rule of law. As fiscal capacity increased, local judges increasingly upheld de jure rules, and the frequency of witch trials declined.

The Roman Agricultural Economy: Organization, Investment, and Production by ALAN BOWMAN and ANDREW WILSON (eds.)

378 BOOK REVIEWS ERIC DODSON-ROBINSON West Chester University, EDodson-Robinson@wcupa.edu. * * * The Roman Agricultural Economy: Organization, Investment, and Production. By ALAN BOWMAN and ANDREW WILSON (eds.). Oxford Studies on the Roman Economy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. 333. Hardcover, $150. ISBN 978-0-19-966572-3. Preindustrial economies were firmly rooted in soil. In such “organic” economies the majority of people worked in agriculture in one way or another, and the bulk of trade depended on what came off the land, whether in raw material or manufactured goods. It is therefore fitting that the third volume resulting from the Oxford Roman Economy Project (OXREP) should be devoted to the Roman rural economy, c.100BC–AD 350. The book’s ambition is not limited to highlighting the importance of agriculture though. It “aims to move substantially beyond the simple assumption that agriculture was the dominant sector of the ancient economy , and to explore what was special and distinctive about the Roman economy … ” (1). It largely succeeds in achieving this aim by way of ten papers, the first of which, a helpful introduction by the editors, recaps the state of the field and revisits pastapproaches and macroeconomic models. One of only two contributions not to target a specific geographical area is an important and timely chapter by Dennis Kehoe, who analyzes how the state defended its interests and met its fiscal goals. In a balanced discussion, Kehoe rejects as unsatisfactory the notion of a “predatory” or “tributary” Roman state, arguing instead that the state consistently instituted fiscal policies and legal instruments that protected not just large landholdersbutalso small farmers. In the next chapter, Helen Goodchild explains the use of GIS computer modeling applied to the Tiber Valley, successfully—though somewhat predictably —showing how different parameters lead to widely different results for agricultural surplusproduction. Annalisa Marzano follows with two chapters, the first investigating the amount of wine and oil that Rome received from its hinterland, looking at numbers of recorded presses. Both the question and the approach are not new; they BOOK REVIEWS 379 were advanced most recently by Eric de Sena.5 Marzano suggests that the importance of viticulture in Rome’s vicinity was greater than previously thought, but stops short of proposing adjusted import figures. In her second chapter, Marzano extends her investigation of wine and oil production, shifting attention to Gaul, Iberia, and the Black Sea region. She detects an overall increase in multiplepress sites during the first two centuries ad followed by a decline after the third, attributing the pattern to rising and then falling population densities and standardsofliving . These findings contrast with those of Mariette de Vos in an information-rich presentation of fieldwork undertaken in the Medjerda Valley (Tunisia). De Vos’s survey data lead her to conclude that North-African oil and wine production saw a steady increase under the Empire, with a dramatic acceleration and peak in the Vandal and early Byzantine periods. De Vos ascribes this outcome to the breakdown of the annona so that“… export possibilities increased enormously and the benefits could be reinvested in the development of the region itself”(149). The apparently divergent economic trajectories of late-antique Mediterranean regions , including annona supply areas, is an interesting phenomenon, and it seems a pity that the volume does not make a greater effort to synthesize Marzano’s and De Vos’s findings. Two chapters are devoted to Roman Egypt, the first by Alan Bowman endeavoring to estimate grain yield, tax income, and population size for a number of Middle Egyptian nomes. Bowman refuses to engage in pan-Egyptian extrapolations of his data, but does state with refreshing directness that they show “… an agrarian economy that is flexible, entrepreneurial, and deeply monetized, even at the village level …” (246). Katherine Blouin then somewhat complicates the picture drawn by Bowman with a study of land use in the Mendesian nome in the Nile Delta. Despite the relatively diverse hydrology of the Delta, grain cultivation seems to have been the nome’s preeminent agrarian activity, with viticulture a distant second, and market gardening only a marginal third. Blouin suggests that thisoutcome in part results from documentary bias, but also reflects the desires of...

The Socio-Ecological Transition on a Crop Scale: The Case of Olive Orchards in Southern Spain (1750–2000)

In Europe, pre-industrial economies were fully dependent on agrarian production to meet most demands. The agricultural system provided the bulk of food, fibres, construction materials, medicines and fuel. It is estimated that 95 % of energy requirements during this period were met by means of noncoal organic sources (Fischer-Kowalski and Haberl 2007:225–227). With the onset of industrialization, agriculture was relegated to providing food or raw materials, for which it now requires significant external inputs. In recent years, interesting theoretical approaches have been developed to analyze the Socio-Ecological Transition (SET) in agriculture (Fischer-Kowalski and Haberl 2007; Gonzalez de Molina 2010) supported by case studies conducted on a national scale (Krausmann et al . 2008). The aim of this paper is to study the SETon a crop scale through an examination of olive groves in Southern Spain, given their major role in contemporary agriculture and that the fact that little is generally known about this type of crop. Olive trees have made a decisive contribution to the industrialization of agriculture and agrarian growth in the Mediterranean world through the application of technologies that chiefly aimed to increase the production of olive oil for human consumption (Infante-Amate 2011; Zambrana 2000). However, we also aim to demonstrate the radical change that took place in the socioeconomic and environmental functions of this crop. The use of the crop as a scale of analysis provides insights into aspects of the SET that are not apparent at more aggregated scales. Case Studies and Timeframe

NEWCASTLE IN THE LONG EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

THE THESIS OF A ‘LONG EIGHTEENTH CENTURY’, which has been so influential in altering traditional periodisation, conceives of the social, political, economic, and cultural developments of the later decades of the seventeenth century, as creating a viable political and social order which largely endured until the 1830s. Contrary to historians, who have been eager to ante-date the changes to the economy and society of Britain associated with an ‘Industrial Revolution’ and have seen the eighteenth century as a preparation for parliamentary reform and extensive urbanisation, it posits a pre-industrial economy that was viable and dynamic in its own right, and a social order which demonstrated considerable cohesion in that, despite acute social tensions, ‘acceptable compromises could be negotiated, compromises which safeguarded the social fabric’.1 Continuity in constitutional and political spheres and in the social hierarchy, rather than stifling economic and cultural change, provided the context for innovation and development. Few towns in Britain better exemplify this than Newcastle, a town which saw little change in its institutions and social fabric, but increased in prosperity and became a thriving cultural centre with a ‘polite society’. Continuity was most basically expressed in the physical town, which remained between 1688 and the 1830s largely confined within its medieval town walls, only cautiously venturing beyond them in the early nineteenth century,2 while the Keelmens’ crowded Sandgate remained the only substantial quarter outside the old boundaries. The walls, themselves, remained intact, if somewhat dilapidated, until, after the 1745 Rebellion, the lingering feeling that they might yet be needed for defence disappeared, and the demolition of the section along the Quayside began in 1763.

The price of human capital in a pre-industrial economy: Premiums and apprenticeship contracts in 18th century England

Training through apprenticeship provided the main mechanism for occupational human capital formation in pre-industrial England. This paper demonstrates how training premiums (fees) complemented the formal legal framework surrounding apprenticeship to secure training contracts. Premiums varied in response to scarcity rents, the expected productivity of masters and apprentices, and served as compensation for the anticipated risk of default. In most trades premiums were small enough to allow access to apprenticeship training for youths from modest families.

Commons, social capital, and the emergence of agricultural cooperatives in early twentieth century Spain

The emergence of Spanish agricultural cooperatives from the end of the nineteenth century was a narrative of uneven regional development. It has been argued that the cooperative movement developed in areas where small and middle-sized farms were relatively important. This paper seeks to complement this explanation by analysing the role played by the pre-existing stock of social capital. The prior importance of institutions built around the use and management of collective resources is explored as an alternative proxy for social capital in pre-industrial economies. The results show that the social networks built around common lands and irrigation communities were a key element, together with relatively high levels of human capital and the existence of a wide layer of middle size farms, in facilitating the emergence of the cooperative movement in rural areas.

Craig Muldrew. Food, Energy, and the Creation of Industriousness: Work and Material Culture in Agrarian England, 1550–1780.

I am always envious of social historians and other social scientists because they have data, and Craig Muldrew's new book is a data extravaganza, with no fewer than seventy-two numerical tables and graphs to delineate the complex relationship between consumption and production in early modern England. It makes important interventions in the standard of living debate and the debate over Jan de Vries's concept of “industriousness” as a necessary condition for the industrial revolution. But more broadly it is an important corrective to much that we thought we knew about agrarian society in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Beginning with the argument (most familiar to nonspecialists from the work of Kenneth Pomeranz) that food calories were the primary energy source of the preindustrial economy, Muldrew attempts to track exactly how many calories English laborers consumed and whether those were sufficient to power England's agricultural economy in a period of extremely low population. This leads to Muldrew's first, and to my mind most convincing, blockbuster: English laborers turn out to have routinely eaten both extraordinary numbers of calories and extraordinary quantities of meat. The long historical tradition that imagined the preindustrial peasantry as de facto vegetarians, eating primarily grains, is dead wrong, at least for England. Laborers ate meat almost daily, and they ate large quantities of garden vegetables and orchard fruits. While in times of scarcity this cornucopia would have been reserved for the hardest workers so as best to maintain productivity, it was rarely or never the case that those workers lacked sufficient calories to work England's lands. By the later seventeenth century, English agriculture had successfully created a “feedback loop” (p. 162) in which increases in available calories produced increases in labor productivity, which in turn led to both greater increases in available calories and surplus wages that the laboring population could spend on non-food consumption.

A Model of Exploitation in a Malthusian Serf or Slave Economy

This paper presents a dynamic model of peasant exploitation by landlords in a serf or slave economy subject to Malthusian dynamics. In the baseline model the only constraint on the landlords is the fact that the peasants’ labor supply is endogenous in the long run through the effect of demographic pressures. Infinitely patient landlords who maximize only their steady state income do not exploit their peasants at all, voluntarily paying them their marginal product, just as if the economy had competitive labor markets. Impatient landlords exploit their peasants both in steady state and along the transition path. A calibration of a baseline model where there are no institutional constraints on landlord power suggests a fairly high rate of exploitation and a very low level of steady state unfree worker population. This highlights the necessity of including costs of oppression in formal considerations of slave/serf economies. The paper does just that, and additionally revisits the Domar Hypothesis on the economic and demographic determinants of whether a particular pre-industrial economy ends up with serfdom or free labor markets.

The ideology of Slow Food

This article addresses the ideology of Slow Food (SF), an influential movement founded in Italy in 1986. Through an analysis of a wide range of texts, ranging from SF’s opposition to fast food to its ambition to establish a new ‘gastronomic science’ and a new ‘development model’ based on the three criteria of buono (good), pulito (clean) and giusto (tasty), the article concludes that SF is a descendant of the countercultural and anti-consumerist movements of the 1960s and 70s. It also claims that SF’s understanding of the capitalist system is limited, that its idea of a new agriculture and a new economy is simply that of returning to a primitive, pre-industrial economy (without explaining how that economy could feed the present world population), that its ideal of a new world is that of a stratified and immutable society, and that its main goal is to combine the commercial promotion of high-price luxury food products with political engagement.