Pre-industrial England Research Articles

The Surprising Wealth of Pre-Industrial England

Occupations listed in wills reveal that as early as 1560 effectively only 60% of the English engaged in farming. Even by 1817, well into the Industrial Revolution, the equivalent primary share, once we count in food and raw material imports, was still 52%. By implication, incomes in pre-industrial England were close to those of 1800. Urbanization rates are not a good guide to pre-industrial income levels. Many rural workers were engaged in manufacturing, services and trade. The occupation shares also imply pre-industrial England was rich enough in 1560 to rank above the bottom fifth of countries in 2007.

Nature as historical protagonist: environment and society in pre‐industrial England

This article compares chronologies reconstructed from historical records of prices, wages, grain harvests, and population with corresponding chronologies of growing conditions and climatic variations derived from dendrochronology and Greenland ice‐cores. It demonstrates that in pre‐industrial, and especially late medieval, England, short‐term environmental shocks and more enduring shifts in environmental conditions (sometimes acting in concert with biological agencies) exercised a powerful influence upon the balance struck between population and available resources via their effects upon the reproduction, health and life expectancy of humans, crops, and livestock. Prevailing socio‐economic conditions and institutions, in turn, shaped society's susceptibility to these environmental shocks and shifts.

Malthus Was Right: New Evidence from a Time-Varying VAR

Although Unified Growth Theory presumes the existence of the Maltusian mechanism in pre-industrial England recent empirical studies challenged this assumption. This paper studies the interaction of vital rates and real wages in the period from 1540 to 1870 in England. We employ time-varying VARs, an approach which addresses potential shortcomings such as parameter instability and declining volatilities in the previous literature. In contrast to recent studies, the main Malthusian mechanisms - the preventive and the positive check - were both at work until the mid-19th century. The preventive check was decreasing and the positive check increasing in importance. Most remarkably, the positive check dominated after the 1750s. The results indicate that instead of disappearing before the advent of the industrial revolution, the Malthusian mechanism rather changed its face over time.

A Theory of Medical Effectiveness, Differential Mortality, Income Inequality and Growth for Pre-Industrial England

The interactions between mortality reductions and income growth are studied, with a special attention at their relationship prior to the Industrial Revolution, when income per head was stagnant. The choice of individual medical spending is modelled, giving a rationale for individual health expenditures even when medicine is not effective in postponing death. The rise of effective medicine is then explained by a learning process function of expenditure on health. The rise in effective medicine is linked to the economic growth of the eighteenth century through life expectancy increases which foster capital accumulation. The rise of effective medicine has also had an effect on the relationship between growth and inequality and on the intergenerational persistence of differences in income. These channels are operative through differential mortality induced by medical effectiveness that turns out to determine a differential in the propensity to save among income groups.

Valiant beggars and global vagabonds

Attempts by governments to control unwanted border crossings are a defining feature of late modernity; but the suppression of cross-border mobility is not new. In pre-industrial England the `masterless men' and `valiant beggars' were subjected to harsh measures designed to curtail their mobility. In this article, we observe that border control intensifies at times of tumultuous structural change when institutions capable of preserving the emerging economic and social order are largely absent. In a globally mobile society, we argue that `flawed consumers' and `suspect citizens' are the most likely to be earmarked for exclusion. This designation links historical conceptions of `the other' with the tropes of race, class and foreignness to underpin contemporary xeno-racism.

Malthus in Cointegration Space: A New Look at Living Standards and Population in Pre-Industrial England

We analyze Malthus'(1798) model when labor demand shifts persistently. The Malthu- sian ideas are formalized and derived in terms of stationarity and cointegration, and the implied restrictions are tested against English pre-industrial data 1560-1760. The evidence suggests a negligible marginal productivity eect of population on real income, implying that the Malthusian check relations should be analyzed as cointegrating relations. The data support highly signi…cant preventive checks working via marriages, but weak (in- signi…cant) positive checks. These results are remarkably clear-cut. We suggest a simple interpretation for the lack of response of real income to population, which is consistent with positive feed back eects from population on technology, a la Boserupian- and/or Smithian mechanisms. Recursive estimation con…rms stable parameters and identify the end of our modi…ed Malthusian regime.

From preventive to permissive checks: the changing nature of the Malthusian relationship between nuptiality and the price of provisions in the nineteenth century

The Malthusian “preventive check” mechanism has been well documented for pre-industrial England through evidence for a negative correlation between the marriage rate and the price of wheat. Other literature, however, speculates that the correlation was in fact positive from the early nineteenth century. This paper uses the cointegrated VAR model and recursive estimation techniques to document the changing relationship between nuptiality and the price of wheat from 1541 to 1965. The relationship is indeed positive from the early nineteenth century to the First World War. A simple theoretical model shows that this result is not in fact inconsistent with a stylised Malthusian mechanism, and can be understood within the context of an increasing dominance of shocks to aggregate demand rather than to aggregate supply.

The FederalPosse ComitatusDoctrine: Slavery, Compulsion, and Statecraft in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America

In antebellum America, as in pre-industrial England, it was commonplace to witness civilians accompanying sheriffs and justices, scouring the countryside in search of scoundrels, scalawags, and other law-breakers. These civilians were theposse comitatus, or uncompensated, temporarily deputized citizens assisting law enforcement officers. At its core, theposse comitatuswas a compulsory institution. Prior to the advent of centralized police forces, sheriffs and others compelled citizens to serve “in the name of the state” to execute arrests, level public nuisances, and keep the peace, “upon pain of fine and imprisonment.” Despite its coercive character, though, thepossewas widely understood as one among many compulsory duties that protected the “public welfare.” Americans heeded the call to serve in localposses, explained jurist Edward Livingston, because of communal “ties of property, of family, of love of country and of liberty.” Such civic obligations, wrote Alexis de Tocqueville in 1835, illustrated why Americans had such a pressing “interest in … arresting the guilty man.” At once coercive and communitarian, lamented Henry David Thoreau, theposse comitatusexemplified how those that “serve the state … with their bodies,” were “commonly esteemed good citizens.”

From Malthus to Solow: How did the Malthusian economy really evolve?

This paper uses a variety of time-series methods and a new real wage series from [Clark, G., 2005. The condition of the working class in England, 1209 to 2004. Journal of Political Economy 113, 520 1307–1340.] to re-examine economic-demographic interactions in pre-industrial England. We confirm that there was a Malthusian economy in the sense that real wages were stationary until the end of the eighteenth century but we find that these was no positive check and that the preventive check broke down in the mid-seventeenth century so that Malthusian controls were absent from that point. There is no evidence of a positive feedback from increasing population size to technological progress as postulated by unified growth theory.

Paul A. Fideler. Social Welfare in Pre-industrial England: The Old Poor Law Tradition. Social History in Perspective. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Pp. viii+264. $29.95 (cloth).

Paul A. Fideler. Social Welfare in Pre-industrial England: The Old Poor Law Tradition. Social History in Perspective. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Pp. viii+264. $29.95 (cloth). - Volume 46 Issue 2

Was Malthus right? A VAR analysis of economic and demographic interactions in pre-industrial England

This paper shows that the interaction between economic and demographic variables in England before the onset of modern economic growth did not fit some crucial assumptions of the model. I estimated a vector autoregression for data on fertility, nuptiality, mortality and real wages over the period 1541-1840 applying a well-known identification strategy broadly used in macroeconomics. The results show that endogenous adjustment of population to real wages functioned as Malthus assumed only until the 17th century: positive checks disappeared during the 17th century and preventive checks disappeared before 1740. This implies that the endogenous adjustment of population levels to changes in real wages -one of the cornerstones of the model- did not work during an important part of the period usually considered within the Malthusian regime.

Social welfare in pre-industrial England: the old poor law tradition

Introduction.- The Medieval Societas Christiana (c. 1350-1450).- From God's Poor to Man's (c. 1450-1540).- Parish, Town, and Poor Law (c. 1540-1610).- Implementation (c. 1610-1690).- Settlement, Workhouses, and New Industry (c. 1690-1780).- Poverty, Policy, and History (c. 1780-1810).- Notes.- Bibliography.- Index.

Survival of the Richest: The Malthusian Mechanism in Pre-Industrial England

Fundamental to the Malthusian model of pre-industrial society is the assumption that higher income increased reproductive success. Despite the seemingly inescapable logic of this model, its empirical support is weak. We examine the link between income and net fertility using data from wills on reproductive success, social status and income for England 1585–1638. We find that for this society, close to a Malthusian equilibrium, wealth robustly predicted reproductive success. The richest testators left twice as many children as the poorest. Consequently, in this static economy, social mobility was predominantly downwards. The result extends back to at least 1250 in England.

A Theory of Medicine Effectiveness, Differential Mortality, Income Inequality and Growth for Pre-industrial England

We study how mortality reductions and income growth interact, looking at their relationship prior to the Industrial Revolution, when income per capita was stagnant. We first present a model of individual medical spending giving a rationale for individual health expenditures even when medicine was not effective in postponing death. We then explain the rise of effective medicine by a learning process function of expenditures in health. The rise in effective medicine can then be linked to the take-off of the eighteenth century through life expectancy increases, and fostered capital accumulation. The rise of effective medicine has also an impact on the relation between growth and inequality and on the intergenerational persistence of differences in income. These channels are operative through differential mortality induced by medicine effectiveness that turns out to determines a differential in the propensity to save among income groups.

‘Monday's child is fair of face’: favoured days for baptism, marriage and burial in pre-industrial England

In the past a couple had the choice of a day from Monday through Sunday on which to baptise their child, or to get married, or to have their burials registered. The day chosen would reflect the parents' own preferences for days of leisure. As each date was converted by computer during the process of family reconstitution to a number of days that had elapsed since the first of January, 1 AD, all that it was necessary to do was to divide the number corresponding to the date by 7 to get the day of the week. Three graphs reveal, with some surprises, the relative popularity of the days of the days of the week chosen for baptisms, burials and marriages, from 1542 to 1847.

Optimal Rent Extraction in Pre-Industrial England and France - Default Risk and Monitoring Costs

Beginning in the mid-seventeenth century, England changed its system of raising revenues from tax farming, combined with the granting of monopolies, to direct collection within the government administration. Rents were then transferred from tax farmers and monopolists to the central government such that English public finances improved dramatically compared to both the old system and to its major competitor, France. We offer a theory explaining this development. In our view, a cost of tax farming is the ex-ante inefficiency due to the auction mechanism while a cost of direct collection is the ex-post monitoring cost the government incurs to prevent theft. When the monitoring cost is high the government therefore allows tax farmers to extract large rents to enhance their up-front payments. In addition, because revenues materialize late under direct collection, and since the government faces limited borrowing, a high default risk makes a system of up-front collection attractive. The results of the model are consistent with historical facts from England and France.

The key role of nutrition in controlling human population dynamics

The early hominids and their successors, the nomadic hunter-gatherers, were evolutionarily adapted to an omnivorous diet. Their food was well balanced nutritionally and they acquired adequate supplies with relatively little expenditure of energy. The complete change to a fixed agricultural lifestyle (the Neolithic revolution) took place only some 12 000 years ago and was the most momentous event in human history. Being tied to the land that they worked led eventually to the city states and the great civilisations of history, which brought with them wars and epidemics of infectious diseases. Much more serious were the insidious effects of the new cereal-based diet which persisted until the twentieth century. Not only was it labour intensive, but also for the bulk of the population it was often deficient in vitamins, minerals and energy, particularly at certain times of the year. Time-series analysis reveals a regular short wavelength oscillation in the grain supply that persisted for at least 350 years and dominated the population dynamics of pre-industrial England. In addition to reducing fertility, it acted primarily via its effects on the nutrition of the pregnant woman. Malnutrition during one of the critical trimesters of pregnancy could have far-reaching effects not only on the health of the fetus and neonate but also on the illnesses of later, adult life. These consequences were insidiously and inevitably carried forward to the subsequent generations. Girls who were born with a low birth weight produced daughters and granddaughters of low birth weight, irrespective of their nutrition during childhood. These intergenerational, knock-on effects established a vicious circle from which there was little chance of escape.

English Agrarian Labor Productivity Rates Before the Black Death: A Case Study

It is often suggested that an agricultural revolution, currently defined as a rise in the output of arable workers, was a necessary precursor to industrialization and improved living standards. This article provides the first direct measurement of arable workers' average labor productivity for pre-industrial England. Rates are assessed for those production conditions that it is thought resulted in the lowest agrarian labor productivity rates in the pre-industrial period: c.1300–1348. The rates for English workers before the Black Death either surpassed or met the literature's best estimates for English workers until 1800, well after industrialization was underway.

Mortality, interest rates, investment, and agricultural production in 18th century England

This paper shows that the exogenous decline of adult mortality at the end of the 17th century can be one of the causes driving both the decline of interest rate and the increase in agricultural production per acre in pre-industrial England. Following the intuition of the life-cycle hypothesis, I claim that the increase in adult life expectancy must have implied less farmer impatience and it could have caused more investment in nitrogen stock and land fertility, the increase in agricultural land, and higher production per acre. I analyze this dynamic interaction using an overlapping generations model and show that the evolution of agricultural production and capital rates of return predicted by the model coincide fairly well with their empirical pattern.

David Hussey, Coastal and River Trade in Pre-Industrial England: Bristol and Its Region 1680–1730. Exeter Maritime Studies. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2000. xxiv + 296pp. 8 plates. 3 maps. 10 figures. 49 tables. Bibliography. £45.00

<b>David Hussey</b>, <i>Coastal and River Trade in Pre-Industrial England: Bristol and Its Region 1680–1730</i>. Exeter Maritime Studies. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2000. xxiv + 296pp. 8 plates. 3 maps. 10 figures. 49 tables. Bibliography. £45.00