Pre-industrial World Research Articles

Ecology in seventeenth-century Japan: the ‘Great Way’ of Kumazawa Banzan

AbstractThe introduction glances at the historical background of seventeenth-century Japan and the role of Kumazawa Banzan. His views are then presented as a variant of the ‘anthropocosmic’ character of premodern religious thinking as identified by the Romanian scholar of religion, Mircea Eliade (1907-86). Banzan adopted the Neo-Confucian view of man as ontologically embedded in the natural order and held a Confucian faith in the arcadian ancient Chinese ‘Three Dynasties’ created through the artifice of Chinese Sages. The essay describes Banzan’s cyclical view of time, fall from arcadia, and man’s agency in post-lapsarian history. It addresses failures in rulership responsible for the ecological crisis of contemporary Japan. It then turns to the ‘eternal return’ characteristic of the traditionalist religions studied by Eliade. A conclusion explores homologies between Banzan’s diagnosis of crisis in his pre-industrial world and the fraught views of man and nature in the twenty-first century.

Groundwater Feedbacks on Climate Change in the CNRM Global Climate Model

Abstract Groundwater and climate interact in a two-way manner. Precipitation ultimately controls groundwater recharge and, conversely, groundwater may influence climate through evapotranspiration. Yet very few global climate models or Earth system models actually simulate groundwater flows. And while the expected impacts of climate change on groundwater resources are the subject of a growing concern, global-scale groundwater–climate feedbacks have received very little attention so far. Here we show that the integration of unconfined aquifers in a global climate model can regionally affect the climate change signal on temperatures and precipitation. We assess the impact of groundwater under preindustrial and 4xCO2 conditions (after climate stabilization). In both cases, we find that groundwater has a cooling and a wetting effect in certain regions of the world. In eastern Europe, both these impacts are stronger in the warmer climate (4xCO2 forcing) where the presence of groundwater reduces the frequency of summer heatwaves by 40%, compared to a 15% reduction in the preindustrial world. This work constitutes one of the very first global assessments of the potential feedbacks of groundwater on climate change. Our results support the idea that groundwater should be represented in global climate models and Earth system models, as it does indeed play an active role in the climate system.

Rapidly increasing likelihood of exceeding 50 °C in parts of the Mediterranean and the Middle East due to human influence

As the world warms, extremely hot days are becoming more frequent and intense, reaching unprecedented temperatures associated with excess mortality. Here, we assess how anthropogenic forcings affect the likelihood of maximum daily temperatures above 50 °C at 12 selected locations around the Mediterranean and the Middle East. We adopt a risk-based attribution methodology that utilises climate model simulations with and without human influence to estimate the probability of extremes. We find that at all locations, temperatures above 50 °C would have been extremely rare or impossible in the pre-industrial world, but under human-induced climate change their likelihood is rapidly increasing. At the hottest locations we estimate the likelihood has increased by a factor of 10–103, whereas by the end of the century such extremes could occur every year. All selected locations may see 1–2 additional months with excess thermal deaths by 2100, which stresses the need for effective adaptation planning.

Warfare and Economic Inequality: Evidence from Preindustrial Germany (c. 1400-1800)

What was the impact of military conflict on economic inequality? I argue that ordinary military conflicts increased local economic inequality. Warfare raised the financial needs of communities in preindustrial times, leading to more resource extraction from the population. This resource extraction happened via inequality-promoting channels, such as regressive taxation. Only in truly major wars might inequality-reducing destruction outweigh inequality-promoting extraction and reduce inequality. To test this argument I construct a novel panel dataset combining information about economic inequality in 75 localities, and more than 700 conflicts over four centuries. I find that the many ordinary conflicts — paradigmatic of life in the preindustrial world — were continuous reinforcers of economic inequality. I confirm that the Thirty Years’ War was indeed a great equaliser, but this was an exception and not the rule. Rising inequality is an underappreciated negative externality in times of conflict.

The Living Past: Commitments for the Future The First Millennium Evening Hosted at the White House

ED. NOTE: In February 1998, at the invitation of President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, Professor Bailyn was honored to give the first of nine Millennium Lectures at the White House. With characteristic wit, insight, and nuance, Bailyn chose the occasion to reflect on the complicated ways in which Americans as a people remain bound to the political concerns and constitutional innovations of the Revolutionary Era. Their preindustrial world and the primitive capital where John Adams and Thomas Jefferson first occupied a half-finished White House were vastly different from the global economy Americans came to dominate and the imperial capital Washington, DC has now become. Yet as Bailyn's lecture made clear, the persisting concern with checking and channeling the power of government that animated revolutionary thinking, in 1776 and 1787 and 1800, has remained both an inspirational and brooding force in American politics and culture ever since. In effect, Bailyn used the great themes of his most influential book, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, to set an agenda for the entire series of Millennium Lectures.Jack N. RakoveProfessor Bailyn's speech may be accessed at the following: https://youtu.be/Yku4MzXT3sQ?t=413

A Wicked War

As war is an eminently political event, the impact of wars on inequality can be seen as an expression of the politics in society. This paper engages with the ongoing literature relating warfare to wealth inequality dynamics in a pre-industrial world. It employs an unbalanced panel of wills in a combined event study and instrument variables research designs to explore the wealth inequality dynamics in Mexico during the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848. The findings suggest that weak public finances and financial crisis led to increasing wealth inequality through military expenditures and national debt. However, the formation of a regressive fiscal-military state and a levelling effect of warfare can coexist. Inequality depends on how war is financed and how destructive to capital and wealth the war is.

The paradox of “Malthusian urbanization”: urbanization without growth in the Republic of Genoa, 1300–1800

AbstractThis paper investigates the relationships between urbanization and long-term economic growth in the pre-industrial world. To this end, we compiled a novel dataset collecting all currently available data on urban and rural populations in an Italian pre-unification state, the Republic of Genoa. Data show the paradoxical coexistence of high urbanization levels with cyclical Malthusian stagnations. Putting together empirical results and historical evidence, we interpreted this puzzle, highlighting how a high degree of urbanization could be the consequence of widespread poverty, rather than a measure of rising standards of living. To describe this phenomenon, we coined the term “Malthusian urbanization”.

Inequality in Pre‐Industrial Europe (1260–1850): New Evidence From the Labor Share

The dynamics of economic inequality and its relationship with economic growth in the preindustrial world is increasingly attracting the attention of both economists and economic historians. In this paper, we tackle this theme by introducing new estimates of the labor share in five major European countries (England, France, Holland, Spain, and Portugal) for the period 1250–1850. Our estimates are constructed using an innovative method based on the conversion of real wages in 2011 PPP $. Overall, we find a complex pattern of evolution of the labor share with major fluctuations. Furthermore, using the inequality possibility frontier (IPF) framework, our results suggest that preindustrial Europe was characterized by a negative relationship between the extraction ratio and GDP.

Von Pfahlbürgern und Zugvögeln: Kontroversen um das deutsche Heimatrecht im 19. Jahrhundert

Modern nation-state building involved the rise of state citizenship and the decline of local membership that had characterized the pre-industrial world. In German-speaking Central Europe, however, this transition was neither quick nor smooth. Rather, the Heimatrecht (home law or home right), which tied people to their community of origin, remained significant throughout the nineteenth century. Recent scholarship on the concept of Heimat has largely ignored its legal history, assuming a rupture between “old” pragmatic-juridical and “new” sentimental-ideological understandings of the term. This article argues that no such clear separation is feasible. Centering on the founding phase of the German Empire, it discusses how the Heimatrecht was defined in the German states before 1871, why it became a bone of political contention between particularism and Prussia-orientated nationalism, and how it affected the lives of migrants. Finally, the article highlights a paradoxical continuity: modern state citizenship enlarged the legal Heimat, but perpetuated its core dilemma.

Theological Imagination in a Throwaway Society: Contending with Waste

This article treats the topic of consumer waste by beginning with a contemporary story that illustrates the reality and complex dynamics of throwaway culture. Noting the dynamic quality of waste, it offers a brief review of the development of throwaway society. Beginning in a preindustrial world in which the battle against “moth and rust” required habits of reuse and repair, or what cultural historian Susan Strasser refers to as bricolage, it then traces changes in “natural” and “temporal” imaginaries, as well as economic and technological factors, that rendered obsolete the cultural skills and imaginative capacities of bricolage. Having argued that forgetting and loss of imagination are key to waste-making, it offers two Christian responses that schools and faith communities might practice: “material anamnesis” and “redemptive vision.”

A ‘Magnificent’ military entrepreneur? The involvement of the Medici Bank in the arms trade (1482-1494)

Sifting through business accounts and public records, this article demonstrates the involvement of Medici Bank in the military industry of the fifteenth century, shedding new light on the final years of one of the most important companies in Renaissance Italy. By restating the relation between the public role and the private business of Lorenzo the Magnificent, this article emphasises the exploitation of government operations for his economic gain as well as the use of the family business for his political purposes – in this case, the consolidation of the new, permanent military institutions of the Florentine Republic. Developing this point further, the entire military organisation of the Medicean regime, traditionally assessed as haphazard and inefficient, is re-evaluated. Finally, this article contributes to the current debate on the military entrepreneurship of the preindustrial world, focussing on the cooperation between state administration and capitalist elites in supplying the materiel indispensable to early modern armies.

Bernard O’Kane. “From Atelier Floor to Monument Wall: How Were Tiles Placed Correctly?”

This article is the reprinted version of one of the author’s conference papers, originally published online in the proceedings of the international conference, Against Gravity: Building Practices in the Pre-Industrial World, edited by Robert Ousterhout, Dorian Borbonus and Elisha Dumser (Philadelphia: Center for Ancient Studies, University of Pennsylvania, 2016; https://www.sas.upenn.edu/ancient/publications.html). Given that this article is concerned with Khorezm – an important historical oa...

A Cowrie’s Life: The São Bento and Transoceanic Trade in the Sixteenth Century

ABSTRACT A collection of money cowries (Monetaria moneta) was discovered in the early 1980s inside a bronze cannon salvaged from the wreck site of the São Bento (1554), at the mouth of the Mzikaba River, Eastern Cape, South Africa. Using an approach inspired by ‘object biography’, I consider the presence of these cowries in a museum, their possible Maldivian origin, their interrupted West African future and their wider social, economic and ecological entanglements as a global trade item circulating in a pre-industrial world. This exploration sheds some light on the slave trade linking the Indian Ocean and Atlantic in the sixteenth century and the intertwined itineraries of cowries and slaves.

Finding the anthropocene in tropical forests

Abstract Commonly proposed definitions of the suggest that significant human alteration of the Earth system is connected to fossil fuel consumption coinciding with the Industrial Revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries, or global change resulting from the Great Acceleration following the Second World War. Although evidence for earlier, anthropogenically-driven environmental changes are acknowledged, they are seen as qualitatively different. This perspective is also prevalent in conservation and ecological discussions of human impacts on tropical forests. A growing body of archaeological and historical evidence demonstrates, however, that humans influenced physical, chemical, and biological systems through large regions of tropical forest starting as early as 45,000 years ago. This evidence challenges the idea, prevalent in global scenarios of anthropogenic land cover change, that human influence on tropical forests was limited until the colonial or industrial era. This paper reviews the role of tropical forests in the Earth system and, through a synthesis of archaeological data, critiques the prevailing view of anthropogenic influence on tropical forests in the pre-industrial world. We suggest that any definition of the anthropocene should account for the long history of human modifications to tropical forests. Archaeological and palaeoenvironmental research in these ecosystems is also critical to the broader debates in the social and natural sciences around the onset and utility of the anthropocene concept, and the potential for long-term, sustainable occupation of tropical forest environments.

Aztec political economy: a new conceptual frame

For those in search of current perspectives on the Aztec with a focus on matters economic, I heartily recommend a deep dive into these three volumes. Each book offers an insightful vantage on what we presently know about this pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican empire, as well as how new discoveries over the last 60–70 years force serious rethinking of both the long-term history of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and key tenets that underpin pre-industrial political economies more broadly. Empires were a relatively rare phenomenon in the pre-industrial world, especially in the ancient Americas, and few have been so skilfully studied through a multi-disciplinary approach that integrates both historical texts and archaeology.

FREEDOM OR CONSTRAINT: THE SPEEDING BICYCLE AND THE INDUSTRIAL SUBJECT IN H. G. WELLS'STHE WHEELS OF CHANCE

In this passage,quoted fromGrant Allen's 1897 bestsellerThe Type-writer Girl, the New-Woman-turned-typist Juliet Appleton decides to quit typing in a London law office where she is forced to “click, click, click all day like a machine.” As an alternative and a release, she jumps on her bicycle and rides for an “idyllic” anarchic farm in the countryside (11). There across the Weald of Sussex and Surrey, the bicycling Juliet encounters two other forms of mobility, that of the train and the horse-driven carriage. The train, an icon of industrial modernity that “annihilated time and space” (Schivelbusch 36), rumbles brutally over the green fields and terrifies the horses, which are symbols of a natural, organic, preindustrial world. But Juliet's bicycle seems to create a balance between the two worlds. The bicycle as the never-failing steel horse enables her to utilize the achievements of industrial mechanization and also allows for a degree of freedom and human agency. Juliet is portrayed as a true modern heroine and an “unabashed” daughter of the industrial age, because she seems to possess a new subjectivity bred and made possible by the partnership between machine and nature, mechanical power and organic energy.

Plague and Lethal Epidemics in the Pre-Industrial World

This article provides an overview of recent literature on plagues and other lethal epidemics, covering the period from late Antiquity to ca. 1800. We analyze the main environmental and institutional factors that shaped both the way in which a plague originated and spread and its overall demographic and socioeconomic consequences. We clarify how the same pathogen shows historically different epidemiological characteristics, and how apparently similar epidemics could have deeply different consequences. We discuss current debates about the socioeconomic consequences of the Black Death and other plagues. We conclude with historical lessons to understand modern “plagues.”

Reverse Engineering Ancient Greek Ceramics: Morphological and Spectral Characterization of Replicates

Athenian pottery, the ceramics produced in the Attica region of Greece between the 6th and 4th centuries B.C., is considered a benchmark technological achievement of the preindustrial world. This work advances our understanding of the firing protocols employed by the ancient Greeks to produce their black‐on‐red designs by characterizing replicates painted with a refined illite clay and fired under oxidizing/reducing/reoxidizing conditions (three‐stage firing). Systematically varying the temperature, atmosphere, and duration of each firing stage within the three‐stage firing scheme allowed the conditions necessary to obtain black and red gloss, both of which are observed on ancient vessels, to be determined. The morphology and elemental distribution of particles formed within the gloss thus formed were characterized using transmission electron microscopy and spectrocolorimetric measurements. Comparison of the results obtained from ancient sherds with those obtained from the replicate samples provides a means of estimating the firing conditions used to create the ancient vessels.

Political order and inequality: their foundations and their consequences for human welfare

The fundamental question of political theory, one that precedes all other questions about the nature of political life, is why there is a state at all. Is human cooperation feasible without a political authority enforcing it? Or do we need a state to live together? This problem then opens up two further questions. If a state is necessary to establish order, how does it come into place? And, when it does, what are the consequences for the political status and economic welfare of its citizens? Combining ethnographical material, historical cases, and statistical analysis, this book describes the foundations of stateless societies, why and how states emerge, and the basis of political obligation. As a result of this inquiry, it explains the economic and political roots of inequality, describes the causes of the stagnation of the preindustrial world, and explores what led to the West's prosperity of the past two centuries.

The Great and Little Divergence: Where Lies the True Onset of Modern Economic Growth?

The Great and Little Divergence are examined in light of recent data on GDP/capita in the pre-industrial world. The Little Divergence is shown to be a myth, based on pasting together distinct and limited episodes of growth that peter out; and on close examination of diverse data on health, farm output, and gdp China and Europe are shown to be on similar tracks up through 1800. Even England and Holland show no evidence of a marked divergence from the rest of the world in economic output per capita until after 1780.