Economic history (c. 1501-1800)

In 1617 after seven years of war between Sweden and Russia and talks facilitated by English and Dutch diplomats the peace treaty of Stolbovo was signed. This important but little-studied document was to form the basis for relationships between Sweden and Russia for the next one hundred years before it was replaced by the Peace of Nystad in 1721 and it had a huge influence on the lives of the people who lived in the region.

This wide-ranging volume draws together contributions by scholars from Britain Sweden Germany Estonia Russia and Finland to offer new insights into and analysis of this peace treaty and its impact on the wider region during the seventeenth century. Covering disciplines including political and economic history church history and Slavonic and Classical philology the chapters gathered here shed new light on and provide a new understanding of the Early Modern period in the Baltic Sea area.

Erasmus Schetz Gaspar Ducci and Gilbert van Schoonbeke. Contemporaries made it indisputably clear that these three moneymakers were exceptional from different perspectives and for different reasons but all commentators implicitly or explicitly referred to their unique economic achievements and they were right to do so. The exceptional careers of the three protagonists shed light on the potential of the most dynamic economic centre of Europe - and the world - during early globalization. Precisely because their economic initiatives were far more ambitious than what other businessmen in Antwerp could or would consider or achieve their careers are ideal vantage points for observing and analysing ‘capital at work’. They also provide an opportunity to examine how commercial capitalism changed and/or was transformed and in what measure the three protagonists extended the frontiers of capitalism.

Studies dealing with inequality in European societies have multiplied in recent years. It has now become clear that pressing questions about the historical trends showing both income and wealth inequality as well as the factors leading to an increase or drop of inequality over time could be answered only by taking into account preindustrial times. Therefore this book deals with inequality in the long-run covering and comparing a very long time span starting its investigations in the later middle ages and ending before the nineteenth century the period that marks the beginning of most available studies.

Hitherto urban distribution of income and wealth is much better known than rural inequality. This book intends to reduce this gap in knowledge bringing rural inequality to the fore of research. Since at least until the nineteenth century the majority of people were country men looking at the rural areas is crucial when trying to identify the underlying causes of inequality trends in the long run of history.　

The book consists of nine original papers and deals with a variety of topics about inequality covering no less than eight different countries in Europe. The majority of the studies published in this book are the result of teamwork between European universities where a range of research centres are currently exploring different aspects of income and wealth inequality in preindustrial times.

This book presents ten case-studies by eminent scholars dealing with food supply storage and markets from c. 1600 to c. 2000. Together they present a long-term history of the tools to regulate the rhythms and seasonal patterns of the food production and distribution process. How were the vast flows of staple food needed for metropolitan areas organised? What practical difficulties had to be overcome to preserve this food safely? Did people respond to price patterns in search for profit? Were governments successful in imposing regulation? In dealing with these issues the contributing authors adopt different approaches and investigate cases from England Belgium Germany Austria Italy France and Mexico. The focus on the stocks and flows of grains and other foodstuffs raises new questions combining economic social political and environmental issues in the study of agricultural markets and food policies.

This collection of essays compares and discusses women’s participation and experiences in credit markets in early modern Europe and highlights the characteristics common mechanisms similarities discrepancies and differences across various regions in Europe in different time periods and at all levels of society. The essays focus on the role of women as creditors and debtors (a topic largely ignored in traditional historiography) but also and above all on the development of their roles across time. Were women able to enter the credit market and if so how and in what proportion? What was then the meaning of their involvement in this market? What did their involvement mean for the community and for their household? Was credit a vector of female emancipation and empowerment? What were the changes that occurred for them in the transition to capitalism? These essays offer a variety of perspectives on women’s roles in the credit markets of early modern Europe in order to outline and answer these questions as well as analysing and exploring the nature of women money credit and debt in a pre-industrial Europe.

The economy of the late medieval Low Countries is often portrayed in terms of dynamism and economic growth. However several regions within this larger entity followed an alternate path of development. One example of this is the Campine (Kempen) a communal peasant region situated to the northeast of the sixteenth-century ‘metropolis’ of Antwerp. By contrast with other regions in the Low Countries this area was characterised by a remarkable stability.

By focusing on ‘independent’ peasant elites this study explores the social structures and the characteristics of inequality of this region showing how these factors led to a different more stable mode of economic development. Looking past standard societal measurements such as property distribution this work combines a wide variety of sources to grasp the nuances of inequality in a communal society. It therefore takes into account other economic factors such as control over the commons and market integration. It also focuses on political and social inequality shedding light on aspects of inequality in village politics social life and poor relief.

Thus in contrast to dominant depictions of pre-modern societies on the road to capitalism this book provides a comprehensive portrayal of inequality and elite groups in a communal peasant society.

In agricultural history specialisation is usually considered as progress turning peasants into market-orientated farmers and allowing them to escape from self-sufficiency. Recent developments in the field of productivist agriculture and the recent rise of alternative agriculture cast doubt on this conventional concept of agricultural specialisation. Several questions arise: Did specialisation necessarily mean that farms concentrated on a single product? Was it always a great step forward? Did it occur in the same form in earlier centuries as in contemporary economies?

The chapters of this book draw attention to several factors relevant to processes of specialisation such as markets transport and the natural environment. The contributions deal with regions in 10 countries of Europe from Sweden to Spain and from England to Bulgaria and with periods between the seventeenth and the twentieth centuries. They suggest several conclusions. Specialisation can take place in various forms ranging from focussing on a single major cash crop to giving preference to a combination of products. This is true both at the level of an individual farm as at a regional level. Specialisation did not always improve the farmers’ standard of living. And it was neither a linear nor an irreversible process. This can be observed in periods of war but also in recent developments in post-communist countries.

Annie Antoine professor of modern history at Rennes 2 University (Brittany France) specialises in the history of rural societies and farming practices. Her latest book is a history of the rural landscape in Western France.

This book is a collection of essays on social networks social capital and kinship in historical and contemporary rural societies. They span a wide range of European countries and historical situations from early modern Flanders and Italy to present-day Austria and Armenia. All the essays describe in detail how people on the countryside connected with one another in formal or informal relations. In doing so the authors use and critically discuss methods of historical interpretation social network analysis and econometrics. The book analyses these topics in three steps. First the authors address whether social relations can be of economic use. Secondly they examine the institutional conditions for such a conversion of social into economic capital reconstructing the often unexpected ways in which the economic and social spheres were connected both in ‘pre-modern’ and in ‘modern’ settings. Thirdly they show how political institutions were constructed out of social networks.

Georg Fertig is professor of economic and social history at Halle University in Germany. He has worked extensively on 18th and 19th-century historical demography and agrarian history.

This book discusses the relationship between ecology and rural society in fragile environments of the past. Rural land use in these areas entailed an inherent vulnerability for instance because of their poor soils aridity or their location in mountain areas near the sea or in severe climatic conditions. The various chapters analyse how societies coped with this vulnerability by way of the organization of property rights to land. These rights formed the framework which shaped the use of the land and were a main constituent of the relationship between mankind and ecology in these fragile areas. To a large extent therefore they determined - and still determine - the success or failure of rural societies to cope with the challenges posed by their environment. In their turn however these property rights were shaped within a wider social and political context in which political and ideological considerations and special interests also played their part. As a result the organization of these rights was not always geared towards sustainability as demonstrated in these chapters which discuss and analyse long-term developments in several parts of Northwestern Central and Southern Europe.

Bas van Bavel is professor of economic and social history of the Middle Ages head of the section of Economic and Social History and coordinator of the knowledge centre Institutions of the Open Society at Utrecht University (the Netherlands).

Erik Thoen is ordinary professor at Ghent University (Belgium) specialised in rural and environmental history. He is co-ordinator of the CORN history network (Comparative Rural History of the North Sea Area).

By exploring the fundamental issues of property rights and markets in land this book will offer important insights into long-term economic change in Europe. The essays gathered here provide a major consideration of the institutional constraints which can be employed by historians and other commentators in order to explain both the slowness or even absence of growth in certain areas of the European economy between the thirteenth and nineteenth centuries as well as the discrete experiences of countries within Europe in this broad period.

This is an issue of current interest not least because discussion of 'institutional determinism' has become a standard of explanations of historical and economic change; that said those promoting such approach have sometimes been criticised for generalising from an 'institutional' perspective rather than taking full account of the variety of potential causative explanations within particular historical contexts.

The present collection of essays will therefore explore the conditions which permitted the progress of agriculture in Europe and the emergence of capitalism in the countryside. The research presented in this volume helps to demonstrate that changes in the market (demand relative prices...) encouraged changes in property rights but certainly did not do so in ways that were consistent or that led inexorably towards individual and exclusive rights of the kind described by the nineteenth-century liberal paradigm.

Specialist of rural and economic history Gérard Béaur is Directeur de Recherches at CNRS and Directeur d’Etudes at EHESS (Paris France). He was Chair of the COST Action A35 Progressore and he is currently director of the GDRI (International Research Network CNRS) CRICEC (Crises and Changes in the European Countryside).

Phillipp Schofield is Professor of Medieval History and Head of the Department of History and Welsh History Aberystwyth University. His research interests focus on rural society in England in the high and late Middle Ages.

Jean-Michel Chevet is a French researcher in the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique ADESS-UMR-5185. He is a specialist in the economic history of the countryside particularly of the development of the English and French growth and of the history of vine growing.

Maria-Teresa Pérez-Picazo was Professor of Economic History at the University of Murcie (Spain). Her principal work was on agrarian history and she focused particularly on the subject of water management in the modern period.