Week 7 suggested essay topics:
For this week I'd like to you to devise your own topic, or to pick from one of the following four. I may be able to provide more guidance about reading, or suggestions about how to frame an essay question if you contact me.
1. Education and human capital
Craft skills and physical health may have given Britain an advantage in the 18th century. That is the topic of a recent article by Kelly et al. A frequently-cited recent article by Squicciarini and Voigtländer looks instead at the role of educated elites in France. In the nineteenth century, mass primary education is introduced and eventually made both free and compulsory. Some authors argue that mechanisation and human capital were complements, others that they were substitutes. Below are a handful of suggestions to get you thinking.
Cotte, M. "Le rôle des ouvriers et entrepreneurs britanniques dans le décollage industriel français des années 1820," Documents pour l'histoire des techniques, vol. 18, no. 2 (2010), pp. 119-30.
De Pleijt, A., A.Nuvolari, and J. Weisdorf, "Human Capital Formation during the First Industrial Revolution: Evidence from the Use of Steam Engines," Journal of the European Economic Association, vol. 18, no. 2 (2020), pp. 829-89.
De Pleijt, A. and J. Weisdorf, "Human capital formation from occupations: the 'deskilling hypothesis' revisited," Cliometrica, vol. 11 (2017), pp. 1-30.
Franck, R. and O. Galor, "Flowers of Evil? Industrialization and Long Run Development," IZA Discussion Paper no. 11681 (July 2018).
Kelly, Morgan, Joel Mokyr, and Cormac O Grada, "Precocious Albion: A New Interpretation of the British Industrial Revolution," Annual Review of Economics, vol. 6 (2014), pp. 363-89.
Mitch, D. "Education and skill of the British labour force," Ch. 12 in CEHMB (2004 ed.), pp. 332-56. Mitch is an authority on British literacy and education. He has lots of other pieces on the topic.
Montalbo, Adrien, "Industrial activities and primary schooling in early nineteenth-century France," Cliometrica, vol. 14 (2020), pp. 325-65.
Nicholas, S.J. and J.M. Nicholas, "Male Literacy, "Deskilling," and the Industrial Revolution," Journal of Interdisciplinary History, vol. 23, no.1 (Summer 1992), pp. 1-18.
Squicciarini, Mara, and Nico Voigtländer, "Human Capital and Industrialization: Evidence from the Age of Enlightenment," Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 130, no. 4 (Nov. 2015), pp. 1825-83. The same authors have a working paper entitled "Knowledge Elites and Modernization: Evidence from Revolutionary France" that could be of itnerest.
2. Banking and financial development
For later periods than ours, there is a large literature on banks and their role in industrialisation. France has been seen as "underbanked" at least up until the mid-nineteenth century. A recent book by Hoffman et al. shows that in fact France had an extremely well-developed network of credit intermediaries that matched up borrowers and lenders: notaries. The book is the culmination of years of research, so you will find various other publications by the same authors on the same issues. In 1852 the famous Crédit Mobilier was founded by the Pereire brothers in Paris. Inspired by the Saint-Simonian movement, this bank had the goal of gathering funds from ordinary savers to finance major industrial and infrastructural investments, so it was an early - and much-copied - investment bank, and step on the way to continental Europe's "universal banks." I don't have a specific recent source to recommend, but you won't have any trouble finding something. For Britain in the eighteenth century Temin and Voth's recent book (again preceded by various journal articles) is an interesting starting point. There is a well developed literature on most aspects of English banking in the nineteenth century and legislation restricting the formation of large joint stock banks. (Another interesting topic is minimally-regulated "free banking" in Scotland.) Gareth Campbell and coauthors have several papers on 'railway mania' in the 1840s in Britain. For an earlier period, there is good material on the development of financial markets in articles about the South Sea Bubble in Britain and the Mississipi Bubble (John Law) in France.
Hoffman, Philip, Gilles Postel-Vinay, and Jean-Laurent Rosenthal. Dark Matter Credit: The Development of Peer-to-Peer Lending and Banking in France. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2019.
Murphy, A. "The Financial Revolution and its Consequences," Ch. 11 in CEHMB (2014 ed.), pp. 321-43.
Santarosa, V., "Financing Long-Distance Trade: The Joint Liability Rule and Bills of Exchange in Eighteenth-Century France," Journal of Economic History, vol. 75, no. 3 (Sept. 2015), pp. 690-719. The British developed the reputation of being masters of international finance. Here is an article on the French.
Temin, Peter, and Hans-Joachim Voth. Prometheus Shackled: Goldsmith Banks and England's Financial Revolution after 1700. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2013.
3. Foreign markets, slavery, and empire
Most of you have probably written on slavery or empire for Approaches. If not, here is an opportunity. There are some starting points for reading on my Approaches webpage. Below are some readings about external markets and trade policy.
Acemoglu, D., S. Johnson, and J. Robinson, "The Rise of Europe: Atlantic Trade, Institutional Change, and Economic Growth," American Economic Review, vol. 95 (2005), pp. 546-79.
Broadberry, S. and B. Gupta, "Cotton Textiles and the Great Divergence: Lancashire, India and Shifting Competitive Advantage, 1600-1850," CEPR Discussion Paper 5183, 2005.
Allen, R. The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective, Ch. 5 (Why Britain Succeeded), pp. 106-131.
Cuenca Esteban, J., "Comparative Patterns of Colonial Trade: Britain and its Rivals," Ch. 2 in Exceptionalism and Industrialisation: Britain and Its European Rivals, 1668-1815, L. Prados de la Escosura ed. (Cambridge: CUP, 2004), pp. 35-66.
Daudin, G., K. O'Rourke, and L. Prados de la Escosura, "Trade and Empire, 1700-1870" Document de Travail OFCE (Observatoire Francais des Conjonctures Economiques) no. 2008-24 (2008).
Eltis, D. and S. Engerman, "The Importance of Slavery and the Slave Trade to Industrializing Britain," JEH, vol. 60 no. 1 (Mar. 2000), pp. 123-44.
Findlay, R. and K. O'Rourke. Power and Plenty. Trade, War, and the World Economy in the Second Millennium. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2007. Ch. 6: "Trade and the Industrial Revolution"
Harley, C.K., "Trade: Discovery, Mercantilism, and Technology," ch. 7 in CEHMB (2004 ed.), pp. 175-203.
Nye, J., "The Myth of Free-Trade Britain and Fortress France: Tariffs and Trade in the Nineteenth Century,"" JEH, vol. 51 (1991), pp. 23-46.
Nye, J. War, Wine, and Taxes. The Political Economy of Anglo-French Trade, 1689-1900. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2007. (Repetitive but an easy and interesting read.)
O'Rourke. K., "Tariffs and Growth in the Late 19th Century," Economic Journal, vol. 110, no. 463 (April 2000), pp. 456-83.
Zahadieh, N., "Overseas Trade and Empire," ch.14 in CEHMB (2014 ed.), pp. 392-420.
4. Poverty and poor relief
I don't have a bibliography on this topic for the moment, but I commend it to you as an interesting and important one. We are accustomed to thinking of the British poor relief system as miserly and mean spirited (which is perhaps not inaccurate, after the 1834 reforms). But Britain was way ahead of other countries in adopting a nationwide system of publicly financed welfare. It has been argued that English poor relief was just a way to keep labour in rural areas for when it was needed at harvest time. Or that it was a sort of insurance necessary to get people to accept uncertain industrial employment. Others have focussed on pauper 'apprentices' as a key source of labour for the early factories. So there's a huge literature. And you will find material on France too.
Lindert, P. "Poor Relief Before 1880" and "Interpreting the Puzzles of Early Poor Relief," chs. 3-4 in Growing Public. Social Spending and Economic Growth Since the Eighteenth Century, P. Lindert, Cambridge: CUP, 2004.