Dr Patrick Wallis

This course is available on the MRes/PhD in Quantitative Economic History, MSc in China in Comparative Perspective, MSc in Economic History, MSc in Economic History (Research), MSc in Empires, Colonialism and Globalisation and MSc in Global Economic History (Erasmus Mundus). This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

This course surveys long-term processes of growth and development in pre-modern Europe and the wider world. The course raises fundamental questions about the nature of pre-industrial societies and economies.  First, it asks if stagnation and poverty were normal conditions in pre-industrial societies and growth an aberration.  Were societies 'Malthusian', and what kind of growth and development did they experience? Second, it addresses debates over the timing and causes of Western economic growth and its connections with the region’s expanding political and military power.  Why British or European success from the 17th century the result of unique social, institutional, or cultural features? Was it the outcome of a centuries-long, cumulative process of change that relied as much on inputs from the rest of Europe and the wider world as much as specifically domestic features? Or was it the result of a 'fortunate conjuncture'?  Third, it explores the range of alternative development paths within Europe and in other regions of the world, such as premodern China and India, considering both regions’ internal economic dynamics and the impact of interactions with European powers as contact grew over the course of the early modern period. The approach throughout is thematic.  Themes include: population, agriculture, technology, manufacturing, labour regimes, economic effects of legal, political, and constitutional structures; political economy; trade and market integration, money, finances and commercial institutions, and the causes and effects of the European expansion overseas.

10 hours of lectures and 10 hours of seminars in the MT. 10 hours of lectures and 10 hours of seminars in the LT.

2-hour meetings weekly, with a flexible combination of lectures and seminars in MT and LT.

Students on this course will have a reading week in Week 6 of each term, in line with departmental policy.

All students are expected to write four essays: one by the end of the fifth week of the MT, one by the end of the ninth week of the MT, one by end of the fifth week of the LT, and one by the end of the ninth week of the LT.

E L Jones, Growth Recurring: economic change in world history (1988; 2nd ed., 2002); D North, Structure and Change in Economic History (1981); H Miskimin, The Economy of Early Renaissance Europe, 1300-1460 (1969); K G Persson, An Economic History of Europe: Knowledge, Institutions and Growth, 600 to the Present (2010); J De Vries, The Economy of Europe in an age of crisis, 1600-1750 (1976); K Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the making of the modern world economy (2000); A G Frank, ReORIENT: Global economy in the Asian age (1998); J E Inikori, Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England (2002); P. Hoffman, Why Did Europe Conquer the World? (2015); B. Wong & J-L. Rosenthal, Before and Beyond Divergence (2014)

Exam (70%, duration: 2 hours) in the summer exam period.
Essay (30%, 3000 words) in the LT.

Survey questions on feedback to students may be non-informative because assessed work comes later in the term than the survey.