Until around 1800 economic growth was the exception not the rule and all economies were very poor by today’s standards. Malthusian pressures were the norm and increases in population were normally accompanied by declines in living standards. The Industrial Revolution saw the British economy escape from Malthusian constraints and marks the world’s first transition to modern economic growth. The course considers the processes by which Britain became the first nation to 13 overcome growth constraints and embark on a path of sustained expansion of per capita income. It looks at the roles played by structural change, new sources of energy and raw materials, agricultural improvement, high wages, new technology, changes in labour supply and much else. The course covers key debates both on the causes of industrialisation and the consequences for the people who lived through it.

This course introduces the theory and practice of the various institutions that have facilitated international trade and wealth creation since the nineteenth century. Some of these emerged organically, others were planned responses to economic collapse and global conflagration. All relied upon some level of credibility and cooperation between competing nation states. We look at the emergence of the classical Gold Standard that underpinned globalisation in the late nineteenth century. The First World War shattered the intricate web of international trade and, despite the attempt to reconstitute the pre-war Gold Standard, the global economy collapsed with the competitive devaluations and protectionism of the 1930s. At Bretton Woods in 1944, the planners of the post-war international economy sought to combine the discipline of the Gold Standard with the flexibility of adjustable exchange rates. Over the next quarter-century, the world enjoyed unprecedented economic growth as international trade returned to levels not witnessed since before the First World War. However, the Bretton Woods Gold Exchange Standard contained the seeds of its own destruction, and its collapse in the early 1970s marked the abrupt end of the Golden Age of Capitalism. The leading European nations used the ensuing period of economic improvisation to develop the European Monetary System that ultimately gave birth to the European single currency. The course finishes by examining how the flaws within this system led to the Euro crisis. It places the crisis in historical perspective by showing today’s policy makers wrestling with essentially the same theoretical and practical issues as their predecessors over the past century.

Most developed countries have experienced dramatic increases in health during the last two centuries, associated with the economic growth of the modern period. This paper examines more closely the relationship between economic growth and health according to the detailed historical record. The richly-documented British case will provide a central focus but comparative material will also be considered. The course will explore the complexities of the relationship between economic growth, urbanization and health; and the need to understand the crucial role of social institutions and political conflict in determining health outcomes for populations participating in rapid economic change. Students will be encouraged to pursue contemporary implications and policy relevance.

Economic thought has undergone extensive transformations since the 18^th century. It emerged both as an empirical language for government purposes and a set of arguments over the natural order of economic life. It became a domain of abstract principles about value, a subversive theory of capitalist mode of production, a subjectivist conceptualization centred on the analysis of choice and the behaviour of an economic agent dealing with scarce means, and a mathematical science. At first, it aspired to universal knowledge, later aimed for exactness on a par with hard sciences. It was nevertheless, and still is, uncommonly marked by internal deep disagreements and bitter epistemological conflicts. It has established itself as a highly formalised academic science but has not ceased to also constitute a source of popular and radical writing.

This option course explores the nature, the significance, and the multiple meanings of this in some respects unique discipline by drawing on intellectual history and history of social science. We will place economic ideas in their economic, political, and social context, to understand how theoretical constructions intertwined with other ways of thinking, such as political thought and psychology, but also ideology, moral feelings, and sentiments. By discussing the recent methodological developments, we will bring how economists thought and worked to light. We will analyse both canonical texts and archives and adopt different approaches and dimensions: biography and prosopography, teaching, business journalism, national tradition and transnational circulation, academic controversy, public discourse, and relationship of economic ideas to policy. The course is chronologically organised. Thematic focuses on subjects such as wealth, value, distribution, markets, labour, money, and power will allow us to cross references between authors of different periods. The aim is to introduce students to the thoughts of some of the most prominent economists of the last three centuries. Their views were at the heart of the important political and social debates of the times and have contributed to shape our understanding of human beings and society.

In this seminar we will examine debates and methodologies that have shaped the History of Capitalism field over the past two decades. We explore the different ways in which historians of the 16th to 19th centuries have approached the question of what capitalism is, and when capitalism became the dominant mode of socio-economic organization. We will discuss the role that European colonialism, commodity production, and enslavement played in shaping capitalism, and ask if there are different capitalisms at a global scale? We will debate key concepts such as commercial capitalism, financialisation, and the corporation. Finally, the seminar will interrogate the relationship between capitalism as we know it today and the history of financial, commercial and technological innovations and ideas about the economy.

This course will introduce students to major themes in environmental politics and understanding as it has developed over the past one hundred and seventy years, predominantly but not exclusively in the anglophone world. Each week will develop a major theme around which arguments and positions have coalesced in environmental politics, drawing on sources from different time periods within each theme. This will allow students to assess and debate genealogies of environmental argument, but also to consider sources in their own context, and how issues have been understood over time.

Students will consider questions such as: Were there key ‘foundational’ moments in environmental politics that have shaped different debates over the long-term? Is there a danger in overstating continuities in environmental thought and making false analogies between different moments of crisis and contestation? How much has environmental understanding been influenced by developments in science? How has environmental thought been incorporated – or ignored – in different strands of economics? Are environmental problems themselves caused by particular historical moments, technologies, ideologies, economic developments or governmental action? Is it helpful to frame environmental history as a search for ‘origins’ which both identifies the causes of modern environmental problems and imagines alternatives through the historical actors who contested change at the point of origin? Is it possible or desirable to develop an environmental history that is not framed by political and ethical judgements on the present? How important were ideas about history themselves to actors who made environmental arguments at particular points in time?

The course will consist of eight two-hour classes with a focus on primary sources. As well as introducing students to a range of primary sources covering leading environmental thinkers (and their opponents) the course aims where appropriate to introduce students to the core theoretical and technical techniques employed in studying the environment in environmental and ecological economics.