Convenor: Prof Gareth Austin

The incomplete process of global industrialisation continues to transform the world. We examine the history of industrial growth and industrialisation beyond the West, focusing on the debates about how far, and why, ‘late’ industrialisations have differed from the original industrial revolution and from Western models generally, notably in the role of the state, the organization of production, and the relative preference for capital and labour intensive technologies respectively. We focus on the economic strategies and changes in their domestic and international political contexts, and (more briefly) discuss the social and cultural dimensions. Not least, we consider the interactions of economies with their physical environments. While the weekly seminars will be framed comparatively, students may focus on individual regions or countries for their essays. The overall aim is to enable students to acquire a critical understanding of the key concepts, empirical methods, and evidence adduced in the debates on this theme.

Seminar topics

1. Concepts of ‘late’ economic development

2. The Industrial Revolution and ‘Great Divergence’: their implications for subsequent development

3. Manufacturing growth and the ‘imperialism of free trade’, c.1850-1914

4. Industrialization and ‘de-globalization’, 1914-45

5. State-led economic development, 1945-c1980

6. Industrialization and economic liberalization, c1980-present

7. ‘The Great Convergence’ amid the ‘Anthropocene’?

8. Connections, comparisons and conclusion.

Convenors: Dr Pedro Ramos-Pinto and Dr Poornima Paidipaty

Inequality has once more become a central topic of debate. Historians have long been interested in questions of distribution, power differentials and exclusion, whilst not necessarily using the language of economics, which has come to shape such discussions. Across the social and human sciences, approaches to inequality vary widely, and interdisciplinary conversations are difficult. Yet, such exchanges hold the promise of significant insights into how inequality is made and unmade throughout time. This course brings together economic, social and political perspectives in exploring how unequal outcomes (such as income, health or capability) have been created, sustained and challenged throughout history and across the globe.  It explores the concept of development, along with the history of ideas about equality and inequality, and the social history of the categories that sustain difference, including (but not limited to) gender, race and religion. How did early agricultural communities and medieval societies think about fairness, and how did people interact across marked social divides? How did traders, missionaries and sovereigns manage increasingly diverse empires, where new opportunities challenged established social hierarchies? How did European colonial expansion engage with social practices and economic relationships around the globe, and how did that affect both ideas and practices of equity in different parts of the world?  How did social categories such as race and gender feature in the postwar ‘Age of Equality’?  How and why has economic inequality come to define equity more broadly, and how does that alter debates about fairness and justice?  

Seminar topics

1. Dimensions of inequality: economic and sociological approaches.

2. Pre-Modern Inequality: archaeology, anthropology and the distant past.

3. Revolutions (Industrious, Emotional and Political): Inequality at the birth of Modernity.

4. ‘The Great Divergence’: the globalisation of inequality.

5. Inequality Naturalised: Bodies, knowledge and power in the colonial era

6. Inequality Measured: Making ‘Inequality Knowledge’

7. ‘Uncertain Victory’: The limits of equality in the post-war era

8. Development, Globalization and Inequality

Convenor: Dr Duncan Needham

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. 

Seminar topics 

1. Free trade and the evolution of the Gold Standard. 

2. The First World War and international trade. 

3. The interwar global economy and the collapse of the Gold Standard. 

4. Bretton Woods, international trade and the Golden Age of Capitalism. 

5. The collapse of Bretton Woods. 

6. The Washington consensus. 

7. The single European market and the birth of the Euro. 

8. The Euro crisis. 

Convenor: Dr Massimo Asta

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 formalized 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 organized. 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 thought 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.

Seminar topics:

1. Nations, Wealth, and Labour

2. Value, Price and Distribution

3. Free Trade and Protectionism

4. Exploitation and Revolution

5. Subjectivism and General Equilibrium

6. Capitalism (and Socialism)

7. The Keynesian Turn

8. Money, Markets, and the Global Capital

Convenor: Dr Anthony Hotson

The history of banking markets is one of intermittent crises interspersed with successive attempts to find ways and means of stabilising the system. The currency reforms of the eighteenth century and the banking ones of the nineteenth were followed by a period of remarkable confidence in London’s financial institutions that lasted until the 1960s. Recent scholarship has emphasised the importance of the Bank of England’s role as lender of last resort, and its modern extension, deposit insurance. Less heed has been paid to various principles of sound banking practice, developed in the late nineteenth century, that helped to stabilise London’s markets. These principles informed a range of market practices that sought to limit aggressive forms of funding and discourage speculative lending. A tendency to downplay the importance of these regulatory practices encouraged a degree of complacency about their removal, and the deregulation that started in the 1970s created a financial structure that disregarded these principles of banking. The events of 2007-8 suggest a reappraisal is needed.

Seminar topics:

1. Money and credit before the nineteenth century
2. The origins and development of central banking
3. Undoubted credit and bank capital
4. Respectable banking and state supervision
5. Savings banks and narrow banking
6. Building societies and the problem of maturity transformation
7. Deregulation since the 1970s in the United States and United Kingdom
8. Causes, consequences and mitigants of credit crises

Convenor: Dr Shailaja Fennell and Dr Jane Lichtenstein (MPhil in Development Studies)

This module explores the role of institutions as formal and informal rules in social, economic and environmental aspects of development at multiple scales. It places people at the centre of development and examines the relationship between the individual and collective; private and public. 

Lectures are structured around core theme of State and Markets using the key concepts of transaction and transition costs in the Michaelmas term; and the theme of Common Pool Resources and Rural Development using the key concepts of collective action and institutional design in the Lent term. 

Convenor: Professor Simon Szreter

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. 

Structure:

Part I 

Class 1: Post-war development orthodoxies and approaches to population health

Class 2: Alternative interpretations of the core evidence: modern Britain’s epidemiological history

Part II: The relationship between economic growth, health and politics in Britain since 1750       

Class 3: 1750-1815

Class 4: 1815-1870             

Classes 5 & 6: 1850-1914

Class 7: Since 1914

Part III

Class 8: Critical reflections on health, politics and economic development