Shave 2011

Economic History Review, 64, 3 (2011), pp.
1024–1071
Book reviews
GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND
Robin R. Mundill, The king’s Jews: money, massacre and exodus in medieval England
(London and New York: Continuum Books, 2010. Pp. xv + 240. 8 illus. 2 maps. ISBN
9781847251862 Hbk. £25/$34.95) ehr_597 1024..1071
Jews were invited to England by the Norman conquerors in order to introduce a credit
economy or at least to help solidify it. Their number never surpassed that of several
thousand and by the year 1290 they were all expelled from the country. This is the brief
history outlined in Mundill’s new book, which is based upon very deep study of the
multitude of extant documentary evidence of Jewish financial activities and other related
economic transactions. The number of these documents is more than any one scholar
could hope to decipher and analyse in a lifetime, but Mundill is one of the few scholars in
this area who knows where to look for information, how to focus appropriately on a few
events, personalities, and institutions, and above all has the capacity to range widely
through politics, jurisprudence, social relations, and manifestations of hatred as well as
economics. Mundill advances his study on the solid foundations laid by his predecessors,
especially Joseph Jacobs and Cecil Roth of an earlier generation and more recent scholars
such as Zefira Rokeah, John Hillaby, and Robert C. Stacy. A particular debt is also owed
to Vivian D. Lipman’s The Jews of medieval Norwich (1967), one of the most outstanding
monographs ever written about a medieval Jewish community.
Although England in the twelfth century was the birthplace of the first series of ritual
murder allegations against the Jews, it was still a century of exceptional economic
success for them. For example, Aron of Lincoln, who is portrayed as never before by
Mundill (pp. 21–9), was the head of an empire that was allegedly worth in excess of £22
billion at current values. One of the richest Jews in history, he handled a network of
partners and agents that spread over England’s regions and beyond. By contrast, the
thirteenth century was marked by decay and decline. This was due to the harsh taxation
imposed by the monarch—of which the Jews were the ‘serves of the chamber’—as well
as to the growing competition of non-Jewish financiers, a subject neglected by historians.
In a desperate effort to satisfy the ever-increasing demands for taxes on the part of the
authorities, many Jews were left only with the small loans market of city dwellers and
peasantry. Things went from bad to worse, such that in 1254 Rabbi Elias requested
permission for all Jews to leave England in the name of the whole community. The
request was immediately denied but the possibility of banishment became a subject of
discussion in government circles.
It is beyond the ability of this relatively short book to cover all aspects of the history. As
a consequence, the profiles of prominent financiers less important than Aron of Lincoln
receive no more than short notices, if any, in the discussion. The recent discovery of the
cemetery of the Jews of York (the ‘Jewburry’), which revealed astounding deviations from
traditional Jewish burial customs, is dealt with in a few lines, not even a quarter of a page
(p. 57). On the other hand, we are given a detailed study of the relations between Jewish
financiers and ecclesiastical institutions (pp. 97–122), and thereby learn about the critical
role they played in transferring the landed property of lenders in difficulty to monasteries
and private entrepreneurs, an issue first raised by Henry G. Richardson. Little wonder then
that the country barons, whether in the Magna Carta or half a century later, expressed such
hostility towards the Jews as agents of an oppressive monarchy.
© Economic History Society 2011. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main
Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
BOOK REVIEWS 1025
The reasons that Edward I expelled the Jews is still the subject of debate. Was he simply
getting rid of a community that was financially exhausted, and thus of no more use to him;
or was he perhaps, as a crusader and son of the pious Henry III, motivated by religious
sentiments? Were there other considerations? Here comparative history may be of assis-
tance. For example, a close examination of the banishment of the merchants of Siena,
Cahors, and Florence in 1245 shows clear financial motives, as does the expulsion of the
great Florentine banking houses some 50 years after the Jews were no longer in England.
Duke University joseph shatzmiller
Michael Bush, The Pilgrims’ complaint: a study of popular thought in the early Tudor north
(Farnham: Ashgate, 2009. Pp. xiv + 307. ISBN 9780754667858 Hbk. £65/$124.95)
Over the past decade and more, Bush has published a succession of studies of the
Pilgrimage of Grace. He has now produced what is in many respects a summative study
which eschews narrative for a more thematic approach to the rebellion. This is arranged in
six chapters: ‘For faith and commonwealth’, which offers an account of the compilation
of the petitions of late 1536; ‘In defence of the faith’, which deals with their religious
objectives; ‘Intolerable exactions’, which concentrates on taxation; ‘The polity defended’,
which is, in many respects, the conclusion of the book; ‘North and south’, in which he
explores the antagonism between northern and southern England evidenced in the peti-
tions and other documentation; and ‘Agrarian conflict’. An appendix reproduces some of
the key documents.
In his conclusion Bush tells us that his aim was to use the documentation ‘which offers
a unique insight into how the people of the north, on the eve of the Reformation, thought
about religion, social relations and politics’ (p. 245) and the subtitle is, of course ‘a study
of popular thought in the early Tudor north’. One would like to say that he has succeeded
in this aim, but he has not. Much of the book is not about popular thought as such, but
hostility to the legislative changes of the Reformation Parliament. Bush’s book is really a
long commentary on the two sets of articles which the Pilgrims produced at York and
Doncaster. As such, it has great utility. No one else will ever have to work out why the
Pilgrims sought the repeal of the statutes against handguns (pp. 154–7), or why some
rather odd individuals were included in the list of those whose work was regarded as
heretical (pp. 101–9), or the workings of Noutgeld in Westmorland (pp. 217–28). However,
the petitions are a list of grievances produced after six or eight weeks of mobilization and
agitation. They arose out of a process of radicalization, then consultation. It was probably
a big mistake to allow the relatively simple aims of the Lincolnshire movement to be diluted
by the introduction of so many sectional grievances, exactly the fear that Aske expressed
when he said that the movement was not for the commonwealth (a point of interpretation
for which I have been criticized). As a legislative programme for a Parliament to be held in
York or Nottingham, the articles are fine, but they tell us little about the causes of the
rebellions: what was thought important enough in the first days of October to bring people
out on the streets? Nor are they necessarily an illustration of popular thought, as Bush
admits from time to time.Take the long discussion of why certain people were added to the
list of heretics. Did the rank and file know these names?
The concentration on the York and Pontefract articles introduces a further flaw into the
book. As I showed in my own study of the Pilgrimage, much of what provoked people in
the first week of October were fears over parish religion, and the expectation—perhaps
deliberately encouraged—that parish churches would be suppressed and church goods
confiscated. We know that this was not intended: the gentry compilers of the articles knew
that too, and the grievance disappears. Accordingly Bush has very little to say about the
© Economic History Society 2011 Economic History Review, 64, 3 (2011)
1026 BOOK REVIEWS
parish, or the life of the parish, an odd omission in a book with this title nearly two decades
after Eamon Duffy’s The stripping of the altars: traditional religion in England, 1400–1580
(1992).
As a book though, it is something of a disaster. It is encyclopaedic in its knowledge of
the state paper sources; but the joins between the filing cards can sometimes be seen. It
is written in a relentless, dogmatic style, with at least two examples of two-page long
paragraphs. Bush does not do shades of certainty. There is much of which I am sceptical
and the review copy has far too many marginal queries to detail here. The discussion of
every element of the petitions without much judgement as to what was, and was not,
important produces a very homogenous movement in which processes of radicalization
and regional preference are submerged. For all its factual content, I thought that the book
was a hindrance to understanding. It is both indispensable and impossible.
Plainly, Bush sees The Pilgrims’ complaint as the authoritative statement to dish all the
others who have offered alternative views of the Pilgrimage, myself included. Most of the
references are to Bush’s previous writings and there is little in the way of dialogue—a little
sniping in the text, some dismissive footnotes directed against my work, and that of others
like Chris Haigh and George Bernard. However, Bush is a contrarian, sometimes pointing
to errors of others and then arguing much the same himself. Ultimately, I remain puzzled
as to what he understands the Pilgrimage to have been about. At some points he dismisses
my contention that the gentry of the north actively worked to restrain the Pilgrims. In his
final sentence, he admits that the ‘commons had their own programme of reform which,
couched in terms of the society of orders, was extremely challenging to the king, lord and
priest, so much so that the three of them eventually closed rank to bring the uprising to an
end’ (p. 249) which leaves me wondering how big a difference there is between what I
argued in 2001 and what he now believes.
University of Reading r. w. hoyle
Phil Withington, Society in early modern England: the vernacular origins of some powerful ideas
(Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010. Pp. xi + 298. 23 figs. 14 illus. ISBN 9780745641294 Hbk.
£55/$69.95; ISBN 9780745641300 Pbk. £16.99/$24.95)
This volume does something new, remarkable, and important. It uses a quantitative
approach to the evolution of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century language and word use as
the basis for a re-analysis of the significance of corporatism and sociability in the creation
of a ‘modern’, and more specifically ‘early modern’, society. In the process, it attempts to
re-integrate the economic and the cultural, the linguistic and the material.
Following an extended and sophisticated account of the development of the profession
of economic and social history in Britain since the nineteenth century, organized around
the evolution of the phrase ‘early modern’, Withington dives into an entirely innovative
form of analysis. The core of this study is a new mapping of the appearance of a series of
keywords in the titles of all the books that appear in the English Short Title Catalogue
(ESTC) for the period up to 1700. ‘Modern’, ‘society’, ‘company’, ‘wit’, ‘civil’, ‘common-
wealth’, among a host of related terms, have been trawled from the full title fields of the
ESTC, and transformed into frequency graphs. These graphs have then been used to
illustrate, first, that terms signifying and labelling a specific kind of ‘modernity’ (based on
a notion of what Withington terms the ‘sociable self’, p. 199) became prominent in the
latter half of the sixteenth century, and in particular during the 1570s and 1580s; and,
second, that terms like ‘commonwealth’, which referenced an older form of social order-
ing, went into relative decline (particularly after the Civil Wars).
Withington’s conclusions essentially reinforce a growing consensus among historians
about the importance of sociability and forms of corporatism in creating a transitional
BOOK REVIEWS 1027
Res Publica (in this context a kind of beer-and-skittles ‘public sphere’), that contributed to,
and resulted from, both a newly decentralized but bureaucratic state, and the development
of corporate capitalism (with a remarkably sociable scientific revolution thrown in for good
measure). In many respects, and in company with Keith Wrightson, Mike Braddick, Steve
Hindle, and Andy Wood, Withington is pushing back the origins of Jürgen Habermas’s
‘authentic public sphere’ from the 1690s to the 1570s, and attempting to articulate the
relationship between ‘modernity’ (in both its statist and possessive individualist forms) and
civic humanism. As a description of early modern English and British culture, and the
evolution of the state and the economy, this is entirely compelling. Habermas’s chronology,
based on coffee and newsprint, has always been suspect even if his overarching analysis of
the role of public debate in the history of the nation state remains compelling.
More problematic, however, is the methodology Withington uses to illustrate this new
chronology. As historians we are faced with an entirely new kind of evidence—mass
digitized text—billions of words, retrievable through keyword searches. To make sense of
these new resources we need new tools; and this book is a laudable first attempt at creating
precisely these. Unfortunately the methodology used here is essentially unconvincing.
What appears on a title page of a book, on the colophon, and on the end papers changed
dramatically between the late fifteenth and the eighteenth centuries as the very nature of
books changed. For all the heroic efforts of cataloguers and bibliographers to force early
modern print objects into a single format, to tame their ‘slipperiness’, it is not credible to
read the title of a book published in 1520 in the same way as one produced in 1690. Nor
is it necessary to take this aggressively reductionist approach. Withington could, for
instance, have translated the text of his titles into a formal corpus, and used the tools of
quantitative linguistics to chart the rise and fall of his ‘keywords’ against more robust
measures of textual density, variety, and proximity. By restricting himself to only the most
basic statistical techniques we are left with a series of graphs measuring change in a way
that at first sight seems intuitively reasonable, indeed commonsense, but which belies all
the subtle complexity that historians have found in language through the many decades of
the linguistic turn. In essence, what Withington has produced is a clear and compelling
narrative of the evolution of the ‘sociable self ’, and an equally clear series of measures
charting the development of the language of title pages, but has not related one to the other
effectively.
This will seem a harsh criticism, but it is not meant to be. As a profession we are
confronted with both the real challenge of dealing with massive electronic texts (produced
in half-a-dozen different ways, and of hugely varying quality), and the need to create usable
and intellectually credible tools that can deal with words in their billions, and at the same
time reflect our new understanding of the complexity hidden in a single phrase.Withington
has taken an all-important first step in the direction of a new form of historical scholarship
and we should all look forward to the next.
University of Hertfordshire tim hitchcock
Nuala Zahedieh, The capital and the colonies: London and the Atlantic economy, 1660–1700
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Pp. xviii + 329. 1 fig. 29 illus. 5 maps.
27 tabs. ISBN 9780521514231 Hbk. £55/$95)
In this long-awaited book on London and Atlantic trade in the late seventeenth and early
eighteenth century, Zahedieh addresses one of the principal lacunae in our understanding
of the colonial mercantile system in the period when its major features were being
developed. In contrast to Bristol and other western Atlantic ports, the English capital’s
merchant class trading to the Americas has been systematically under-studied. In part, this
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neglect has resulted from the limitations of sources available to study merchant operations
in the capital: Zahedieh rightly calls the archival record ‘scrappy’ (p. 9). She makes brilliant
use of the 1686 portbooks, which list in exhaustive detail the whole extent of colonial
commerce connected to London, but no other portbook survives in full. Paradoxically, the
other reason why London has been comparatively neglected by historians is that trade in
the capital was of a different conceptual order to that done elsewhere. Unlike the more
studied East India trade, the London Atlantic sector lacked centralized direction or single
corporate control. The merchant group was large, diffuse, and hard to track down.
Moreover, what they did is difficult to track down or even describe when found.
Zahedieh’s study, therefore, is greatly welcome because it fills a gap in the literature
that desperately needed to be filled. Moreover, the book is gracefully and tautly written
and conveys in a few pages essential truths about the early modern Atlantic economy
that often take other historians whole volumes to describe. Based on massive and
meticulous research and on an excellent understanding of mercantilism in all its aspects,
this book is a major contribution to British and Atlantic economic history and shows
just how important Atlantic trade was to the development of an increasingly integrated
national economy. London, an English counterpart as an urban trading hub to Amster-
dam, played a leading role in this development. Its merchants, whom Zahedieh describes
in greater detail than has hitherto been possible, outlining their intensely competitive
nature and innovative tendencies, grew very wealthy on Atlantic trade. The richest mer-
chants, men such as Gilbert Heathcote who died in 1733 with a spectacular fortune
of £750,000, became both wealthy and politically and economically important. The
monied interest, she shows, became central to eighteenth-century policies that commit-
ted Britain to an assertive foreign policy and a build-up of military strength. The Seven
Years’ War could be foreseen by the activities of London colonial merchants two gen-
erations earlier.
Two features of Zahedieh’s impressive analysis stand out. First, she places a great deal
of importance on socially costly but politically crucial rent-seeking, and dwells on the irony
of how intensively competitive merchants regularly engaged in monopolistic tendencies in
regulated markets. She makes a telling contribution to the increasingly contentious debate
over the nature of the Glorious Revolution by arguing that one consequence of the creation
of a consolidated state as a result of that event fostered rent-seeking activities and thus
ushered in slower economic growth. She shows how the benefits of unrestrained compe-
tition within the strictures of the Navigation Acts in the three decades before 1689 became
transformed after 1689 as an unholy troika of Crown, Parliament, and the transatlantic
trading elite cooperated to use political institutions to protect vested interests and promote
costly foreign wars that hurt most people but, crucially, benefited a select few greatly. She
challenges what she calls a ‘Whig’ interpretation of steady economic progress after 1689
and implicitly contradicts work by people like Steve Pincus and Will Pettigrew who see the
revolutionary settlement as allowing free markets to flourish.
Second, she demonstrates with empirical precision how significant the growth of the
sugar economies of theWest Indies was to Atlantic commerce. Comparing North American
and West Indian trade statistics, she shows that the latter were both much greater in volume
and more dynamic over time. Her findings will not surprise experts. Nevertheless, they
contradict some well-established historiographical assumptions in which the importance
and dynamism of the West Indian plantation economies continue to be underplayed.
Zahedieh asserts, following the argument made about ‘ghost acres’ by Kenneth Pomeranz,
that the appropriation of New World lands provided a resource bonanza that is significant
in explaining how Britain became what Adam Smith described as a properly commercial
society and increasingly an industrial society. If this is true, then it is clear that the
establishment of plantation systems in the West Indies based on the ruthless exploitation of
African slaves was crucial to this process. Zahedieh provides valuable evidence to those

BOOK REVIEWS 1029
scholars wanting to orient the locus of the Atlantic World further southward than is
currently the case.
Zahedieh makes valuable and insightful contributions to a number of historiographical
debates about the beginning of industrialism, the significance and efficiency of the mer-
cantile system, and the role of the Atlantic colonies in creating eighteenth-century British
prosperity. It is an excellent book, which will shape scholarship considerably.
University of Melbourne trevor burnard
Beverly Lemire, The British cotton trade, 1660–1815, Vols. 1: Part I: early years of trade and
British response to Indian cottons to the 1600s; 2: Part II: international trade and the politics of
consumption, 1690s–1730; 3: Part III: establishing a British cotton trade, c.1730–1815; 4: Part
III: establishing a British cotton trade, c.1730–1815 continued (London: Pickering & Chatto,
2010. Pp. lvii + 453, lvii + 453, lvii + 453, lvi + 453. ISBN 9781851969791 Hbk.
£350/$625)
The number of multi-volume source excerpts and commentaries, and critical editions,
published by Pickering and Chatto (P&C) continues to grow into the hundreds with titles
concentrated upon works and documents from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The list covering economic and social history topics, particularly the latter, is extensive and
continues to develop in interesting directions. I must confess an early scepticism about the
P&C project with respect to historical sources and documents. I doubted that sufficiently
able editors would be forthcoming to ensure that these volumes would comprehend the
sheer range of some of the topics and the possible source materials that might throw light
upon them. There was also the fear that, rather than acting as a taster to encourage further
exploration of subjects and historical evidence, the easily available and digestible docu-
mentary extracts might encourage lazy and partial research and understanding, especially
among students. The quality of most P&C collections, and the work of their editors, has in
fact proven to vary from competent to outstanding with most editions including lesser-
known source examples and sound editorial guidance and commentaries. I would place the
current work in the outstanding category. I am impressed by the range of source materials
included—chronologically, spatially, socially, and economically—and entirely admiring of
the critical and analytical knowledge and erudition of the editor.This source collection and
its commentary will not only inform those new to the field but will also prove invaluable
for much more specialized researchers.
Despite the title, Lemire stresses two organizing principles at the outset: a long chro-
nological perspective and a comparative approach. Mindful of the impact of Asian cottons
in Europe from the middle ages, several sources (some little known) explore the theme of
Indian production and trade, 13 dating from before 1660, the earliest from the 1530s.
Extension of the chronological range also occurs at the end of the period, with five
excellent extracts dating from between 1815 and 1843, all of which cast useful light on the
history of the industry. Indian cottons and Indian competition are integrated into many
aspects of the topic throughout the whole period but the comparative approach necessarily
does not extend to including evidence from other European countries, or the US apart
from the fascinating Memoir of Samuel Slater, the father of American manufactures (1836),
which says much about the personal life as well as the training of a leading technical
innovator who was to emigrate with his skills, a common pattern of technology transfer to
and from the wider world.
The first of the three main parts is largely devoted to the British response to Indian
imports: the politcal manoeuvrings between the East India Company and the woollen and
silk interests; the resulting, sometimes ambiguous prohibitions and restrictions; the appre-
1030 BOOK REVIEWS
ciation of consumers; and the attempts at emulation on the part of British manufacturers.
The sources discussed range from wills and correspondence to bills of sale and cargo
manifests but include a very comprehensive range of the major petitions and polemics on
the subject of British trade and Indian competition. Part II further explores the tensions
created between consumers hungry for the new colours and patterns of Asian goods and
the conservative backlash which included violent attacks on women wearing Indian calicos.
The major sources for this include newspapers, parliamentary evidence, legal records, and
travel writings.
Part III demonstrates the difficulties of enforcing import bans and consumer prohibi-
tions against the background of growing and increasingly sophisticated domestic manu-
facturing of cotton cloths and a rise in smuggling and illicit dealings. The importance of
colonial markets and a home market driven above all by changing tastes and fashions is
strongly documented through a rich variety of sources from trade directories and business
records (including pawnbroker’s pledges) to criminal accounts, poetry, and visual carica-
tures. The editor’s overall introduction and her brief comments on each section of source
materials are sound and useful, as is the extensive bibliography and handy glossary.
If I have a criticism it is that, following the editor’s own research preoccupations, the
collection focuses much more on the demand side of the sector than on the technological
innovations and organizational changes that transformed manufacturing. However, the
brief is the cotton trade, and in addressing this Lemire traces a ‘rich historical thread that
links together international trading companies and court politics, local innovations and
popular fashions, global competition and colonial trade’ (p. xii) to reveal the links between
trade, changes in social practices, and industrial development.
Swansea University/London School of Economics pat hudson
Tom Arkell, ed., with Nat Alcock, Warwickshire hearth tax returns: Michaelmas 1670,
with Coventry Lady Day (London: British Record Society and Dugdale Society, 2010.
Pp. xiv + 566. 25 illus. 18 maps. 29 tabs. ISBN 9780901505552 Hbk. £35)
Books are often described as ‘long-awaited’. This is certainly true of the publication of the
Warwickshire hearth tax. As Arkell’s preface explains, an edition of theWarwickshire hearth
tax was first planned in 1936 by Philip Styles. After various false starts and complications,
the volume has now been published under the auspices of the British Record Society’s
Hearth Tax series, in association with the Dugdale Society. If Styles was the right choice in
1936, Arkell is undoubtedly a very worthy modern successor. There is surely no one better
qualified either to subject the hearth tax to forensic testing and analysis, or to set it in the
context of seventeenth-century Warwickshire. Similarly, his collaborator Alcock is emi-
nently well qualified to discuss the vernacular architecture of the county at the time the tax
was levied.
The editors’ scholarly credentials are important, because the administrative peculiarities
of the county might have defeated less experienced historians. Unlike some other counties,
Warwickshire was divided into four large hundreds, each of which was also divided into
four autonomous sub-units, each with its own high constables, who were responsible for
organizing the petty constables of each manor. By the time the hearth tax was first levied
in 1662, this neat, manorial system was breaking down, and being superseded piecemeal
by the authority of the Justice of the Peace, and the parish. This led to a jumble of
administrative units, made worse when manorial and parochial boundaries were not
contiguous. These complications make it difficult to identify precisely the nature of
the settlements listed in the returns, or to map them. However, unlike other counties,
BOOK REVIEWS 1031
Warwickshire is well served with surviving hearth tax returns, with some areas of the
county featuring in eight separate assessments between 1662 and 1674.
Arkell sketches out the administration of the tax in the county, tests the internal
consistency and reliability of the surviving returns, and then analyses the distribution of
hearths and its significance. Alcock relates the tax to the small stock of surviving houses,
and makes extrapolations from this comparison. Any historian planning to use the hearth
tax for a ‘simple’ analysis of relative wealth or poverty would be very well advised to read
Arkell’s analyses before embarking on such a perilous activity. By setting the 1670 tax in
the context of the other assessments, Arkell demonstrates powerfully the dangers of using
a single assessment as a ‘snap-shot’ measure. He shows that in several hundreds the 1670
return was reused in the following years, which meant that figures for exemption recorded
on the 1670 return actually related to 1671. Similarly, the 1670 return was the first to be
levied after the end of the ‘farm’ to royal creditors. It was based on the 1666 assessment,
the last directly administered levy, but Arkell demonstrates that in many areas of the county
the variations in numbers of recorded households could exceed 100 per cent between the
two returns. Arkell also emphasizes the extent to which levels of exemption, numbers of
households, distributions of hearths, numbers of non-assessed forges and ovens, and
surnames could vary markedly between assessments. A single return hides these inconsis-
tencies, and creates a spurious impression of certainty and clarity. Therefore, tables 8 and
9, which detail the variations between assessments for individual settlements, are salutary
illustrations of this point.
Arkell’s method of analysing the tax differs in some respects from the template used by
the British Academy Hearth Tax research project. Comparing the hearth tax to other local
indices of ‘wealth’, such as parochial rates and probate inventories, he shows that there are
few clear distinctions between householders possessed of two, three, or four hearths.
Instead, he adopts much broader categories, distinguishing primarily between those who
were exempt from the tax, and those who were assessed on more than three hearths.
Analysis of the distribution of these groups is depicted in map 3, which illustrates the
regions revealed through the tax. In general terms, though, while variations between
parishes in the county could be considerable, Warwickshire exhibited patterns of variation
that were much less extreme than the dominance of one-hearth households in Westmor-
land or the considerable stratification and wealth concentrations found in Kent. Exemption
levels never exceeded a mean of 50 per cent in any of Arkell’s regions, while the proportion
of householders with more than five hearths never exceeded 10 per cent.
Arkell’s social analysis is equally interesting, but raises one or two questions. The
difficulties of pinning ‘gentry’ status to householders (pp. 75–6), either on the basis of
attributions such as ‘Mister’ or according to an assessment threshold, could have perhaps
been predicted. Perhaps it is just this reviewer’s pet theory, but variations in the use of ‘Mr.’
or ‘gent.’ may reflect differences of social perspective, between locals claiming such status
(based on their immediate circumstances), and extra-local assessors rejecting these claims
by the application of broader status criteria. Similarly, the description of the application of
parish rates and probate inventories as data points for hearth tax categories is a little
involved. The implication in these analyses is that because the fit between the distributions
in hearth assessments and rating valuations or probate assessments are relatively weak, or
contain large areas of overlap, that these measures are unreliable, rather than the hearth tax
itself. However, the analysis appears instead to demonstrate the efficacy of Arkell’s main
point, that the hearth tax is a useful, but rather blunt, instrument in the assessment of
‘wealth’ distinctions. That said, the analysis of the hearth tax and poverty is (as might be
expected) extremely thorough and convincing.
Alcock’s examination of the relationship between the surviving housing stock and the
hearth tax is very effective, particularly given the relative paucity of smaller dwellings that
survive. He analyses 537 probate inventories with information on room numbers. As with

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the assessments, he shows that it is difficult to be precise. One-hearth houses tended to

have between three and six rooms, while more than three-quarters of two- or three-hearth
houses having between five to nine, and six to 11 rooms respectively. Alcock extrapolates
from this that houses with no more than four or five rooms were commonest in the county,
accounting for almost 60 per cent of the post-Restoration housing stock.
Despite the potential flaws in the data, and the problems inherent in their analyses, the
material represented, and mapped, in this volume is presented to the very high standards
we have come to expect from this series. Arkell’s introduction (like all his publications on
the hearth tax) should be standard reading for anyone who wishes to study this intriguing
and infuriating assessment. Alcock’s analysis provides a very useful insight into the housing
stock of a county with a relatively broad assessment pyramid and a flat apex. Economic and
social historians will be particularly grateful not only for the main assessment listings, but
also for tables 28 and 29, which list parish-by-parish breakdowns of distribution in 1670,
and exemption levels across all the surviving taxes for the county. Together, these aspects
ensure that this latest hearth tax volume is the most informative and useable yet produced.
University of Exeter henry french
Nigel Goose and Leanne Moden, A history of Doughty’s Hospital Norwich, 1687–2009
(Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Press, 2010. Pp. xiv + 258. 13 figs. 16 plates. 3 tabs.
ISBN 9781905313938 Pbk. £9.99/$19.95)
As a visual artefact this book presents as a rather delightful example of English local
history. The cover depicts the interior garden courtyard of the almshouse, cosy and
inviting. Inside, ghostly images of Victorian masters jostle with photographs from recent
decades, in which neatly attired residents join staff and civic officials in functions and
celebrations.The connotations are of dignified care in old age, reaching its fullest flowering
in the postwar period.
The text unfolds in three parallel strands. Each chronological section opens with a
survey of developments in social welfare, interleaving histories of philanthropy with public
policy. Next comes a slice of urban history, detailing economic and social change in
Norwich. These preliminaries frame the substance of the book, a detailed institutional
history in which sequential narrative runs alongside thematic discussion of financial
management, social composition of residents, and the almshouse in a ‘mixed economy of
welfare’. In crafting their material thus, Goose and Moden have produced a text that
addresses academic specialists, local historians, and a general readership, as well as fulfill-
ing the institutional commission that sparked the project. Despite one or two sentimental
and unselective passages, perhaps designed to satisfy the almshouse trustees, this makes for
an impressive model of public dissemination.
What do they offer their academic readership? With respect to theoretical position, they
are thoroughly traditional. Though Doughty’s foundation in 1687 coincided with the
period of the ‘great confinement’, Foucault’s ideas cast no analytical shadow, and the
opportunity to contextualize within a larger story of institutionalization of problematic
groups is passed over. Instead, by beginning with a lengthy preamble on monastic charity
and medieval leper hospitals, the authors situate their subject within a longer tradition of
charitable giving.The social functions and complex motivations of gifting are hinted at but
unexplored. Philanthropy, then, is interpreted unchangingly as benevolence inspired by
religious sentiment, a reading affirmed by the closing reference to the spirituality infusing
the ‘voluntary impulse’ (p. 231).
The more novel contribution lies in their case study of almshouse management over the
long-run. Doughty was a land-owner and merchant, probably Nonconformist, whose
BOOK REVIEWS 1033
bequest was intended to purchase a building and then to generate income for ‘alms’ and
running costs. The central challenge facing the trustees was the administration over three
centuries of this endowment and subsequent gifts. Their problems included, inter alia,
infrastructural decay, difficult tenants, flooding, the Blitz, postwar urban planners, chang-
ing public expectations, and millennial bureaucratic regulation. Strategies of financial
management are therefore of great interest. Although the portfolio and balance sheet are
only occasionally glimpsed, investment seems to have soon diversified from land to include
bank annuities and consols. Each vehicle experienced occasional difficulty; for example,
the slump in income from property during the agricultural ‘depression’ of the 1870s and
1880s. By the later twentieth century, the capital was split between property and securities,
with about a third of income coming from charges and underwriting in various guises by
the state.
These tactics sustained and developed institutional accommodation for a fairly modest
number of people, with 277 admissions between 1893 and 1973 (p. 156). Nineteenth-
century almspersons were predominantly male, and drawn from Norwich’s ‘respectable’
(p. 93) skilled trades; by the twentieth century women were in the majority. Mean age
remained fairly stable, until a rise in the very recent period with applicants increasingly
entering later in life. Essentially Doughty’s functioned as a residential home for those
not needing sustained nursing or medical care, and various examples are given of resi-
dents whose ‘habits’ (p. 96) or impairments led to their removal to the workhouse
infirmary. It would be fascinating to know what other factors determined selection to
the almshouse in preference to the poor law. Indeed, the intertwining of voluntary and
public sector runs throughout this story. It was a public body, Norwich Corporation,
that initially assumed Doughty’s trusteeship, though as elsewhere in the era of ‘old
corruption’, accusations flew that benefits were dispensed to curry political favour. The
upshot was the creation of an independent body of trustees in 1837, though it was only
after another corruption scandal in 1870 that a transparent selection method, based on
advertisement and testimonials, was introduced. A consolidation of local charities in
1911 brought a new management board, in which councillors and poor law guardians
held a majority. Under this multi-sectoral governance, burgeoning state welfare expen-
diture was treated as a financial asset. For example, old age pensions allowed an equiva-
lent reduction in the almspersons’ stipend, and then its eventual replacement with a
subsidy paid by residents. Free doctoring from the start of the NHS meant the Medical
Officer post could be cut, while postwar building work was supported by local authority
funding and housing association grants. Such cross-subsidies brought with it a tightening
regime of audit and inspection, paradoxically reaching its zenith in the Blair era, as
welfare pluralism became entrenched.
Thus in addition to deepening our appreciation of the public–private mix in welfare the
findings raise important questions about the conceptual adequacy of ‘mixed economy’ to
describe such interdependence. We now need further case studies of the terrain mapped
here to establish whether we can generalize from Doughty’s experience.
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine martin gorsky
Jane Walker, ed., Datchworth tithe accounts, 1711–1747 (Letchworth: Hertfordshire Record
Society, 2010. Pp. lvii + 129. 9 figs. 8 illus. 5 tabs. ISBN 9780954756185 Hbk. £22)
William Hawtayne became the rector of the rural parish of Datchworth in 1709. On the
expiry of a lease of the tithes and glebe in 1711, he took direct control of this significant
source of income and kept detailed accounts until his death in 1747. In the first four years
Hawtayne was paid in kind and accounted for the sale of corn, the predominant crop in a
1034 BOOK REVIEWS
predominantly arable parish, as well as the cost of collecting it and taking it to market.
However, he moved quickly to a system of cash payments, and from 1712 recorded several
composition agreements with individual farmers in his account book. One obvious advan-
tage to him was that it solved the problem of dealing with large quantities of produce, some
perishable, and much surplus to the requirements of his household. Composition agree-
ments could be set at a rate that might approximate to current market prices, rather than
by modus, a long-established customary payment that took no account of inflation.
From 1716 the accounts record almost exclusively the receipt of payments from
parishioners for unspecified tithes; these would appear to be from earlier accounts, for
wheat, barley, and oats. Specific crops and livestock are mentioned occasionally, prob-
ably because of their rarity relative to corn. This lack of detail and the fact that the
accounts give no indication of the extent of non-payment may be frustrating omissions.
However, historians are all too aware of such shortcomings in original sources, and there
is still much to be gleaned. The distinctions in the rate of tithe between tilth and edge
crops in the three-field system, and the new crop of turnips are worthy of note. Two
undated surveys of parishioners and their holdings (included between the accounts for
1712 and 1713) and the poor rate and land tax return for 1721 (reproduced in the
appendices) indicate the value of the glebe and estates of the tithe payers, and allow for
some comparison between the sizes of holdings and tithe payments to be made. The
appendices also include potted biographies of several landowners and tenants, and dates
of burials and wills of tithe payers, all of which provide a most useful context and
background to the accounts.
Although the accounts deal predominantly with tithe payments, it is not clear to what
extent they deal with the glebe, although a graph is presented which purports to cover the
value of both between 1713 and 1747. However, the glebe terrier of 1607 makes a useful
appendix and the location of glebe land in an open field called Cundell is an interesting
ancillary piece of research. The frequent omission of tithe customs, the local arrangements
regulating the incidence of tithes, from glebe terriers is noted, and 1698 is mentioned as
the date after which this was rectified. However, the source cited is an instruction by the
bishop of Coventry and Lichfield (Datchworth was in the diocese of Lincoln), with no
authority beyond his diocese, although it may well have reflected a more widespread
concern.
The index is comprehensive, although the logic of combining places and subjects while
persons are separate is hard to understand, unless it is for the ease of the family historian.
Crops and livestock are indexed under these generic headings and separately under tithe
if that word is used with them in the text. This adds an unnecessary complexity, although
it is covered by a note at the beginning of the index. The editorial skill and effort in
presenting the text, however, is not matched by a most uneven introduction, which is
disjointed, notably when dealing with Hawtayne’s life and career, and which contains some
naïve and meaningless statements. The financial details of the accounts are well drawn out
in a series of graphs. Several pages are devoted to covering the origins of tithes from biblical
times, and Hawtayne’s published sermons, at the expense of a more comprehensive
treatment of the impact of tithes, their collection, and the tensions they provoked in the
eighteenth century. Tithes are a tricky and complex subject and the text requires a
better-focused and more thorough introduction to support its interpretation and assess-
ment. This is a great shame because it does detract somewhat from the excellence of the
presentation of the text. The book is well produced and illustrated with a very attractive
dust jacket, indicating that it is aimed at a wider market than just the membership of this
record society. The editor deserves praise for making such an important source more
widely accessible.
Wiltshire and Swindon Archives steven hobbs

BOOK REVIEWS 1035
David R. Green, Pauper capital: London and the poor law, 1790–1870 (Farnham: Ashgate,
2010. Pp. xix + 279. 59 figs. 12 tabs. ISBN 9780754630081 Hbk. £60/$114.95)
Delivering and obtaining poor relief in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century London was
complex. The capital combined national poor laws with a myriad of local acts and hosted
many specialist institutions. Green proves an able and enthusiastic guide through this
intricate institutional terrain, his latest book providing a comprehensive and clearly
written account of this seemingly overwhelming topic. Notwithstanding his admission
that the ‘start and end points of research can sometimes be arbitrary products of the
historian’s imagination’ (p. xiii), Green’s time period of 1790 to 1870 makes a great
deal of sense. Not only was it a ‘period that witnessed a growing interest in the reform
of poor relief’, but the reforms themselves—especially the Poor Law Amendment Act,
1834—marked the start of a ‘new ideology’ in the provision of poor relief (p. xiii). The
period also links one period of economic downturn with another: the late eighteenth- and
early nineteenth-century depression, characterized by the escalating cost of poor relief,
and the economic crash in the capital of the mid-1860s. By examining this 80-year period
the impact of these social and economic changes can be traced in both poor relief
administration and provision.
Pauper capital starts with an introduction to the poor laws, detailing key reforms and the
role of London in the mounting debates concerning poverty and its relief in the late
eighteenth century. Thereafter, the book is ordered chronologically, although each chapter
has a well-defined theme. The first two chapters analyse the implementation and admin-
istration of the old poor laws in London. The first of these contextualizes the relief system
in London, illustrating that a significant proportion of relief was expended on indoor relief
and that there were large numbers of casual poor to relieve in comparison to other parts
of England and Wales. The second draws upon the social and demographic characteristics
of London to decipher temporal and spatial patterns in poor relief provision. Green
examines the number of people receiving indoor and outdoor relief, and the mechanisms
by which the poor were relieved in London. This analysis is complemented by a series of
maps. Helpful analyses of London’s population growth, the increased rates of immigration
into the capital, and the seasonal nature of employment, not least in the dockyards, allow
Green to explain these variations in relief patterns. It is made clear that the needs of
individuals and families, and the methods used by parish officials to relieve them, were in
no way homogenous throughout the city.
The next two chapters examine the implementation of the Poor Law Amendment Act,
1834, in London.While chapter 3 details the social, economic, and political context for the
implementation of the new poor law, chapter 4 examines how London’s relief authorities
adapted pre-existing relief infrastructure and practices to provide poor relief in accordance
with the stipulations of the Poor Law Commission and, from 1847, the Poor Law Board.
This process was relatively smooth in comparison to other parts of the country, with
London not witnessing much in the way of protest from the anti-new poor law movement.
Strikingly, Green even shows that many of the parishes that did not officially adopt the new
legislation still adhered to the ‘sentiment’ of the new poor law and ‘implemented policies’
similar to those stipulated by the 1834 act (p. 113). This finding has significant repercus-
sions both for how we understand the implementation of the new poor law and for how we
conceptualize the impact of other poor laws.
Still, by the mid-nineteenth century the new poor law system was effectively fully
operational, but notwithstanding the increased scope of statutory provisions—including
the establishment of district schools and lunatic asylums—the number of individuals
obtaining relief was increasing, significantly so from the mid-1860s.The final two chapters
examine poor relief administration and policy change during the 1860s and 1870s: chapter
6 analyses the overall trends in poor relief receipt and moments of sudden high demand on

1036 BOOK REVIEWS
relief; and chapter 7 explores the complexities and tensions engendered by the increased
demand for assistance.
This is then essentially a most welcome administrative history of the poor laws in
London. However, there is one chapter (5) that uses ‘pauper narratives’ to explore the
‘voice’ of the poor themselves. Many poor law historians have recently sought to uncover
the agency of the poor through the examination of negotiations between relief providers
and claimants. Green has followed this trend by examining how claimants dealt with a
range of individuals and institutions to obtain statutory relief in nineteenth-century
London, including appeals to magistrates and the police courts. As Green states, ‘Nego-
tiating relief was never just a question of applying to an overseer or relieving officer, or
seeking a night’s shelter at the workhouse’ (p. 165).This research is particularly innovative,
though, for Green explores negotiations within workhouses. Inmates remonstrated against
their incorrect categorization, their treatment, the irksome work they had been set to, and
their often illegal punishments. They also complained about meagre visiting times, inferior
food, and shoddy medical treatment. This book represents a significant advance in our
understanding of both how individuals obtained relief and how they shaped their experi-
ence of being ‘relieved’.
Hitherto, some welfare historians have ruled out a comparison in the scale and scope of
relief between the capital and the rest of England and Wales. This position is usually
justified on the basis that London contained a large number of statutory institutions,
multiple local rules, and many alternative resources for the use of the poor, combining to
make the city an ‘unusual’ context. However, as Green’s book attests, this does not mean
that London should be ignored in our regional or national accounts of the poor laws.
London provides us with a lens through which we can view the operation of poor relief
administration in its entirety. Indeed, there is much that any poor law scholar can learn
from Pauper capital about the processes through which relief policies were put into place.
For instance, many officials controlling those London workhouses established under local
acts gradually adopted the stipulations of the 1834 act. Was this phase of transition similar
in different institutions and in different contexts? How did such transitions impact on relief
provision elsewhere? Much comparative work now needs to be undertaken.
Pauper capital is undoubtedly a major contribution to urban and welfare history in the
modern period. It is based upon an impressive range of archival sources, including minutes
kept in the administration of poor relief by London’s parishes, correspondence between
parish/union officials and the central welfare authorities, British Parliamentary Papers, and
newspapers. Especially impressive is the way in which Green has woven both quantitative
and qualitative together in presenting a picture that shifts from analysing general trends
in poor relief to individuals’ experiences. Pauper capital offers the most comprehensive
account yet of the poor laws in London.
University of Sussex samantha a. shave
Janet Macdonald, The British Navy’s Victualling Board, 1793–1815: management competence
and incompetence (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2010. Pp. xvii + 264. 8 maps. 6 tabs.
ISBN 9781843835530 Hbk. £65/$125)
Roger Knight and Martin Wilcox, Sustaining the fleet, 1793–1815: war, the British navy and
the Contractor State (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2010. Pp. x + 251. 14 tabs. ISBN
9781843835646 Hbk. £60/$115)
Books dedicated to British naval victualling of any period are rare, but the success of
Macdonald’s Feeding Nelson’s navy (2004) demonstrates an appetite, gratified in 2010 with
BOOK REVIEWS 1037
the publication by the Museum of London Archaeology of Ian Grainger and Christopher
Phillpotts’s The Royal Navy victualling yard, East Smithfield, London, which analyses Tower
Hill archaeological remains between 1050 and 1785, and now with these two volumes by
Boydell on naval victualling during the Napoleonic Wars.
Macdonald’s book, which derives from a Ph.D., assesses the Victualling Board Com-
missioners’ competence in feeding 147,000 naval seamen in over 800 ships together with
multitudinous convicts, soldiers, allied seamen, and civilians during the longest and most
extensive global naval warfare experienced by Britain. Employing contemporary concepts
of management competence, she seeks a ‘thorough analysis’ of the ‘copious detail of
purchase and accounting practices’ of the time, in the process trying to correct ‘generally
uncritical repetition of . . . flawed secondary sources [which] has provided an unbalanced
picture of both the victualling task and the individuals who performed it’ (pp. 1, 3, 5, 14).
To widen the debate she uses Parliamentary Commission reports to assess ‘the causes of
any poor performance’ (pp. 7, 14, 15).
Chapters examine ‘core tasks’ (delivery to ships, management of home victualling yards,
and delivery overseas), ‘non-core’ (accounting, head office. and yard personnel), and ‘ad
hoc’ (feeding civilians, offences, and parliamentary enquiries). These convey the complex
logistics of provisions, suppliers, contractors, tendering, preparation, packaging, transpor-
tation, payment, and yards.TheVictualling Board’s task since 1683 was to supply ‘a set ration
of food and drink’ for a pre-notified number of seamen for a set period (pp. 1, 17–18).
Management of facilities, administrators, clerks, and workmen was undeniably complex, but
in Macdonald’s view should have followed routine procedures. However, numbers rose
beyond precedent: from 17,000 seamen prewar to 147,000 in 1813. From 1793 army
victualling was added, comprising 18 overseas army garrisons in 1814, while military
expeditions presented diverse challenges (pp. 19–20).War itself interrupted supply lines and
caused demand fluctuations, while bad weather affected harvests. Macdonald finds that
while the Board performed well on ‘immediate decision’, ‘day-to-day activities’, it failed in
systemic and proactive management such as reducing prices of standing contracts when
market prices fell and anticipating winter sailing delays to Channel outports. She contrasts
its success in solving ‘acute’ (rapid onset/short duration) problems with its failure to cope
with ‘chronic’ (gradual onset/long duration) inefficiencies (pp. 40, 90).
Knight and Wilcox’s volume is one outcome of a Leverhulme project, supplemented by
an online database of wartime contractors, warship numbers and seamen, global distribu-
tion of selected provisions, illustrations, and sources: <www.nmm.ac.uk/researchers/
research-areas-and-projects/sustaining-the-empire/> and <www.gre.ac.uk/schools/gmi/
research/sustaining_the_empire_war,_the_navy_and_the_contractor_state>. The object is
to ‘analyse and judge the mechanism’ whereby the Victualling Board administered con-
tracts and assess its impact on the operational efficiency of the navy and the British
economy during 22 years of the extreme demands of war. Dr Johnson’s opening quotation
contrasts ‘the death of multitudes, and the expence of millions’ with ‘the sudden glories of
paymasters and agents’, illustrating the tension between public expenditure and private
profit. While Clerke’s 1782 Act prevented contractors from sitting in Parliament, there
were still many ways to influence government officials. However, Knight and Wilcox
challenge the stereotype of rich merchants making unjustified profits.
Contractors were diverse, case studies spanning well-capitalized London contractor/
partnerships operating internationally and smaller merchants all over Britain, Europe, and
the world. Data were collected by sampling selected provisions from alternate years: 4,200
Victualling Board contracts with 676 contractors from an estimated 10,000 contracts
between 1793 and 1815. By evaluating interactions between the state and the private sector
Knight and Wilcox seek to complement John Brewer’s ‘fiscal-military state’ by positing a
‘contractor state’: expenditure derived from taxation delineated the demand side of the
British economy while conversely illustrating its supply side. The state benefited by using

1038 BOOK REVIEWS
contractors who could purchase overseas where the government could not, were flexible,
had expertise, and supplied the capital (pp. 2, 10–11, 193). Knight and Wilson provide a
superb analysis of the complex global web linking contractors to the Victualling, Ordnance,
Transport, Admiralty and Navy Boards, victualling yards, dockyards, and naval bases.
Approaches and conclusions diverge, crucially on the impact of naval victualling upon
the British economy. Macdonald disputes that Victualling Board purchases encouraged
‘the growth of firms of suppliers’, or were ‘fundamental in pushing forward the growth of
a national agricultural market’. Her assertions are based on ‘no consistent data on either
national agricultural production during “our” period, or, with the exception of the Smith-
field cattle market, on the quantities purchased in any markets’. She attributes high war
prices to weather fluctuations; while naval personnel, ‘less than 1 per cent’ of the popula-
tion, was too small to exert such an influence, and would have been fed anyway. Further-
more, ‘only two-thirds’ of Victualling Board purchases ‘went through the London markets’
(pp. 38–9). However, Knight and Wilcox’s data show that specific naval and military
campaigns significantly increased throughput of cattle at Smithfield in 1789–90 (11,000
more than 1788); 1793 (177,000: 10,000 more than 1792); 1794–6 (respective annual
increases of 8.2, 8.5, and 16 per cent) and 1806–8 (rose from 24,000 to 144,000). They
conclude that ‘localised and concentrated demand by the navy and the army’ affected
suppliers and costs, corroborated by government action during bad harvest years to offset
purchases and prevent social unrest. The sheer scale of the navy as the largest spending
government department is irrefutable: £15 million in 1800, with victualling accounting for
35 per cent. In 1810 victualling for 130,000 seamen cost over £4 million and for overseas
garrisons nearly £5 million. From 1803 to 1815 up to 72,000 POWs were also fed
annually. Their analysis of the scale and ramifications of bankruptcies indicates the effect
of the Victualling Board on the commercial sector (pp. 29, 50, 56, 67–80, 151–4).
Both agree that while the Victualling Board delivered required provisions competently,
it failed in passing accounts, accumulating debts of £10 million in 1806, up to 50 years in
duration. This incompetence (common to other departments) derived from commission-
ers’ lack of professional expertise and staffing shortages. These two books offer comple-
mentary insight into naval victualling which will be appreciated by economic historians.
Knight and Wilcox provide a superlative historiography and strategic analysis while Mac-
donald examines micro-management and chain of command. Boydell is to be congratu-
lated on publishing two books that not only open up debate into naval victualling but also
provide a wealth of data demonstrating the centrality of the maritime to economic history.
University of Portsmouth ann coats
Gary B. Magee and Andrew S. Thompson, Empire and globalisation: networks of people,
goods and capital in the British world, c.1850–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2010. Pp. xxi + 291. 6 figs. 3 tabs. ISBN 9780521898898 Hbk. £45/$78; ISBN
9780521727587 Pbk. £17.99/$31.99)
The product of seven years of intensive collaboration between Magee, an economic

historian, and Thompson, an imperial historian, this path-breaking study explores the
relationship between globalization and empire. Its focus is the British world, defined as
‘those regions of empire and elsewhere (most notably the United States) where people
from Britain settled in substantial numbers’ (p. xii). Starting from the position once staked
out by Douglass North and David Fieldhouse, among others, that is, the importance
of culture for understanding economic development, the authors analyse the ‘cultural
economy’ of transnational expansion (p. 14). Particular emphasis is placed on the concept
of networks. This ‘software of empire’ (p. 16), especially migrant networks, turned on
BOOK REVIEWS 1039
kinship structures, religious institutions, ethnic societies, and fraternal organizations.
According to Magee and Thompson, they ‘connected private, unofficial and provincial
interests in Britain with their overseas contacts and communities. It was through them that
ideas and information were exchanged, trust was negotiated, goods were traded and people
travelled’ (p. 16). If there is anything in the secondary literature that the authors have not
read, it escapes this reviewer. From Ranald Michie’s pioneering research 30 years ago on
the social web of investment in the nineteenth century (Revue international d’histoire de la
banque, 1979), to Andrew Dilley’s recent work on the rules of the financial game (‘Gentle-
manly capitalism and the dominions: London finance, Australia and Canada, 1900–1914’,
D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 2006), all is turned to profitable account. At the
same time, valuable insights emerge from the authors’ own original research, an important
case in point being the growth and huge significance of post office remittances after
the mid-1870s (‘Lines of credit, debts of obligation: migrant remittances to Britain,
c.1875–1913’, this journal, 2006; ‘The global and the local: explaining migrant remittance
flows in the English-speaking world, 1880–1914’, Journal of Economic History, 2006). Page
after page is sprinkled with illuminating vignettes of key individuals and episodes, etched
against backgrounds shaped by wider processes and movements.
The core of Empire and globalisation comprises five chapters, the first of which expands
upon certain of the historiographical and conceptual issues identified in the introduc-
tion. Noting how ‘trans-national impulses and ideas . . . intrinsic to the operations of
empire’ have shaped consideration of space and place (p. 22), chapter 1 examines the
interplay between the book’s key themes of imperial networks, ‘Britishness’, and Anglo-
American relationships. Chapters 2 and 3 analyse respectively the roles played by
different networks, and assess the significance of overseas migration. So far as the latter
is concerned, it was not just the huge number involved—some 13.4 million between
c.1850 and 1914—but migrants’ ‘determination and skill in forging and sustaining links
to friends and family “back home” ’ that was crucial (p. 64). The remaining two sub-
stantive chapters focus on markets and consumer cultures, and on information and
investment. Both contain any number of subtle observations, but one example must
suffice. Far from British industry simply retreating into the comfort zone of imperial
markets, it exported successfully to dominions characterized by rapidly rising levels of
consumption. Although choice was initially conditioned by familiarity, subsequent
increases in demand reveal ‘empire markets . . . as an engine of economic convergence
and modernity’ (pp. 118–25, 167).
What can be offered by way of criticism of this wide-ranging study? While area specialists
will benefit from seeing ‘their’ territories in new and inter-linked contexts, and generalists
from a more nuanced appreciation of historically contingent processes, it is a book whose
arguments will not go unchallenged. For all that the structure of Empire and globalisation
lends itself to clearly delineated themes, it does have the effect of blurring the subject’s
overall periodization. An unintended consequence is that the waxing and waning of linked
developments occasionally move out of focus. More specifically, Magee and Thompson’s
treatment of information flows may be insufficiently robust. Other scholars have made
more of questionable moments in the history of the financial press. Sections of it rarely
emerged with probity intact from encounters with the speculative imperatives of London’s
money markets. Most importantly, there is the fundamental difficulty, acknowledged by
the authors, of defining the ‘British world’ satisfactorily; of coming up with a definition that
not only works for place and period, but also captures the changing nature of ‘Britishness’.
From the start of the twentieth century, the increasingly international character of capital
mobilized under the City’s auspices is not a development easily accommodated within
such a framework.
Yet comments of this nature hardly detract from what Magee and Thompson have
achieved. They have reinvigorated ways of thinking about these subjects. Comprehensive,

1040 BOOK REVIEWS
stimulating, and provocative, Empire and globalisation will influence debate and research on
the past dynamics of globalization for decades to come.
University of Sheffield ian phimister
Emma Robertson, Chocolate, women and empire: a social and cultural history (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 2009. Pp. xiii + 249. 10 figs. ISBN 9780719077777 Hbk.
£60/$89.95)
Chocolate, women and empire begins with the original version of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the
chocolate factory which draws on traditional imperial narratives, depicting the Oompa
Loompas as diminutive black characters and Willy Wonka as an imperial explorer discov-
ering this tribe of ‘pygmies’ in the ‘very deepest and darkest part of the African jungle
where no white man had ever been before’. Such stories were not confined to children’s
books—historians writing about the ancient origins of chocolate have also emphasized
western exploration and discovery.
Despite these echoes of empire, Robertson demonstrates that the marketing of chocolate
in Britain generally divorced it from imperial associations. Although advertising sometimes
presented an exotic image of empire, it was more likely to associate chocolate with luxury,
pleasure, and indulgence than with empire. Robertson’s project is about ‘de-romanticising
the cocoa bean’ (p. 13), exploring the history of the labour involved in chocolate produc-
tion in British colonies as well as Britain. Chocolate, women and empire ranges widely over
time and place, including the early period of chocolate manufacture and Rowntree’s
plantations in the West Indies. However, its geographical and gender focus is particularly
on women in the cocoa-producing villages of Nigeria who farmed the cocoa, and those
who were extensively employed in Rowntree’s factory in York to manufacture chocolate
confectionery and drinks.
The theme of the domestic impact of empire in new imperial histories often involves a
focus on British culture, neglecting the lives and perspectives of the colonized. Robertson’s
research draws on archives and interview material in Nigeria as well as Britain to demon-
strate that women’s significance in the production of chocolate was not confined to its
manufacture in British factories. She finds that the farming of cocoa in West Africa was not
the province of men as has often been assumed. Women provided labour on cocoa farms
and were involved in all stages of production and also as porters, traders, and buyers. They
were also cocoa farmers in their own right, particularly in later life. The interview material
from women who began work in Nigeria and York from the 1940s through to the 1960s
means that the study extends into the period of loss of imperial power: a period that has
received little attention in new imperial histories.
Robertson aims to ‘confront the disconnection between women in York and Nigeria’
(p. 8), but does not present any evidence of consciousness of these connections on either
side.There is limited evidence of female workers in theYork factory engaging with the wider
world, but none of their engagement with fellow female workers on cocoa farms in Africa.
Strong female friendship groups emerge as a theme in the oral evidence from York factory
women, with friendships crossing difference to incorporate migrant women recruited after
1945—some from empire. Although Africans were among visitors to the factory, including
women, female factory workers did not necessarily encounter them, and their presence
registered in works magazines mainly as a colourful backdrop to the main York enterprise.
If consciousness of empire was patchy, uneven, and often extremely limited, Robert-
son demonstrates York’s imperial connections, and the interdependence of local,
regional, national, and global histories. Rowntree used the image of York as historic and
medieval city to market its chocolates, but its factory gave York very different
BOOK REVIEWS 1041
associations—modernity and colonialism. Robertson documents traffic in commodities
and people—from Britain to empire, but also in the reverse direction.This ranged from the
40,000 tins of chocolates supplied on Queen Victoria’s orders to soldiers fighting in the
South African war, through the African visitors to Rowntree, to visits by Rowntree agents
to the Caribbean and Africa who returned with artefacts that were placed on display in the
factory. The most significant part of the traffic was cocoa, but while Rowntree was
committed to some profit-sharing in England, the profits of chocolate manufacture were
not shared with cocoa producers.
Chocolate, women and empire is a fascinating and meticulously documented study,
drawing on a wide range of sources.Through its exploration of the complex power relations
of gender, race, and class involved in chocolate production, it makes an important contri-
bution to new imperial histories. It will be valuable for students and scholars of imperial
history, women’s history and, given the considerable attention to the postwar period,
contemporary British history.
University of Central Lancashire wendy webster
Barbara Hately-Broad, War and welfare: British prisoner of war families, 1939–45 (Manches-
ter: Manchester University Press, 2009. Pp. ix + 291. 2 figs. 5 tabs. ISBN 9780719078545
Hbk. £60/$89.95)
War and welfare is a study of income support for the wives and children of captured
servicemen in the Second World War. Families were encumbrances with which the War
Office did not wish to deal and for whom the Treasury did not want to pay. Hately-Broad
pursues the twists and turns in the policies that ensued from this unpromising premise, as
well as the inevitable reliance of the families of prisoners of war on voluntary agencies.
The blurb on the back cover suggests that the book is about the experiences of service-
men’s dependants and the strategies they adopted to get a better deal. However, Hately-
Broad’s approach is firmly governmental and administrative. Occasional cases surface
from the official sources. An example is that of Alice Truman who was told that since her
husband was a prisoner of war and ‘of no further use to the country’ in wartime, her house
would be requisitioned (p. 165). This receives sympathetic comment from the author, who
judges government policy consistently in terms of its sensitivity to the needs of families, but
we hear no more about Mrs Truman until the book’s conclusion. Here it is stated that she
‘fought a long campaign with her local authority to be allowed to return home, even to the
extent of involving the Home Secretary’ (p. 254). Truman evidently described her struggle
in an oral history interview archived in the Imperial War Museum, but Hately-Broad tells
us no more than that her account belittles her efforts and that, in her case and that of other
wives, ‘it is difficult to imagine that their experiences did not colour their subsequent lives’
(p. 254). Indeed, but a different methodology from that adopted here would be needed to
research this important issue.
The author is dismissive of the ‘feminist’ approach to policy on servicemen’s allowances
that suggests that they were used to control wives and mothers and that the low level at
which they were set ensured a supply of women to the labour market. A focus not only on
the serviceman and the policy-maker, but also on the woman and what she did in her
husband’s absence, would be needed to advance the debate, but Hately-Broad does not
pursue the relationship between the level of allowances in the Second World War and the
participation in work of the wives of prisoners of war. She argues that shifts in policy can
be explained as part of a cycle of government interest and public pressure, which rose in
wartime when the fate of the serviceman mattered in terms of morale and the national
effort, and declined postwar when this ceased to be the case.While this is plausible, it is not
1042 BOOK REVIEWS
incompatible with an approach that suggests that the return of responsibility to the
ex-serviceman at the end of the war was part of a reassertion of family values.
Hately-Broad demonstrates clearly that, while all servicemen’s wives suffered from the
low levels at which allowances were set, the wives of prisoners of war had additional
burdens to bear. Notably, allowances were paid for 17 weeks after a serviceman had been
reported missing in the expectation that within this time the belligerent power would
provide information, in accordance with the 1929 Geneva Convention, about his status.
While such notification usually materialized in the European theatre of war, it was rarely
forthcoming in the Far East. Japan had not signed the Convention, and to the Japanese,
capture was shameful and captives beneath contempt. The wives of Far Eastern prisoners
of war were, however, permitted only three-monthly extensions of their allowances. The
terrible dilemma in which the lack of information placed such families is indicated in
the book, and some painful cases are quoted, in which wives had remarried and started
new families on the supposition of death, only to be confronted by the return of the first
husband. The focus, however, is on the difficulty for the authorities of deciding what
allowances to pay the wife and children in such circumstances, rather than on the impact
of such irruptive eventualities on the people concerned.
It may seem unfair to complain that the study does not do what this reader wanted, but
false hopes are raised by the title and the cover. There are other, more minor, quibbles:
there is no list of abbreviations; the copy-editor permitted the ungrammatical construction
‘prisoners of war’s families’ throughout. However, the book presents a thorough account of
policy on the allowances granted in respect of the families of prisoners of war in the Second
World War. Rather like an official history, it will be an essential work of reference for others
pursuing different topics in the same field.
University of Manchester penny summerfield
Alex Mold and Virginia Berridge, Voluntary action and illegal drugs: health and society in
Britain since the 1960s (Basingstoke and NewYork: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Pp. x + 242.
ISBN 9780230521407 Hbk. £55/$90)
In this intelligent and impressively researched book, Mold and Berridge tell the story of
voluntary action in relation to illegal drugs in Britain since the 1960s. The book will be
essential reading for those interested in both histories: the history of responses to illegal
drugs, and the history of the ‘third sector’. The authors have so much to say on both of
these important subjects that there is also, however, a degree of frustration with the hybrid
approach. The story of illegal drug use is here, but one has to tease it out through the
complexities of an argument about the shifting relationship between the state and the
voluntary sector.With such an important subject, and such expert authorities, it is a shame
that we do not have here the definitive account of illegal drug use in postwar Britain.
Readers in search of such an account can make a start by turning to Mold’s other writing
on the history of treatment for heroin addiction. Similarly, the authors offer us a hugely
illuminating insight into this most recent chapter in the history of the voluntary sector, but
it is inevitably a partial picture: responses to illegal drug use may offer an intriguing case
study, and one that opens up this larger history, but one is left wishing the authors had
provided us with the comprehensive account of the subject that appears to have been
within their grasp. In short, there is in this book the basis for two landmark studies and
perhaps in years to come these will follow.What we have, instead, is a book, brimming with
ideas and rich in detail, that offers fascinating insight into the postwar history of drugs and
sets us thinking about how complex and challenging histories of welfare and policy will
need to become as historians reach the last third of the twentieth century. The latter is so
BOOK REVIEWS 1043
important that I would urge any historian wanting to understand the changing nature of
social policy and statutory/voluntary relations in the period since the 1960s to read and
work with this book.
What, then, do we learn about this relationship through the case study of illegal drug
use? To some extent, we see themes resurfacing that would be familiar to those who have
studied this relationship in earlier periods.Thus, the voluntary sector found opportunity in
carving out areas that the state initially was ill equipped to address, but in due course was
increasingly reliant on the state or was even replaced by state bodies. Yet the authors
challenge Frank Prochaska’s depiction of the voluntary sector in these last decades of the
century being engulfed by the leviathan of the state, and thus of the demise of the voluntary
spirit. Instead, we have here a case for the ongoing vibrancy of the voluntary sector (and
of resultant voluntary–statutory tensions), nowhere more so than in interplay with ‘new
social movements’ and the emergence of drug-user activism, but also in the growth of
‘social enterprises’ and thus in the relationship to the market as well as the state. Along the
way, Mold and Berridge also offer us a rich history of responses to illegal drug use since the
1960s. They do so, in part, via a series of intriguing case studies, upon which they hang
a broader chronological story. They begin with the fascinating story of Phoenix House, a
‘therapeutic community’ with a vision of breaking down traditional divisions between
doctors and patients and creating an environment in which drug users would take respon-
sibility for their own condition and would ultimately overcome addiction. They also tell
the story of Release, a group on the fringes of the counter-culture, set up to represent and
protect the interests of the illegal drug user. The 1980s emerges as a key period of change,
and of opportunity for the voluntary sector. It saw, on the one hand, the Thatcher
government and its rhetoric of ‘rolling back the state’, and on the other the dual crisis of
a sharp escalation of heroin addiction and the explosion of concern around HIV/AIDS.
Here, the authors point to the way that the activism emerging in particular out of gay
politics and its encounter with HIV/AIDS provided important models for the increasing
importance of users in the development of responses to illegal drug use. Finally, we are
introduced to the world of ‘social enterprise’ businesses like Addaction and Turning Point,
who looked to take advantage of the increasing demand for preventive and treatment
services, state efforts to integrate the voluntary impulse (a ‘rolling into the state’), and a
new generation of service-user and activist-user groups looking to more radical solutions
and asserting the rights of the user. Along the way, we encounter a series of ongoing
tensions about approaches to drug use that parallel and intersect with the story of
voluntary–statutory relations: for instance, the interplay between medical and legal models,
between an emphasis on treatment (including abstention) and prevention, between law
enforcement and social support or even legalization, and between the interests of the
community and the drug user. Here, the complexity of the fine-grained story, and the
decision to focus on the question of voluntarism, means that those looking for clear
answers about successes and failures in drugs policy, but also those looking for a simple
picture of trends over time, may find themselves wishing for more.
University of Warwick mathew thomson
GENERAL
Karl Gunnar Persson, An economic history of Europe: knowledge, institutions and growth,
600 to the present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Pp. xv + 253. 36 figs.
12 illus. 4 maps. 7 tabs. ISBN 9780521840095 Hbk. £50/$85)
This book, designed as an undergraduate text in European economic history, enters a

market with few competitors. Why? With so many countries in Europe, and such diversity
1044 BOOK REVIEWS
of experience in the period 600–2010, any such text must have as its underlay basic models
of the development of the European economy in various phases. Otherwise it would
dissolve into a swamp of particulars: Sweden in 1750, Belgium in 1880, France in 1930.
Such a simplification has been hard to achieve, since the dissolution of the idea of the
unchanging ancien régime. Hence the thinness of the market, and the daunting challenge
the book faces.
The volume makes a creditable attempt at this hard task, seeking to condense European
experience into 13 propositions in the introduction. The text is accessible to students with
little economic background (there is a glossary of economic terms at the end), with some
useful summarizing diagrams. Each chapter ends with suggestions for additional reading.
The ultimate test of the value of this book is how well it simplifies and categorizes
European experience, and how plausible and engaging to students that simplification will
be. In judging this as a reviewer I set aside strong priors. In my view the correct model with
which to simplify pre-industrial European experience is the Malthusian model, but this the
author pugnaciously rejects as ‘dogmatic’ Malthusianism. Instead, for the pre-industrial
era, Persson offers an amalgam of the Malthusian and the Smithian approaches. (This to
me is like trying to mate a wolf with a chihuahua, but, as noted, I set aside my priors.) The
author proposes that the substantial population growth between 600 and 1800 caused a
corresponding substantial growth of income levels. There was an intermediate Smithian
phase between the stagnation of incomes in the Malthusian era, and their unfettered
growth in the modern world. Persson argues that population growth did not absorb all
technological advance, leaving incomes unchanged, à la Malthus, because the negative
effects of population through the land constraint were dwarfed by the positive effects of
population on incomes from economies of scale. He offers some interesting evidence in
favour of this amalgam, such as an increase in the variety of occupations specified over
time. However, he develops no formal model of his novel interpretation, and the schema
he lays out in diagrammatic form in summary on page 61 seems to identify population as
the independent, exogenous mover of the pre-industrial world.
Chapters 2–4 which outline the Malthus/Smith synthesis achieve a reasonable degree of
theme and integration. A competing paradigm for the pre-industrial era has been institu-
tional economics, which emphasizes institutional developments as the driver of growth.
This is dealt with in chapter 5, but in a more erratic fashion. Are institutions just a response
to the underlying scarcities and technologies of societies, or are they the prime movers? The
‘maybe, maybe not’ conclusion of this chapter will not work well pedagogically.
The next obstacle that must be faced by the writer of a European history text is the
industrial revolution and its consequences. Here Persson’s explanation of the industrial
revolution is pretty much ‘and then science happened’, with an extended and readable
account of various major innovations from 1750 to the present. Alongside this process went
both a period of income divergence across European nations, 1700–1914, and a period of
strong convergence, 1914 to the present. Persson outlines these trends, but explains them
as a product of various institutional failures and successes.The weight given to institutions
here serves to underline the weakness of the earlier chapter on the nature and role of
institutions in economic growth. After dealing with the industrial revolution Persson turns
to the evolution of money and banking institutions, concluding that the development of
these forms was another important cause of growth. While good at describing these
developments, Persson once again is ambiguous on the issue of the basic long-run drivers
of growth. To what extent were new financial institutions a form of technological change
and driver of growth, or a response to the growing scale and nature of the economy? Here
he seems to suggest that new financial institutions were a major reason for an increase in
the savings rate within economies associated with the industrial revolution, responsible for
substantial income gains, but offers little in the way of theory or empirics to make this
claim plausible.

BOOK REVIEWS 1045
The second half of the book is a consideration of the monetary, trade, fiscal, and
redistributive institutions of economies since the industrial revolution, and their effects on
growth and income distribution. Important common developments in this era include a
substantial rise in trade, a rise in government claims on output, and a decline in economic
inequality (including gender inequalities). My American colleagues routinely view the rise
of government, and of redistributive taxation, in much of Europe as an important drag on
economic growth and a failure of these economies in the modern era.While acknowledging
this critique, Persson comes out as sympathetic to ‘Scandinavian capitalism’, and against
its competitor, ‘Anglo-Saxon capitalism’. However, given the importance of this issue in
the current economic crisis, a more rigorous and extended discussion of the debate would
have been welcome.
In summary, the merits of this book as a class text will depend very much on the
approach of the instructor to European economic history, but this book does offer one of
the very few syntheses of European economic history.
University of California, Davis gregory clark
Michael Mitterauer, Why Europe? The medieval origins of its special path, Gerald Chapple,
trans. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010. Pp. xxiv + 406. ISBN 9780226532530
Hbk. £31.50/$49)
Each of the seven principal chapters in this study concerns a well-established topic of
discussion in European medieval history, moving forward in time from the Fall of the
Roman Empire to the Age of Discovery. Mitterauer starts with the agrarian development
of the early middle ages, and then proceeds to discuss manorial structures, kinship, feudal
bonds and their implications for government, the ‘papal Church’ and international
religious orders, crusading and early colonial expansion, preaching, and printing. His
book could be read as an overview of developments in Latin Christendom, combined with
a discussion of the ways in which they contrasted with those elsewhere in Eurasia. In
exploring these different areas of discourse, he shows case by case how European civili-
zation differed from that elsewhere in the world. Europe’s range of cereal crops, the
division between interdependent demesnes and peasant tenancies, conjugal families, feudal
military organization with its implications for society and government, an uniquely cen-
tralized control of religious doctrine and practice, the expansiveness associated with both
crusading and commercial development, and the early development of mass communica-
tions through preaching and printing, are all contrasted with different developments in
the Byzantine Empire, in Islamic civilization, and in China. At one level, then, this is a
summary of some main points of European medieval history with an exceptionally open
eye to what was going on elsewhere in the world.
As the book’s title suggests, however, the author’s intentions are more ambitious than a
mere overview of select topics. He is avowedly engaged in the Weberian project of explain-
ing the emergent aspects of western civilization that are, or may be supposed to be,
‘universally significant and valid’ (p. 272), such as modern science and technology, to
which by implication he would, at least tentatively, add the development of mass commu-
nications, freedom of discussion, and representative government. Without resorting to
elaborate methodological discursiveness, or abstruse terminology, he has composed a
complex study in historical sociology. Like Weber, Mitterauer has a particular interest in
establishing the structural affinity between different aspects of the societies under scrutiny.
He shows, for example, how the extensive cropping of European agricultural regimes was
compatible with a widely dispersed pattern of lordship; how the exceptional weakness of
kinship bonds was conducive to the formation of feudal and clerical loyalties; and how
1046 BOOK REVIEWS
and why the centralized authority of the Church accompanied feudal restrictions on royal
power.
The forward movement through the book from the end of the Roman period to the
Renaissance also permits a sustained investigation of some ways in which these numerous
interconnections came about. Some passages attribute a causal relationship between
different institutions, as in the argument that seigneurial authority over dependent tenants
‘guaranteed the dominance of the nuclear family’ (p. 63), or that ‘the origins of European
political systems were definitely shaped by organized military systems’ (p. 102). Other
arguments, perhaps more convincingly, define favourable conditions for subsequent devel-
opment, as in the argument that the personal relationships characteristic of feudal bonds
‘provided the context’ for the growth of mutual obligations between kings and their
subjects (p. 129). In either case, this aspect of the book is best thought of as a study of path
dependency. References to ‘Europe’s special path’ are numerous. In this respect the
argument cannot possibly be a closed one, since some necessary conditions of Europe’s
distinctiveness, such as the range and disposition of natural resources, were established
before the start of the period. There are nevertheless propositions here, some old, some
new, whose importance can hardly be overlooked in any attempt to make sense of the
distinctiveness of Europe’s long-term social and political development. The analysis places
great emphasis on the transformation of north-western Europe, particularly in the heart-
land of the Frankish empire, in the centuries following the fall of the Roman Empire.
‘Agrarian revolution’, with numerous associated changes in rural institutions, here allowed
a set of interdependent social formations that were both to modify the European power
structure and to influence developments elsewhere in Europe by their diffusion. Even the
authority of the medieval papacy, and its potential to curb kings and princes, was possible
because of the physical and institutional separation between Rome and the new centres of
power to the north. A similar argument explains the independence of the Italian city states,
and their freedom to initiate the colonial movements that foreshadowed European expan-
sion in the sixteenth century.
It is rare to find such a concerted attempt to attribute meaning to European history.
Mitterauer’s focus on the single big question in the book’s title shows one rewarding way
to make the subject a unified field of enquiry. Both students and teachers who look for
more than a random hop from topic to topic through the centuries will find here a rich
source of both challenge and new perspectives.
University of Durham richard britnell
Bas J. P. van Bavel and Phillipp R. Schofield, eds., The development of leasehold in north-
western Europe, c.1200–1600 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008. Pp. 213. 9 figs. 20 tabs. ISBN
9782503522548 Pbk. €62/$90)
A social transition from relations governed by status or custom to those created by contract
must underpin or complement almost any interpretation of long-term economic develop-
ment since the early middle ages. Like biological evolution, however, such long-term
transformation is more easily demonstrated by means of inter-temporal or inter-regional
comparisons than through documented, step-by-step narration. Analysis of evidence
for leasehold would seem to offer historians the best chance of success in charting
this important topic, since no other type of contract is better documented in legal codes
or in archives surviving from landed society. However, as the contributors to this
volume demonstrate, the path to better understanding lies through a thicket. The
leasing of property was an alternative not only to many types of tenure that were not
overtly customary (including various sorts of freehold) but also to direct exploitation by
BOOK REVIEWS 1047
proprietors themselves. Leases were not all of one type. Some were more contractual, some
more commercial, than others. Some were hereditary; some were beneficial; some were of
such long duration as to be unnegotiable from generation to generation; some were for
money rents and some for produce rents. In any given context the ease and rapidity of
development was governed not only by fluctuations in the returns to land, capital, and
labour, but also by different legal and institutional traditions. Furthermore, in order to
establish any solid generalizations about the role of contractual relations in society it is
necessary to measure the extent of leasing relative to other forms of landholding, an
exercise that requires documentation not easily obtained.
This volume’s breadth of enquiry across north-western Europe, with its many varied
regional levels of urbanization and commercial development, allows its editors to explore
the hypothesis that the development of leasing and the strong medieval economic devel-
opment of the North Sea region may be causally connected. A joint paper by the editors,
together with another by van Bavel alone, make a good job of defining the method-
ological issues involved, and draw together much of the evidence by a judicious use of
comparative method. The remaining papers are regional studies varying in their com-
patibility with the editors’ methodological and historiographical objectives, though all of
interest in their own right. Tim Soens and Erik Thoen write jointly about Flanders,
Alexis Wilkin about the area of Liège, Ghislain Brunel about northern France, Nils
Hybel about Denmark, Christer Lundh and Mats Olsson about Scania. There are two
papers concerning England by Jane Whittle and Miriam Müller. Not all the authors
show the same concern with inter-regional comparison, but their contributions together
serve well to show that within northern Europe the medieval chronology of leasehold,
and the extent to which leasehold had been adopted as a normal form of tenure by the
sixteenth century, were far from uniform, and that there were strong contrasts even
between different parts of the various study areas, notably within Flanders and England.
Some of these contrasts are so stark as to defy current interpretation. However, the
evidence for medieval leasehold is particularly impressive in areas around the North Sea
in northern France, Flanders, the Netherlands, and eastern England, a finding that
supports the conclusion that leasing and commercial development had a strong affinity,
though the relationship was complicated by the intervention of other variables such
as soil quality, communications, proximity to markets, the availability of credit, and
institutional structures.
Several other important conclusions emerge from the different chapters, of which the
following four will give some clearer impression of the book’s significance. One is that
though the history of leasehold through much of northern Europe can be comfortably
extended back to the twelfth century, this is misleading as an index of any common pattern
of economic development. It cannot be assumed that early leases, often of large properties
such as manors, had a more commercial character than other forms of tenure, or that they
differed greatly in character from more obviously feudal tenures. A second conclusion,
deriving both from the editor’s methodological analysis and from empirical observation, is
that the relationship between leasing and the rise of capitalism—the transition from custom
to contract—is best approached through the study of short leases that were regularly
renewed, and that other forms of lease are likely to be irrelevant to this purpose. Thirdly,
awareness of the chronology of leasing is complicated by the fact that the regions that
pioneered short leases were not the same as the regions that developed them most rapidly;
nor can it be assumed that in particular areas the incidence of leasing did not sometimes
regress. Finally, short leases are likely to be under-represented in our documentation
because they were more likely than longer leases to depend upon oral agreements,
particularly when they were between peasants.
University of Durham richard britnell

1048 BOOK REVIEWS
Juliann Vitullo and Diane Wolfthal, eds., Money, morality, and culture in late medieval
and early modern Europe (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010. Pp. xiii + 245. 30 figs. ISBN
9780754664970 Hbk. £55/$99.95)
The nine essays presented here grew out of an interdisciplinary symposium on merchants
and culture at Arizona State University, and the editors link their theme explicitly to the
banking crisis that came to a head in 2008. They hope that by returning to the origins of
the market economy in the middle ages and the debates it engendered ‘we can better face
some of our own ethical contradictions and financial fears’ (p. 1).The contributors include
economic historians, a musicologist, art historians, and literary critics who examine a
pan-European range of cultural and economic phenomena from the thirteenth through to
the seventeenth century. The interdisciplinary character and unusual perspectives of this
volume make it a welcome contribution to an area traditionally dominated by economic
historians.
The first three essays examine social groups in the context of the medieval commercial
economy. Robert Sturges considers traces of class conflict in a fifteenth-century English
mystery play cycle. Although the ‘Wakefield Master’ accurately portrays peasant bitterness
against the gentry, whom they blame for their poverty, ultimately he endorses a conserva-
tive social model in which each order keeps its duly assigned place. Giacomo Todeschini
explores the long and complex relationship between usury and ‘infamy’, a legal disability
that involved exclusion from the community. Judas was a key figure in the medieval
development of the concept, and, in keeping with his earlier work, Todeschini concludes
that the usury prohibition can be explained better by its association with infamy than with
specific credit transactions. Modern scholarship generally exempts the moneychanger from
the taint of usury because he performed a socially useful task free of the illicit profit sought
by the usurer. However, as James Murray shows on the basis of evidence from Flanders, as
moneychangers increasingly took on the role of deposit bankers profiting from loans, they
attracted the opprobrium traditionally directed at Lombards and Cahorsins.
Three essays are linked by the concept of monetary value as it found expression in
literature and music. Ian Moulton offers a close reading of Pietro Aretino’s Ragionamenti,
a dialogue on the qualities of nuns, wives, and prostitutes. The interlocutors, themselves
whores, conclude that concubines are the only honourable class of women because they are
honest about their commercial motives. In Moulton’s view, the Ragionamenti is really a
tortured meditation on the commoditization not only of sex, but of everything, including
literature, in a market economy. Echoing Joel Kaye’s Economy and nature in the fourteenth
century (1998), Michael Long detects affinities between fourteenth-century scholastic
analyses of money and value and developments in fifteenth-century polyphony. He notes
the permeation of musical theory by monetary language and provides a case study of a
Tuscan madrigal that functions as a sort of tone poem on financial markets. Bradley Rynor
contextualizes the 1622 play The changeling against contemporary writings on devaluation.
He shows how the plot, characterization, and vocabulary of the play reflect anxieties about
the mysterious and opaque operations of financial markets in early modern Europe.
The final section of the book focuses on the tension between Christian ideals of poverty
and the extraordinary wealth generated by the medieval commercial revolution. Julia
Miller and Laurie Taylor-Mitchell trace the rise and decline of the Tuscan Humiliati, a
popular thirteenth-century religious order distinguished from the more famous mendi-
cants by their emphasis on manual labour—particularly the manufacture and marketing of
woollen textiles—as the central element of their discipline. The Tuscan Humiliati quickly
emerged as highly successful entrepreneurs in this key industry, and the authors show both
how the order invested its wealth in artistic patronage and how the commercial virtues of
the Humiliati inexorably undermined the order’s original charitable ideals. In another joint
essay, the editors explore how Aristotelian notions of the sterility of money, which underlay

BOOK REVIEWS 1049
the usury prohibition and the general medieval suspicion of profit, were gradually
supplanted between the late thirteenth and sixteenth century by a lay ideology in which the
merchant and his money could be viewed as legitimately fruitful. Taking ‘masculinity’ as
their guiding category, the authors illustrate through contemporary texts and paintings
from north and south of the Alps how a new model of merchant masculinity was ham-
mered out in dialogue with theologians and moralists. By way of balance, Kathleen Ashley
offers a case study of a seventeenth-century female philanthropist, Abigail Mathieu. On the
basis of inherited wealth and a series of shrewd marriages, Mathieu accumulated a fortune,
which she deployed to endow charitable, religious, and educational institutions in her
native Chalon-sur-Saône. Ashley emphasizes Matheiu’s particular concern for women and
how she embodied Counter-Reformation ideals of charity.
University of Toronto lawrin armstrong
Maartje van Gelder, Trading places: the Netherlandish merchants in early modern Venice
(Leiden: Brill, 2009. Pp. xvii + 241. 3 figs. 9 illus. 3 maps. 2 tabs. ISBN 9789004175433
Hbk. €99/$147)
In 1607, the Cinque Savi alla Mercanzia, the special magistracy that supervised mercantile
activity in Venice, found that the Netherlanders were the dominant foreign group in the
city’s maritime trade. Van Gelder’s interesting and highly readable study of this merchant
community in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries attempts to do much more than
merely confirm the above statement. As she says in the introduction, her main aim is to
explain ‘why traders from the Low Countries settled in Venice and how they succeeded in
becoming such a strong commercial force in a city accustomed to protecting its own trade’
(p. 5). To this end, the author adopts a double perspective that focuses both on the
Netherlanders’ economic and communal activities and on their relations with the Venetian
state and society.
After a rather descriptive background chapter on the history of Venice, its commercial
decline, and its immigrant traders, the next two chapters address the Netherlanders’ role
in supplying Venice with Baltic grain in the 1590s and the growth of their maritime and
overland trade in the city respectively. Chapter 4 provides a social analysis of the settle-
ment of Netherlandish merchants with emphasis on their number, provenance, religious
affiliation, and intra-communal relations. Chapter 5 examines their attempts to obtain
Venetian citizenship and their collective petitions to overcome the restrictive Venetian
commercial policies. This is followed by the final chapter which further explores the
Netherlanders’ position in Venetian society and looks at their co-location in the city’s
urban milieu, residential pattern, domestic interiors, and lifestyles. In addition, the
chapter documents the business partnerships and matrimonial alliances within the com-
munity and concentrates on the dynastic politics of two leading families, the van Axels
and Ghelthofs, who managed to enter the Venetian patriciate in the late seventeenth
century.
Based on archival research in Venice and the Low Countries, Trading places is an
informative new addition to the existing literature on the resident foreign communities of
early modern Venice. The author shows how the Netherlanders’ growing trading networks
enabled them to gain significant concessions and privileges from the Venetian state, thus
helping to connect Venice to the Atlantic in a period when the city’s status in interna-
tional commerce was steadily declining. In so doing, van Gelder contrasts the different
government regulations regarding the Netherlanders with those imposed on other immi-
grant traders like the Germans, Jews, Greeks, and Ottomans, to project the specificity of
the former. By exploring the material culture of the Netherlanders and their participation
1050 BOOK REVIEWS
in the festive life of the city, the author also provides a persuasive argument about the
relevance of cultural history as a method of studying diasporic merchant communities.
Moreover, van Gelder challenges older assumptions about the existence of a sharp inter-
nal divide between Protestant and Catholic Netherlanders abroad and points out that in
Venice Northerners and Southerners worked together and were often connected through
familial ties. In arguing that ethnic and religious differences were not divisive factors
within the community, she attributes the ‘high level of cohesion’ (p. 130) among
Netherlandish merchants to their shared provenance, family and friendship bonds, and
business relations.
Although the book offers many empirical insights, van Gelder’s concluding remark that
‘the Netherlandish traders had little difficulty in securing a place in Venetian society’
(p. 203) sounds rather exaggerated considering the very small number who managed to
obtain Venetian citizenship or married Venetian women and owned villas in the country-
side. Similarly, the author’s emphasis on the overlap between kinship ties and commercial
contacts implies an idealistic perception of merchant communities as concrete and inter-
nally cohesive groups. While van Gelder rightly dismisses shared religious and ethnic
identity as exclusive criteria of cooperation, when she stresses the ‘strong internal cohesion
among the Netherlanders’ (p. 207), she does not acknowledge that her records refer almost
exclusively to a mercantile elite. As a result, her portrayal of the Netherlandish community
comes across as rather monolithic, leaving no room for the investigation of internal
economic or social conflict. Finally, it is rather disappointing that the interactions between
the Netherlanders and other immigrant communities in the city have received no attention
in the book.
These limitations notwithstanding, van Gelder’s study provides a focused and compre-
hensive approach to the relations between the Republic of Venice and the Netherlandish
merchants, while making a useful contribution to the history of cross-cultural trade
interactions in the early modern period.
Goldsmiths, University of London anastasia stouraiti
José Luís Cardoso and Pedro Lains, eds., Paying for the liberal state: the rise of public finance
in nineteenth-century Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Pp. xii + 310.
ISBN 9780521518529 Hbk. £50/$88.99)
Economic historians are waking up to the fact that nineteenth-century public finance is as
interesting as early modern finance, and quite possibly more so. After all, the early modern
debate, with its narrow focus on links between property rights, fiscal policy, and economic
growth, concerns mostly the handful of countries which successfully pioneered forms of
modern public finance, from the Italian city states via the Dutch Republic to Britain and
the US. By contrast, during the nineteenth century there occurred a profound political and
financial transformation. All states faced the need to expand their services from little more
than defence and justice to police, education, healthcare, and infrastructure. The conse-
quent need for more revenue and for fiscal policies conducive to economic growth forced
states to negotiate increasing tensions between elite interests and the growing body of
taxpayers clamouring for the vote. Cardoso and Lains had the excellent idea of organizing,
in 2006 and 2008, two conferences on the question of how European states achieved their
transformations. As usual the contributions vary in content, in scope, and in the kind of
data provided, but this is an important and very welcome book overall, let down only by
insufficient attention to copy-editing and proofreading.
Sandwiched between an introduction by the editors and a general conclusion by Larry
Neal, nine states pass muster: Britain (Martin Daunton), the Netherlands (Jan Luiten van
BOOK REVIEWS 1051
Zanden and Arthur van Riel), France (Richard Bonney), Germany (Mark Spoerer),
Austria-Hungary (Michael Pammer), Sweden (Lennart Schön), Italy (Giovanni Federico),
Spain (Francisco Comín), and Portugal (Cardoso and Lains). To me the book’s most
surprising finding is the degree to which fiscal systems continued to struggle for legitimacy,
for acceptance by the population at large. Both in Britain and the Netherlands, those
paragons of constitutions and commitment, to secure sound finance and low interest rates
governments had to manoeuvre carefully during the first decades of the nineteenth century
to regain public trust lost, in Britain’s case, during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars
and, in the case of the Netherlands, during the reign of an autocratic monarch. In France,
conservative elites combined with slow population growth to decrease the rate of accep-
tance of fiscal policies and tax reform, while in Austria-Hungary the attempts at reform
helped to drive the dual monarchy apart instead of unifying it, because the country’s many
nationalities resisted anything resembling intrusion from Vienna even if they stood to gain
from it. Nearly every chapter has one or more examples of brittle public acceptance
limiting the scope for reform.
The second surprise which the book springs on the reader is the sheer width of the
European spectrum of possibilities. Local social and political structures proved resilient
in the face of essentially similar processes such as industrialization, railway building, or
urbanization. The editors clearly started the project expecting to find a European public
finance pattern, only to discover no such thing existed. Public finance systems diverged
over time, rather than converging towards a particular model, say the proven British
system, as one might have expected. There were many forms of fiscal modernity and
various means to its achievement. Nearly all of them are considered successful in the
eyes of the contributors to this volume. This would shatter ideas about a supposed
superiority of public finance systems modelled on Britain’s financial revolution if the
editors had used their overly dense introduction to provide something in the way of a
standard for judging success or failure. The bond prices presented by Neal are a useful
first gauge, of course, but it is not sufficient; we need to compare tax incidence, fiscal
efficiency, and a measure for the impact of fiscal policy on economic growth. The all-
too-general notion of tax states evolving into fiscal states is of little use here, and Harley
Hinrichs’s model of fiscal transition from traditional to modern states, discussed by Neal
in his conclusion, needs articulation if it is to prove useful. Hopefully the resumed
European State Finance database at Cambridge will soon deliver the tools for verdicts
based on rigorous comparisons.
Utrecht University joost jonker
Yves Segers, Jan Bieleman, and Erik Buyst, eds., Exploring the food chain: food production
and food processing in western Europe, 1850–1990 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010. Pp. 289. 37 figs.
42 tabs. ISBN 9782503517797 Pbk. €68/$99)
This latest volume in the comparative rural history of the North Sea area series is edited
by two rural historians and one economist/economic historian. They have assembled a
diverse range of papers, drawn from presentations to a Leuven conference of 2003. The
editors provide a short introduction, highlighting three themes of the papers: the role of
technology in food production and processing; the presence of cooperation in the business
of growing and processing food; and the incremental presence in food politics of concerns
about health, hygiene, and quality. Thirteen separate papers follow, picking up on one,
sometimes two, or even all three of these themes.
Milk and dairy farming remain important subjects for food historians, involving animal
as well as consumer health questions, and the often competing priorities of production and
1052 BOOK REVIEWS
quality/safety, and three of the papers here examine dairying. Bieleman analyses the
emergence of mechanized dairying in the northern Netherlands, taking a long chronologi-
cal view, from the start of the nineteenth century to roughly the Second World War, probing
the importance of changes in technological application. Segers and Wim Lefebvre look at
the dairy industry in Belgium in a narrower time span, the interwar years. They show,
among other things, that gender imperatives were important, with the notion of dairying as
‘women’s work’ inhibiting capital investment in the sector. Carin Martin moves the focus
to Sweden, introducing the elements of cooperation, and examining the 1860s to the
1930s.
Cooperation, broadly defined, is also present in papers by Maria De Waele on meat
supply in Ghent, from 1850 to 1990, outlining the craft consciousness of the butcher
trade, and Peter Koolmees, on the development of the meat industry in the Netherlands,
1850–1990, although competitive pressures were evident too. Peter Lummel writes
about Berlin’s ‘huge stomach’ (p. 139) and the development of the city’s food industry
from 1850 to 1925, and Ted Collins analyses the North American influence on food
manufacturing in Britain, from 1880 to 1939, exploring the transatlantic transmission of
canning and freezing techniques, and the development of breakfast cereals, plus the
manner in which imports were supplemented by inward investing producers establishing
manufacturing plant in the UK. Two papers follow on fishing, fish canning, and other
methods of seafood preservation, by Alain Drouard, focusing on French sardines in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and Hans Jürgen Teuteberg, examining the indus-
trialization of seafood in Germany between 1885 and 1930. Flemming Just writes about
the Scandinavian ‘food system’ in the interwar years, concentrating mainly on agricul-
ture, particularly, again, dairying, and overlapping slightly with the earlier Martin paper,
although spreading the geographical coverage beyond Sweden to Norway and Denmark.
Mogens R. Nissen then explores the subsequent experience of Danish farming under
Nazi occupation in the Second World War, with a detailed administrative as well as
agricultural history. Jean-Michel Chevet examines cooperation in wine production and
supply in twentieth-century France, with some illuminating comparative commentary on
developments in Australia, especially later in the century. Finally Paul Brassley, bravely,
and actually to fairly good effect, provides a closing assessment on food production and
processing in western Europe from 1850 to 1990. This picks out long-running changes
and continuities by contrasting the main general characteristics of the food industry
of 1850 with those in 1990, and attempting to define the boundaries between food
production, processing, and retailing.
There has been quite a lengthy time lag between the conference that produced this
collection and publication, and the essays do not appear to have been revised or updated
subsequently. Certainly none include in their bibliographies any literature published since
2003. Thus the book’s relevance to ongoing historiographical debates is slightly con-
strained. Most of the chapters, moreover, still read as they were originally prepared, as
strongly empirical conference papers, outlining the raw data for discussion and question-
ing. Accordingly, readers hoping for more considered and reflective essays, establishing the
implications of the data for broader economic and historical understanding, will be
disappointed. These important qualifications aside, however, the collection as a whole is
fairly successful. The range of geographical, chronological, and thematic coverage is wide
but not overly diffuse, and the data collected by these ‘North Sea area’ scholars, even in
their slightly undigested form, will assist those exploring the history of food production and
processing in other geographical settings, where technological questions, concerns about
quality, and business attempts to define common political and business interests were
equally evident.
University of Glasgow jim phillips

BOOK REVIEWS 1053
Elvira Vilches, New World gold: cultural anxiety and monetary disorder in early modern Spain
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010. Pp. xi + 361. ISBN 9780226856186 Hbk.
£29/$45)
Historians of the European economy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are well
aware of the impact of gold and silver from the Americas on the money supply. In the
1930s, the painstaking archival work of Earl J. Hamilton (American treasure and the price
revolution in Spain, 1501–1650, 1934) tracked the inflationary effects of that influx in Spain.
Subsequently, many scholars have added nuance to his analysis, taking into account, for
example, increases in population and the velocity of monetary circulation. To one degree
or another, every part of Europe connected by trade, migration, and warfare experienced
the unprecedented inflation of the sixteenth century. Scholars continue to debate the
timing and intensity of that inflation as the European economy expanded. Debate is even
more intense regarding the seventeenth century, with economic crisis in some areas
(including Spain), and a continuation of prosperity—or at least a differing timetable—in
other areas.
Economic historians rarely study the literary manifestations of the disruption caused by
monetary changes. Fortunately, literary scholars have recently become interested in a wide
range of written works that includes economic treatises, price schedules, legislative
debates, bureaucratic memoranda, and correspondence, in addition to creative works such
as plays, poetry, and novels both long and short. Literary scholars are well qualified to
analyse the deep layers of meaning in all of these sources, and to place them in the context
of historical developments. The work under review provides an excellent example of this
approach.
It is difficult for modern scholars to understand the inner workings of the early modern
Spanish economy.The author demonstrates that it was even more difficult for Spaniards at
the time. The discovery of hitherto unknown lands and peoples in the western hemisphere
shattered the geographical and cosmological knowledge shared by Renaissance Europeans.
For Spaniards from Columbus’s time onward, the Indies—as they were known in
Spain—were magical places of unparalleled wonders. Columbus himself thought he was
near the biblical Garden of Eden during his fourth expedition, and the lush jungles and
striking landscapes inspired other writers with similar fantasies. As for the riches of the
Indies, Columbus’s wishful thinking was superseded by real reports of stunning plunder
from the Aztec and Inca capitals in the 1520s and 1530s. The rich deposits of silver mined
at Potosí and later at Zacatecas prompted awed descriptions of the abundance of the Indies
and contributed to the record bullion shipments at the end of the sixteenth century.
Hamilton calculated that some 181 tons of gold and 16,000 tons of silver were officially
registered by the Crown and private parties in the period from 1500 to 1650, plus an
unknown quantity of contraband. Economic historians often focus on the silver. Vilches
concentrates on the gold, less because of its volume than because of its traditional meaning
as the standard of value and purity. After an introduction outlining her interpretive
framework, she approaches the subject in six thematic chapters: New World gold; fantastic
descriptions of New World abundance; the problematic meaning of gold as a standard of
value; money and credit paper; debt; and attempts to comprehend changes in standards of
value and wealth.
In each of the chapters, the author analyses comments about money, credit, and value
from a diverse mixture of authors. The running theme is a deep anxiety about the shifting
definition of true value, when gold itself could no longer be considered a stable marker.
Along with the anxiety about inflation, many authors wrote in anguished tones about the
loss of human virtue in an era dominated by greed. The other six deadly sins also figured
prominently, particularly in the works of moralists, with New World wealth as the corrupt-
ing influence undermining all proper behaviour.

1054 BOOK REVIEWS
The growth of credit instruments, debt, speculation, and all the other engines of
Europe’s economic growth were viewed as mysterious and almost incomprehensible by
many moralists, who railed against merchants, bankers, and money-changers with apoca-
lyptic fury. Nonetheless,Vilches makes clear that the link between an abundance of money
and increased prices was clear to most commentators. Marjorie Grice-Hutchinson’s
The school of Salamanca: readings in Spanish monetary theory, 1544–1605 (1952) provided
an erudite summary and analysis of the general understanding.
Vilches examines a much wider range of sources than economic historians traditionally
use, listed in the extensive bibliography and the index. A few errors of fact—for example,
Bernardo Ward and the Count of Campomanes were two separate individuals—do not
detract from the whole. For literary specialists, the author demonstrates a thorough
familiarity with postmodern theory while avoiding most of the jargon associated with that
approach. The book should interest scholars in many intersecting and overlapping fields
concerned with the European economy as well as the history and literature of Spain and
its empire.
University of Minnesota carla rahn phillips
Janet Rizvi with Monisha Ahmed, Pashmina: the Kashmir shawl and beyond (Mumbai:
Marg Publications, 2009. Pp. 324. 220 illus. ISBN 9788185026909 Hbk. £112.50/$80)
Pashmina: the Kashmir shawl and beyond traces these exquisite shoulder wraps from the
sources of pashmina, a textile woven from the downy undercoat of the Tibetan goat,
through the history of shawl production and the vicissitudes of shawl consumption in
Asia, Europe, and the US. One of book’s particular strengths is its detailed descriptive
data, including information about cashmere. For example, all pashmina can be called
‘cashmere’—an English rendering of Kashmir—but not all cashmere is 100 per cent
pashmina. International merchants have marketed a wide variety of fibre mixes as ‘cash-
mere’ since the nineteenth century, with the fibres sourced from Russia, China, Iran, and
central Asia as well as from the southern Himalayan regions (pp. 242–53). ‘Cashmere’ has
become a ‘generic name’ for all of these products (p. 13).
The characteristic design element of Kashmiri shawls is commonly referred to in English
as a ‘paisley’, resulting from the nineteenth-century mass production of shawls with this
motif in the town of Paisley. In Rizvi’s account, seventeenth-century Kashmiri shawl
designers ‘took a floral motif ’ that they ‘manipulated with breathtaking virtuosity’ for two
centuries, until Euro-American imperial agents included the shawl and its designs in their
‘economic project of taking anything they fancied of beauty and value from the colonized
world, commodifying it, using it as a template for mass-production in Europe’s mills
. . . and sending the cheapened product to undercut the original in its traditional markets’
(p. 19). The book takes this interpretation for granted rather than providing detailed
argumentation of the standpoint. Rizvi’s book is extremely strong on details for everything
about shawls, but she only sketches out the place of this consumer good in the wider
economic history. Thus economic historians who are interested in world trade, yet who
enjoy the occasional change from well-organized tables of statistics, will find the book
appealing but occasionally frustrating as Rizvi uses prices and quantities of commodities
more as non-pictorial illustrations rather than as skeletons for constructing economic
analyses.
Most English-language writings about Kashmiri shawls fall into either narratives about
imperial technology transfers for British and French textile manufacturing, loosely tied
together by links to changes in Euro-American clothing fashions, or narratives privileged
in textile history, where design motifs and embroidery styles are more important than the
BOOK REVIEWS 1055
price of pashm (goat hair). Rizvi tried to straddle both, although the longest chapters of
the book will be of most interest to textile historians. Pashmina, building on Rizvi’s earlier
Trans-Himalayan caravans: merchant princes and peasant traders in Ladakh (1999), ranges
from the lives of the pastoral nomads who raise the pashm-producing goats, to ethno-
graphic details of the pashm trade, describing the worldwide demand for cashmere since
the Second World War, and ending with the tentative revivification of long-moribund
shawl weaving skills in Kashmir. Pashmina is organized into five chapters. The first four
focus on the fibre (pashm), the textile (shawls woven of pashmina), the history (the
possible beginnings of the Kashmiri shawl industry to the situation at the end of the
nineteenth century), and ‘By land and sea’ (the regional and international trade in
shawls). ‘Cashmere and Kashmir’, the fifth chapter, offers Rizvi’s account of how ‘pash-
mina became cashmere’, and how cashmere developed into a ‘global product’ (p. 244).
The eclectic nature of the volume is illustrated by two appendices, the first on ‘Myths,
misconceptions, and oddities’. This varied compilation of information serves to support
Rizvi’s contention that ‘one aim of this book has been to set the record straight’ about the
Kashmir shawl (p. 268). This first appendix includes useful critiques of the sources used
for older English-language books, such as John Irwin’s The Kashmir shawl (1973). The
second appendix, ‘Terminology and glossary’, is particularly useful for the non-specialist
wishing to understand the many technical terms in various languages. Rizvi’s decision to
use ‘more specific, though cumbersome, descriptive terms for the different stages of the
(buta or paisley) motif’s evolution’ (p. 274) adds yet another layer of terminological
complexity to the already over-abundant vocabulary that specialists have either translit-
erated from various languages or even coined themselves. The bibliography, chapter
notes, maps, and picture credits are all useful. The illustrations are not only extremely
well chosen but also gorgeous.
Ever since Sidney Mintz’s Sweetness and power: the place of sugar in modern history (1985),
there has been something of an academic cottage industry to narrate the economic and
social histories of commodities. Rizvi’s book fits into this trend, although with less focus on
creating or testing economic theories, and more emphasis on the technical and social
aspects of shawls. Pashmina is an entertaining and beautifully illustrated read. The book is
an extraordinary treat for those already interested in Kashmiri shawls. It is likewise an
education for those not yet fascinated by these sumptuous fabrics and their almost infinite
variations.
Montana State University michelle maskiell
Xabier Lamikiz, Trade and trust in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world: Spanish merchants
and their overseas networks (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer Ltd, 2010. Pp. xi + 211. 3 maps.
3 tabs. ISBN 9780861933068 Hbk. £50/$90)
This marvellous book brings theoretical rigour and insightful analysis to bear on an
exceptional body of previously unknown primary source material. In doing so, it makes a
most novel and important contribution to the literature of early modern Spanish Atlantic
trade. It is written with remarkable economy; others would surely have spun the analysis of
such rich sources out over several times the 186 pages of text. At its heart lies discussion
of a number of extraordinary caches of private mercantile correspondence, discovered by
Lamikiz among the papers of the High Court of Admiralty in The National Archives in
London. This correspondence was seized from Spanish vessels during eighteenth-century
wars, and the most remarkable series consists of nearly 2,000 envelopes taken on a single
ship, La Perla, en route from Peru in October 1779.The enclosed letters date from between
late March and early May of that year, and contain virtually the entire correspondence of
1056 BOOK REVIEWS
the merchants of Lima for that period: more than 500 principal writers and 900 main
recipients, the latter in more than 150 destinations in Spain and elsewhere (though more
than half of the letters were for Cadiz, by far the most important port for Spanish colonial
trade).
The book is divided into three sections, of which the first two are devoted to very
different branches of Spanish Atlantic trade: those of the Basque port of Bilbao with
northern Europe, and of the Andalusian port of Cadiz with the viceroyalty of Peru. The
former section provides an excellent fresh analysis of the trade of Bilbao and its province,
Vizcaya. Like the section that follows, it gives a clear, detailed sense of how trade func-
tioned, how merchants lived and pursued their profits, and how trade developed over time.
The chapters devoted to Cadiz, in turn, stand as a major new account of trade with Peru
in the eighteenth century, in particular from the 1740s onwards. It is this section that best
exploits the private correspondence encountered by Lamikiz in London. Often confiden-
tial, these letters cast a very different light than the better-known accounts of government
officials or merchant guilds.
Lamikiz demonstrates excellent command of a wide literature, and is thus able to remark
repeatedly throughout his book on the ways his analysis fills significant lacunae in existing
histories, or indeed stands in outright conflict with them. These include, as examples
chosen almost at random, the relation between the evolution of credit in colonial com-
merce, particularly sea loans, and changes in the pattern of trade (pp. 89–90); analysis of
notas de efectos aparentes (inventories of articles in demand sent from the colonies), ‘a type
of document that appears nowhere in the historiography on Spanish colonial trade’
(p. 112); or a claim for the importance in trade of friendship alongside (historiographically
more valued) family relations (p. 150). To choose a further example with rather greater
care, a major enigma for scholars of British trade with the Spanish colonies is the shift that
took place around 1750 away from British control of Anglo-Spanish trade in the Carib-
bean, and towards control by Spanish-Americans (see Pearce, British trade with Spanish
America, 1763–1808, 2007, pp. 29–30). Lamikiz provides the most convincing explanation
for this shift to date, relating it to the shift in Spanish Atlantic trade during the 1740s away
from a structure based on fleets and towards single ‘register’ ships. His analysis of the
impact of the register ship system, not least in having ‘encouraged Spaniards to depend less
on foreigners and more on their transatlantic correspondents’ (p. 135), indeed, stands as a
central contribution of the section on trade with Peru.
The third and final section develops in still greater detail the central argument
advanced throughout the former two, on the crucial importance of trust (and distrust)
in eighteenth-century Atlantic trade. Lamikiz notes that while acknowledged by eco-
nomic historians, trust is often regarded as an ‘unimportant epiphenomenon’. Yet, while
such elements as ‘supply, demand, capital, infrastructure, instruments of credit and the
law are seen as the main influences on the operation of trade . . . it was trust that per-
formed the role of combining all these elements, thereby constituting a prerequisite for
the creation of trade’ (p. 182). Thus, in a section based on the correspondence of La
Perla, Lamikiz explores the impact on Spanish merchants of the ‘veritable wave of infor-
mation crossing the Atlantic’, which scrutinized their conduct and credit minutely and
from multiple perspectives (p. 104). Conversely, during this period ‘trade with Peru was
for the most part dominated by Spanish merchants, because the conditions under which
foreigners had to operate from the middle of the eighteenth century onwards reduced
their ability to trust’ (p. 137).
I conclude by emphasizing that a short review of this nature can scarcely do justice to a
work exceptionally rich in fresh information and interpretations. I recommend it without
reservation.
King’s College London adrian pearce

BOOK REVIEWS 1057
Barbara H. Stein and Stanley J. Stein, Edge of crisis: war and trade in the Spanish
Atlantic, 1789–1808 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009. Pp. xii + 623. ISBN
9780801890468 Hbk. £40/$77)
For a long time Stanley Stein, emeritus professor at Princeton, was best known for his The
colonial heritage of Latin America; essays on economic dependence in perspective (1970), which
contributed to the exceptional success of dependency theory as the dominant paradigm in
the field of Latin American history at the time.Yet it was followed by a long relative silence,
which ended abruptly about a decade ago, when he and his late wife Barbara Stein came
back with a succession of volumes on the eighteenth-century Spanish Atlantic: Trade,
silver and war (2000), Apogee of empire (2003), and now Edge of crisis. A fourth volume is
promised in the preface to the current one.
Like the earlier two volumes, Edge of crisis is based on, and often makes accessible for the
first time, a breathtaking amount of primary source research that the authors collected over
a lifetime. Also, like the earlier volumes, it does without much of the recent historiography.
The result is a dense and detailed account of two decades of highly complicated history in
the Spanish Atlantic, primarily written from a political history point of view. For economic
historians the banishment of some very interesting statistical material to the endnotes is
frustrating. Tables appear in piecemeal fashion in the notes and are rarely discussed in the
text proper. However, for the patient reader there is a very valuable mine of information
here.
Edge of crisis deals with the last 20 years before the implosion of the Spanish Empire
began in the mainland colonies as a direct reaction to the invasion of the metropolis
through Napoleon’s armies in 1808. The interpretative framework remains true to the
Steins’ roots, that is, colonial dependency makes a late grand stance. The point of depar-
ture is an exploitative relationship between peninsular Spain and its American possessions,
here represented by New Spain (Mexico), that had its foundation in just one commodity:
silver. The authors thus go back to a traditional view of the Spanish Empire that was at its
core designed to extract the fabulous wealth of the New World to the metropolis. Hence,
they have to grapple with the problem that this grand narrative has always encountered:
why did Spain not succeed?
The answer offered here comes in various steps. First, the authors have revised late
eighteenth-century published and unpublished debates about how to mend Spain’s poor
economic performance. Their conclusion is that contemporaries analysed the problems
with great insight and developed adequate proposals for reform. Alas, the ‘wealth of
analysis’ was outdone by a ‘poverty of execution’. Throughout the volume, Stein and Stein
trace in great detail why certain policies were not implemented, who was in favour, who
against. The immediate economic and otherwise interests of the parties involved are
examined on the base of a remarkable body of primary research and painstakingly careful
work.
In Stein and Stein’s view the failure to implement reform was almost always explained
by some ad hoc collision of interest between groups that were aligned around common
geographical background in Spain, no matter whether their businesses were mainly
active in the peninsula or in the Americas. Any attempt to open up the supposedly
exploitative commercial relationship was blocked by these conflicts that pitched
‘Basques’ against ‘Montañeses’ (Cantabrians) in New Spain, for example. Thus, Spain’s
economy reverted to its supposed ‘default’ once again, that is, a ‘closed’ monopoly
system of trade between peninsula and colonies, designed to enrich the royal treasury
and its cronies in Cadiz.
The second argument is that by the late eighteenth century, New Spain had become a
‘sub-metropolis’. Spain exploited New Spain through the closed trading system, and New
Spain exploited the Spanish Caribbean. Indeed, at times the authors refer to an ‘inverted

1058 BOOK REVIEWS
colonial compact’ (p. 46) that left New Spain with more power than Madrid. Yet, never-
theless, Stein and Stein argue that colonial bureaucrats persistently executed Madrid’s
orders despite their evident local power, and against better knowledge. Why they would
apparently do so remains unclear.
Here the tension between the dependentista framework and the empirical work under-
taken by the authors becomes very pronounced. On hundreds of pages the authors give
example after example of the agency of the Consulados (merchant guilds) of Mexico City
and Veracruz, the miners’ guilds, and various strong networks of merchants, miners,
agricultural interests, and colonial administrators. They also describe in fascinating detail
Spain’s trade with the American territories, which—as they point out—had not been a
‘closed’ trading system for much of the eighteenth century thanks to special conditions
for Buenos Aires, single ships that were allowed to travel outside convoys, and other
licences.
In fact, Spain’s organization of the Americas trades was of course economically speaking
never a true monopoly like the English or Dutch East India Companies. It reflected an
older organizational form that gave trading privileges to a group of merchants who
competed among themselves on individual accounts. It was a very unstable oligopoly,
whose power of exclusion—the essential precondition of monopoly—was always delimited
by the incentive for members to serve as (paid) proxy for outsiders. That contemporaries
called it monopodio should not confuse us; though the Steins are of course in good company
in this confusion, since an embarrassing number of grown-up economists have referred to
the Spanish Carrera de Indias as a monopoly.
Paradoxically, then, this is a fascinating tale of the abolition of a monopoly that never
was. Stein and Stein’s own story seems to be breaking out of the straitjacket of dependency
theory all the time. One of the great merits of this book is to show how old-fashioned,
careful archival research tends to challenge bad models, even if this is clearly not what the
authors intended. Edge of crisis is no easy read. It sometimes feels as if it were written in a
rush. There are repetitions and small mistakes. A scholar writing up a lifetime of research
deserves admiration for the work, and indulgence on these formalities; that Johns Hopkins
Press did not remedy such quirks is less forgivable.
Northwestern University regina grafe
John Haldon, ed., Money, power and politics in early Islamic Syria: a review of current debates
(Farnham: Ashgate, 2010. Pp. xv + 210. 24 figs. 2 maps. 2 tabs. ISBN 9780754668497
Hbk. £55/$99.95)
How is one to understand the transformation of Greater Syria in the early Islamic period
against a background of relative institutional stability? This collection of nine articles, most
of which are the products of a stimulating, thought-provoking workshop held at Princeton
University in 2007, addresses a series of controversial issues concerning the interpretation
of a combination of textual, numismatic, and archaeological evidence. There is also some
attention to Egypt.
Money is a central concern.The most important contribution of this collection lies in its
attention to copper coins. Both Alan Walmsley, in an article on coinage and the economy
of Syria-Palestine, and Lutz Ilisch, in his article on cAbd al-Malik’s copper reform coins,
point out that the Islamic reform coins produced in the 690s were a unified tri-metallic
system in gold, silver, and copper. Ilisch also notes that copper coins would have been in
the hands of most people, that only the copper coins had the complete shahada, and that
they were uniform from western Iran to Egypt for five or six years before they reverted to
provincial variations.
BOOK REVIEWS 1059
However, Walmsley’s suggestion that the lack of numismatic evidence from the later
eighth century indicates demonetization is challenged by Gene Heck’s posthumous article
on Islamic currency in the first century of the hijra. Heck advances a theory of currency
meltdown to provide the bullion for cAbd al-Malik’s coinage reform that would have
reduced the surviving body of numismatic evidence for pre-reform coins and argues for the
accuracy of literary accounts vis-à-vis numismatic evidence. Otherwise, Heck repeats his
familiar ideas about ijāzı̄ mining producing the gold and silver that supported economic
growth and the early Islamic conquests and that early Islamic monetary policy reflected a
need for cash for commerce and to pay salaries/stipends and taxes, along with possibly
anachronous ‘modern’ terminology. However, according to Jairus Banaji, in his contribu-
tion on Late Antique legacies and Muslim economic expansion, this was not new. The
single most enduring Late Antique legacy in the Islamic period was the continued use of
money and its availability in large quantities as evidenced in the assets of individuals, the
levels of taxation in cash, and the continuity of commercial networks.
The problem with all of this is that it sees money only in terms of cash. Indeed, the trend
towards increasing monetization stretches back into Late Antiquity, and by the early
Islamic period enormous amounts of coins were in circulation. However, the supply of
money was increased even more by the development of credit instruments in the Islamic
period as contrasted with Late Antiquity. There is also a rather simplistic equation of cash
with taxation and commerce. One of the problems with early Islamic government was that
the growth sectors of the economy in agriculture and commerce were never taxed effec-
tively. This is probably one reason they were growth sectors, but by the eighth century this
was also one of the main causes of fiscal problems for the government.
With regard to early Islamic administration, Arietta Papaconstantinou examines Egyp-
tian papyrus documents, especially receipts for the requisitions of supplies, to argue for the
importance of negotiation between social groups and the authorities as well as within
groups. Clive Foss argues strenuously that the caliph Mucāwiya had something that ‘could
be called a state’ (p. 93) based on the degree of central control, taxation, a hierarchic chain
of command, and requisitions for the fleet in Egypt. He seems to have overlooked the
existence of two great vice-royalties, one for Iraq and the east and another for Egypt and
the west, from about 670 during the last decade of Mucāwiya’s rule, when the viceroys
appointed their own sub-governors, another good example of hierarchy.
In the only actual contribution on archaeology, Jodi Magness, in her article on early
Islamic urbanism, re-dates continued occupation at the monumental building around the
southern end of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and at the monumental Roman bath
complex at Hammath Gader past the mid-eighth century and well into the cAbbāsid
period. This is based on a critical re-examination of the evidence based on datable pottery
types and leads her to argue that an over-reliance on numismatics can lead to the misdating
of associated remains. This is also part of a revisionist trend, seen also in some of the work
of Donald Whitcomb, to see the continuing occupation of sites in Greater Syria extending
into the cAbbāsid period.
Finally, the contributions of R. Stephen Humphreys on Christian communities and by
Hugh Kennedy on Syrian elites complement each other nicely. Both note that wealthy
Christian landlords lasted until about the ninth century and that the conversion of
Christian Bedouin to Islam meant that Syrian Arab tribal leaders continued to form part
of the elite. However, for Humphreys, this is a matter of the declining fortunes of Syrian
Christians.
Much here is speculative and inconclusive, and there is clearly much more work to be
done in numismatics and archaeology. Although the contributors raise more questions
than they answer, that can be a useful thing.
University of California Los Angeles michael g. morony

1060 BOOK REVIEWS
Joel Wolfe, Autos and progress: the Brazilian search for modernity (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2010. Pp. xi + 269. 26 illus. ISBN 9780195174571 Hbk. £60/$99; ISBN
9780195174564 Pbk. £14.99/$21.95)
Wolfe tells the story of Brazil’s modernization in the last century or so through the
automobile.This is used to narrate important changes in politics, infrastructure, consumer
markets, and society in general, with the automobile as a central component of the
transformation that Brazil experienced from being an elite-dominated agricultural society
to its development as a manufacturing democracy in the late twentieth century.
There are three themes or arguments running through the book. First, there is what has
been termed ‘automobility’, a complex and contested concept which combines the socio-
logical and cultural characteristics of the technology with its economic significance. In
Brazil this led to a fascination with automobiles as emblems of modernity and, in turn, the
development of a very large domestic manufacturing industry and a road network. Second,
automobility promoted the unification and modernization of Brazil. Third, automobility
promoted consumerism in Brazil in general and, through the high salaries of automobile
workers, led to the development of a middle class that ultimately wanted to live in a
democratic country. In short, Wolfe uses automobility as a way to explain the most
important transformations in Brazil in the twentieth century, giving it a central role in the
initial industrialization of the country in the early twentieth century, in the modernization
of society in the period from 1940 to the 1960s, and the democratization of the country in
the 1980s after the military regime of 1964–85.
The book is divided into six chapters and an epilogue. Chapter 1 describes the intro-
duction of automobiles as an elite product in the early twentieth century, while chapter 2
explains how the advent of a mass market for automobiles forced the development of
interior roads and city streets in the south-east of the country. Chapter 3 examines the
diffusion of Fordism and Americanism with the arrival of American assembly plants in
Brazil, and argues that automobility was fundamental in shaping Brazil’s long-term indus-
trial development. Chapter 4 focuses on explaining how the civil war of the 1930s and the
government’s development plans after the Second World War impacted on Brazilian
modernization. This includes a nice section on the rise of automobile racing as a national
sport in Brazil; it also narrates how the reliance on petrol led the government in 1953 to
create Petrobras, the largest publicly listed company in Latin America. Chapter 5 is an
enthusiastic account of the 1950s, narrating the incredible expansion of Brazil’s automo-
bile industry and the continued growth of its road network. It is during this period that the
automobile industry provided the best opportunities for social mobility for migrants from
the interior of Brazil and, according to the author, this is the period when a large class
of Brazilian middle-class consumers developed. Chapter 6 argues that automobiles and
industrialization in general created a middle class that wanted democracy and takes the
reader through the dark years of military dictatorship and the subsequent redemocratiza-
tion of the country. This chapter also explains how, thanks to Brazil’s ambitions to export
automobiles, and as a consequence of the oil shocks of the 1970s, the Brazilian government
ended up developing an ethanol industry. The book ends with an epilogue of what
happened between the 1980s and the present. It focuses on the process of democratization
in Brazil and the importance of automobility in promoting this process.
The book is well written, well researched, and accessible to anyone, yet lacks many of the
features economic historians like, such as tables or figures, international comparisons, and
hypothesis testing. Moreover, the role the author attributes to automobility leaves the
reader with a sense that the book was a bit too ambitious in scope; put simply, the author
tried to explain too much through automobility. In addition, for Brazilian experts the book
feels like the author overstretched the concept of automobility and consumerism, which
works fine in the US, to the Brazilian case without devoting sufficient time to explaining the

BOOK REVIEWS 1061
basic fact that Brazilians who had access to automobiles were in fact a small elite relative
to the masses that lived in extreme poverty.Thus, while Wolfe portrays his book as a history
of the rise of automobility as a middle-class phenomenon in Brazil, in practice a large part
of the book is, in fact, a history of the Brazilian elite’s fascination for automobiles. Some
numbers on the relative access to automobiles compared to other countries would have
been useful to put things in perspective. These problems aside, this is a fascinating
work because the obstacles to automobility are so tightly linked to the constraints on
economic development in Brazil, namely its poor infrastructure, fragmented geography,
and convoluted politics. Autos and progress should motivate students to learn more about
Brazil and I am sure will captivate historians interested in the history of automobiles and
automobility.
Harvard Business School aldo musacchio
Juliet K. Walker, The history of black business in America: capitalism, race, entrepreneurship.
Vol. I, to 1865. Second edition (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009.
Pp. xxiv + 405. 38 tabs. ISBN 9780807832417 Hbk. $65)
If truth was marching on during the Civil War, money was unable to maintain the pace for
African Americans.This has prompted Walker to revise the first edition of her monumental
book The history of black business in America by dividing it into two volumes and adding
an introduction and a new chapter on the Civil War years. Walker observes that ‘old and
young, sick and well, they [African Americans] were turned loose to the open sky, naked
to their enemies’ (p. 273). Her history transcends the normal boundaries of the field and
moves into the realm of prescient philosophy or, as Lewis Carroll might have it, a corrective
to the ‘poor sort of memory that only works backwards’.
The Civil War chapter is brilliantly conceived and beautifully written, prompting me to
amend one observation of my review of the first edition (in 1999 for H-Business) that,
while not meant to detract from Walker’s work, may have been an anodyne for sceptics and
those of limited thinking ability bent on marginalizing black history. In contrast to my
earlier comment that ‘No effective discussion of the black community can go on without
. . . Walker’s book as a basis for understanding the peculiarities and promises of Black life
in American’, I amend those words and widen the circle to bring in those who would wish
to know more fully about American history in general and its treatment of a so-called
minority of people referred to now as African Americans.
We see the centrality of business in the specific instance of African American history and
the general case of American history during the Civil War era. Blacks had to carry the
burden of colour when bidding for economic sustenance in a nation where ‘in the absence
of wealth, if nothing else, . . . whiteness should count as “currency” to pay for societal
advantages that would distinguish poor whites from blacks, whether slave or free. The
nation’s skin privilege phenomenon was intensified by the Civil War’ (p. 195). The Civil
War catapulted America into modernity for many, but blacks left the plantation with hope
as their only resource. Daunting though the situation was, black leaders came to the fore
and a new vision and vocabulary prevailed. The overriding dictates (understandably so)
were how to feed oneself and build homes, and develop that ‘lifting as we climb’ sense of
community; all of this despite the fact that the ‘Civil War not only produced a downturn in
black business advancement but also presaged the state of black commerce in post-Civil
War America’ (p. 196). Entrepreneurial and business opportunities continued to be a
source of optimism, since the former bondsmen and bondswomen knew all too well the
results of unrequited labour.Walker narrates the dawning of this story, invokingW. E. B. Du
Bois to point out that ‘To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars
1062 BOOK REVIEWS
is the very bottom of hardships’ (p. 270). Thus while the Civil War appeared to be a
promising coda for blacks in business, they found themselves up against new and different
commercial challenges in industrializing America.
Walker’s central thesis is that ‘The Civil War . . . marked the peripheralization of black
activity in the subsequent development of the industrial-based American business com-
munity’ (p. 199). There were approximately 2,000 black businesses during the Civil War.
African American entrepreneurs mostly provided goods and services to their local towns
and cities, and, in the words of Walker, ‘in pre-Civil War, preindustrial America, blacks did
not require substantial outlays of venture capital to launch a business’ (p. 197). Without
venture capital and with blacks being driven out of business, entrepreneurship became
increasingly difficult in the African American community. Areas that did show some
growth, however, were in procurement of some military contracts, the undertaking busi-
ness (understandably so), and the fuel business. Even with $57 million saved in the
Freedman’s Bank over its first seven years, the only advantage accruing to black investors,
according to Walker, was ‘interest received on their savings—initially one per cent—
. . . [as] their savings were seldom available for loans to blacks for reinvestment in the black
community’ (p. 256).Walker goes on to postulate that ‘had there not been a Civil War, quite
possibly the history of black business participation in the United States might have ended
before the close of the nineteenth century’ (p. 207).
Walker argues that ‘Clearly, American history has failed African Americans if, indeed,
the purpose of history is to interpret the past as a basis for assessing the present and
providing insight for charting a more positive future’ (p. 204). She may wish to cast her net
wider. I witnessed the extent to which it failed all too many Americans at the Business
History Conference’s annual meeting this year. The plenary session was about to get out
of hand until Walker set the record straight. What was being skirted in the discussion was
the impact of racism and bigotry in the destruction of eager African American entrepre-
neurs who find no support from the banking community or government. If these odds do
not beat down black businesspersons, they face the double whammy of being told they lack
the necessary cognitive tools or tradition. Walker articulated this with full command of her
subject matter and teacher’s zeal. The story, after all, is one of (to quote one past black
leader) ‘finding a way out of no way’.We must take heed of more historians like Walker and
Nell Painter who provide history where the purpose is to provide guidance, not merely
armchair knowledge. Then maybe we will see more of that marriage of truth and money in
the making of a better America.
University of Texas at El Paso maceo crenshaw dailey
Lex Heerma van Voss, Els Hiemstra-Kuperus, and Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk, eds.,
The Ashgate companion to the history of textile workers, 1650–2000 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010.
Pp. xxiii + 836. 19 figs. 23 maps. 69 tabs. ISBN 9780754664284 Hbk. £75/$144.95)
This volume is unusual in scale and scope. Following a pattern established by an earlier
‘companion’ on dockworkers, the editors have assembled 34 additional international
specialists to cover textile workers and the textile industry in 21 countries on all continents,
and designed a structure that includes both chronological and thematic contributions.
Although the history of textile workers is the stated focus, understanding differences in the
nature, organization, and experience of these industries in various locations, including
products, markets, and global trends, is a clear prerequisite. The book is, therefore, more
than comparative labour history and has some elements of a major global study of an
industrial sector over time.There are some really penetrating and thought-provoking essays
that increase the importance of the volume as a contribution to contemporary debates in
BOOK REVIEWS 1063
global history. Others stray somewhat from the menu of comparative issues and from the
longer time frame: perhaps the inevitable result of such an ambitious, almost unwieldy,
collaborative effort.
Dictated from the outset by the availability of data and the interests of potential
contributors, the unit of analysis in the chronological essays is the nation state even where,
as the editors suggest, this is not always the most appropriate. The main criterion for
inclusion of the national studies was that a country’s cotton and/or woollen industry should
account for at least 1.5 per cent of global production at the point when reliable comparative
figures become available from the International Labour Office in the 1930s. Although
massive geographical shifts occurred in the loci of textile activity over the three-and-a-half
centuries covered by the volume, these criteria ensured that all major historic textile
producers are included. There are, however, some unfortunate lacunae created by inability
to secure contributions (France, Indonesia, Australia, and Belgium), and the serendipitous
addition of less centrally important producers (Egypt, Uruguay, and Denmark), though the
latter provide interesting comparative case study evidence. The detailed essays on China,
Brazil, Argentina, Italy, Egypt, India, Japan, and Poland are particularly welcome and
enlightening.
A strong case is made that globalization began, at least in textiles, in the early modern
period. Long commodity chains in semi-processed and finished textile goods, the
co-existence of mechanized and hand technologies in different locations, international
competition influenced by colonialism and global inequalities, have been characteristic of
the sector over the whole period. The persistence of workshop, household, and craft
technologies alongside mechanization and factories into the twenty-first century warns
against a view that identifies worldwide development of the sector with any linear model.
Indeed the cotton and woollen industries provide ample evidence of different paths and
patterns to industrialization, including the more labour-intensive patterns experienced in
much of Asia. As is well known, the liberalization of world markets and competition in the
second half of the twentieth century is shown to have produced a dramatic decline in textile
production in the former core areas of the world in favour of Asia in general and China in
particular. Here the story is enlivened by contrasting national experiences and perspectives.
Although conditions for textiles workers varied a great deal across the studies, gender
divisions are shown to have been a particularly constant and enduring feature of the labour
market across time and space. Recourse to wage-cutting in the face of global competition,
via mechanization, piece rate systems, the substitution of female and child labour for adult
males, and global relocation, is also shown to be a major feature of the industry trans-
nationally and over time. The bargaining power of textile workers has been historically
weak and on a global level militancy was concentrated in the ‘de-globalization’ period of
1914–45, rather than before or after. Despite the Bombay textile strike of 1982–3 being
perhaps the largest industrial conflict the world has ever seen, militancy on a world scale,
particularly in former core regions, has declined faster than the industry for a multitude of
reasons, not least the ease and threat of international relocation. The ability to explore this
and other questions about the global textile industry, and its workers, from a multitude of
international perspectives is a major achievement of the volume.
Swansea University/London School of Economics pat hudson
Patrice Baubeau and Anders Ogren, eds., Convergence and divergence of national financial
systems: evidence from the gold standards, 1817–1971 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2010.
Pp. xiv + 306. 40 figs. 36 tabs. ISBN 9781851966486 Hbk. £60/$99)
Whether or not an ideal model of credit intermediation exists, and why various systems did
or did not converge towards it, are among the most debated issues in financial history.This
1064 BOOK REVIEWS
volume revisits these questions with contributions which are the results of a series of
workshops specifically designed to promote young scholars. The book comprises an intro-
duction and 12 chapters divided into four general sections.
Section I, ‘The social mechanisms of financial convergence’, contains three chapters (by
Patrick Verley; Jean-Luc Mastin; and Kim Oosterink and Angelo Riva), all focusing on the
French case during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A picture emerges not only of
specific geographic areas or segments struggling to be integrated into the national market,
but also of the extreme difficulty of harmonizing working practices. Thus the general
message emerging from this section is that even at the national level financial convergence
is not an automatic process. Despite its title (‘National convergence and divergences in the
long term’), the second section, in fact, mainly examines international issues, in particular
an analysis of whether or not long-term convergence is a clearly observable historical
phenomenon. Thus chapter 4, by David Le Bris, focuses on a comparison between the
French and the American stock markets, while the contribution by Carlo Brambilla
(chapter 5) studies the investment policy of pre-1914 European banks. The conclusions of
these two papers suggest the existence of contradictory trends: while integration was visible
in the stock market, this was not the case in the banking industry. Chapter 6 by Dirk
Drechsel focuses on Switzerland and analyses how different monetary regimes impacted
on the stability of the banking sector.
The third section, ‘Convergence and historical shocks’, examines the role of exogenous
shocks in shaping the structure and features of financial systems. Chapter 7 (by the editors)
analyses how differing degrees of commitment to the Second World War impacted on the
involvement of banks and stock markets in the credit markets of various countries, while
the other two contributions in this section analyse national cases: Spain during the civil war
(chapter 8 by Pablo Martin-Acena, Elena Martinez Riuz, and Maria Pons) and Britain
during the financial crisis of 1914 (chapter 9 by Richard Roberts). Here the overall
conclusion is that random shocks introduce idiosyncratic constraints and opportunities to
the action of policy-makers who shape the structure of financial systems accordingly. Thus
even assuming the theoretical existence of a ‘perfect’ system, the impact of exogenous
shocks constrains the convergence of national financial sectors. The final section allegedly
studies the relationship between monetary arrangements and convergence among financial
systems, although various contributions only follow this path very loosely. Chapter 10 by
Kalina Dimitrova and Luca Fantacci analyses the establishment of the gold standard in
eastern Europe, including whether or not this reflected the willingness to converge towards
an established model. Chapter 11 by Antoine Gentier looks at the Italian crisis of 1893,
which marked the end of the controversial experience of currency convertibility. Finally,
chapter 12 by Jeroene Euwe studies the development of Amsterdam as an international
financial centre.
Overall, the volume provides many interesting studies and mostly from young scholars.
While the quality of individual chapters varies substantially, this is nonetheless a welcome
contribution to the field of financial history. However, it is not very well edited or
organized. In particular, the introduction, which is fundamental in a collection covering a
set of very diverse issues, countries, and historical phases, is confusing and provides little
guidance for navigation through the chapters. In addition, segments of the introduction are
repeated exactly at the beginning of chapter 7; and the title of some of the sections, and the
rationale for including specific chapters in them, is not always very clear: for example,
section II is allegedly on national convergence but two out of the three chapters are, in fact,
on international comparison. Moreover, chapter 6 would naturally fit in section IV which,
in turn, has a fuzzy title and contains chapter 12 which appears to have little in common
with the other two contributions.
University of Birmingham paolo di martino

BOOK REVIEWS 1065
Hiroyuki Odagiri, Akira Goto, Atsushi Sunami, and Richard R. Nelson, eds., Intellectual
property rights, development, and catch-up (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Pp. xii + 451. 28 figs. 48 tabs. ISBN 9780199574759 Hbk. £65/$120)
Intellectual property rights (IPRs), primarily in the form of patents, have existed in major
economies for centuries. Yet despite years of industrialization, economic transformation,
and technical change, economists have never demonstrated convincingly that IPRs have an
important causal impact on innovation and growth. The essential reason for this paradox
is the complexity of innovation and growth, which are multi-dimensional phenomena
arising from any number of circumstances, including history and random chance.Whether
IPRs encourage, discourage, or have any impact at all in this milieu is highly context-
specific. Further, available measures of the strength or scope of patent protection are
simply too crude to isolate any roles they may play in determining technological change.
This inferential problem does not mean that patents are unimportant. Rather, it means
that any real understanding of their roles must come from fitting them into detailed studies
of the history, economics, and politics of individual nations.This is the essential task of this
volume, which offers a series of fascinating accounts of industrial development and
catch-up in 11 economically important countries, ranging from the long-since technologi-
cally advanced (for example, the US and Japan), to the recently emergent (Korea and
Israel), and to the rapidly evolving (Brazil, China, and India). The model in each chapter
is for the authors to offer a close study of the nature of technical changes supporting
development and to attempt to place IPRs into that context. In every case the analysis leads
to the same essential conclusion: intellectual property may have mattered in some specific
situations but it was just one factor in a complex stew of policies, labour markets, trade,
education, innovation, and other fundamental elements of growth. Anyone who really
believes, on the one hand, that simply reforming patents and copyrights will lead to a
flowering of innovation, or, on the other, that stronger IPRs will retard the ability of firms
in developing countries to acquire and use technologies, needs to read this book for a
strong dose of reality.
An introductory chapter by the editors sets the stage by describing their conception of
what constitutes technological ‘catch-up’, how economies learn, and the basic evolution of
patent systems. They note the famous ‘two faces’ of IPRs: the beneficial possibility that
patents may encourage innovation and technology transfer and the worrisome concern that
patents could support monopoly power and restrict learning through imitation. These
cross-cutting issues (which are far deeper and bear more facets than this simple concept)
lie at the foundation of any treatment of intellectual property and require close study in
specific cases. To manage that, the chapters devoted to each country’s experience are
organized in a standardized format: they provide the background policy history; describe
the process of development and industrial catch-up; place IPRs into some statistical
perspective; and supplement the discussion with some cases studies of individual firms. In
this context the analysis is sometimes tedious—there are lengthy discussions of patent-law
reforms that often are not tied closely to subsequent development—and sometimes mis-
leading, as often happens when authors rely on patent statistics to illuminate innovation
trends. Indeed, one general shortcoming is that the authors rarely present any systematic
data analysis, leaving readers to wonder if basic patent trends are in any way related to
policy reforms.
In the broader picture this is a minor shortcoming because the greater interest lies in the
historical discussions of economic and technological development and, especially, in the
firm-level case studies. These experiences provide a wealth of detail of interest to any
IPRs-policy analysts. An excellent example is the chapter on Israel. That country’s devel-
opment story involves an early commitment to establishing world-class scientific and
educational and research institutions, such as Hebrew University and the Technion, in the

1066 BOOK REVIEWS
1920s, along with courting the immigration of scientists and skilled workers. One result
was the development of local generic pharmaceutical producers and distributors (Teva,
founded 1901).These factors continued after independence in 1948, combined with heavy
imports of capital and technology. Technology policy was developed in the shadow of
uncertainty about military hostility and potential boycotts by neighbouring countries. A
significant step was the establishment in the 1960s of direct government support pro-
grammes for applied industrial R&D, which is widely credited with improving Israel’s use
and development of science and technology. One major idiosyncratic factor was strong
support within the defence budget for military R&D, which quickly spilled over into
industrial applications as a number of soldier-entrepreneurs established businesses in
information technology, technical inputs, and other key sectors. Whether IPRs had much
to do with this history is only treated in the case studies of five companies, with a mixed
message. One prominent ICT company (Elscint) immediately saw a need to patent
extensively in Israel, the US, and the EU in order to build defensive licensing systems.
Another (M-Systems) relied on patent licensing with Samsung and Toshiba to build a
global business in flash disks. A third (Mirabilis) successfully used copyrights and trade-
marks to sell its instant-messaging software. Arguably, these are cases where IPRs sup-
ported technical development and the chapter authors see such rights as important. At the
same time, Teva’s post-independence development as one of the world’s greatest generic
pharmaceutical producers was likely encouraged by relatively limited patent scope before
the 1990s. However, its primary strategies were to acquire similar firms in the US and
Europe and to invest strongly in complementary relationships and services. It is doubtful
that Israel’s patent policy played a key role in the overall emergence of the firm.
These kinds of histories may be found in nearly all the chapters. For example, in the
1960s South Korea established research institutes in order to invest in human capital and
advanced training for indigenous scientists and engineers. It adopted laws on capital-goods
imports and guidelines on technology transfer that prioritized particular types of tech-
nology and set ceiling royalty rates, later relaxed. Behind these policies domestic firms
acquired significant amounts of technical information. Much of this focused on improving
labour-intensive production early in the period but rapidly shifted into indigenous devel-
opment of higher-technology areas, such as semiconductors and electronic components.
As for IPRs, in the 1960s and 1970s the government set up an effective patent office and
revised its industrial policy laws. However, the scope of patents was limited considerably in
relation to prior law, a fact to which the authors ascribe the rapid expansion of Korean
patent applications after 1980. Only later did the patent and copyright laws become
consonant with those in the advanced countries. China appears to be following this model
rather closely, albeit with a greater focus on using its market size to attract technologies that
may improve productivity in domestic enterprises. Perhaps surprisingly, in light of wide-
spread complaints about strategic enforcement of IPRs in China, the authors of that
chapter overall are enthusiastic about the importance of patents in the country’s industrial
transformation. Their description of the emergence of Huawei into a global leader in
wireless and other electronic technologies is disappointingly unbalanced in that context.
In summary, while the volume is uneven, the detailed chapters are worth consulting as
interesting histories of how various countries have moved toward the global technological
frontier and what roles domestic IPRs may have played. The analyses largely support the
claim that patents have helped organized structural change but have at times been impedi-
ments to growth. In any event, IPRs must be placed into specific contexts. There is no
magic intellectual-property bullet that can induce development. Rather, economic growth
relies on a wide range of fundamental—and sometimes surprising—factors that are likely
more important to the story.
University of Colorado at Boulder keith e. maskus

BOOK REVIEWS 1067
Donald R. Stabile, The living wage: lessons from the history of economic thought (Cheltenham:
Edward Elgar, 2008. Pp. viii + 163. ISBN 9781848441972 Hbk. £59.95/$100)
Recent years have seen campaigns for the living wage achieve a renewed prominence in
both the UK and the US. Stabile’s new book is thus timely in offering a concise account
of arguments among economists over the living wage. The coverage focuses primarily on
the period since Adam Smith, but with brief excursions into ancient and medieval discus-
sions. As the sub-title suggests, Stabile’s aim is very much to address current concerns
though a survey of past debates about remuneration.
Stabile organizes his material into three main chapters, each of which addresses what he
takes to be a key aspect of the case for a living wage. The first deals with arguments about
‘sustainability’ or the claim that insufficient wages lead to the exhaustion of the working
population. Stabile charts a persistent tendency to incorporate a ‘decency’ component into
understandings of a subsistence wage, and an enduring recognition among economic
thinkers of just how low pay was for many workers in the developed world prior to the
twentieth century. He rightly notes the prevalent view that workers were at a disadvantage
in bargaining, and the related sympathy towards trade unions among many nineteenth-
century writers. Stabile stresses the importance attached to the distinction between ‘neces-
sities’ and ‘luxuries’ in analyses of remuneration. In this, as in other chapters, Stabile
identifies a division between ‘moral’ and ‘market’ economists, and presents Pareto as a key
figure in inaugurating the dominance of the latter group in the twentieth century through
his focus on free exchange and his conception of optimality.
The examination of ‘sustainability’ is followed by a study of the closely related question
of ‘capability’. This chapter details claims about the importance of adequate pay for the
development of civic virtue, but also scrutinizes arguments about the productivity gains
resulting from higher wages. The former receives the bulk of the attention in a survey that
ranges from John Stuart Mill and Alfred Marshall to John R. Hicks, Gary S. Becker, and
Amartya Sen. The latter was, though, highly influential in late nineteenth-century debates,
often reflecting a view of technological change that emphasized the increasing rather than
decreasing demands on skill created by innovation. This suggests some of the difficulties
generated by seeking to make historical analysis speak to present concerns. The notion of
‘capability’ employed here derives primarily from more recent discussions, and its appli-
cation to earlier debates can conjoin arguments that contemporaries often separated.
The third organizing concept utilized is that of ‘externality’. This terminology emerged
only in the twentieth century, but Stabile contends that it raises the same issues as ancient
disputes over morals and markets.This is certainly the most wide-ranging of the three main
chapters, as Stabile uses the notion of externality to extend the variety of impacts through
which the efficacy of the living wage is to be evaluated. Arthur Pigou appears as the prime
mover in defining an externality, while John Maurice Clarke features as the main exponent
of its relevance to capturing the consequences of low wages. As in earlier chapters, Stabile
offers short summaries of the views of a number of twentieth-century economists, here
including Ronald Coase’s work on social costs and Arthur Okun’s analysis of ‘the big
trade-off’ between efficiency and equality. The final chapter draws the ‘lessons’ from the
more historical sections, noting that many ‘moral’ economists preferred the voluntarism of
unions to statutory enactment of a living wage, while also stressing, topically enough, the
utopianism of ‘perfect competition’ and the claims of fairness.
This is a tightly written book that recognizes the rich heritage of debates about wages
within political economy. Stabile is quite right to note the widespread support for high
wages among eighteenth- and nineteenth-century writers. The sections on American
institutionalists are particularly helpful, and the book as a whole provides a useful intro-
duction to its subject.There are, though, losses as well as gains associated with its structure
and coverage. The organization of the material through the conceptual framework of

1068 BOOK REVIEWS
contemporary economics does curtail its capacity to reveal the complexity and context of
earlier debates. Covering such a range of thinkers inevitably occludes some of the particu-
larities of their positions. The book is primarily addressed to economists (and their
students) who recognize that their subject does have a history. Intellectual historians
seeking to understand economic ideas in context are not its main constituency, and this is
reflected in its organization and approach. It is perhaps a shame that the underlying
questions about the appropriate distribution of resources are not explored more fully, but
this would have required a broader canvas. As it is, this economical work does the job it sets
out to do with clarity and care.
University of Bristol james thompson
Anthony B. Atkinson and Thomas Piketty, eds., Top incomes: a global perspective (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2010. Pp. xxi + 776. 161 figs. 172 tabs. ISBN 9780199286898
Hbk. £50/$90)
The top income shares approach represents an important contribution to the study of
historical inequality as it provides homogeneous long-run series, largely comparable across
countries. Under the leadership of Atkinson and Piketty, this approach was initially applied
to study top income and wealth shares for a sample of advanced nations from which a series
of essays resulted, many of them collected in a companion volume published in 2007 which
contrasted continental European and English-speaking countries. This approach has now
been successfully extended to developing countries’ experience since the late nineteenth
century. In Asia, India (Abhijit Banerjee and Piketty), Indonesia (Andrew Leigh and Pierre
van der Eng), Japan (Chiaki Moriguichi and Emmanuel Saez), Singapore (Atkinson), and
post-1980 China (Piketty and Nancy Qian) are considered. In Europe, the focus has been
on Scandinavia (Sweden (Jesper Roine and Daniel Waldenström), Norway (Rolf Aaberge
and Atkinson), and Finland (Markus Jaanti, Marja Riihelä, Risto Sullström, and Matti
Tuomala)) and the Latin countries (Italy (Facundo Alvaredo and Elena Pisano), Portugal
(Alvaredo), and Spain (Alvaredo and Emmanuel Saez), to which Argentina (Alvaredo) has
been added). An excellent overview of their findings by Atkinson, Piketty, and Saez,
including comparisons with developed countries and a most useful statistical appendix,
closes the volume.
Piketty and Atkinson found that, since people with high incomes have been obliged to
pay taxes since modern economic growth began, their tax statistics were available for many
countries over long periods of time. If these top incomes are related to reference totals for
the whole population and its incomes, top income shares can be obtained over the
long-run. Computing inequality this way is hard but straightforward work. Top income
(and wealth) shares are derived by dividing the sums of incomes in different top fractiles
by the sum of all incomes earned by the entire (tax) population, had everyone filed a
personal tax return. Under the assumption that top incomes are Pareto distributed, and
using standard interpolation techniques, income shares for top fractiles (top 10, 1, and 0.1
per cent) can be computed. This approach is not free from shortcomings. It is silent about
inequality at the bottom of the distribution and its outcome cannot be decomposed into
within-group and between-group inequality. Moreover, the definition of income changes
and tax legislation varies across countries and over time, rendering the comparison of
inequality levels across countries difficult. Furthermore—and this is often highlighted by
its critics—the resulting estimates might be biased because of tax avoidance and evasion,
though against this it can be said that the information used refers to those who should pay
taxes, not to the taxes actually paid.
Turning to empirical matters, international comparisons suggest that most countries
shared similar inequality trends (although with different intensity). A drop in income
BOOK REVIEWS 1069
concentration occurred in the early twentieth century as top capital incomes fell due to
destruction, inflation, bankruptcy, and fiscal and monetary policies to finance war debts.
This trend was then heightened by the depression of the 1930s and then the Second
World War, with a larger drop in top shares among war-hit countries. Progressive income
and estate taxation impeded the recovery of top shares up to the 1970s. However, since
the 1980s there has been relative stability in top shares in continental Europe, but not
in other, particularly Anglo-Saxon, countries where top shares have risen once more on
the back of large increases in top salaries. These trends, originally found for OECD
countries, fit rather well the experience of developing countries, even those that did not
participate in the world wars and in which progressive taxation has been a late event.
Such robust results lend support to an empirical regularity in which inequality exhibits
a ‘U’ shape, as against Kuznets’ ‘inverted U’ story. Furthermore, whereas Kuznets’
‘inverted U’ is mainly an economic explanation, here we have mainly a political inter-
pretation of inequality.
An important question confronts the reader. Does the top income share approach
provide a comprehensive measure of aggregate inequality? Unfortunately, there is no
attempt here to assess the significance of their inequality description in comparison to
alternative measures, such as inequality estimates on the basis of household surveys (used
for the second half of the twentieth century) or the short-cut method usually employed for
the nineteenth and early twentieth century, that of land rent/unskilled wage ratios and/or
the GDP per worker/unskilled wage ratio. Is it sufficient to cite other works in which a high
correlation is found between top income shares and Gini measures?—a question posed by
Andrew Leigh’s ‘How closely do top income shares track other measures of inequality?’
(Economic Journal, 2007). One wonders why the top income share approach and the Gini
coefficient produce broadly the same results when they are addressing different aspects of
inequality: the former addressing concentration at the top end of the distribution and the
latter a measure of inequality at the middle point. Would a lack of correlation between
alternative inequality measures challenge their validity? If so, recent research by Branko
Milanovic et al. (Economic Journal, forthcoming) indicates that in traditional societies the
link between top income shares and overall inequality is not strong. A further question that
emerges from this volume concerns whether the top share approach is restricted in
application to the twentieth century. Since Atkinson et al. have pushed the approach’s
boundaries beyond the developed countries, would it also be possible to push them back
in time to cover the industrialization era? A discussion of the interactions between inequal-
ity and economic development would also be welcomed. Thus, has there been a trade-off
between egalitarian ambitions and incentive effects?
Overall, together with its 2007 companion, Top incomes provides a path-breaking con-
tribution to economic history and helps to bridge the gap between development economics
and economic history that deserves the close attention of our profession and of social
scientists in general.
Universidad Carlos III leandro prados de la escosura
Jeffrey M. Chwieroth, Capital ideas: the IMF and the rise of financial liberalization (Princeton,
NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2010. Pp. xviii + 311. 1 fig. 5 tabs. ISBN
9780691142319 Hbk. £52/$75; ISBN 9780691142326 Pbk. £20.95/$29.95)
This book is about the historical trajectory of one capital idea: what to do about the
movement of capital across borders. In the postwar settlement that came into effect with
the Bretton Woods Agreement, these movements were widely seen as potentially disruptive
of domestic policy autonomy. The two leading negotiators, John Maynard Keynes and
1070 BOOK REVIEWS
Harry Dexter White, both defended the idea that countries might legitimately use capital
controls in an effort to eliminate short-term, speculative capital mobility. It is perhaps
no wonder, then, that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) came to look at capital
controls in the same benign way. Born out of the accords and staffed with Bretton Woods
delegation people, the organization comfortably endorsed what Chwieroth calls ‘Keyne-
sian standards of behavior’ (p. 107), which encouraged governments to implement controls
in response to payment imbalances and capital flow volatility. So—and this is the puzzle of
Capital ideas—how is it that by the late 1990s, this same organization had become one of
the main advocates of capital controls liberalization worldwide?
It turns out that the consensus on capital controls had never been terribly strong to begin
with. Going all the way back to 1945, Chwieroth shows that powerful voices in the US and
Germany spoke against the policy almost immediately. The US refused to support coop-
erative capital controls from the start, effectively nipping in the bud bilateral initiatives.
Then, in the 1960s, the advent of massive worldwide capital volatility and supportive
economic analyses coming out of the neoclassical synthesis gave new legitimacy to capital
freedom advocates.The Fund’s leadership, in the person of Per Jacobsson, forced a change
in the IMF official position as early as 1961, which implicitly downplayed the dangers of
capital volatility. By the Latin American debt crisis, the message coming out of the US
Treasury and the Federal Reserve and, increasingly, IMF management too, had changed
singularly in tone. By and large capital outflows were now seen as a ‘symptom of poor
fundamentals’ (pp. 149–52). A neoliberal focus on restoring these fundamentals was
regarded as the right policy response, and capital controls were only tolerated to the extent
that they helped manage the transition. In the decades that followed, the IMF staff started
working hard to promote the long-run goal of dismantling capital controls wherever they
existed, although important differences of opinion emerged—and persist to this day—on
how this dismantling should be done: gradually, or in a ‘big bang’. Capital freedom had
become the new norm.
Chwieroth walks his reader gradually and carefully through all the twists and turns that
history took on this question. The reader sometimes desires a reflexive pause, to take stock
of the broader meaning of his dense narrative. Consider: in the 1940s, Keynes and White
saw capital mobility as a problem that needed eliminating so that countries could run their
domestic economic programmes in peace; by the 1980s, however, capital mobility had
morphed into the solution to the troubles caused by domestic autonomy—a way to disci-
pline poorly performing states and governments. In the old ‘Keynesian’ logic, speculative
capital was wrong, a dark force that could destabilize government priorities. In the new
‘neoliberal’ logic, capital was right, a positive force that punished the sinners and rewarded
the virtuous.
This inversion was, of course, pregnant with extraordinary symbolic and moral
significance—not to mention considerable political and economic consequences; for
instance, the fact that the US economy was the main beneficiary of the repeal of capital
controls worldwide is not irrelevant to the story told here, as is shown in Greta Krippner’s
Capitalizing on crisis: political origins of the rise of finance in the US economy (2011). Chwi-
eroth is certainly not the first scholar to have demonstrated this shift, yet by focusing on
IMF internal politics he makes his demonstration precisely and well. His attention to
sociological detail pays off analytically, too. People have long careers at the IMF. Staff
recruited in the 1940s did not retire until the 1980s, which might explain why the IMF
actually lagged slightly behind the economics profession on the question of capital con-
trols. However, when these older staff were replaced, the new generations were completely
up-to-speed on the new neoclassical consensus on capital movements (a proposition
Chwieroth actually demonstrates through the ingenious use of a survey). Incidentally,
stable staff and recruitment patterns also explain why the current consensus is so hard to
displace now, even in the face of major economic crisis.

BOOK REVIEWS 1071
Thus the last third of the book focuses on the wave of financial earthquakes that have
rocked the world since the late 1990s. The Asian experience, particularly Malaysia’s
effective use of capital controls in 1997, sharply strengthened the position of gradualists
within the IMF. The recent subprime crisis renewed appreciation for regulatory reform.
However, Chwieroth says, we have not come full circle; far from it. Even though lip service
is being paid to Keynes, the full Keynesian rationale, which associated capital controls with
a strong domestic agenda, is unlikely to come back. Rather, and due in part to its own
internal structure, the IMF has been stuck in neoliberal limbo—accepting limited capital
controls in practice and continuing to repudiate them in theory. For the same reasons it has
also been powerless (and unwilling) to regulate international capital markets that are
dominated by its own principals—a source of lasting, if sometimes muted, legitimacy crisis.
History never returns—it plays itself, Marx said, ‘the first time as tragedy, the second time
as farce’.
University of California, Berkeley marion fourcade

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Economic History Review, 64, 3 (2011), pp.

Duke University joseph shatzmiller

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Swansea University/London School of Economics pat hudson

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the assessments, he shows that it is difficult to be precise. One-hearth houses tended to

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Wiltshire and Swindon Archives steven hobbs

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