线下|剑桥春季学期：近代早期经济-社会史系列研讨会（1月19日—3月16日）
Early Modern Economic and Social History Seminar
Cambridge, Lent Term 2023
1月19日—3月16日
线下
摘要
19 January – Hillary Taylor (Cambridge)
‘Paternalism and the politics of “toll corn” in early modern England’
This paper examines controversies related to a neglected aspect of early modern English grain marketing: toll corn. Such disputes and the litigation that they occasioned provided opportunities for individuals of various positions — including grain sellers — to reassert normative ideals about the considerations that should take precedence in the market: specifically, the belief that the needs of the poor should outweigh the interests of private individuals (or corporate entities), and that authorities had a paternalistic duty to ensure that the poor’s needs were met. That these points were articulated in toll corn disputes throughout the period indicates their continued hold in some quarters, even after they had ceased to be reflected in ‘official’ policies regarding grain provision and marketing. However, controversies about toll corn also demonstrated the extent to which such thinking could ring hollow in practice. Individual authorities’ willingness to fulfil the material component of their duty to their inferiors was not accompanied by a mandate that they do so kindly. The politics of toll corn — like contemporary ideologies and practices of paternalism — both enabled and circumscribed the labouring population’s ability to shape the terms of their subordination in early modern England.
2 February – Li Jiang (Exeter)
Wage labour and living standards in early modern England: evidence from Lancashire, 1580-1620
Based on the Shuttleworth accounts, 1582-1621, probate inventories and other supporting documents, this paper discusses life-cycle changes of Lancashire wage workers’ living standards during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The discussion is divided into three sections: cost of living, annual wage income and levels of wealth. The accounts record the cost of ‘tabling’ workers, which involved providing food and drink. Using this evidence, it is argued that instead of following a stable basket of consumables, the costs of feeding wage workers ranged widely and were influenced by diverse factors, such as the prices of food, the demand for labour strength and the skills applied in tasks. Low annual wage incomes and high turnover rates of workers do not suggest a high-pressure labour market where workers were desperate for employment, but rather an economy where waged work was a supplement to other activities. This is further supported by the comparison between monetary wages recorded in the Shuttleworth accounts and the material wealth recorded in the Shuttleworth employees’ probate inventories. The findings show that monetary wages could only be used to measure the purchasing power of wage workers during a specific period of their life cycle and did not have a positive correlation with wage workers’ living standards measured using inventories. In conclusion, it is argued that current research on living standards of early modern period presents an incomplete picture of the real lives of wage workers.
16 February – Eugene Costello (UC Cork & Stockholm University)
Environmental knowledge and economic interaction: pastoralism in north-west Europe, 1350-1850
This talk presents initial results from an interdisciplinary project on livestock rearing during the medieval-to-modern transition. Focusing on Ireland and Sweden, I will show how it becomes possible to track livestock husbandry and its economic importance when the landscape is considered along with historical evidence. Moreover, I will discuss the environmental adaptability of people in these previously-overlooked places.
2 March 2023 – Marjoleine Kars (MIT)
Multiple Crossings: Black Biographies in the Dutch Atlantic
Accara and Gousarie were two African men caught up in Dutch slavery and colonialism during the Age of Revolution. Leaders in the 1763 Berbice slave rebellion, they next served as slave hunters, army drummers in the Dutch Republic, and Maroon fighters in Suriname. Defying easy characterization, the pair were victims, perpetrators, resisters, and collaborators – sequentially and, at times, simultaneously. How do we write the biographies of people forced to shape-shift across boundaries and allegiances and whose presence in the archives is equally slippery?
16 March 2023 – Hugo Bromley (Cambridge)
‘Rendered much cheaper, than our work-people can make’; Women’s employment in textile manufacturing and English political economy, 1688-1722
How did the English and later British state understand women’s work in textile manufacturing at the start of the long eighteenth century? A close study of petitions, pamphlets, private correspondence and parliamentary journals suggests that English political economy was based on a much more complex economic understanding, particularly of women’s work, than has often been assumed, that attempted to sustain household incomes, regardless of who in the household was employed. Women played an active role in shaping the economic knowledge that formed the basis of state decision-making. At the same time, female consumers were attacked for buying ‘luxury’ textiles from overseas and undermining domestic employment. The need for manufacturing to provide employment to households that would otherwise be dependent on poor relief drove measures to restrict Irish woollen production, ban the export of raw wool, and restrict trade with India. Recognising the importance of household employment in British economic thinking helps explain the dominant position of textile manufacturing in shaping British political economy before the Industrial Revolution.
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