This article attempts to quantify the decline of Spain over the period 1500–1850. In contrast to earlier estimates that focus almost exclusively on Castilian agriculture, we look at trends in urbanisation and construct new measures of agricultural and aggregate output at both regional and national levels. A distinctive long-run behaviour is found across Spanish regions that rejects the identification between Castile and Spain. Per capita income grew in the sixteenth and early nineteenth centuries, while contraction and stagnation occurred in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In the long run, output per head did not improve until the early nineteenth century. At the time of its imperial expansion Spain was a relatively affluent nation and, by 1590, was only behind the Low Countries and Italy in terms of per capita income. Spain's decline has its roots in the seventeenth century while its backwardness deepened in the first half of the nineteenth century.

We revise previous estimates on average nutritional status in Britain during the industrial revolution. We find that average nutritional status declined substantially throughout the period 1740–1865, with a partial recovery only for the cohorts born in 1805–9 and 1810–14. The decline in nutritional status estimated for the second half of the eighteenth century is consistent with recent estimates of food prices and farm labour wages. We suggest that parliamentary enclosures and the decline of cottage industry could partially explain the fall in nutritional status. In addition, comparing the age at final attainment of height of a group of rural residents with a group of urban migrants we provide further evidence about the negative impact of urbanization during the early industrial revolution.

Recent cross-country investigations of the role of institutional fundamentals, such as the protection of property rights, in promoting financial development have extended a literature that has for decades maintained that financial factors can affect real outcomes. In this article we pursue this new direction by considering relationships between finance, growth, legal origin, and the political environment in a historical cross-section of 17 countries covering the period from 1880 to 1997. We find that relationships between a country's legal origin (such as English, French, German, or Scandinavian) and financial development are for the most part consistent with earlier findings but are not persistent. At the same time, political variables such as proportional representation election systems, frequent elections, universal female suffrage, and infrequent revolutions or coups seem linked to larger financial sectors and higher conditional rates of economic growth. Despite the explanatory power of some of our measures of the deeper fundamentals, however, a significant part of the growth-enhancing role of financial development remains unexplained by them.

Industrialisation in European countries caused an increase in both internal migration and emigration. Internal migrants were even more numerous than overseas emigrants. However, few empirical studies have sought to explain internal migrations. This article examines the causes and effects of internal migration in Spain with the aim of answering some of the questions debated in the literature. The results show that internal migrations in Spain were driven by economic forces. Moreover, the lag in rural population transfer can be explained by the scant pull of industrial and urban destinations. The article also shows that internal migrants differed in some respects from the people who emigrated overseas. Finally, the impact of internal migration on labour markets is measured.

W. Arthur Lewis argued that a new international economic order emerged between 1870 and 1913, and that global terms of trade forces produced rising primary product specialization and de-industrialization in the poor periphery. More recently, modern economists argue that volatility reduces growth in the poor periphery. This article assesses these de-industrialization and volatility forces between 1782 and 1913 during the Great Divergence. First, it argues that the new economic order had been firmly established by 1870, and that the transition took place in the century before, not after. Second, evidence from 1870–1939 confirms that while terms of trade improvements raised long-run growth in the rich core, they did not do so in the poor periphery. Given that the secular terms of trade boom, and thus de-industrialization, was much bigger in the poor periphery before 1870 than after, one might plausibly infer that it might help explain the Great Divergence. Third, growth-reducing terms of trade volatility also contributed to the Great Divergence. Terms of trade volatility was much greater in the poor periphery than the core before 1870. It was still very big after 1870, certainly far bigger than in the core. Based on evidence drawn from 1870–2000, we know that such volatility lowers long-run growth in the poor periphery, and that the negative impact is big. Since terms of trade volatility in the poor periphery was even bigger before 1870, one might plausibly infer that it also helps explain the Great Divergence before 1870.

This article presents revised estimates for the Human Development Index (HDI) for the benchmark years 1870, 1913, 1950, 1975 and 1999, based on the latest available data for real gross domestic product per person and on the recently modified formula for HDI. The results indicate that HDI in most of today's less-developed countries exceeds that of Western Europe in 1870 and that the gaps in HDI between Western Europe and each of Africa, China and India were smaller in 1999 than in 1950. Both these outcomes have been heavily influenced by widespread gains in life expectancy.

This article argues that market integration should be measured as σ-convergence over the largest possible sample of markets. Its focus is the European market for wheat, rye and candles from the middle of the eighteenth century to the eve of the first globalization. Price dispersion for cereals remained constant until the outbreak of the French Wars, then it increased abruptly. It began to decline after the end of the wars, and the process continued steadily until an all-time low was reached in the 1860s. Domestic and international integration contributed in roughly the same proportions to integration in the long run, but the latter was much more important in accounting for medium-term changes. These results suggest that the level of integration was determined for most of the period by war and political events, with a substantial contribution from a fall in transport costs in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. By contrast, there is very little evidence of integration in the market for candles.

Mass emigration was one key feature of the Great Irish Famine which distinguishes it from today's famines. By bringing famine victims to overseas food supplies, it undoubtedly saved many lives. Poverty traps prevented those most in need from availing of this form of relief, however. Cross-county data show that the ratio of emigration to deaths was higher in richer than in poorer counties. Another key feature of the Famine emigration was that it was irreversible. The Famine thus had a permanent impact on Ireland's population in a transitory fashion. Famine emigration spurred post-Famine emigration by eliminating poverty traps; the result was a sustained decline in the Irish population, and a convergence of living standards both within Ireland and between Ireland and the rest of the world.

On average, the poor European periphery converged on the rich industrial core in the four or five decades prior to the First World War. Some, like the three Scandinavian economies, used industrialization to achieve a spectacular convergence on the leaders, especially in real wages and living standards. Some, like Ireland, seemed to do it without industrialization. Some, like Italy, underwent a less spectacular catch-up, and it was limited to the industrializing North. Some, like Iberia, actually fell back. What accounts for this variety? What role did trade and tariff policy play? What about emigration and capital flows? What about schooling? We offer a tentative assessment of these contending explanations and conclude that globalization was by far the dominant force accounting for convergence (and divergence) around the periphery. Some exploited it well, and some badly.

It is commonly believed that not much happened in the transmission of information before the introduction of the electric telegraph. This article, however, argues that this was not the case, that quite a substantial improvement in the speed of information transmission had already taken place a few decades before this technical breakthrough. Between 1820 and 1860, global dispatch times diminished remarkably, on average to about a third of what they had been around 1820. This implies that on most routes the improvement during these three decades amounted to more saved days than was achieved after the introduction of the electric telegraph. The development can be described as an evolution which started in Europe in the 1830s and was diffused gradually all over the world. The first transcontinental communications to benefit were those across the North Atlantic and to the Far East, with South America, Africa and Australia clearly trailing behind. The ‘take-off’ was initially connected with the introduction of steamships on coastal or short sea routes and subsequently on increasingly long ocean voyages. However, even traditional overland mail-coach connections improved as also did sailing-ship (‘packet’) connections over the North Atlantic until the late 1830s. It was only in the late 1840s and 1850s that railways started to shrink distances within Continental Europe.

Is globalisation 50, 500 or 5,000 years old? Most economists take the ‘big bang’ view, and think globalisation happened very recently. Most historians also take the big bang view, but point to globalisation in the distant past, citing famous dates like 1492. We argued recently in this (O'Rourke and Williamson 2002a) and another journal (O'Rourke and Williamson 2002b) that both views are wrong. Instead, we argued that globalisation has evolved since Columbus, but that the most dramatic change by far took place in the nineteenth century. Economically significant globalisation did not start with 1405 and the first junk armadas heading west from China, or with 1492 and Columbus sailing those little caravels west from Europe, or with 1571 and the arrival in Manila of those stately galleons from Mexico. Globalisation became economically meaningful only with the dawn of the nineteenth century, and it came on in a rush.

I use the rents and prices of land held by charities in England to estimate statistically nominal and real farmland rental values, including payments for tithe and taxes, from 1500 to 1912. The series measures rental values when land was rented in a competitive market, not the average rents paid by land occupiers which would often be lower because of customary leases. An advantage of the methods used here over older ones is that the sampling error in the series can be calculated. The series show rapid shifts of income toward landowners and away from wages around 1600 and 1800, but back toward wages after 1870. Land rental values are much higher before 1820 than in the recent series of Michael Turner, John Beckett and Bethany Afton. This implies that agricultural productivity was high before 1800: higher than could be consistent with an agricultural revolution either alongside or before the Industrial Revolution.

In a recent issue of the European Review of Economic History (vol. 6, 2002, pp. 23–50), Kevin O'Rourke and Jeffrey Williamson dismiss claims by ‘World historians…[who] argue that globalisation is a phenomenon which stretches back several centuries, or even several millennia’ (p. 23). Rather, O'Rourke and Williamson insist that ‘[g]lobalisation did not begin 5,000 years ago, or even 500 years ago. It began in the early nineteenth century. In that sense, it is a very modern phenomenon’ (p. 47). O'Rourke and Williamson offer an explicit model of world trade that predicts specific outcomes; and they marshal empirical evidence to support their contention that there was no global economy until the early decades of the nineteenth century.

At the end of the nineteenth century some of the less developed countries of Southern Europe often faced major problems when they sought to increase their exports of primary products. Such problems were a consequence of the tariff policies implemented by a number of their trading partners. In this article we analyse the case of the Spanish exports of ordinary table wine during the period 1890–1935. The expansion of wine production outside Europe meant that some countries in the American continent raised their tariffs to protect national production, which caused serious damage to exporters. Much more serious was the discriminatory trade policy initiated by France in 1891 which gave priority to the tariff-free importing of Algerian wine, as against the high tariffs that had to be paid by other exporters. This policy, as well as protecting French production, aimed to support her colonial policy in Algeria and seriously affected Spanish exports, as shown by our data and the econometric analysis we have carried out. The Spanish response resulted in a greater penetration of other European markets, thanks to the competitiveness of Spanish wine, but this did not prevent a serious crisis in the sector.

The paper investigates the initial phase of the cooperative organisation of agricultural processing firms in Denmark. It argues that the variations observed can be explained within the framework of the theory of industrial organisation. The focus is on the success of cooperative creameries. In 1903, twenty years after the first establishments, the owners of about 80 per cent of all Danish milch cows supplied their product to a cooperative. The success of cooperatives within other fields of production was smaller by comparison. The point is that dairying cooperatives, given the existing technology of gathering information and of preserving and transporting a perishable product, were ideally suited to overcome the problems of potential lock-in and of asymmetric information.

The Irish Famine killed over a million people who would not have died otherwise. The nosologies published by the 1851 Irish census provide a rich source for the causes of death during these catastrophic years. This source is extremely rich and detailed, but also inaccurate and deficient to the point where many scholars have given up using it. In this article we try to make adjustments to the death-by-cause tabulations and provide more accurate ones. These tables are then used to analyse the reasons why so many people died and why modern famines tend to be less costly in terms of human life.

This article addresses two issues that feature prominently in the recent historiography. First, how does the Habsburg Empire's economic performance compare to the record for other European economies in terms of levels and growth of national income? Second, to what extent was the Austrian economy subject to prolonged stagnation after 1873? These questions are examined on the basis of new annual estimates of GDP for Austria and Hungary for 1870 to 1913. The article argues, first, that over the whole period under review Austrian per capita income failed to expand at a pace broadly commensurate with the country's relative income position. The Austrian economy did not catch up with the leaders and failed to keep pace with other ‘followers’. Second, the Hungarian economy recorded a markedly higher rate of per capita income growth, placing it about mid-range in a European growth comparison. Third, the new evidence supports the notion of a ‘great depression’ in the western half of the empire (Austria) after 1873. The distinct periodicity and differential rates of Austrian and Hungarian growth are consistent with the argument that the outflow of Austrian capital to Hungary after the 1873 Vienna stock market crash was crucial in prolonging economic stagnation in Austria, whilst fuelling the first widespread wave of industrialisation in Hungary. The reversal of this capital outflow in the early 1890s was associated with an increase in Austrian economic growth and a decrease in Hungary's rate of expansion.

This article provides an overview of Italian urbanisation between 1000 and 2000, which may help in distinguishing the main phases of Italian economic history. In this millennium, three epochs can be singled out: from the tenth century to 1300–50; from 1300–50 to 1860–70; and from 1860–70 to 2000. While the first phase is characterised by slow progress and the third by massive urbanisation, the intermediate phase saw declining urbanisation. A strong connection exists, in these periods, between urbanisation and the productivity of the Italian economic system. By looking at Italian economic history from the perspective of urbanisation, we can draw a different picture from the one prevailing in recent literature on the subject.

Citizenship was a key concept in European state formation from the Middle Ages onwards. This article presents an economic interpretation of citizenship. It argues that such a contract increases the efficiency of the exchange between the state and its inhabitants. Next, the concept of citizenship is applied to the political economy of the Dutch Republic, which was an ‘intermediate’ stage in the process of state formation between the medieval commune (with a restricted form of citizenship) and the nation-state of the nineteenth century, when the concept became more inclusive, covering all inhabitants. The article briefly sketches the genesis of the Dutch Republic and identifies some of the key problems of its political economy.

This review article looks at the recent books on the British Industrial Revolution by Robert Allen and Joel Mokyr. Both writers seek to explain Britain's primacy. This article offers a critical but sympathetic account of the main arguments of the two authors, considering both the economic logic and the empirical validity of their rival claims. In each case, the ideas are promising but the evidence base seems in need of further support. It may be that eventually these explanations for British economic leadership at the turn of the nineteenth century are recognized as complementary rather than competing.