All students should read the articles (or in a few cases designated selections from longer books) assigned for each week. Graduate students should further supplement that reading with an additional book selected from the book suggestions. Any undergraduate who wishes to read one of the suggested books is of course welcome to do so. Moreover, book review subjects (see the Assignments section) should be drawn primarily from the readings listed in this table.
| WEEK # | TOPICS | READINGS |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Deep History and Big Data: Understanding Long-term Global Processes |
Davidson, Adam. "The Economy's Missing Metrics." New York Times Magazine, July 1, 2015.
Steckel, Richard H. "Big Social Science History: Presidential Address." Social Science History 31, no. 1 (2007): 1–34. View for DiscussionNew Economic Thinking. "Is Technology Killing Capitalism?" August 17, 2016. YouTube. Serious Science. "Explaining Modern Economic Growth – Deirdre McCloskey." June 15, 2016. YouTube. |
| 2 | Energy, the Standard of Living, and Measuring Economic Growth |
Cherlin, Andrew J. "Why Are White Death Rates Rising?" New York Times, February 22, 2016. Harper, Kyle. "Civilization, Climate, and Malthus: The Rough Course of Global History." Journal of Interdisciplinary History 45, no. 4 (2015): 549–66. McCloskey, Deirdre Nansen. ———. "It Was Ideas and Ideologies, Not Interests or Institutions Which Changed in Northwestern Europe, 1600–1848." Journal of Evolutionary Economics 25, no. 1 (2015): 57–68. Book Suggestions
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| 3 | The Tech Boom of the Middle Ages |
Prak, Maarten. "Mega-Structures of the Middle Ages: The Construction of Religious Buildings in Europe and Asia, c. 1000–1500." Journal of Global History 6, no. 3 (2011): 381–406. Roland, Alex. "Once More into the Stirrups: Lynn White Jr., Medieval Technology and Social Change." Technology and Culture 44, no. 3 (2003): 574–85. Book Suggestions
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| 4 | Was Malthus Right?—Plague and the Post-Plague Economy |
Cook, Eli. "For Whom the Bell Curve Tolls." Chronicle of Higher Education, May 12, 2014. Erdkamp, Paul. "Economic Growth in the Roman Mediterranean World: An Early Goodbye to Malthus?" Explorations in Economic History 60 (2016): 1–20. Grantham, George. "Explaining the Industrial Transition: A Non-Malthusian Perspective." European Review of Economic History 12, no. 2 (2008): 155–65. Hatcher, John. "Understanding the Population History of England: 1450–1750." Past & Present 180 (2003): 83–130. Lee, Ronald. "Population Homeostasis and English Demographic History." Journal of Interdisciplinary History 15, no. 4 (1985): 635–60. McCants, Anne E. C. "Historical Demography and the Crisis of the Seventeenth Century." Journal of Interdisciplinary History 40, no. 2 (2009): 195–214. McCloskey, Deirdre Nansen. "You Know, Ernest, the Rich Are Different from You and Me': A Comment on Clark's A Farewell to Alms." European Review of Economic History 12, no. 2 (2008): 138–48. Persson, Karl Gunnar. "The Malthus Delusion." European Review of Economic History 12, no. 2 (2008): 165–73.
Book Suggestions
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| 5 | The Global Crisis of the 17th Century |
Goldstone, Jack A. "East and West in the Seventeenth Century: Political Crises in Stuart England, Ottoman Turkey, and Ming China." Comparative Studies in Society and History 30, no. 1 (1988): 103–42. Hobsbawm, E. J. "The General Crisis of the European Economy in the 17th Century." Past & Present Society 5, no. 1 (1954): 33–53. Book Suggestions
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| 6 | Consumers Everywhere |
de Vries, Jan. "The Industrial Revolution and the Industrious Revolution." Journal of Economic History 54, no. 2 (1994): 249–70. Lemire, Beverley, and Giorgio Riello. "East & West: Textiles and Fashion in Early Modern Europe." Journal of Social History 41, no. 4 (2008): 887–916. McCants, Anne E. C. "Poor Consumers as Global Consumers: The Diffusion of Tea and Coffee Drinking in the Eighteenth Century." Economic History Review 61, no. 1 (2008): 172–200. ———. "Exotic Goods, Popular Consumption, and the Standard of Living: Thinking About Globalization in the Early Modern World." Journal of World History 18, no. 4 (2007): 433–62. Book Suggestions
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| 7 | The Industrial Revolution |
Crafts, Nicholas. "Productivity Growth in the Industrial Revolution: A New Growth Accounting Perspective." Journal of Economic History 64, no. 2 (2004): 521–35.
Indiviglio, Daniel. "What Does Productivity Mean For Unemployment?" The Atlantic, November 5, 2009. McCloskey, Deirdre Nansen. "Bourgeois Virtue and the History of P and S." Journal of Economic History 58, no. 2 (1998): 297–317. ———. "The Industrial Revolution." Prudentia, 2008. Mokyr, Joel. "Demand vs. Supply in the Industrial Revolution." Journal of Economic History 37, no. 4 (1977): 981–1008. ———. "The Intellectual Origins of Modern Economic Growth." Journal of Economic History 65, no. 2 (2005): 285–351. Book Suggestions
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| 8 | Empire Building: East and West |
Go, Julian. "Capital, Containment, and Competition: The Dynamics of British Imperialism, 1730–1939." Social Science History 38, no. 1–2 (2014): 43–69. Hoffman, Phillip T. "Why Was it Europeans Who Conquered the World?" Journal of Economic History 72, no. 3 (2012): 601–33. Perdue, Peter C. "Empire and Nation in Comparative Perspective: Frontier Administration in Eighteenth-Century China." Journal of Early Modern History 5, no. 4 (2001): 282–304. Book Suggestions
or
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| 9 |
Slavery, the 'Resource Curse' and Inequality in the Contemporary World? Guest speaker: Professor Johan Fourie, Department of Economics, Stellenbosch University, South Africa |
Hopkins, A. G. "The New Economic History of Africa." Journal of African History 50, no. 2 (2009): 155–77. Nunn, Nathan. "The Long-term Effects of Africa's Slave Trades." Quarterly Journal of Economics 123, no. 1 (2008): 139–76. Africa: Population Density, Open Data for Africa. Population Density - Asia, index mundi. Book Suggestions
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| 10 | Divergence: When and Why? |
Allen, Robert C. "The Great Divergence in European Wages and Prices from the Middle Ages to World War I." Explorations in Economic History 38, no. 4 (2001): 411–47. Allen, Robert C., Jean‐Pascal Bassino, et al. Becker, Sascha O., Steven Pfaff, et al. "Causes and Consequences of the Protestant Reformation." Explorations in Economic History 62 (2016): 1–25. Buringh, Eltjo, and Jan Luiten van Zanden. "Charting the 'Rise of the West': Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth Centuries." Journal of Economic History 69, no. 2 (2009): 409–45.
Vries, P. H. H. "Review: Are Coal and Colonies Really Crucial? Kenneth Pomeranz and the Great Divergence." Journal of World History 12, no. 2 (2001): 407–46. Lecture slides from Professor Gregory Clark's teaching site at the University of California, Davis.
Book Suggestions
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| 11 | No class – Individual meetings to work on projects | No readings assigned |
| 12 | Class presentations of individual final projects | No readings assigned |
"Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World." (PDF)