The European Network for the Comparative History of Population Geography and Occupational Structure from 1500 to the present (ENCHOS)

We launched the European Network for the Comparative History of Population Geography and Occupational Structure from 1500 to the present in early 2017. The underlying aim of ENCHOS is to improve our understanding of Europe's long-run economic history, and the origins of modern economic growth. Its goals are to (i) create a long-lasting network of scholars committed to working together within an agreed methodological framework, (ii) precipitate multiple follow-on projects generating robust harmonized datasets on occupational structure and population geography at the local, regional and national levels 1500-1900, for as many European regions as possible and create a quantitative data-infrastructure, scalable to any spatial scale from local communities, to regions, polities and beyond.

Economic historians are drowning in detailed local studies and buffeted by contradictory and methodologically problematic international comparisons based on incommensurable national studies. While we have estimates of national aggregates such as GDP per capita and real wages for many countries, we lack a detailed, quantitative and integrated account of European economic development 1500-present based on harmonized and robust data available at a sub-national level. ENCHOS would try to change that by jump-starting projects aimed at creating an integrated set of inter-related datasets that would allow us to trace, in a directly comparable manner, the evolution of Europe's local, regional and national economies over four centuries. The intention is to create a quantitative scalable framework for European economic history to which more particularistic studies could fitted. Long-term economic development is closely connected with two major interrelated structural changes which the historic record allows us to document in considerable detail over many centuries. First, as economic development proceeds, population tends to concentrate in towns and industrial or proto-industrial regions. Second, individuals tend to become more specialized while localities, regions and nations experience shifts in occupational structure away from an early predominance of agricultural employment

The network is co-ordinated by Dr Leigh Shaw-Taylor and Dr Alexis Litvine, both at the University of Cambridge.

The inaugural meeting of the ENCHOS network took place at Robinson College, Cambridge, in 2017. Podcasts of most of the presentations are available. ENCHOS II and ENCHOS III were held at Bocconi University Milan and Koç University in Istanbul, and ENCHOS IV and ENCHOS V took place at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in September 2022, and at Johannes Kepler University Linz in September 2023. ENCHOS VI will take place in Paris in March 2024.

Members of the network

• Austria (Michael Pammer, Johannes Kepler University, Linz), Occupation in Austria, seventeenth to nineteenth centuries
• Belgium (Erik Buyst, KU Leuven; Isabelle Devos, Universiteit Gent; Robin Philips, University of Utrecht), Occupational structure of Belgium 1796-1910
• Bulgaria (Grigor Boykov, University of Vienna)
• Denmark (Paul Sharp, University of Southern Denmark)
• England and Wales (Leigh Shaw-Taylor, Amy Erickson, Jacob Field and others at the University of Cambridge; Jane Whittle and others at the University of Exeter; Tony Cockerill), The Occupational Structure of Britain c.1379-1911. Women's work in rural England 1500-1700: a new methodological approach
• Finland (Antti Häkkinen, Petri Roikonen, University of Helsinki)
• France (Alexis Litvine, Auriane Terki-Mignot, University of Cambridge; Isabelle Seguy INED, Paris; Jean-Pascal Bassino, ENS Lyon), Reconstructing a municipal-level GIS for France
• Germany (Paul Warde, University of Cambridge; Katrin Moeller, Georg Fertig, Halle University) Ontology of historical German occupational titles
• Hungary (Tamás Vonyó, Bocconi University)
• Ireland (Jason Begley, University of Coventry; Frank Geary; Tom Stark)
• Italy (Guido Alfani, Bocconi University; David Chilosi, KCL; Carlo Ciccarelli, University of Rome Tor Vergata; Andrea Caracausi, Università di Padova; Béatrice Zucca Micheletto, Université de Rouen; Giulio Ongaro, LSE)
• Netherlands (Rombert Stapel, IISH)
• Ottoman Territories/Turkish Republic (Erdem Kabadayi and others, Koç University, Istanbul.), Industrialisation and Urban Growth from the mid-nineteenth century Ottoman Empire to Contemporary Turkey in a Comparative Perspective, 1850-2000
• Poland (Piotr Koryś, Maciej Bukowski, Maciej Tyminski, University of Warsaw; Aleksandra Dul, University of Cambridge)
• Portugal (Filipa Ribeiro da Silva, IISH; Jaime Reis, Universidade de Lisboa)
• Scotland (Michael Anderson, Edinburgh; Corinne Roughley), Mapping Scottish demographic datasets
• Serbia (Stefan Nikolić, University of Loughborough)
• Spain (Carmen Sarasua and others at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona; Frán Beltran, Norwegian University of Science and Tecnology; Alfonso Díez Minguela, University of Valencia; Julio Martinez Galarraga, Univeristy of Valencia. Guillermo Esteban Oliver; Luisa Muñoz Abeledo), Participation rates of women and men and occupational structure in 18th and 19th centuries Spain The geographical distribution of the economic activity in Spain: 1860-1950 Women's Labour Force Participation and Occupational Structure in Spain, 1877-1975
• Sweden (Kerstin Enflo, University of Lund; Anna Missiaia, University of Gothenburg; Matts Olsen, Lund; Fredrick Sangren, Umea University), The Occupational Structure of Sweden, 1570-1920
• Switzerland (Cédric Chambru, ENS Lyon. Gabi Wuetrich, University of Zurich)
• Methods (Murat Güvenç, Kadir Has University; Frank Geary; Richard Zijdeman, IISH; Christian Vedel, SDU; Stanley Hinton, University of Cambridge)

We would welcome new members for the network, especially (but not only) those working or wishing to work on regions of Europe we do not presently cover.

Global coverage of ENCHOS and affiliates.