The Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure - seminar series

Research seminar series run by the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure.

Seminars will take place in person in Seminar Room 3, Faculty of History and on Zoom at 1.15pm. Sandwiches and fruit will be available from 1.00pm.

Please note that Seminar Room 3 has stair access only.

The support of the Trevelyan Fund (Faculty of History) is gratefully acknowledged.

Convenors: Romola Davenport (rjd23@cam.ac.uk), Alice Reid (alice.reid@geog.cam.ac.uk) and Leigh Shaw-Taylor (lmws2@cam.ac.uk).

There are no forthcoming seminars at present. Please check back here later.

You may wish to view the archive of previous seminars.

Graduate Workshop in Economic and Social History

The Workshop meets alternate Mondays, 12.30pm.

Convened by Jerome Gasson (jttg2) and Emma Wordsworth (ekw34).

To join the mailing list, please complete the Google Form:
https://forms.gle/RcAx1t4WWY1yL2RA9

Twitter: @EconomicandSoc2

There are no forthcoming seminars at present. Please check back here later.

You may wish to view the archive of previous seminars.

Core Seminar in Economic and Social History

Seminars take place on Thursdays at 5:15 pm in Room 5 of the History Faculty. All are welcome, either in person or online.

The Core seminar combines multiple seminars: Medieval Economic and Social History; Early Modern Economic and
Social History; Modern Economic and Social History and Policy; African Economic History; Global Economic History;
Quantitative History; Financial History; the Centre for History and Economics; and the Cambridge Group for the
History of Population and Social Structure. Their specialist seminar programmes do not run in Michaelmas term, but
each meets separately again in the Lent and (sometimes) Easter terms.

Seminar convenor: Leigh Shaw-Taylor (lmws2@cam.ac.uk)

Economic and Social History at Cambridge: www.econsoc.hist.cam.ac.uk

View the archive of previous seminars.

# Thursday 5th October 2023, 5.15pm - Jeremy Adelman, University of Cambridge

Earth hunger: Global integration and the need for strangers

Venue: Room 5, Faculty of History

Ever since trade, migration, and finance sutured the world together into one unit, people have been debating the rewards and risks of togetherness. This talk explores the main lines of argument about what it has meant to need strangers, their resources, their labour, and their ideas – and what it has meant for them to need “us.” Since the early nineteenth century, these arguments about interdependence have defined the meaning of modern life at a world scale. Some perspective on them will help understand the distempers of our own times.

# Thursday 12th October 2023, 5.15pm - Maria Bach, Walras Pareto Centre, University of Lausanne. (Paper jointly authored with François Allison, Walras Pareto Centre, University of Lausanne)

All welcome

A comparative history of national accounting in India and the USSR

Venue: Room 5, Faculty of History

We propose using a comparative history of national accounting looking at the same time, the 1920s, in two different places: India and the USSR. In both places there were attempts at defining and counting national wealth. In India, K.T. Shah and K.J. Khambata produced a national wealth estimate to measure the tax capacity of Indians. In the USSR, P. I. Popov published in 1926 with two dozen of collaborators the first “balance” of the Soviet economy for the year 1923-1924 with planning objective in mind. Comparison in the history of national accounting is particularly relevant because the fundamental aim of national accounts is to compare the performance of an economy across time and/or in relation to other economies. The Indian case study and the comparison between India and USSR are scant, if not completely absent, in the history of national accounting. Our aim is to bring India and the comparison with the USSR into the international debates on how measurement was and is done to better understand the relative progress of various populations and territories. Our case studies recover and connect intellectuals tuning into global debates on national accounting and taking part in dialogues on different ways of counting the economy.

# Thursday 19th October 2023, 5.15pm - Leigh Gardner, LSE.

How was power shared in colonial Africa? Taxation and representation in the British empire

Venue: Room 5, Faculty of History

Who held power in colonial Africa? Colonial governments made policies which have had lasting impacts on the continent’s development. But they were constrained in many ways – by lack of staff and resources, and by their lack of legitimacy with those they ruled. Recent research in political science has shown that the survival of autocratic regimes in contemporary African countries has depended on the strategic use of patronage, either in the form of power showing with potential rivals or through the use of public resources. Similarly, British colonial governments used strategies of power sharing and resource distribution at various administrative levels to secure the stability of colonial rule. New data on the composition of colonial legislative councils and local governments shows how these methods varied between and within colonies, reflecting local economic and political circumstances.

# Thursday 26th October 2023, 5.15pm - Jordan Claridge, LSE

Wages and labour relations in the Middle Ages: It's not (all) about the money

Venue: Room 5, Faculty of History

For long periods of history, a significant proportion of the labour force has received all or part of their wages in non-monetary in-kind payments. Despite its historical ubiquity, this form of labour remuneration remains poorly understood. This paper presents a framework which allows for the valuation and interpretation of in-kind wages. We apply our method to a new dataset of agricultural wages for labourers in medieval England (1270-1430), most of whom received a composite wage for which in-kind payment was the largest share. Assessing the market value of the wages these workers received, we find an increase in the relative importance of cash payments in the latter decades of the fourteenth century. We show that this was connected to a fundamental shift in labour relations, providing new empirical insights into the so-called `golden age of labour’ that followed the Black Death.

Quantitative History Seminar

Supported by the Centre for History and Economics and the Trevelyan Fund (Faculty of History).

The seminar meets on Wednesdays at 1.15pm in Seminar Room 3, Faculty of History and on Zoom.
Sandwiches and fruit will be available from 1.00pm.

Please note that Seminar Room 3 has stair access only.

Convenor: Leigh Shaw-Taylor (lmws2@cam.ac.uk)

There are no forthcoming seminars at present. Please check back here later.

You may wish to view the archive of previous seminars.

Additional seminars of interest to Campop members

Additional seminars of interest to Campop members.

View the archive of previous seminars.

# Thursday 5th October 2023, 5.15pm - Jeremy Adelman, University of Cambridge

Earth hunger: Global integration and the need for strangers

Venue: Room 5, Faculty of History

Ever since trade, migration, and finance sutured the world together into one unit, people have been debating the rewards and risks of togetherness. This talk explores the main lines of argument about what it has meant to need strangers, their resources, their labour, and their ideas – and what it has meant for them to need “us.” Since the early nineteenth century, these arguments about interdependence have defined the meaning of modern life at a world scale. Some perspective on them will help understand the distempers of our own times.

# Thursday 12th October 2023, 5.15pm - Maria Bach, Walras Pareto Centre, University of Lausanne. (Paper jointly authored with François Allison, Walras Pareto Centre, University of Lausanne)

All welcome

A comparative history of national accounting in India and the USSR

Venue: Room 5, Faculty of History

We propose using a comparative history of national accounting looking at the same time, the 1920s, in two different places: India and the USSR. In both places there were attempts at defining and counting national wealth. In India, K.T. Shah and K.J. Khambata produced a national wealth estimate to measure the tax capacity of Indians. In the USSR, P. I. Popov published in 1926 with two dozen of collaborators the first “balance” of the Soviet economy for the year 1923-1924 with planning objective in mind. Comparison in the history of national accounting is particularly relevant because the fundamental aim of national accounts is to compare the performance of an economy across time and/or in relation to other economies. The Indian case study and the comparison between India and USSR are scant, if not completely absent, in the history of national accounting. Our aim is to bring India and the comparison with the USSR into the international debates on how measurement was and is done to better understand the relative progress of various populations and territories. Our case studies recover and connect intellectuals tuning into global debates on national accounting and taking part in dialogues on different ways of counting the economy.

# Thursday 19th October 2023, 5.15pm - Leigh Gardner, LSE.

How was power shared in colonial Africa? Taxation and representation in the British empire

Venue: Room 5, Faculty of History

Who held power in colonial Africa? Colonial governments made policies which have had lasting impacts on the continent’s development. But they were constrained in many ways – by lack of staff and resources, and by their lack of legitimacy with those they ruled. Recent research in political science has shown that the survival of autocratic regimes in contemporary African countries has depended on the strategic use of patronage, either in the form of power showing with potential rivals or through the use of public resources. Similarly, British colonial governments used strategies of power sharing and resource distribution at various administrative levels to secure the stability of colonial rule. New data on the composition of colonial legislative councils and local governments shows how these methods varied between and within colonies, reflecting local economic and political circumstances.

# Thursday 26th October 2023, 5.15pm - Jordan Claridge, LSE

Wages and labour relations in the Middle Ages: It's not (all) about the money

Venue: Room 5, Faculty of History

For long periods of history, a significant proportion of the labour force has received all or part of their wages in non-monetary in-kind payments. Despite its historical ubiquity, this form of labour remuneration remains poorly understood. This paper presents a framework which allows for the valuation and interpretation of in-kind wages. We apply our method to a new dataset of agricultural wages for labourers in medieval England (1270-1430), most of whom received a composite wage for which in-kind payment was the largest share. Assessing the market value of the wages these workers received, we find an increase in the relative importance of cash payments in the latter decades of the fourteenth century. We show that this was connected to a fundamental shift in labour relations, providing new empirical insights into the so-called `golden age of labour’ that followed the Black Death.