31 March 2012
Economic History Society Annual Conference 2012
Press Briefings
For information on other research presented at the annual conference, please contact Romesh Vaitilingam.
WAR STUNTS CHILDREN’S GROWTH: EVIDENCE FROM THE ‘HUNGER BLOCKADE’ OF GERMANY
The consequences of war are particularly dire for growing children, reports a new study of the ‘hunger blockade’ of Germany during the First World War, to be presented at the Economic History Society’s 2012 annual conference this weekend by Mary Cox, University of Oxford.
EMPLOYING THE ENEMY: NEW FINDINGS ON THE EXPLOITATION OF PRISONER-OF-WAR LABOUR BY NAZI GERMANY
Prisoners-of-war (POWs) in Nazi Germany contributed at least 2% a year to the war economy of their enemy. That is one of the findings of new research by Johann Custodis, which reveals the true scale and economic impact of POW employment.
INNOVATION AND PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH IN ECONOMIC HISTORY
Economic historians have seized on information and communications technology to become much more productive in terms of research publications and improved teaching methods. According to Professor Sir Roderick Floud, Provost of Gresham College, London, this is just one example of how innovation in the services sector can make an enormous difference to productivity and economic growth.
REVOLUTION ON THE BRITISH WORKING MAN
Most adult men saw their lives improve on many fronts during the Industrial Revolution. That is the central finding of new research by Dr Emma Griffin (University of East Anglia), which has gathered evidence on male employment and living standards from working-class autobiographies of the time.
HEALTH AND SAFETY NIGHTMARES OF TUDOR ENGLAND
A historical study of around 9,000 reports on accidental deaths is opening a new window on everyday life in the age of the Tudors.
At this weekend’s annual conference of the Economic History Society, Dr Steven Gunn of the University of Oxford will survey the often gory details of the dangers to people’s working lives in sixteenth-century England.
STEAM PLOUGHS: NEW EVIDENCE ON THE MECHANISATION OF ENGLISH AGRICULTURE
When BBC Radio 4 News Quiz host, Sandy Toksvig, heard historians had spent three years working on a ‘quantitative study’, she told them ‘get a life’. But a University of Reading PhD student, who until recently cared for her mother age 102, found a new life when she won the Museum of English Rural Life (MERL) scholarship in 2009 to study the steam mechanisation of agriculture – by counting ploughing engines.
Jane McCutchan, who will present her work at the Economic History Society’s 2012 annual conference in Oxford this weekend, credits her good fortune to her ‘steamy past’ as project manager for STEAM – Museum of the GWR, Swindon, but she is grateful to members of the Steam Plough Club for their help and support.
OIL IN RUSSIA: FROM THE TSARS TO PUTIN
Russia under the tsars was far more welcoming to foreign investment in the oil industry than it is today. Restrictions on foreign investment in modern Russia have led to slower progress on several frontier oilfield projects than would have been made had the international oil companies been allowed to get involved.
These are among the findings of new research by Nathaniel Moser, which draws on a range of sources including archive material in Moscow, Russian language publications and interviews with senior executives in today’s oil industry.
BUSINESS POWER NOT TRADE UNION POWER: THE ECONOMIC REALITY OF THE 1970s IN THE UK
Popular memories of the UK economy in the 1970s are dominated by images of relentless industrial conflict, power-grabbing trade unions, greedy and adversarial workers, collapsing productivity, rubbish piling up and the dead unburied.
But according to new research by Dr Jim Phillips of the University of Glasgow, the realities were very different, especially where workers and trade unions are concerned.
HUMAN DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA: LONG-RUN VIEW REVEALS THE RELATIVE LACK OF PROGRESS
A new measure of human development indicates that the longstanding gap in wellbeing between Africa and the rest of the world is even deeper than previously thought. After a period of sustained improvement in human development up to 1980, Africa stopped catching up with the developed world and began falling behind once more. And the continent has consistently fallen short of achievements in Asia and Latin America.
These are among the findings of research by Professor Leandro Prados de la Escosura.
HIDING THE COSTS OF WAR: HOW AMERICAN WARMONGERS HAVE SECURED PUBLIC SUPPORT OVER THE PAST CENTURY
American governments over the past century have used many ways to hide both the financial and human costs of war from their citizens.
That is the central argument of a new book, America’s Economic Way of War: War and the US Economy from the Spanish-American War to the Persian Gulf War by Professor Hugh Rockoff, which will be launched at the Economic History Society’s 2012 annual conference in Oxford this weekend.
BRISTOL BOOMED WELL BEFORE THE SLAVE TRADE
Bristol’s trade with the American colonies were already well established 50 years before the city first became involved in the slave trade. Indeed, much of the city’s growth pre-dates the period when slave labour became widespread in the colonies.
These are the central findings of new research by Richard Stone, University of Bristol.
‘MONETARISM IN ONE COUNTRY’: THE EVOLUTION OF CONSERVATIVE ECONOMIC THINKING IN THE 1970s
Conservative economic thinking had abandoned price and wage controls when the party arrived in government in 1979, but there was already a fundamental disagreement about how to fight inflation. Many senior figures were unconvinced that controlling the money supply alone could defeat inflation – ‘monetarism in one country’ – and believed that it was to necessary to control the exchange rate by joining the European Monetary System (EMS).
These are among the findings of new research by Adrian Williamson, University of Cambridge.
