Sok Chul Hong

Bernard Harris

Roderick Floud

Robert W. Fogel

Humans have become much taller and heavier, and experience healthier and longer lives than ever before in human history. However it is only recently that historians, economists, human biologists and demographers have linked the changing size, shape and capability of the human body to economic and demographic change. This fascinating and groundbreaking book presents an accessible introduction to the field of anthropometric history, surveying the causes and consequences of changes in health and mortality, diet and the disease environment in Europe and the United States since 1700. It examines how we define and measure health and nutrition as well as key issues such as whether increased longevity contributes to greater productivity or, instead, imposes burdens on society through the higher costs of healthcare and pensions. The result is a major contribution to economic and social history with important implications for today's developing world and the health trends of the future.

Health, Nutrition, and Human Development in the Western World since 1700

The Changing Body

An Economic History of the English Garden draws on never-seen primary sources to explore how much gardens cost to make and to maintain; how many gardeners tend to particular gardens; the prices of plants sold by nurseries, or imported from far-flung corners of the world; where the plants come from, what tools and techniques were used to create them and how they were invented. The author compares one garden with another in terms of the burden that it has put on the family that has owned it over the centuries. He unearths where their money came from and why they spent it on a garden. The result is a far deeper understanding of one of England's dearest - and indeed costliest - industries.

An Economic History of the English Garden

An altogether different kind of book on English gardens--the first of its kind--a look at the history of England's magnificent gardens as a history of Britain itself, from the 17th-century gardens of Charles II to those of Prince Charles today; how gardens transformed England; what they cost in their time and the billion-dollar industry they created. "One of the most important books on garden history in the last half century. For anyone serious about the subject, Floud's book is a must buy." --Historic Gardens In this rich, revelatory history, one of Britain's preeminent economic historians writes that while gardens have been created in Britain since Roman times, their true growth began in the 17th century. By the 18th century, nurseries in London occupied 100 acres filled with ten million plants and were worth more than all of the nurseries in France combined. Roderick Floud takes us through more than three centuries of English history as he tells of the kings, queens, and princes whose garden obsession changed the landscape of England itself, from Stuart, Georgian, and Victorian England to today's Windsors. We meet the designers of royal estates, including Henry Wise, William Kent, Humphrey Repton, and England's greatest of all gardeners, "Capability" Brown, who created the 150-acre lake near Blenheim Palace, who earned millions annually, and who designed more than 170 parks, many still in existence today. We see how gardening became a major catalyst for innovation (central heating came from experiments to heat greenhouses with hot-water pipes); how industrial Britain's new iron industry supplied a myriad of tools (mowers, pumps, and the boilers that heated the greenhouses); how gardens came to influence architecture (the Crystal Palace). And, finally, Floud explores how gardening became a billion-dollar industry as well as an art form that, by the 19th century, was unrivalled anywhere in the world.

How a Billion-Dollar Industry Transformed a Nation, from Charles II to Today

England's Magnificent Gardens

Many statements made by historians are quantitative statements, involving the use of measurable historical evidence. The historian who uses quantitative methods to analyse and interpret such information needs to be well acquainted with the particular methods and techniques of analysis and to be able to make the best use of the data that are available. There is an increasing need for training in such methods and in the interpretation of the large volume of literature now using quantitative techniques. Dr Floud's text, which is relevant to all branches of historical inquiry, provides a straightforward and intelligible introduction for all students and research workers. The simpler and more useful techniques of descriptive and analytical statistics are described, up to the level of simple linear regression. Historical examples are used throughout, and great attention is paid to the need to ensure that the techniques are consistent with the quality of the data and with the historical problems they are intended to solve. Attention is paid to problems of the analysis of time series, which are of particular use to historians. No previous knowledge of statistics is assumed, and the simple mathematical techniques that are used are fully and clearly explained, without the use of more mathematical knowledge than is provided by an O-level course. A bibliography is provided to guide historians towards the most useful further reading. This student friendly text was first published in 1973.

An Introduction to Quantitative Methods for Historians

Deirdre N. McCloskey

Donald McCloskey

The most up-to-date and comprehensive survey of recent British economic history currently available.

The Economic History of Britain Since 1700

Kenneth Wachter

Annabel Gregory

In historical accounts of the circumstances of ordinary people's lives, nutrition has been the great unknown. Nearly impossible to measure or assess directly, it has nonetheless been held responsible for the declining mortality rates of the nineteenth century as well as being a major factor in the gap in living standards, morbidity and mortality between rich and poor. The measurement of height is a means of the direct assessment of nutritional status. This important and innovative study uses a wealth of military and philanthropic data to establish the changing heights of Britons during the period of industrialization, and thus establishes an important dimension to the long-standing controversy about living standards during the Industrial Revolution. Sophisticated quantitative analysis enables the authors to present some striking conclusions about the actual physical status of the British people during a period of profound social and economic upheaval, and Height, Health and History will provide an invigorating statistical edge to many debates about the history of the human body itself.

Nutritional Status in the United Kingdom, 1750-1980

Height, Health and History

Jane Humphries

Paul Johnson

A new edition of the leading textbook on the economic history of Britain since industrialisation. Leading historians and economists examine the foundational importance of economic life in modern Britain as well as the close interconnections between economic, social, political and cultural change. Each chapter provides a clear guide to the major controversies in the field and students are shown how to connect historical evidence with economic theory and how to apply quantitative methods. Volume 2, on 1870 to the present, tracks the development of the British economy from late nineteenth-century global dominance to its early twenty-first-century position as a mid-sized player in an integrated European economy. The chapters re-examine issues of Britain's relative economic growth and decline over the 'long' twentieth century, setting the British experience within an international context, and benchmark its performance against that of its European and global competitors.

The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain

Roderick C. Floud

Between 1830 and 1914 Britain became the world's major trading nation, carrier of the majority of the world's goods, by far the largest investor overseas, and the centre of the world's financial system. It was an exceptional time in the history of the country; even a hundred years later, many look back to it with nostalgia. This book describes and assesses the reality of what was achieved in those eighty-five years.

The People and the British Economy, 1830-1914

Many statements made by historians are quantitative statements, involving the use of measurable historical evidence. The historian who uses quantitative methods to analyse and interpret such information needs to be well acquainted with the particular methods and techniques of analysis and to be able to make the best use of the data that are available. There is an increasing need for training in such methods and in the interpretation of the large volume of literature now using quantitative techniques. Dr Floud’s text, which is relevant to all branches of historical inquiry, provides a straightforward and intelligible introduction for all students and research workers. The simpler and more useful techniques of descriptive and analytical statistics are described, up to the level of simple linear regression. Historical examples are used throughout, and great attention is paid to the need to ensure that the techniques are consistent with the quality of the data and with the historical problems they are intended to solve. Attention is paid to problems of the analysis of time series, which are of particular use to historians. No previous knowledge of statistics is assumed, and the simple mathematical techniques that are used are fully and clearly explained, without the use of more mathematical knowledge than is provided by an O-level course. A bibliography is provided to guide historians towards the most useful further reading. This student friendly text was first published in 1973.

Pat Thane

Geoffrey Crossick

Modern industrial societies are the creation of forced of change embedded in their pre-industrial and pre-capitalist past, forces which have shaped their economic structures, their politics of domination and resistance, their social ideas and relationships. In this book a distinguished group of historians focuses on this dialectal relationship between capitalism and its pre-capitalist heritage, revealing the ways in which older forms - whether they be social and economic structures and institutions, movements or ideologies, rituals or vocabulary - help to shape new, and are themselves reshaped in the process. The book thus develops a central theme in the writing of Eric Hobsbawm, to whom these essays are presented as a tribute on his retirement from Birkbeck College. An additional essay provides a major reappraisal of Hobsbawm's work. A number of different themes in modern European history are discussed in the context of the interrelationship of capitalism and the pre capitalist past. Several essays explore the history of the working class, its ideas and strategies of resistance, in France, Britain, Germany and Spain. Others discuss the place of landowners and bankers in the European ruling classes, and the development of central and eastern European societies. Their common concern is with the power of the past over patterns of change, and as such they are both a tribute to an outstanding British historian and a major contribution to the analysis of modern European history.

Essays for Eric Hobsbawm

The Power of the Past

A new edition of the leading textbook on the economic history of Britain since industrialization. Combining the expertise of more than thirty leading historians and economists, Volume 2 tracks the development of the British economy from late nineteenth-century global dominance to its early twenty-first century position as a mid-sized player in an integrated European economy. Each chapter provides a clear guide to the major controversies in the field and students are shown how to connect historical evidence with economic theory and how to apply quantitative methods. The chapters re-examine issues of Britain's relative economic growth and decline over the 'long' twentieth century, setting the British experience within an international context, and benchmark its performance against that of its European and global competitors. Suggestions for further reading are also provided in each chapter, to help students engage thoroughly with the topics being discussed.

David Mitch

Santhi Hejeebu

Economics as a mathematical exercise, which too often relies on the notion of perfectly rational actors, doesn t have a perfect grasp of reality. What economics could use most, as many have pointed out, is a more realistic view of human beings, and how non-material beliefs and values shape the economy. "Humanism Challenges Materialism in Economics and Economic History" is a new synthesis of the most promising perspectives of this more human-centric approach to economics. Roderick Floud, Santhi Hejeebu, and David F. Mitch have brought together a variety of top scholars from an formidable range of disciplines to develop and illustrate three specific approaches: how individual beliefs influence material outcomes, how collective beliefs affect the economy, and how the methods of economics are not just higher-order math but forms of rhetoric, philosophy, and history. By bringing together these fundamental yet alternative conceptions of economics as informed by the humanities, and organizing them into effective and complementary groups, the volume is a huge step forward in developing a much more realistic conception of the long story of capitalist growth."

Roderick Floud

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