The Divergence of National Occupational Structures c. 1500 to c. 1930
Leigh Shaw-Taylor, Osamu Saito and Tony Wrigley organised a session at the International Economic History Congress to be held in Helsinki in September 2006 (see www.helsinki.fi/iehc2006 for further information on the conference).
The Topic and its Importance
In 1800 well over half of the English male labour force was engaged in occupations other than agriculture at a time when, with the exception of the Netherlands, the comparable proportion in Europe was about one quarter. It would be interesting to know comparable figures for other parts of Eurasia. It is unlikely that England's occupational structure was very different from that of other countries in North Western Europe in say 1500. Understanding the first industrial revolution and the 'great divergence' living standards in different parts of Eurasia which it precipitated it would be necessary, amongst other things, to chart the evolution of England's distinctive occupational structure. As outlined below the organisers are engaged in research aimed at reconstructing the development of England's occupational; structure in the centuries which preceded the classic period of industrialisation. To identify the nature and timing of the economic divergence between England and North Western Europe on the one hand and North Western Europe and other parts of Eurasia we hope to use the session to bring together commensurable data sets on the occupational structure of a number of countries or regions over the period c. 1500 to c. 1930 for comparison. Individual papers may or may not cover the whole period from 1500-1930. We are interested in comparing the transitions to industrial economies not time periods. The session organisers hope that this meeting will lead to an edited volume and further comparative work.
Participants
- Danielle van den Heuvel and Elise van Nederven Meerkerk on the Dutch Republic 1500-1850
- Ling Liu, O. Saito and T. Taniguchi on Taiwan 1905-1920
- Leigh Shaw-Taylor and Tony Wrigley on Britain 1500-1911
- Osamu Saito on Japan 1789-1920
- Yoshifumi Usami on India 1881-1931
Details of the session and papers
Details of the session and papers are available under session 32 at http://www.helsinki.fi/iehc2006/sessions1_40.html .