Great Wave

by Fischer, David Hackett;

  On commerce, trade, and migration, see H. E. S. Fisher, “Anglo-Portuguese Trade, 1700–1770,” Economic History Review 2d ser. 16 (1963) 219–33; V. M. Godinho, “Flottes de sucre et flottes de l’or, 1660–1770,” Annales E.S.C. 5 (1950) 184–97; J. A. Faber, “The Decline of the Baltic Grain Trade in the Second Half of the Seventeenth Century,” Acta Historiae Neerlandica I (1966) 108–31.

  Fiscal history is the subject of P. G. M. Dickson, The Financial Revolution in England: A Study in the Development of Public Credit, 1688–1756 (London, 1967) and E. B. Schumpeter, “English Prices and Public Finance, 1660–1822,” Review of Economic Statistics 20 (1938) 21–37. The institutional structure of economic activity is the subject of W. R. Scott, The Constitution and Finance of English, Scottish, and Irish Joint-Stock Companies to 1720 (3 vols., Cambridge, 1912).

  On social history in this period many hundreds of local and regional studies have been completed by Annales historians in Europe and by students of the “new social history” in the United States. Annalists normally study price and wage movements; American social historians mostly do not (except the Chesapeake group), but all of these works remain useful. Among them are R. Baehrel on Provence, P. Deyon on Amiens, P. Goubert on Beauvais, Le Roy Ladurie on Languedoc, J. Meyer on Brittany, A. Poitrineau on Basse-Auvergne, F. Lebrun on Anjou, G. Frêche on the Toulouse area, P. St. Jacob on Burgundy, J. Dupâquier on Vexin, G. Lemarchand on Normandy, Thomas Sheppard on Lourmarin, Patrice Higonnet on Pont-de-Montvert, and John Day on Sardinia. For central Europe, there are studies by Gerald Soliday on Frankfurt-am-Main and Gerald Strauss on Nuremberg. In Belgium there is the work of E. Hélin on the Liége region, C. Bruneel on Brabant. In Britain, there is the work of D. C. Chambers on the Vale of Trent, W. G. Hoskins and his students on Leicestershire, V. Skipp on the Forest of Arden, David Hey on Myddle, Shropshire, Margaret Spufford on Cambridgeshire, and E. A. Wrigley and R. S. Schofield, on Colyton, Devon. In America, there is the work of Philip Greven on Andover, Mass., John Demos on Plymouth, Mass., Kenneth Lockridge on Dedham, Mass., Daniel Scott Smith on Hingham, Mass., Robert Gross on Concord, Mass., Linda Auwers on Windsor, Conn., Jessica Kross on Newtown, N.Y., Stephanie Wolff on Germantown, Pa., Allan Kulikoff on Prince George’s County, Md., Darrett and Anita Rutman on Middlesex County, Va., and many other projects.

  On the growth of political stability in this period, see C. B. A. Behrens, Society, Government, and the Enlightenment: The Experiences of Eighteenth-Century France and Prussia (London, 1985); Ronald W. Harris, Absolutism and Enlightenment, 1660–1789 (London, 1964, 2d ed. 1967); John G. Gagliardo, Enlightened Despotism (New York, 1967). On England, see J. H. Plumb, The Growth of Political Stability in England, 1675–1725 (London, 1967); Betty Kemp, Kings and Commons, 1660–1832 (New York, 1957); E. N. Williams, The Eighteenth-Century Constitution (New York, 1960).

  On France, the political historiography tends to stress the weakness of the old regime rather than its strengths; but see Roland E. Mousnier, The Institutions of France under the Absolute Monarchy, 1598–1789 (2 vols., Chicago, 1979, 1984); Pierre Goubert, Louis XIV and Twenty Million Frenchmen (New York, 1970).

  For Prussia, see Hans Rosenberg, Bureaucracy, Aristocracy, and Autocracy (Boston, 1966); Reinhold August Dorwart, Administrative Reform of Frederick William I of Prussia (Westport, 1953).

  On Iberia, see Carl A. Hanson, Economy and Society in Baroque Portugal, 1668–1703 (Minneapolis, 1981), which interprets this period as “an era of relative quiescence in Portuguese history . . . as in most nation-states, the General Crisis . . . was clearly resolved in favor of absolutism.”

  On cultural and intellectual history there is a very rich literature, which tends, however, to be careless in its chronology and confused in its assumption of social and economic trends. The classical work is Voltaire, The Age of Louis XIV, (tr. Martyn P. Pollack (London, 1962). In the twentieth century, many works have been written to deny that this period was truly an “age of reason.” See, e.g., Carl Becker’s witty but wrong-headed The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers (New Haven, 1932); Basil Willey, The Eighteenth-Century Background (New York, 1941); Lester Crocker, An Age of Crisis: Man and World in Eighteenth-Century French Thought (Baltimore, 1959); Frank Manuel, The Eighteenth Century Confronts the Gods (New York, 1967). A contrary argument appears in Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment (Boston, 1951). Mediating models are developed in Albert Soboul, Guy Lemarchand, and Michele Fogel, Le siècle des lumières (2 vols., Paris, 1977); Paul Hazard, The European Mind (New York, 1963); Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation (2 vols., New York, 1966–69); Roger Mercier, La réhabilitation de la nature humaine (1700–1750) (Paris, 1980).

  Among many helpful monographs are Jean Ehrard, “L’idée de nature en France à l’ aube des lumières (Paris, 1963; Flammarion ed., 1970); Charles Vereker, Eighteenth-Century Optimism (Liverpool, 1967); William Letwin, The Origin of Scientific Economics (Garden City, 1963).

  Some of the most important contributions to intellectual history in this period are biographies. Among them are Frank Manuel, A Portrait of Sir Isaac Newton (Cambridge, 1968); Maurice Cranston, John Locke (London, 1957; rpt. New York, 1979); Ronald Grimsley, D’Alembert (New York, 1963); Isabel Knight, The Geometric Spirit: The Abbé de Condillac and the French Enlightenment (New Haven, 1968); and Ira Wade, The Intellectual Development of Voltaire (Princeton, 1969).

  The Price Revolution of the Eighteenth Century

  Most historians outside of France are not aware that there was a price revolution in the eighteenth century. The subject has been so little understood that when Boris Mironov picked up in Russia unmistakeable evidence of what looked to him like a price-revolution in the eighteenth century, he concluded that it was a delayed Russian extension of the price-revolution of the sixteenth century! See Boris Mironov, “The Price Revolution’ in Eighteenth-Century Russia,” Soviet Studies in History 11 (1973) 325–52;

  General historical introductions to this period include Franco Venturi, The End of the Old Regime in Europe, 1768–1776: The First Crisis, tr. R. Burr Litchfield (Princeton, 1989); C. B. A. Behrens, The Ancien Régime (1967, New York, 1979); M. S. Anderson, Europe in the Eighteenth Century, 1713–1783 (2d ed., London, 1976); Leonard Krieger, Kings and Philosophers, 1689–1789 (New York, 1970); and Isser Woloch, Eighteenth-Century Europe: Tradition and Progress, 1715–1789 (New York, 1982). Still useful are three volumes in the old Langer series: Penfield Roberts, The Quest for Security, 1715–1740 (New York, 1947); Walter L. Dorn, Competition for Empire, 1740–1763 (New York, 1940); and Leo Gershoy, From Despotism to Revolution, 1761–1789 (New York, 1944); and two volumes in the French Peuples et civilisations series: P. Muret, La prépondérance anglaise, 1713–1763 (Paris, 1937); and Philippe Sagnac, La fin de l’ ancien régime et la révolution Américaine, 1763–1789 (Paris, 1952). General works of economic and social history include Fernand Braudel, Capitalism and Material Life, 1400–1800 (1967; New York, 1973); idem, Afterthoughts on Material Civilization and Capitalism (Baltimore, 1977); idem, Civilization and Capitalism, Fifteenth-Eighteenth Century (3 vols., 1979; New York, 1982–84); Pierre Chaunu, La civilisation de l’Europe classique (Paris, 1966).

  On the economic history of England, see T. S. Ashton, An Economic History of England: The Eighteenth Century (London, 1955); idem, Economic Fluctuations in England, 1700–1800 (Oxford, 1959).

  For France, the leading works are Ernest Labrousse et al., Histoire économique et sociale de la France vol. 2, 1660–1789 (Paris, 1970); Roger Price, The Economic Modernization of France (New York, 1975); H. Sée, La France économique et sociale au XVIIIe siècle (1925, Paris, 1967); idem, Esquisse d’une histoire économique et sociale de la France depuis les origines jusqu’à la guerre mondiale (Paris, 1929); Marc Bloch, “La lutte pour l’individualisme agrare,” Annales d’Histoire Économique et Sociale 2 (1930) 329–81, 511–56, which deals mainly with the eighteenth century.

  On Italy, the best beginning is Giulio Einaudi, ed.
, Storia d’Italia, vol. 3, Dal primo settecento all’unita (Turin, 1973); specialized studies include Bruno Caizzi, Industria, commercio e banca in Lombardia nel XVIII secolo (Milan, 1968); Giuseppe Felloni, Il mercato monetario in Piemonte nel secolo XVIII (Milan, 1968); R. Burr Litchfield, “Les investissements commerciaux des patriciens florentins au XVIIIe siècle,” Annales E.S.C. 14 (1969) 685–721; Giulio Giacchero, Storia economica del Settecento genovese (Genoa, 1951); Carlo Antonio Vianello, Il settecento milanese (Milan, 1934); R. Romano, Prèzzi, salari e servizi a Napoli dal secolo XVIII (1734–1806) (Milan, 1965).

  On Spain, see Richard Herr, the Eighteenth-Century Revolution in Spain (Princeton, 1958); Jaime Carrera Pujal, Historia de la economia española (5 vols., Barcelona, 1943–47), devotes vols. 3–5 to the eighteenth century. A classic is G. Desdevises du Dezert, L’Espagne de l’ ancien régime (3 vols., Paris, 1897–1904).

  For central Europe, see W. H. Bruford, Germany in the Eighteenth Century: The Social Background of the Literary Revival (1935, Cambridge, 1968); Hermann Aubin and Wolfgang Zorn, eds., Handbuch der deutschen Wirtschafts-und Sozialgeschichte (2 vols., Stuttgart, 1971), 1:495–678; Otto Hintze, “Zur Agrarpolitik Friedrichs des Grossen,” Forschungen zur brandenburgischen Geschichte 10 (1898) 275–309.

  Eastern Europe in this era is studied in M. Confino, Domaines et seigneurs en Russie vers la fin du XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1963); Jerome Blum, Lord and Peasant in Russia from the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, 1961); Boris Mironov, ‘The Price Revolution’ in Eighteenth-Century Russia,” Soviet Studies in History 11 (1973) 325–52; idem, “Le mouvement des prix des céréales en Russie du XVIIIe siècle au début du XXe siècle,” Annales E.S.C. 41 (1986) 217–51; and W. H. Reddaway, ed., The Cambridge History of Poland (Cambridge, 1941).

  On northern Europe, the first volume of B. J. Hovde, The Scandinavian Countries, 1720–1865 (Boston, 1943) is devoted to this period.

  For the Middle East see, André Raymond, “The Economic Crisis of Egypt in the Eighteenth Century,” in A. L. Udovitch, ed., The Islamic Middle East, 700–1900: Studies in Economic and Social History (Princeton, 1981), 687–709.

  For America, John J. McCusker and Russell R. Menard, The Economy of British America, 1607–1789 (1985, Chapel Hill, 1991) has an excellent bibliography. Also helpful are J. H. Parry, Trade and Dominion: European Overseas Empires in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1971); Richard B. Sheridan, Sugar and Slavery: An Economic History of the British West Indies, 1623–1755 (Baltimore, 1974); Lyman L. Johnson and Enrique Tandeter, eds., Essays on the Price History of Eighteenth-Century Latin America (Albuquerque, 1990); Harold B. Johnson, “A Preliminary Inquiry into Money, Prices, and Wages in Rio de Janeiro, 1763–1823,” in Dauril Alden, ed., Colonial Roots of Modern Mexico (Berkeley, 1973); Armando de Ramón and José de Larrain, Origenes de la vida economica Chilena, 1659–1808 (Santiago, 1982).

  For localized studies it is interesting to compare Georges Lefebvre, Les paysans du Nord pendant la Revolution Français (Bari, 1959); Robert Gross, The Minutemen and Their World (New York, 1976); Patrick O’Mara, “Geneva in the Eighteenth Century: A Socioeconomic Study of the Bourgeois City,” (thesis, Berkeley, 1956); Franklin L. Ford, Strasbourg in Transition, 1648–1789 (Cambridge, 1958); Thomas Sheppard, Loumarin in the Eighteenth Century: A Study of a French Village (Baltimore, 1971); Patrice Higonnet, Pont-de-Montvert (Cambridge, 1971); Olwen Hufton, Bay eux in the Late Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1967); and Jeffrey Kaplow, Elbeuf during the Revolutionary Period: History and Social Structure (Baltimore, 1964).

  Demographic movements are discussed in E. A. Wrigley and R. S. Schofield, The Population History of England, 1541–1871; A Reconstruction (Cambridge, 1981), 402–7; also D. V. Glass, “Population and Population Movements in England and Wales, 1700–1850”; and Louis Henry, “The Population of France in the Eighteenth Century,” in Glass and Eversley, eds., Population and History (London, 1965), 434–56; Michael W. Flinn, The European Demographic System, 1500–1820 (Baltimore, 1981).

  On harvest conditions and subsistence crises see John W. Rogers Jr., “Subsistence Crises and Political Economy in France at the End of the Ancien Régime,” Research in Economic History 5 (1980) 249–301; David Landes, “The Statistical Study of French Crises,” Journal of Economic History 10 (1950) 195–211; Emanuel Le Roy Ladurie, “Climat et recoltes au XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles,” Annales E.S.C. 15 (1966) 434–65; Douglas Hay, “War, Dearth, and Theft in the Eighteenth Century: The Record of the English Courts,” Past & Present 95 (1982) 117–60; J. Jenny, “Le prix du blé à Bourges en 1766: Un tumulte populaire,” Mémoires Union Societe Savantes, Bourges 8 (1959–60) 49–122.

  On price movements and markets in this era, much work has been done in France. The leading authority is still C.-E. Labrousse: Esquisse du mouvement des prix et des revenus en France au XVIIIe siècle (2 vols., Paris 1933), idem, “Prix et structure regionale: Le froment dans les régions française, 1782–1790,” Annales d’Histoire Sociale 2 (1940) 382–400; and La crise de l’économie Française a la fin de l’ancien régime et au début de la Révolution (Paris, 1943). Also helpful are A. P. Usher, History of the Grain Trade in France, 1400–1710 (Cambridge, 1913), and idem, “The General Course of Wheat Prices in France, 1350–1788,” Review of Economic Statistics 12 (1930) 159–69. Other studies of French prices include Georges Frêche, “Études statistiques sur le commerce céréalier de la France méridionale au XVIIIe siècle,” Revue d’Histoire Économique et Sociale 49 (1971) 5–43, 183–224; A. Danière, “Feudal Incomes and Demand Elasticity for Bread in Late Eighteenth-Century France,” Journal of Economic History 18 (1958) 317–41; R. Latouche, Le mouvements des prix en Dauphiné sous l’ancien régime; étude méthodologique (Grenoble, 1934) and Annales E.S.C. 9 (1937) 110; A. Poitrineau, La vie rurale en Basse-Auvergne au XVIIIe siècle (1726–1789) (2 vols., Paris, 1965); Ruggiero Romano, Commerce et prix du blé à Marseille au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1956); P. de Saint-Jacob, Les paysans de la Bourgogne du Nord au dernier siècle de l’Ancien Régime (Paris, 1960); P. Saint-Jacob, “La question des prix en France à la fin de l’Ancien Régime, d’après les contemporains,” Revue d’Histoire Économique et Sociale 36 (1952) 133–46; E. Sol, “Les céréales inférieures en Quercy (prix de 1751 à 1789)” Revue d’Histoire Économique et Sociale 4 (1938) 335–55; G. Afanasiev, Le commerce des céréales en France au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1894); J. Letaconnoux, Les subsistances et le commerce des grains en Bretagne au XVIIIe siècle (Rennes, 1909); Ernest Blin, Le prix du blé à Avalon de 1756 à 1790 (Paris, 1945); F. G. Dreyfus, “Prix et population à Treves et à Mayence au XVIIIe siècle,” Revue d’Histoire Économique et Sociale 34 (1956) 241–61; Marie-Jeanne Tits-Dieuaide, “L’evolution du prix du blé dans quelques villes d’Europe occidentale du XVe au XVIIIe siècle,” Annales E.S.C. (1987) 529–48.

  For price movements in other nations, see William Beveridge, Prices and Wages in England from the Twelfth to the Nineteenth Century (London, 1939; reissued New York, 1966); Earl J. Hamilton, War and Prices in Spain, 1651–1800 (Cambridge, Mass., 1947); Vitorino M. Godinho, Prix et monnaies au Portugal, 1750–1850 (Paris, 1955); Corrado Vivanti, “I prèzzi di alcuni prodotti agricoli a Mantova nella seconda metà del XVIII secolo,” Bolletino Storico Mantovano 3 (1958) 499–518; P. J. Middelhoven, “Auctions at Amsterdam of North European Pinewood, 1717–1808: A Contribution to the History of Prices in the Netherlands,” Acta Historiae Neerlandicae 13 (1980) 65–89; Astrid Friis and Kristof Glamann, A History of Prices and Wages in Denmark, 1660–1800 (Copenhagen, 1958); Tadeusz Furtak, Ceny w Gdansku w latach 1701–1815 [A history of prices in Danzig-Gdansk] (Lemberg, 1935); Ruth Crandall, “Wholesale Commodity Prices in Boston during the Eighteenth Century,” Review of Economic Statistics 16 (1934) 117–28; R. Cesse, “La crisis agricola negli Stati Veneti a meta del secolo XVIII,” Estratto dal Nouvo Archivo Veneto n.s. 42; Giuseppe Prato, La vita economica in Piemonte a mezzo il secolo XVIII (Turin, 1908); Helena Madurowicz-Urbanska, Ceny zbozaw zachodniej Malopolsce w D
rugiej Polowie XVIII wieku (Warsaw, 1963); William S. Sachs, “Agricultural Conditions in the Northern Colonies before the Revolution,” Journal of Economic History 13 (1953) 274–90; V. N. Jakovchevsky, Kupechesky kapital v feodal no-krepostnicesky Rossii [Prices and Profit in Feudal and Servile Russia] (Moscow, 1953), of which pp. 77–103 and 193–201, with statistical materials, are translated in Italian in Romano, ed., Prèzzi in Europa, 447–79; this is mainly a study of Russian prices in the mid- and late eighteenth century. Abel also cites Paul von Hedemann-Heespen, “Zur Sitten-und-Preisgeschichte des 18 Jahrhundert,” Die heimat. Monatsschrift des Vereins zur Pflege der Natur-und-Landskunde in Schleswig-Holstein, 21 (1911), which I have not seen.

  On wage movements, see Elizabeth W. Gilboy, “The Cost of Living and Real Wages in Eighteenth-Century England,” Review of Economic Statistics 18 (1936) 134–43; idem, Wages in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge, Mass., 1934, New York, 1969); M. W. Flinn, “Trends in Real Wages, 1750–1850,” Economic History Review 2d ser. 27 (1974) 395–413, with commentary in ibid. 29 (1976) 137–144; G. N. Von Tunzelmann, “Trends in Real Wages, 1750–1850, Revisited,” ibid., 33–49; Luigi Dal Pane, Storia del lavoro in Italia dagli inizi del secolo XVIII al 1815 (Milan, 1958); F. W. Botham and E. H. Hunt, “Wages in Britain during the Industrial Revolution,” Economic History Review, 2d ser. 40 (1987) 380–99; L. D. Schwarz, “The Standard of Living in the Long Run: London, 1700–1860,” Economic History Review 38 (1985) 24–41; A. Verhaegan, “Note sur le trevail et les salaires en Belgique au XVIIIe siècle,” Bulletin de l’Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales de l’Universite de Louvain 19 (1953) 71–88; R. Keith Kelsall, “The General Trend of Real Wages in the North of England during the Eighteenth Century,” York Archaeological Journal 33 (1936); idem, “The Wages of Northern Farm Labourers in the Mid-Eighteenth Century,” Economic History Review 8 (1937) 80–81; Pierre Vilar, “Elan urbain et mouvement des salaires: Le cas de Barcelone au XVIIIe siècle,” Revue d’Histoire économique et Sociale 28 (1950); E. H. Hunt, “Industrialization and Regional Inequality: Wages in Britain, 1760–1914,” Journal of Economic History 46 (1986) 935–66; idem and F. W. Botham, “Wages in Britain during the Industrial Revolution,” Economic History Review 2d ser. 40 (1987) 380–99; L. D. Schwarz, “Trends in Real Wage Rates, 1750–1790: A reply to Hunt and Botham,” Economic History Review, 2d ser. 43 (1990) 90–98; J. Söderberg, “Real Wage Trends in Urban Europe, 1750–1850: Stockholm in Comparative Perspective,” Social History 12 (1987) 155–76.