Wealth and Poverty

By David Bates | Published in History Today Volume: 54 Issue: 7 2004

David Bates introduces the summer’s major historical conference.

This year’s Anglo-American Conference at the Institute of Historical Research, London, on July 7th-9th, is devoted to the theme of ‘Wealth and Poverty’. Over eighty papers address the multitude of problems which economic inequality has posed for human societies, and the ideologies, philosophies and policies which have developed to justify differentials in wealth and poverty and influenced attempts to alleviate it.

The papers cover subjects from the living standards of the medieval peasantry to contemporary ideas on the redistribution of wealth. Alongside sessions which tackle the physical conditions of a life spent either in wealth or poverty, others focus on ideas and practice in relation to the alleviation and abolition of poverty.

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