Economic History

Diamonds and Migrant Labour in South Africa, 1869-1910

The 'pass laws' and migrant labour of apartheid in South Africa today have their origins in the policies designed to control the black workers in the diamond mines a century ago.

Inflation and the Moral Order

The new phenomenon of inflation in 16th-century England not only disrupted the medieval social order, it also challenged the traditional moral censure of usury and capital expansion.

What is Economic History?

History with the people left out? Arid quantification? Or study of the essential motivating force of society? Six historians answer.

1926: Social Costs of the Mining Dispute

In 1926 the mining dispute led to the General Strike. Chris Wrigley writes how the memory of the hardship of those months has left a permanent legacy of bitterness in industrial relations in the coal industry.

'In Place of Strife' - The Guilds and the Law in Renaissance Venice

The trade guilds of Venice, explains Richard Mackenney, were organisations with a surprising amount of political and economic power in the patrician Renaissance city.

1919: The Winnipeg General Strike

Throughout Europe, the end of the First World War brought in its wake disillusion, civil unrest and even revolution. As Daniel Francis explains here, it was the same story in Canada in 1919.

Living the Fishing

'It's no fish ye're buying - it's men's lives', wrote Sir Walter Scott, and looking at the fishing industry in Scotland in the last century involves a vivid recreation of the hard life of the isolated fishing communities, their work and their family life.

The Fishermen's Religious Revival

1921 was an annus terribilis for the fishing communities of north-east Scotland - and the despair of the fisher folk, explains John Lowe Duthie, led them to religious fervour for consolation.

International Economic Co-operation After 1945

As Robert Lowe Hall, Lord Roberthall was the first British representative on the Economic and Employment Commission. In April 1947 he became Director of the Economic Section of the Cabinet Office, and in 1953 Economic Adviser to Her Majesty's Government.