British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences
Writing the History of the Global
British Academy, 10 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1
21-22 May 2009
Dynamics and Concepts: Shaping Global History
Jan Luiten Van Zanden (Utrecht University)
Economic history has gained much in depth and power thanks to ‘new economic history’, the systematic application of theories and quantitative methods of analysis borrowed from economics. For global economic history, this is only possible when we can make use of quantitative datasets that cover large parts of the world, preferably the world as a whole. Individual scholars are generally not able to put together such global datasets – the exception to this rule, Angus Maddison’s estimates of GDP and population, proves how difficult this is (but also demonstrates what the potential gains are). A lot of expertise of the institutional and cultural background of the historical sources is needed to really be able to compare them internationally. Therefore, in order to professionalize global economic history, teams of scholars have to start putting the most relevant data together – perhaps in an international comparative way (say, comparing the Yangtze delta with Holland), but preferably by trying to make global comparisons. This is the only way forward if we really want to understand the history of global inequality – why some countries are poor and others are rich.