Doing Economic History

The courses examines how historians and economists, from different intellectual traditions and schools, grapple with major problems of economic history including pre-modern agrarian orders; demographic fluctuations; diverse property regimes; financial and commercial expansion; the emergence of fiscal-military state; the industrial revolution; growth and poverty; markets and networks; epidemics and their economic impacts; labor and capital; the rise of capitalism and imperialism; anti-capitalist and socialist movements; immigration; formal and informal economies; ; development and underdevelopment; globalization and environmental crisis; Special emphasis will be given to the theories of the Great Divergence, namely why the West became the dominant economic power over the rest of the world and how different economies responded to that.