Finance vs 金融
02/2013
The implementation of a banking system in the provinces of Japan was led
by strong central initiatives at the end of 19th century and, for this
reason, it is difficult to study its impact only from the perspectives
of local history. Such initiatives were pretty hard to resist especially
where local trade and industries were still weak, so one might think of
this as an origin of present-day ‘financial paternalism’, or a strong link
between our government and the financial sector.
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Finance vs 金融 02/2018
長期公債発行を可能にしたイングランド銀行が設立されたのは1694年。「財政革命」と呼ばれることもあるこの金融会社設立の裏には、機能的な税制改革と、納税に不可欠な民富の蓄積がありました。ロンドンを中心とするこの有名な金融史の一方で、実は同じ頃に地方に興る銀行ビジネスについてはあまり知られていない。産業革命を起こす地方経済の底力は、ノリッジ市やエクセター市など中世以来の自治都市に起こる民間の産業金融に蓄えられました。特筆すべきは首都と地方いずれの金融も、海外へ向けイギリスが勢力を伸ばす歴史的経緯に初めから直結していた点です。
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Old and New vs 新旧混在
03/2013
Historians now see two distinctive paths in the process of Japanese industrialization,
namely, the one led by Western technologies in the late 19th century, and
the other evolving from the indigenous economy in the late Edo period.
This dualism, which would continue to shape the modern Japanese economy,
is interesting because the mixture of the old and new has also been identified
by historians like Hudson and Berg in the context of early British industrial
history. The similarity should not hide major differences though; political
and geographical settings were so different between the two countries,
not to mention the timing of take-off.
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Old and New vs 新旧混在
03/2018
「イギリス産業革命」といえば蒸気機関など鉱物資源エネルギーを効率よく利用するための工学技術の革新を思い浮かべますが、その要因は、近年、それ以前の数百年間に変化する人口、農業、消費、都市商業など様々な角度から、「長期の歴史」を土台に理解されるようなりました。技術革新が目立つ工業部門の裏で、実は伝統的手工業生産が長く続いていたこともわかっています。歴史のどの「層」を重視するかによってその変化のスピードはそれぞれ違って見えることを発見したF・ブローデルはフランス人。爾来、歴史に見える長期持続が世界中で注目されることになる。 |
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Institutions vs 制度
04/2013
We now live in the third largest economy in the world. But how can we ‘qualitatively’ compare the state of our economy with that of other leading economies? This is a type of question one should consider from historical and comparative perspectives, since how we arrived at the condition we are in now explains
a lot about the condition itself! Comparative Economic History reminds
us how firmly the current state of political and economic institutions
depends on history. Examples of these in Great Britain may be found in
the history of finance, social welfare, local government, charitable organisations etc. in both British and European contexts. Interestingly, these are also key areas making up the Japanese economy, and they are most definitely
the products of our own history. So, one can say that how much we know about our economy depends on how well we study it in historical and comparative settings!
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Institutions vs 制度
04/2018
東西の制度比較は経済史のおもしろみの一つ。各国経済のパフォーマンスを数値化して比べる以外にも、都市と農村に着目しそれぞれの特徴と影響力を比較することもできる。例えば、同じ都市でも日本では城下町が中心。一方、イギリスでは自治都市が軸になっていました。日本では武士が都市を統治し、イギリスでは商工業者が市議会を構成し教会の影響も続いていました。歴史のパワーを知るものにとってこうした違いは、今も続く東西比較においても案外参考になる。
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Early Modern vs 近世
05/2013
Some historians argue that the standard periodization, such as ‘medieval’, ‘early modern’ and ‘modern’, should be revised, following the acknowledgement that there was a precocious market economy in parts of Asia, which seem to have developed separately from the West before the age of industrialization.
This is a welcoming intellectual venture, since such a proposition is likely to boost students’ interests in Comparative Economic History. It has been established that commercially prospering Edo Japan deserves to be labeled as an ‘Economic Society’, although it remained largely agricultural and was in theory secluded from the world. One may see a parallel development on the other side of Eurasia; the British commercial economy was also booming in the 17th and 18th centuries. But can we then regard the Edo period as ‘Early Modern’, even though tangible signs of ‘the Enlightenment’, ‘proto-democracy’, or ‘the state formation’ were extremely weak?
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Early Modern vs 近世
05/2018
近代の始まりを「産業革命」や「工業化の時代」に求める経済学者は多いが、それ以前の政治、宗教、科学の歴史も重要なのは明らか。近年、人口増や市場の拡大、農業革命やプロト工業化、さらには財政国家論も加わって、16世紀には近代へ向かって始動する経済の歴史は他の近代史と足並みをそろえつつある。結果、ユーラシア大陸の東と西、日本とイギリスを比較する上で、約300年続く近世(16世紀から18世紀)はすこぶるおもしろい時代であったことを再認識できる。
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01/2014Demography vs 人口▽ 02/2013Finance vs 金融▲ Top▲
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The Great Divergence vs 大分岐
06/2013
Our Japanese students’ views on “the Great Divergence” are divided. Some
support the claim that the Asian economy had never been outperformed by
the West before the age of industrialization. Others stick to the orthodox
interpretation; “the first modern society” initially emerged in the early
modern Europe. Such split reactions to our past are somewhat predictable,
considering the normal state of Japanese society where there has always
been the fusion of, and the tension between Western modernism and local
traditionalism since the run-up to the Meiji Restoration. Or, the different
opinions may be the outcome of students’ searching for their identity,
especially in a time of renewed political power struggles in East Asia
lately. Whatever the truth, Comparative Economic History helps us understand
the way we see the world and our place in it.
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The Great Divergence vs 大分岐
06/2018
ヨーロッパ近世(16~18世紀)が経済史上このうえなく重要な時代となるのは、21世紀のグローバル市場へ向かう不可逆的な動きがその頃始まるからです。それ以降、世界の人々は西欧主導の物質的・思想的交流から逃れることは限りなく不可能に近づき、どの国の経済史について説くにせよ、西洋経済史を意識せずに語れば現実味に欠ける物語になる点にその歴史的意義が見える。近世において初めて経済史の主役に躍り出て長く舵取りを任されたのがイギリスであったという偶然に、その後の世界史がどう依存したのか考えてみると面白い。商業、財政、農業、産業において革命的変化を起こし、その後、科学と金融において世界をリードするその持続力も近世における動きだしを無視しては語れない。 |
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Comparison vs 比較
07/2013
“I think the author is wrong about the death rate in South East Asia in
the 18th century”, remarked one of the international students from Thailand.
The author, who is famous for his comparative studies, does not seem to
be proficient in the languages spoken in the region, so he probably got
the information second-hand. This episode reminds us of an obvious hurdle
for studying Comparative Economic History. It is often hard for historians
to handle a range of primary sources written in different linguistic traditions
from their own. But here, the combination of pertinent local history and
a good translation of it may lower the hurdle a bit. We know, for instance,
that Japanese scholars, who utilize comparison, often cite examples of
the British town and countryside whose histories are based on painstaking
local research and are in print in Japanese. In fact, if one takes CEH
more seriously, both reliable and readable local research becomes more
important than ever.
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Comparison vs 比較
07/2018
イギリス経済史について研究する際、私的な書簡や日記だけでなく公的な行政資料まですべて手書きの文書を読みこなす技が必要になります。読み進めるうちに、肝心な箇所で文書が破損していたり、文字がぼやけていたりすることもよくあり、天候を気にしながら登山する感覚になります。英語圏の研究者による水準の高い研究が揃う分野では、その動向を日本に紹介する作業も大事ですが、下山した人の感想を聞くよりも、やはり自分で登ってみるのがよい。世界には、高く険しい山がたくさんあり、思いもよらない景色を眺めるチャンスもあるからです。
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Industrialisation vs 工業化
11/2013
The organizational aspect of the Meiji silk trade was well presented in
our graduate seminar last week, but personally, I wished to hear more on
the effect of growing urban consumerism in this era on the modernization
of the domestic silk trade. And most definitely, the history of the textile
industry is an interesting subject to explore in comparative perspectives.
We know that the production of Japanese silk textiles was initially
concentrated in the commercialized region of Kinai especially near Kyoto
in the Edo period, but subsequently it spread in the remote eastern provinces
(such as northern Kanto and southern Tohoku) where a much cheaper labour
force was available. An indigenous form of domestic industry in Edo Japan
was partly transformed into a modern form of small factory industry, following
the impact of the world market on the production process in the late 19th
century.
The destiny of Japanese silk production can be discussed in the context
of much debated themes in the West, such as proto-industry, the “industrious”
revolution, the roles of the town and the countryside etc. Recently, the
continuity of the conventional form of industry into the age of industrialization
has been ‘a hot issue’ in both Japanese and British academic circles; the
division between industrial and pre-industrial economies may not have been
as clear as we think it is.
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Industrialisation vs 工業化
11/2018
イギリス経済史を通じて学ぶ重要な教訓の一つは、なんと言っても産業技術の定着と発展には、外国(人)の影響が欠かせないという真実。かつて織物業が一国産業の発展に欠かせないエンジンであったことはよく知られていますが、16世期の新毛織物にしても18世期の綿織物にしても、外国(人)の技術をうまく取り入れたことがその商業的成功の決定的な要因となりました。その後改良されたその技術は産業革命を招来し、やがて日本にも外国人によって伝えられることになります。産業ナショナリズムを脱し、肝心要の国際交流の経済効果に気付かされる大事な史実です。
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Improvement vs 改良
12/2013
An urban historian in Tokyo kindly sent me his latest survey on the disaster
control measures implemented by the Bakufu (central government) at the
time of the devastating floods in eighteenth century Edo. It meticulously
shows how officials tried to learn from their experiences and kept records
of past rescue operations for future reference. The extent of the procedures
put in place is impressive. I was considering what my colleague had told
me about rural Japan a week before. According to his reading, the people
were very adept at living harmoniously with nature. Thus he believes that
pre-modern Japan was much more ‘progressive’ than the West in this respect.
In what way did our ancestors deal with the constantly changing natural
environment? Was nature something which had to be ‘controlled’ or something
which was accepted as a part of the symbiotic system of the universe? We
know well from the economic history of Europe that one can write very different
histories depending on which perspectives he/she chooses, urban or rural.
Perhaps, the same thing can be said about the economic history of Japan
revealing differing attitudes towards nature in the increasingly urbanized
Edo period.
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Improvement vs 改良
12/2018
遺伝子組換え、IT革命、そして人工知能(AI)。16~17世期の科学革命やその後の啓蒙主義、産業革命によって始まった、人間の手により世界を改良する潮流の勢いは現在も衰えていません。その威力を数値ではかることは無理でも、数世紀の間に世界市場と領土を押さえ、その後は科学とビジネスの分野で母語の優位を活かすヨーロッパの北西に位置する辺境国のしなやかな歴史を読めば、改良の流れを止める難しさがよくわかる。この間、全人口の90%以上を占めた農村人口は激減し、今度は90%以上が都市に住むようになる。地球規模の環境破壊は間もなく不可逆的フェーズに突入するとされる。しかし経済発展のプロセスは「改良」を名目にとっくの昔にそのフェーズに入っていることを、経済史から再認識することになる。
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Demography vs 人口学
01/2014
How different were the ideas of "family" between Japan and Korea
in the early 20th century’ was the main topic for discussion at the annual
meeting of the Tohoku Socio-Economic History group last week. The historical
context for the discussion was given by a new study on the implementation
of the Japanese family system by the imperial government to Korea in 1939,
known as Sōshi Kaimei .
The history of Japanese family, or "household" to be more
precise, has been widely discussed by historians of preindustrial economic
growth in Edo Japan, with significant input from British demographers (mainly
based at the University of Cambridge). Thanks to such demographic sources
as Shumon Aratame Cho, kept and preserved as "registers of religious faith" in 17th-
and 18th-century towns and villages, we now know how the authorities in
Edo and local domains collected information about residents, their age,
and family relationship in detail.
Sōshi Kaimei is undoubtedly one of the politically charged policies which would have
altered the relationship between Japan and Korea if it had remained for
a long time. But it also turns out to be an important case of past governmental
efforts which inadvertently left useful information about what the family
meant to the Japanese people and their neighbours.
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Demography vs 人口学
01/2019
イギリスでは、労働力(多くは下層民)の活用を念頭に人口問題の重要性が17世期には公に認識され、18~19世期になると経済成長の限界を示す経済理論上の主題として注目されるようになります。一方、一国の人口趨勢を国勢調査導入以前の歴史に遡って推計する技が生かされるようになるのは20世期になってからです。その結果、生産部門ばかりに目が奪われがちな経済史家の視野を結婚や家族、出産や死亡など誰もが経験しうるライフサイクル上の事柄へと広げ、経済史研究にパラダイムシフトをもたらしました。ところが、世界には人口推計すらままならならず、ましてや歴史人口学など不可能であることを途上国の留学生から学ぶことになる。洗練された人口史をもとに経済的優位を主張できる先進国とそれができない後発の国々との間で世界史をどう共有できるのか、思わぬ課題が浮上することになる。
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