日英比較
国際共修のすすめ

Finance vs 金融

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.
02/2013

 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背景には、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、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ません。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、首都と地方の金融いずれも、イギリスが海外へ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。
02/2013

Old and New vs 新旧混在

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.
03/2013

　「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のはF・ブローデルです。爾来、激しい変化の一方で、何世紀もの間、変わることのない長期持続の歴史も世界中で注目されるようになりました。
03/2013

Institutions vs 制度

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!
04/2013

 東西の制度比較は経済史の魅力の一つです。各国経済のパフォーマンスを数値化して比較するだけでなく、都市や農村に着目しそれぞれの特徴と影響力の違いを比べることもできます。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となっていました。日本では経済活動を行わない武士が都市を統治していましたが、イギリスでは商工業者が市議会を構成し都市を治めていました。教会が中心となって弱者救済の思想が根強く残るのもイギリス都市の特徴です。農業に目を向けてみると、早くから市場の論理に適応していくイギリスの農業と、近代まで石高制に紐付けられた日本のそれとを対比することができます。歴史のパワーを知る者にとって、こうした違いは、今の東西を比較する際にも、意外と参考になることが多いのです。
04/2013

Early Modern vs 近世

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?
05/2013

 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。しかし、それ以前の政治、宗教、科学も、近代史に直結する重要な歴史でした。近年、人口増加や市場の拡大、農業革命や消費革命、さらに財政国家論も加わり、近代へ向う経済の歴史は他の近代史と足並みをそろえつつあります。その結果、約300年続く近世は、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非常に興味深い時代であったことを再認識できるのです。
05/2013

The Great Divergence vs 大分岐

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.
06/2013

 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ほぼ不可能になり、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てきます（参考 西洋経済史Q&A）。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のように依存したのか考えてみるとよいでしょう。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のです。
06/2013

Comparison vs 比較

“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 Comparative Economic History more seriously, both reliable and readable local research becomes more important than ever.
07/2018

 イギリス経済史を研究する際には、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術が必要です。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でしょう。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。
07/2018

Industrialisation vs 工業化

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.
11/2013

 イギリス経済史を通じて学ぶ重要な真実の一つは、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ことです。かつて織物業が産業発展のための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改めて気付かされる大事な史実です。
11/2013

Improvement vs 改良

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 Japanre vealing differing attitudes towards nature in the increasingly urbanized Edo period.
12/2013

 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、人間の手による社会改良の勢いは現在も衰えていません。その威力を数値で測ることは難しいですが、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北西部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ります。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ります。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ていますが、経済発展のプロセスは「改良」を名目にとっくの昔に不可逆的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ができるのです。
12/2013

Demography vs 人口学

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 Soshi 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.
 Soshi Kaimei is undoubtedly one of the politically charged policies which would have altered the relationship between Japan and Korea if it had remained fora 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.
01/2014

イギリスでは、労働力の活用を念頭に人口（多くは下層民）の重要性が17世期には政府により認識され（救貧法）、18〜19世紀になると人口問題は経済成長の限界をテーマに理論化されました（マルサスの人口論）。しかし、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術が注目を集めるようになったのは、ようやく20世紀になってからです（歴史人口学）。歴史家の視野を、婚姻や世帯形成、出産や死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、経済史の世界にパラダイムシフトをもたらしました。ところが、世界には一国の人口推計値というマクロ経済の基本データすら揃わない国々がある。そんな不都合な真実を、発展途上国の留学生が指摘しました。「世界史」の認識を、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どう共有できるか、思わぬ課題に気づかされることになります。
12/2013