Comparative Economic History

Topics Covered
This lecture series is designed to explore the history of two leading industrial nations, Britain and Japan, by putting them into a comparative perspective. Precocious urbanization, industrialization and commercialization explain the resilience of both economies, but their institutional and social settings, which could either promote or restrain economic performance and business practices, were markedly different. The histories of the two countries diverged and converged as they reacted to fresh economic realities. They show up how scarce resources were allocated and the problems of inefficiency ameliorated under different social and political circumstances.
  “Comparison” is a complex intellectual technique successfully adopted by eminent economists and historians, such as Smith, Weber, Braudel, and North. The comparative approach is also implicit in studies of Economic History in general. The discussion mainly covers the early modern period when both Britain and Japan started to build the foundation of a modern capitalist economy, but students are encouraged to study the two economies in a broader historical context.

Reading

Broadberry, S., Accounting for the great divergence (2015). article pdf

Cullen, L.M., A history of Japan, 1582-1941: internal and external world (2003).

De Vries, J., The industrious revolution: Consumer behavior and the household economy,1650-to the present (Cambridge, 2008).

Francks, P., The Japanese consumer; An alernative economic history of modern Japan (2009).

Hall, J. W. ed., The Cambridge History of Japan, vol. 4 (Cambridge, 1991).

Hamano, K., et al., Nihon Keizaishi 1600-2000 (2009)

Hayami, A., Saito, O., and Toby, R. P., eds., The economic history of Japan: 1600-1990 (Oxford, 2004).

Jones, E., The European miracle: Environments, economies and geopolitics in the history of Europe and Asia (Cambridge).

Smith, T.C., The Agrarian Origins of Modern Japan (1959).

Tanimoto, M., ed., The role of tradition in Japan’s industrialization: Another path to industrialization (Oxford, 2006).

Wrigley, E. A., Energy and the English industrial revolution (Cambridge, 2010).

van Zanden, J. L., The Long Road to the Industrial Revolution. The European Economy in a Global Perspective, 1000-1800 (Leiden, 2009).