Speaker: Tim Brook (UBC) Although China in the Ming period had a large and sophisticated grain market, almost no grain price data survive – except for when famine struck. This presentation explores the possibilities and limits of what 774 famine pieces over half a dynasty might be able to tell us about the economic history […]
Speaker: Taco Terpstra (Northwestern) Archaeological data show that the process of Mediterranean state formation starting around 700 BCE is positively correlated with economic development. Likewise, state disintegration after ca. 300 CE correlates with economic contraction. This paper will discuss what effect the formation and collapse of states had on the economy of the ancient Mediterranean, […]
*Please note this lecture has been cancelled.* Speaker: Priya Satia (Stanford) The biggest gun-making firm in 18th-century Britain was owned by a Quaker family, the Galtons of Birmingham. They were major suppliers of guns to the slave trade in West Africa, the East India Company, settlers and trading companies in North America, and the British […]
A Price History of Ming Famine 
Ties that Bind: State Formation and Economic Development in the Ancient Mediterranean 
CANCELLED -Pacifists Making Guns: The Galton Family and Britain’s Industrial Revolution