GDP per capita was calculated by dividing the total GDP in Europe and India by total population in both territories. Note that for “Europe,” thirty-six countries in Western, Mediterranean, and Eastern Europe have been included. Not included are all former USSR territories and former Yugoslavian territories. “India” includes Pakistan and Bangladesh. All GDP and population data comes from Maddison, Historical Statistics for the World Economy, available at www.ggdc.net/maddison/ Historical_Statistics/horizontal-file_03–2007.xls

Sources and description of real wage data

India

Nominal wage data

All the wage data has been converted into grams of silver per day. 1 rupee was worth 10.78 grams of pure silver. In the few instances when the sources reported wages per month, they were divided by 30 to obtain daily wages. All in all, 391 nominal wage quotations for unskilled (or semi-skilled) laborer the entire period 1600–1900 could be gathered. The wages are for laborers, agricultural laborers, spinners, and weavers. Geographically, the data is slightly biased toward the east and the south, while there are more wage figures available for later years than for earlier years. Whenever there were no values for some years, simple interpolations were used to generate values. When more than one wage figure was available for some years, simple arithmetic averages were computed.

Market integration and economic development

The idea that the reach of the market is associated through the division of labor with the level of economic development, and that the expansion of markets, that is, the process of market integration, leads to economic growth, has made Adam Smith one of the best known economists of all time. It has also become one of the most popular explanations for economic development since Smith first asserted that connection more than two hundred years ago.

In a nutshell, the logic of the argument runs as follows. When, for some reason, market areas expand and formerly separated markets become part of one single market, their integration turns them into a single operating entity. This generates a territorial expansion of the division of labor, inducing a reallocation of resources within regions or national economies, leading to an increasing division of labor. Through the specialization of skills, this will eventually improve the general productivity and thus induce economic growth.

This appendix shows all the sources used for the analysis in Chapter 5. Again, all the sources and markets used for this chapter are listed for reasons of transparency, even though a good part of the data had been used in previous chapters already. Again, conversions used to turn capacity into weight measures are 76 kg/hl for wheat and 72 kg/hl for spelt, if not noted otherwise. Also, prices are wheat prices if not mentioned otherwise.

Sources of Grain Prices

Western India

Bombay, 1836–1914

Source for 1836–1862: Accompaniments nos. 1 to 9, p. 118. Tolas per rupee, calendar years.

Source for 1863–1914: Prices and Wages, various issues. Seers per rupee (earlier issues) and rupees per maund (later issues); average prices for calendar years.

Junnar, 1800–1827

Source: Divekar, V.D., Prices andWages, table 38. Average market prices for harvest years (June-May); seers per rupee. Wholesale prices.

Source: Divekar, V.D., Prices andWages, table 27. Average market prices for harvest years (June-May); seers per rupee. Wholesale prices.

Nimgaon Ketki, 1809–1827

Source: Divekar, V.D., Prices and Wages, table 38. Average market prices for harvest years (June-May); seers per rupee. Wholesale prices.

The present investigation deals with two very large geographical entities – the European continent and the Indian subcontinent. When analyzing and comparing these large entities as part of the “big picture” in Part I, many differences within and between them will be ignored. However, this macro picture is important, as it draws the broad lines of historical development. Even though the two territories were, for most of the period studied, neither politically nor economically entirely unified, their various parts nevertheless maintained close economic and political ties and shared countless historical experiences and cultural and social characteristics, which defined them as entities separate from other territories. Notwithstanding the many regional disparities, there was a “European” path of economic development, and also an Indian one, as the unifying factors were stronger than the dividing ones. However, the macro picture should, and will, be complemented in Part II with analyses that try to differentiate regional disparities and narrow down the geographical focus.

As with the geographical extent, the process under study – market integration or economic integration more generally – is equally multifaceted. Undoubtedly, such a far-reaching process is embedded in the general course of historical development on all levels. The expansion from a regional economy to a global market – arguably achieved in the advanced part of the world in the period from 1700 to 1900 – profoundly changed most aspects of life. Therefore, only a history of both regions that encompasses a wide range of economic, social, political, geographical, and cultural aspects would be able to explain such a far-reaching historical development. But this is neither feasible nor necessary here, as the main contribution of this work lies elsewhere, namely in the quantitative investigation of the levels and trajectories of economic integration in India and Europe. Nevertheless, this chapter attempts to discuss briefly what are believed to be the most important natural and historical determinants of market integration. By doing so, it simultaneously provides a literature survey of the central writings on these topics.

This list indicates the sources and original units of all price series used in the Part I, listed alphabetically and grouped according to grain type and location. If not stated otherwise, the prices series represent annual average prices. However, the sources are often not clear on exactly how many observations were used to calculate an average or typical price. In a small number of sources it does not become entirely clear whether the prices really are average prices or not. For the analyses, all the Indian data has been converted into rupees per maund. The following conversions were used for India: 1 maund = 40 seers = 640 chittacks = 3200 tola = approx. 37.3578 kg. 1 Madras Garce = 3200 measures = 3552 kg. 1 rupee = 16 annas = 64 pice. 1 rupee was worth 10.78 grams of pure silver. For conversions of non-Indian prices, please consult the explanations for the individual series.

Rice Prices

India

Ahmedabad, 1824–1914

Source for 1824–1862: Accompaniments nos. 1 to 9, p. 118. Tolas per rupee, calendar years.

Source for 1824–1862: Accompaniments nos. 1 to 9, p. 118. Tolas per rupee, calendar years.

Source for 1863–1914: Prices and Wages, various issues. Seers per rupee (earlier issues) and rupees per maund (later issues); average prices for calendar years.

Belgaum, 1824–1914

Source for 1824–1862: Accompaniments nos. 1 to 9, p. 118. Tolas per rupee, calendar years.

So far we have compared the “average” efficiency or performance as well as the broad trends of integration in two very big geographical entities. However, these two regions labeled “Europe” and “India” were by no means homogeneous entities, but were characterized by substantial differences along various dimensions, such as climate (cropping pattern, climatic variability, seasonal differences), transport infrastructure (quality and density of roads, availability of water transport, topographic suitability, year-round accessibility), legal and political framework (in different nations [Europe] and different states/realms [India] with different legal regimes, different policies, different polities, tariffs, etc.), agricultural technology (tools used, subsistence or cash crop production, heavily relying on imports/exports), social and economic structure (specialized merchants, credit markets and readily available capital, tax system, standard of living), and barriers of trade (restrictions, trade policy, tariff levels, differences in units, currencies, etc.).

The results of the macro analysis in Chapter 3 on the extent of market integration within as well as between India and Europe therefore hide or blur substantial heterogeneity. Indeed, various insights in the first three chapters were calling for more regional differentiation. Thus, to get a better understanding of how markets actually worked and to better map out differences between Europe and India, as well as differences within these territories, we now want to narrow the geographical scope and to draw a comparative picture confined to smaller areas. Such “micro” comparisons are really complementary to the macro study, and together they provide the reader with a view of the broad differences and some more detailed analysis of underlying causes for such differences.

In the previous chapter we have provided an overview of the most important determinants of economic integration in India and Europe, and have briefly glanced at relevant aspects of the general history and the qualitative picture of market integration. Now it is time to present the quantitative assessment of the levels and processes of market integration in both regions.

It was mentioned in the Introduction that the paucity of historical economic data is much more pronounced for India as compared with European and even some other Asian countries. This shortage is not limited, in the Indian case, to specific variables; there is a pronounced scarcity of all economic data prior to the nineteenth century and it is also a symptom of a more general phenomenon which has been plaguing Indian historiography, namely a general shortage of the non-European sources on India. It is therefore hardly surprising that quantitative studies on all aspects of Indian economic history have mostly been confined to the time after 1860, when the British administration started to systematically collect and publish official statistics. For what may be labeled the “pre-statistical” period – before 1860 – economic data becomes scanty and is scattered around in numerous sources and regional studies, and nearly no systematic efforts have yet been made to amass the economic data available and to explore it in an all-Indian or international context.

Introduction

Between 1270 and 1870 Britain slowly progressed from the periphery of the European economy to centre-stage of an integrated world economy. In the process it escaped from Malthusian constraints and by the eighteenth century had successfully reconciled rising population with rising living standards. This final chapter reflects upon this protracted but profound economic transformation from the perspective of the national income estimates assembled in Part I and analysed in Part II of this book. Because Britain’s economic rise did not unfold in isolation, account is taken of the broader comparative context provided by the national income reconstructions now available for several other Eurasian countries: Spain from 1282, Italy from 1310 and Holland from 1348, plus Japan from 725, China from 980 and India from 1600. All are output-based estimates but have been derived via a range of alternative approaches according to the nature of the available historical evidence. Several make ingenious use of real wage rates and urbanisation ratios (Malanima, 2011; Álvarez-Nogal and Prados de la Escosura, 2013), two economic indicators often used as surrogates for estimates of GDP per head. Only the GDP estimates for Holland, like these for Britain, have been made the hard way, by summing the weighted value-added outputs of the agricultural, industrial and service sectors and then dividing the results by estimates of total population obtained by reconciling time-series and cross-sectional demographic data. Methodologically, the British and Dutch national income estimates are therefore the most directly comparable. Each is free from overdependence upon any single or narrow range of data series and, instead, they encapsulate variations in the wide range of economic indicators, appropriately weighted in line with their importance in overall economic activity, from which they have been reconstructed.

Introduction

Agriculture was for long the single largest component of the English and British economies, both in terms of its share of employment and the value of its output. The latter was a function of the amount of land under cultivation, the uses to which it was put, the productivities of crops and animals and their respective prices. The main purpose of this chapter is to describe the methods used to derive the areas under arable and grass and, in particular, the total sown acreage. The crops produced and animals stocked are the subjects of the following chapter. Along the way, it will be demonstrated that claims that the peak arable area in the medieval period may have exceeded 20 million acres (Clark, 2007a: 124) are unrealistic, since, on the best available evidence, the combined total under field crops and fallow could not have been more than 12.75 million acres. In the absence of significant food imports, this limited both the population that could be supported and the supply of kilocalories per head needed for survival. It also shaped the production choices made by agricultural producers.

Comprehensive national agricultural statistics were collected annually from 1866 and provide the starting point for calculating the acreages of arable and grass (Anon, 1968; Coppock, 1984). Together with the tithe files, which provide a precise but incomplete guide to the share of land in each county devoted to arable production during the 1830s (Kain, 1986; Overton, 1986), they are used to provide a nineteenth-century benchmark. The chapter proceeds as follows. After a discussion of the potential agricultural area of England in Section 2.2, Section 2.3 reviews the arable acreage by county from the tithe files of the 1830s and from the agricultural statistics of 1871. Section 2.4 then examines changes in land use between 1290 and 1871, while Section 2.5 presents county-level estimates of the arable acreage in 1290. Section 2.6 provides a further cross-check by examining changes in land use between 1086 and 1290. Finally, Section 2.7 provides estimates of land use for a number of benchmark years between 1270 and 1871.