Bread and the British Economy, 1770–1870

Bread and the British Economy, 1770–1870 PDF

Author: Christian Petersen

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-05

Total Pages: 355

ISBN-13: 1351954822

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In this ambitious book Christian Petersen has taken a central topic in economic and social history and given it a new sweep and coherence. As the Lord’s Prayer suggests, securing an adequate supply of bread was a matter of over-riding concern to everyone until very recently. Bread was always by far the largest single item in the budgets of the poor, but bread could be made from many grains - wheat, rye, barley etc. Christian Petersen describes how in the later eighteenth century the process of replacing other cereals by wheat in bread making was completed throughout Britain. He provides a continuous series of estimates of bread consumption per caput, of bread prices (and, consequently, used in conjunction with population data, of total national expenditure on bread), and of wheat output and net imports. The implications of the changes in techniques of milling and baking that occurred are analysed, and the organisation of the baking and retailing of bread is described. Bread was so central to the economy of individual households and to the national economy as a whole that this book represents a major contribution to the history of the British economy and of British society in the period 1770-1870.

Acquired Tastes

Acquired Tastes PDF

Author: Benjamin R. Cohen

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2021-08-17

Total Pages: 291

ISBN-13: 0262542919

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How modern food helped make modern society between 1870 and 1930: stories of power and food, from bananas and beer to bread and fake meat. The modern way of eating—our taste for food that is processed, packaged, and advertised—has its roots as far back as the 1870s. Many food writers trace our eating habits to World War II, but this book shows that our current food system began to coalesce much earlier. Modern food came from and helped to create a society based on racial hierarchies, colonization, and global integration. Acquired Tastes explores these themes through a series of moments in food history—stories of bread, beer, sugar, canned food, cereal, bananas, and more—that shaped how we think about food today. Contributors consider the displacement of native peoples for agricultural development; the invention of Pilsner, the first international beer style; the “long con” of gilded sugar and corn syrup; Josephine Baker’s banana skirt and the rise of celebrity tastemakers; and faith in institutions and experts who produced, among other things, food rankings and fake meat.

The People's Bread

The People's Bread PDF

Author: Paul Pickering

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2000-08-01

Total Pages: 315

ISBN-13: 0567204979

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Formed in 1839, the Anti-Corn Law League was one of the most important campaigns to introduce the ideas of economic liberalism into mainstream political discourse in Britain. Its aspiration for free trade played a crucial role in defining the agenda of nineteenth-century liberalism and shaping the modern British state. Its faith in the free market still resonates in Britain's public policy debates today. This is the first comprehensive study of the League which makes use of recent methodological developments in social history.

A History of British Baking

A History of British Baking PDF

Author: Emma Kay

Publisher: Pen and Sword History

Published: 2020-11-23

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 1526757494

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A cultural and social history of Britain’s breads, cakes, and pastries through the ages, from the author of Dining with the Victorians. The Great British Baking Show and its spinoffs are a modern-day phenomenon, but the British, of course, have been baking for centuries—and here, for the first time, is a comprehensive account of how Britain’s relationship with this much-loved art has changed, evolved, and progressed over time. Renowned food historian Emma Kay skillfully combines the related histories of Britain’s economy, innovation, technology, health, and cultural and social trends with the personal stories of many of the individuals involved with the whole process: the early pioneers, the recipe writers, the cooks, the entrepreneurs. From pies to puddings, medieval ovens to modern-day mass consumption, the result is a deliciously fascinating read.

Regulating the British Economy, 1660–1850

Regulating the British Economy, 1660–1850 PDF

Author: Perry Gauci

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-08

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 1317068734

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This collection of chapters focuses on the regulation of the British economy in the long eighteenth century as a means to understand the synergies between political, social and economic change as Britain was transformed into a global power. Inspired by recent research on consumerism and credit, an international team of leading academics examine the ways in which state and society both advanced and responded to fundamental economic changes. The studies embrace all aspects of the regulatory process, from developing ideas on the economy, to the passage of legislation, and to the negotiation of economic policy and change in practice. They range broadly over Britain and its empire and also consider Britain's exceptionality through comparative studies. Together, the book challenges the general characterization of the period as a shift from a regulated economy to a more laissez-faire system, highlighting the uncertain relationship between the state and economic interests across the long eighteenth century.

The Politics of Provisions

The Politics of Provisions PDF

Author: John Bohstedt

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-02-24

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 1317020200

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The elemental power of food politics has not been fully appraised. Food marketing and consumption were matters of politics as much as economics as England became a market society. In times of dearth, concatenations of food riots, repression, and relief created a maturing politics of provisions. Over three centuries, some eight hundred riots crackled in waves across England. Crowds seized wagons, attacked mills and granaries, and lowered prices in marketplaces or farmyards. Sometimes rioters parleyed with magistrates. More often both acted out a well-rehearsed political minuet that evolved from Tudor risings and state policies down to a complex culmination during the Napoleonic Wars. 'Provision politics' thus comprised both customary negotiations over scarcity and hunger, and 'negotiations' of the social vessel through the turbulence of dearth. Occasionally troops killed rioters, or judges condemned them to the gallows, but increasingly riots prompted wealthy citizens to procure relief supplies. In short, food riots worked: in a sense they were a first draft of the welfare state. This pioneering analysis connects a generation of social protest studies spawned by E.P. Thompson's essay on the 'moral economy' with new work on economic history and state formation. The dynamics of provision politics that emerged during England's social, economic and political transformations should furnish fruitful models for analyses of 'total war' and famine as well as broader transitions elsewhere in world history.

The Political Economy of the Dutch Republic

The Political Economy of the Dutch Republic PDF

Author: Oscar Gelderblom

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-02-24

Total Pages: 361

ISBN-13: 1317020766

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In the first half of the seventeenth century the Dutch Republic emerged as one of Europe's leading maritime powers. The political and military leadership of this small country was based on large-scale borrowing from an increasingly wealthy middle class of merchants, manufacturers and regents This volume presents the first comprehensive account of the political economy of the Dutch republic from the sixteenth to the early nineteenth century. Building on earlier scholarship and extensive new evidence it tackles two main issues: the effect of political revolution on property rights and public finance, and the ability of the nation to renegotiate issues of taxation and government borrowing in changing political circumstances. The essays in this volume chart the Republic's rise during the seventeenth century, and its subsequent decline as other European nations adopted the Dutch financial model and warfare bankrupted the state in the eighteenth century. By following the United Provinces's financial ability to respond to the changing national and international circumstances across a three-hundred year period, much can be learned not only about the Dutch experience, but the wider European implications as well.

The Moral and Market Economies of Bread

The Moral and Market Economies of Bread PDF

Author: Jonas Albrecht

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2024-06-13

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 1350398489

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From the 1770s the Vienna bread market was rocked by a series of politico-economic and technological changes that questioned the way this everyday foodstuff was sold and produced. In this book, Jonas Albrecht explores how this reconfiguration of the bread market had wide-reaching and significant consequences for a society who relied on this foodstuff to live. Before 1860 the production and selling of bread was embedded into a moral economy with distinct regulations. But as the grain market expanded and new cereal varieties arrived from the empire's peripheries reformers sought to create a 'free' market through liberalizing reforms. The Moral and Market Economies of Bread shows that while terminating market regulation did mobilize and diversify Vienna's bread market in spatial terms, it intensified inequality among consumers. As opaque prices, non-transparent market procedures and diverging power relations between producers and consumers led to unrest, city officials and bakers struggled to meet the shortcomings of the free market from within. This book brings economic, social and urban histories together and employs a spatial approach and GIS methods to explore the relationship between market and society, and capitalism at large.

Migration and Inequality in Germany 1870-1913

Migration and Inequality in Germany 1870-1913 PDF

Author: Oliver Grant

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2005-10-06

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 0191515353

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Migration and Inequality in Germany 1870-1913 presents a new view of German history in the late nineteenth century. Dr Grant argues that many of the problems of Imperial Germany were temporary ones produced by the strain of rapid industrialisation. Drawing on the tools of development economics he argues that Germany passed through a labour surplus phase as desribed by the Lewis Model. This period came to an end around 1900, creating more favourable conditions for political reform and social reconciliation. But Germany's progress to full political and economic maturity was derailed at the outbreak of war in 1914. Dr Grant bases his argument on an analysis of the economic and demographic forces driving migration in nineteenth-century Germany. High rural-urban migration led to the rapid expansion of German cities. The main factors driving this were social and economic change in the countryside and the process of the demographic transition. The release of surplus labour onto urban labour markets held back wage increases and led to an increase in inequality. The German economy behaved in a way which seemed to bear out the predictions of Karl Marx and this contributed to the appeal of Marxist ideas and the rise of the social democratic vote. However, this was a temporary phase. The labour surplus period was largely over by 1900. The rise in inequality which had begun in the 1820s came to an end, and inequality began to fall. Contrary to received wisdom, Germany was not on the brink of a general socio-economic crisis in 1914; instead it was moving away from one. However, the political system failed to take advantage of this opportunity, and Germany's dependence on imported food and raw materials led to a strategic crisis which combined disastrously with internal political problems.