Sheilagh Ogilvie
Biographic Data
| ID | 305430 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sheilagh Ogilvie |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sheilagh |
| FAMILY NAME | Ogilvie |
| SIGNATURE | OGILVIE S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cambridge |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8807-3826 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 42 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 271 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 42 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1986 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Was Serfdom Good for the Economy
Some recent theories have sought to rehabilitate serfdom, postulating that it could have been economically beneficial because lords used their institutional power to address pre-modern market failures. This article tests these claims through a detailed case study of a large lordly estate in early modern Bohemia. It investigates the supposed benefits of lordly mills, credit provision, money dues, labour services, demesne enterprises, and manorial …
Economically relevant human capital or multi-purpose consumption good? Book ownership in pre-modern Württemberg
We investigate books as an indicator of human capital using extraordinary, individual-level data on book ownership and signature literacy for a population of German women and men between 1610 and 1900. Although book ownership was very high from an early date, it was associated with signature literacy, gender, urbanization, and wealth in ways inconsistent with its having registered economically relevant human capital. The books people owned were o…
Thinking carefully about inclusiveness
Policy lessons are often drawn from the emergence in Europe of ‘inclusive’ institutions, which are held to have displaced ‘extractive’ institutions and fostered economic growth. This article analyzes the concept of inclusiveness using evidence on a historical institution that has been widely viewed as inclusive – the guild. It finds that we must differentiate between three types of inclusiveness: community, corporative, and societal. Community in…
What can we learn from a race with one runner? A comment on Foreman-Peck and Zhou, 'Late marriage as a contributor to the industrial revolution in England
Foreman-Peck and Zhou's claim that late marriage was a major contributor to the industrial revolution in England cannot be sustained. They consider neither other influences on English industrialization nor other European economies where marriage age was high throughout the early modern period but industrialization came much later. It is not possible to argue that late marriage age was a major contributor to English industrialization without analy…
Institutions, Demography, and Economic Growth
This article evaluates criticisms by Sarah G. Carmichael, Alexandra de Pleijt, Jan Luiten van Zanden, and Tine De Moor of our view of the European Marriage Pattern (EMP), and explains why their claims are incorrect. We elaborate our arguments concerning the institutional sources of economic growth, explore the relationship between women's position and the EMP, analyze the two-way links between demographic and economic behavior, and explicate aspe…
Occupational structure in the Czech lands under the second serfdom
This article presents an analysis of occupational structure, a key component of the 'Little Divergence', in an eastern-central European economy under the second serfdom, using data on 6,983 Bohemian villages in 1654. Non-agricultural activity was lower than in western Europe, but varied positively with village size, pastoral agriculture, sub-peasant strata, Jews, freemen, female headship, and mills, and negatively with arable agriculture and town…
A two-tiered demographic system
This paper presents first results from a project to reconstitute the demographic behavior of three villages in Württemberg (southern Germany) from the mid-sixteenth to the early twentieth century. Using high-quality registers of births, deaths, and marriages, and unusual ancillary sources, we improve on the family-reconstitution techniques pioneered by Louis Henry and applied to good effect by the Cambridge Group and other scholars. This paper fo…
Does the European Marriage Pattern Explain Economic Growth
This article scrutinizes the recently postulated link between the European Marriage Pattern (EMP) and economic success. Multivariate analysis of 4,705 demographic observations, covering women's marriage age, female lifetime celibacy, and household complexity in 39 European countries, shows that the most extreme manifestations of the EMP were associated with economic stagnation rather than growth. There is no evidence that the EMP improved economi…
The Economics of Guilds
Occupational guilds in medieval and early modern Europe offered an effective institutional mechanism whereby two powerful groups, guild members and political elites, could collaborate in capturing a larger slice of the economic pie and redistributing it to themselves at the expense of the rest of the economy. Guilds provided an organizational mechanism for groups of businessmen to negotiate with political elites for exclusive legal privileges tha…
Retail development in the consumer revolution
What lessons for economic development can we draw from the Champagne fairs
Household Debt in Early Modern Germany
The "less-developed" interior of early modern Europe, especially the rural economy, is often regarded as financially comatose. This article investigates this view using a rich data set of marriage and death inventories for seventeenth-century Germany. It first analyzes the characteristics of debts, examining borrowing purposes, familial links, communal ties, and documentary instruments. It then explores how borrowing varied with gender, age, mari…
Contract enforcement, institutions, and social capital
Social scientists draw important lessons for modern development from the medieval Maghribi traders who, it has been argued, lacked effective legal mechanisms for contract enforcement and instead relied on informal sanctions based on collective ostracism within an exclusive coalition. We show that this claim is untenable. Not a single empirical example adduced as evidence of the putative coalition shows that a coalition actually existed. The Maghr…
Institutions and European Trade
What was the role of merchant guilds in the medieval and early modern economy? Does their wide prevalence and long survival mean they were efficient institutions that benefited the whole economy? Or did merchant guilds simply offer an effective way for the rich and powerful to increase their wealth, at the expense of outsiders, customers and society as a whole? These privileged associations of businessmen were key institutions in the European eco…
Consumption, Social Capital, and the "Industrious Revolution" in Early Modern Germany
This study uses evidence from central Europe to address open questions about the Consumer and Industrious Revolutions. Did they happen outside the North Atlantic economies? Were they shaped by the "social capital" of traditional institutions? How were they affected by social constraints on women? It finds that people in central Europe did desire to increase market work and consumption. But elites used the social capital of traditional institution…
Turning qualitative into quantitative evidence
Many historians reject quantitative methods as inappropriate to understanding past societies. This article argues that no sharp distinction between qualitative and quantitative concepts can be drawn, as almost any concept used to describe a past society is implicitly quantitative. Many recent advances in understanding have been achieved by deriving quantitative evidence from qualitative evidence, using the two dialectically, and indexing them aga…
Rehabilitating the guilds
This article examines Epstein's attempt to rehabilitate pre‐modern craft guilds by criticizing my German case study. It demonstrates that his criticisms are baseless and his assertions about European guilds unsupported. Long survival does not establish the efficiency or aggregate economic benefits of any institution. Contrary to rehabilitation views, craft guilds adversely affected quality, skills, and innovation. Guild rent‐seeking imposed deadw…
Whatever is, is right’? Economic institutions in pre‐industrial Europe 1
Institutions—the structures of rules and norms governing economic transactions—are widely assigned a central role in economic development. Yet economic history is still dominated by the belief that institutions arise and survive because they are economically efficient. This article shows that alternative explanations of institutions, particularly those incorporating distributional effects, are consistent with economic theory and supported by empi…
Serfdom and social capital in Bohemia and Russia1
The 'horizontal' social capital generated by networks and communities is widely regarded as inherently antagonistic to 'vertical' hierarchies such as serfdom. This article examines this view using evidence from pre-Emancipation Bohemia and Russia. It finds that serf communes generated a substantial 'social capital' of shared norms, common information, and collective sanctions. But communal social capital was manipulated by village elites who coll…
So that Every Subject Knows How to Behave
Social disciplining' is the name that has been given to attempts by the authorities throughout early modern Europe to regulate people's private lives.1 In explicit contrast to 'social control,' the informal mechanisms by which people have always sought to put pressure on one another in traditional societies, 'social disciplining' was a set of formal, legislative strategies through which the emerging early modern state sought to 'civilize' and 'ra…
The Use and Abuse of Trust
Guilds are social scientists' favoured historical example of institutions generating a 'social capital' of trust that benefited entire economies.This article considers this view in the light of empirical findings for early modern Europe.It draws the distinction between a 'particularized' trust in persons of known attributes and a 'generalized' trust that applies even to strangers.This is paralleled by the distinction between a 'differential' trus…
Communities and the 'Second Serfdom' in Early Modern Bohemia
Journal Article Communities and the 'Second Serfdom' in Early Modern Bohemia Get access Sheilagh Ogilvie Sheilagh Ogilvie University of Cambridge Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Past & Present, Volume 187, Issue 1, May 2005, Pages 69–119, https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gti012 Published: 01 May 2005
Women and Labour Markets in Early Modern Germany
Guilds, efficiency, and social capital
This article considers recent economic theories about guilds in the light of evidence from a German proto-industrial region. The empirical findings cast doubt on views that guilds existed because they were efficient institutional solutions to market failures relating to product quality, training, and innovation. However, guilds did generate a 'social capital' of shared norms, common information, mutual sanctions, and collective political action. …
Germany
Economic landscapes the population of late medieval and early modern Germany the agrarian economy 1300-1600 consumption and demand the urban network of early modern Germany markets and marketing, town and country the nature of early capitalism gender and the world of work German social structure 1300-1600 the social and economic role of institutions communities and the nature of power daily life in late medieval and early modern Germany confessio…
Does the European Marriage Pattern Explain Economic Growth
This article scrutinizes the recently postulated link between the European Marriage Pattern (EMP) and economic success. Multivariate analysis of 4,705 demographic observations, covering women's marriage age, female lifetime celibacy, and household complexity in 39 European countries, shows that the most extreme manifestations of the EMP were associated with economic stagnation rather than growth. There is no evidence that the EMP improved economi…
Whatever is, is right’? Economic institutions in pre‐industrial Europe 1
Institutions—the structures of rules and norms governing economic transactions—are widely assigned a central role in economic development. Yet economic history is still dominated by the belief that institutions arise and survive because they are economically efficient. This article shows that alternative explanations of institutions, particularly those incorporating distributional effects, are consistent with economic theory and supported by empi…
Guilds, efficiency, and social capital
This article considers recent economic theories about guilds in the light of evidence from a German proto-industrial region. The empirical findings cast doubt on views that guilds existed because they were efficient institutional solutions to market failures relating to product quality, training, and innovation. However, guilds did generate a 'social capital' of shared norms, common information, mutual sanctions, and collective political action. …
Universal Banks and German Industrialization
This paper argues that the role of universal banks in German industrialization has been over-emphasized. The contribution of universal banks to the financing of railway investment was overshadowed by that of the German states. The distinctive features of the relationship between universal banks and industrial firms apply only to industrial joint-stock companies, but the vast majority of the industrial capital stock in Germany before 1914 was acco…
Contract enforcement, institutions, and social capital
Social scientists draw important lessons for modern development from the medieval Maghribi traders who, it has been argued, lacked effective legal mechanisms for contract enforcement and instead relied on informal sanctions based on collective ostracism within an exclusive coalition. We show that this claim is untenable. Not a single empirical example adduced as evidence of the putative coalition shows that a coalition actually existed. The Maghr…
The Economic World of the Bohemian Serf
Consumption, Social Capital, and the "Industrious Revolution" in Early Modern Germany
This study uses evidence from central Europe to address open questions about the Consumer and Industrious Revolutions. Did they happen outside the North Atlantic economies? Were they shaped by the "social capital" of traditional institutions? How were they affected by social constraints on women? It finds that people in central Europe did desire to increase market work and consumption. But elites used the social capital of traditional institution…
Germany and the Seventeenth-Century Crisis
This article surveys the debate on the ‘General Crisis’ of the seventeenth century in the light of hitherto neglected research. Firstly, most theories of the crisis fail to combine its economic and socio-political aspects. Secondly, few explanations of the crisis take account of evidence from the local and regional levels. Thirdly and most seriously, theories of the crisis have ignored Germany, while historians of Germany have ignored the crisis …
The Economics of Guilds
Occupational guilds in medieval and early modern Europe offered an effective institutional mechanism whereby two powerful groups, guild members and political elites, could collaborate in capturing a larger slice of the economic pie and redistributing it to themselves at the expense of the rest of the economy. Guilds provided an organizational mechanism for groups of businessmen to negotiate with political elites for exclusive legal privileges tha…
Rehabilitating the guilds
This article examines Epstein's attempt to rehabilitate pre‐modern craft guilds by criticizing my German case study. It demonstrates that his criticisms are baseless and his assertions about European guilds unsupported. Long survival does not establish the efficiency or aggregate economic benefits of any institution. Contrary to rehabilitation views, craft guilds adversely affected quality, skills, and innovation. Guild rent‐seeking imposed deadw…
Retail development in the consumer revolution
Institutions, Demography, and Economic Growth
This article evaluates criticisms by Sarah G. Carmichael, Alexandra de Pleijt, Jan Luiten van Zanden, and Tine De Moor of our view of the European Marriage Pattern (EMP), and explains why their claims are incorrect. We elaborate our arguments concerning the institutional sources of economic growth, explore the relationship between women's position and the EMP, analyze the two-way links between demographic and economic behavior, and explicate aspe…
Household Debt in Early Modern Germany
The "less-developed" interior of early modern Europe, especially the rural economy, is often regarded as financially comatose. This article investigates this view using a rich data set of marriage and death inventories for seventeenth-century Germany. It first analyzes the characteristics of debts, examining borrowing purposes, familial links, communal ties, and documentary instruments. It then explores how borrowing varied with gender, age, mari…
What lessons for economic development can we draw from the Champagne fairs
Turning qualitative into quantitative evidence
Many historians reject quantitative methods as inappropriate to understanding past societies. This article argues that no sharp distinction between qualitative and quantitative concepts can be drawn, as almost any concept used to describe a past society is implicitly quantitative. Many recent advances in understanding have been achieved by deriving quantitative evidence from qualitative evidence, using the two dialectically, and indexing them aga…
Serfdom and social capital in Bohemia and Russia1
The 'horizontal' social capital generated by networks and communities is widely regarded as inherently antagonistic to 'vertical' hierarchies such as serfdom. This article examines this view using evidence from pre-Emancipation Bohemia and Russia. It finds that serf communes generated a substantial 'social capital' of shared norms, common information, and collective sanctions. But communal social capital was manipulated by village elites who coll…
Occupational structure in the Czech lands under the second serfdom
This article presents an analysis of occupational structure, a key component of the 'Little Divergence', in an eastern-central European economy under the second serfdom, using data on 6,983 Bohemian villages in 1654. Non-agricultural activity was lower than in western Europe, but varied positively with village size, pastoral agriculture, sub-peasant strata, Jews, freemen, female headship, and mills, and negatively with arable agriculture and town…
A two-tiered demographic system
This paper presents first results from a project to reconstitute the demographic behavior of three villages in Württemberg (southern Germany) from the mid-sixteenth to the early twentieth century. Using high-quality registers of births, deaths, and marriages, and unusual ancillary sources, we improve on the family-reconstitution techniques pioneered by Louis Henry and applied to good effect by the Cambridge Group and other scholars. This paper fo…
Communities and the 'Second Serfdom' in Early Modern Bohemia
Journal Article Communities and the 'Second Serfdom' in Early Modern Bohemia Get access Sheilagh Ogilvie Sheilagh Ogilvie University of Cambridge Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Past & Present, Volume 187, Issue 1, May 2005, Pages 69–119, https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gti012 Published: 01 May 2005
Proto-industrialization in Europe
Cet article passe en revue l'état actuel du débat concernant les théories de ‘ protoindustrialisation’. Celles-ci essayent d'expliquer l'évolution économique durant les premières années de l'Europe moderne. La recherche récente a révélé que les conséquences économiques, sociales et démographiques de la proto-industrialisation different énormément suivant les sociétes. Les principaux facteurs techniques et sociaux qui sont à l'origine de cette div…
Economically relevant human capital or multi-purpose consumption good? Book ownership in pre-modern Württemberg
We investigate books as an indicator of human capital using extraordinary, individual-level data on book ownership and signature literacy for a population of German women and men between 1610 and 1900. Although book ownership was very high from an early date, it was associated with signature literacy, gender, urbanization, and wealth in ways inconsistent with its having registered economically relevant human capital. The books people owned were o…
Women and the “Second Serfdom ”
This article investigates women's position in early modem Bohemia by focusing on female household headship, which was very low by European standards. Empirical analysis suggests that the factors hypothesized in the literature as influencing female economic independence in preindustrial Europe had little effect in Bohemia. Instead, it appears that the decline in female headship between 1591 and 1722 was a consequence of the growing power of landlo…
So that Every Subject Knows How to Behave
Social disciplining' is the name that has been given to attempts by the authorities throughout early modern Europe to regulate people's private lives.1 In explicit contrast to 'social control,' the informal mechanisms by which people have always sought to put pressure on one another in traditional societies, 'social disciplining' was a set of formal, legislative strategies through which the emerging early modern state sought to 'civilize' and 'ra…
Coming of age in a corporate society
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Coming of age in a corporate society
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Germany and the Seventeenth-Century Crisis
This article surveys the debate on the ‘General Crisis’ of the seventeenth century in the light of hitherto neglected research. Firstly, most theories of the crisis fail to combine its economic and socio-political aspects. Secondly, few explanations of the crisis take account of evidence from the local and regional levels. Thirdly and most seriously, theories of the crisis have ignored Germany, while historians of Germany have ignored the crisis …
Shorter Notices
SHORTER NOTICES Get access SHEILAGH OGILVIE SHEILAGH OGILVIE Trinity CollegeCambridge Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The English Historical Review, Volume CVIII, Issue 427, April 1993, Pages 478–479, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/CVIII.427.478 Published: 01 April 1993
Proto-industrialization in Europe
Cet article passe en revue l'état actuel du débat concernant les théories de ‘ protoindustrialisation’. Celles-ci essayent d'expliquer l'évolution économique durant les premières années de l'Europe moderne. La recherche récente a révélé que les conséquences économiques, sociales et démographiques de la proto-industrialisation different énormément suivant les sociétes. Les principaux facteurs techniques et sociaux qui sont à l'origine de cette div…
Shorter Notices
SHORTER NOTICES SHEILAGH C. OGILVIE SHEILAGH C. OGILVIE Trinity CollegeCambridge Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The English Historical Review, Volume CX, Issue 436, April 1995, Pages 485-a–485, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/CX.436.485-a Published: 01 April 1995
Institutions and Economic Development in Early Modern Central Europe
Institutions and economies underwent profound changes between 1500 and 1800 in most parts of Europe. Differences among societies decreased in some ways, but markedly increased in others. Do these changes and these variations tell us anything about the relationship between social organisation and economic well-being? This is a very wide question, and even the qualified ‘yes’ with which I will answer it, though based on the detailed empirical resea…
Universal Banks and German Industrialization
This paper argues that the role of universal banks in German industrialization has been over-emphasized. The contribution of universal banks to the financing of railway investment was overshadowed by that of the German states. The distinctive features of the relationship between universal banks and industrial firms apply only to industrial joint-stock companies, but the vast majority of the industrial capital stock in Germany before 1914 was acco…
European Proto-Industrialization
Germany
European Proto-Industrialization
List of illustrations List of tables List of contributors 1. The theories of proto-industrialization Sheilagh C. Ogilvie and Markus Cerman 2. 'Proto-industrialization' as a research strategy and a historical period - a balance sheet Jurgen Schlumbohm 3. Social institutions and proto-industrialization Sheilagh C. Ogilvie 4. Proto-industrialization in France Pierre Deyon 5. Proto-industrialization in England Pat Hudson 6. Ireland 1841: pre-industri…
State Corporatism and Proto-Industry
Servage et marchés. L’univers économique des serfs de Bohême dans le domaine de Friedland (1583-1692)
On considère souvent que les paysans ignorent les concepts de coût et de profit, et détestent les marchés, l’argent et le gain. La lenteur de la croissance économique est alors attribuée à la «culture paysanne ». Lorsque les paysans se comportent différemment, l’on suppose qu’ils vivent dans des enclaves d’agriculture avancée ou individualiste. Cet article étudie une économie paysanne qui ne prétend pas être avancée : la Bohême sous le servage. L…
Women and the “Second Serfdom ”
This article investigates women's position in early modem Bohemia by focusing on female household headship, which was very low by European standards. Empirical analysis suggests that the factors hypothesized in the literature as influencing female economic independence in preindustrial Europe had little effect in Bohemia. Instead, it appears that the decline in female headship between 1591 and 1722 was a consequence of the growing power of landlo…
"Women and the "Second Serfdom
This article investigates women's position in early modem Bohemia by focusing on female household headship, which was very low by European standards. Empirical analysis suggests that the factors hypothesized in the literature as influencing female economic independence in preindustrial Europe had little effect in Bohemia. Instead, it appears that the decline in female headship between 1591 and 1722 was a consequence of the growing power of landlo…
The Economic World of the Bohemian Serf
A Bitter Living
Women were key to the changes in the European economy between 1600 and 1800 that led the way to industrialization. But we still know little about this female 'shadow economy' - and nothing quantitative or systematic. This text aims to illuminate women's contribution to the pre-industrial economy
Social Capital and Collusion
Women and Labour Markets in Early Modern Germany
Guilds, efficiency, and social capital
This article considers recent economic theories about guilds in the light of evidence from a German proto-industrial region. The empirical findings cast doubt on views that guilds existed because they were efficient institutional solutions to market failures relating to product quality, training, and innovation. However, guilds did generate a 'social capital' of shared norms, common information, mutual sanctions, and collective political action. …
The Use and Abuse of Trust
Guilds are social scientists' favoured historical example of institutions generating a 'social capital' of trust that benefited entire economies.This article considers this view in the light of empirical findings for early modern Europe.It draws the distinction between a 'particularized' trust in persons of known attributes and a 'generalized' trust that applies even to strangers.This is paralleled by the distinction between a 'differential' trus…
Communities and the 'Second Serfdom' in Early Modern Bohemia
Journal Article Communities and the 'Second Serfdom' in Early Modern Bohemia Get access Sheilagh Ogilvie Sheilagh Ogilvie University of Cambridge Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Past & Present, Volume 187, Issue 1, May 2005, Pages 69–119, https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gti012 Published: 01 May 2005
So that Every Subject Knows How to Behave
Social disciplining' is the name that has been given to attempts by the authorities throughout early modern Europe to regulate people's private lives.1 In explicit contrast to 'social control,' the informal mechanisms by which people have always sought to put pressure on one another in traditional societies, 'social disciplining' was a set of formal, legislative strategies through which the emerging early modern state sought to 'civilize' and 'ra…
Whatever is, is right’? Economic institutions in pre‐industrial Europe 1
Institutions—the structures of rules and norms governing economic transactions—are widely assigned a central role in economic development. Yet economic history is still dominated by the belief that institutions arise and survive because they are economically efficient. This article shows that alternative explanations of institutions, particularly those incorporating distributional effects, are consistent with economic theory and supported by empi…
Serfdom and social capital in Bohemia and Russia1
The 'horizontal' social capital generated by networks and communities is widely regarded as inherently antagonistic to 'vertical' hierarchies such as serfdom. This article examines this view using evidence from pre-Emancipation Bohemia and Russia. It finds that serf communes generated a substantial 'social capital' of shared norms, common information, and collective sanctions. But communal social capital was manipulated by village elites who coll…
Rehabilitating the guilds
This article examines Epstein's attempt to rehabilitate pre‐modern craft guilds by criticizing my German case study. It demonstrates that his criticisms are baseless and his assertions about European guilds unsupported. Long survival does not establish the efficiency or aggregate economic benefits of any institution. Contrary to rehabilitation views, craft guilds adversely affected quality, skills, and innovation. Guild rent‐seeking imposed deadw…
Historical Economic and Social Studies (32 works) · Political science (28 works) · Economics (25 works) · Law (18 works) · Sociology (17 works) · Geography (12 works) · Business (11 works) · Economy (10 works) · Culture, Economy, and Development Studies (9 works) · History (9 works)