Patrick Karl O’brien
Biographic Data
| ID | 3591200 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Patrick Karl O’brien |
| GIVEN NAMES | Patrick Karl |
| FAMILY NAME | O’brien |
| SIGNATURE | O’BRIEN P K |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of London |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 31 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 194 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 31 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1959 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Not an ordinary bank but a great engine of state: The Bank of England and the British economy, 1694-1844
From its foundation as a private corporation in 1694, the Bank of England extended large amounts of credit to support the British private economy and to support an increasingly centralised British state. The Bank helped the British state reach a position of geopolitical and economic hegemony in the international economic order. In this paper, we deploy recalibrated financial data to analyse an evolving trajectory of connections between the Britis…
Contrasting Cosmographies for the Development of Science in Pre-Industrial Europe and Late Imperial China: A Bibliographical Survey
After two decades of heuristic debate on the Great Divergence the consensus view is that polities and economies of the West began their transitions to modern industrial market economies at least two centuries before Imperial China. Furthermore, Europe’s earlier transition and China’s retardation can be plausibly attributed in some significant (but, alas, unmeasurable degree) to historically observable and explicable differences in their beliefs a…
Global History: Universal and World
The Cambridge History of Capitalism: From Ancient Origins To 1848
The first volume of The Cambridge History of Capitalism provides a comprehensive account of the evolution of capitalism from its earliest beginnings. Starting with its distant origins in ancient Babylon, successive chapters trace progression up to the 'Promised Land' of capitalism in America. Adopting a wide geographical coverage and comparative perspective, the international team of authors discuss the contributions of Greek, Roman, and Asian ci…
The Future Is Another Country: Offshore Views of the British Industrial Revolution1
This article is built upon a dense description and inferences drawn from the diaries and memoirs of travellers who visited the British Isles between 1815 and 1850. The majority came from Mainland Europe and North America and arrived aware of the economic growth and social change underway in Britain. We comment upon and analyze the ways that they reported and the language they used to describe novel features of the British economy. We reflect upon…
Global Economic History as the Accumulation of Capital Through a Process of Combined and Uneven Development: An Appreciation and Critique of Ernest Mandel
O'Brien provides a critical assessment of Ernest Mandel's 1975 monograph Late Capitalism. In so doing, he offers a historical narrative that puts into question Mandel's framing of 'waves' of capitalist development as a process of capital accumulation that was dependent upon uneven development in the Third World. O'Brien starts by problematising Mandel's argument that an initial concentration of money, capital and bullion in the hands of Europeans…
Contentions of the Purse between England and its European Rivals from Henry V to George IV: A Conversation with Michael Mann 1
Hegemony or Empire
The Reconstruction, Rehabilitation and Reconfiguration of the British Industrial Revolution as a Conjuncture in Global History
All historical research, however micro and focussed can be represented as part of a process of ‘reconfiguration’ Research is simply the crafts dominant and traditional activity of transforming archival evidence into printed narratives which validate, qualify and occasionally demolish dominant meta-narratives. Most historians continue to be engaged in Von Ranke's grand project for construction of history by making different, more durable and bette…
Balance Sheets for the Acquisition, Retention and Loss of European Empires Overseas
Our essay will critically survey and attempt to offer an overall interpretation of a growing volume of publications by historians who have attempted to evaluate the costs and benefits for Europe's domestic economies flowing from some five centuries of involvement with empires overseas. That involvement began with the conquest of Ceuta by the Portuguese in 1417 and passed through two epochs: 1417-1825 and 1825-1974. After a first conjuncture marke…
Political Biography: A Polemical Review of the Genre
My "polemic" deals with the biographies of statesmen who operated in the context of established systems of law, conventions, and accountability, and not with dictators and more or less absolute monarchs. I argue that unless abiographer contextualizes his/her subject in order to deal with (a) problems of vaUdation; (b) the counterf actual problem of dispensability; and (c) connections between the "life" and the achievements, then the genre is not …
The Costs and Benefits for Europeans from their Empires Overseas
Large historical problems are stimulating to debate but difficult to specify and answer in ways that might carry forward our long-standing discourses in global economic history. The papers which form the basis of our essay deal with a meta question and are focused upon the economic consequences (the costs and benefits) for those European societies most actively involved in territorial expansion, colonization, world trade, capital exports and emig…
The Britishness of the first industrial revolution and the British contribution to the industrialization of ‘follower countries’ on the mainland, 1756–1914
(1997). The Britishness of the first industrial revolution and the British contribution to the industrialization of ‘follower countries’ on the mainland, 1756–1914. Diplomacy & Statecraft: Vol. 8, Britain and Europe, pp. 48-67
Global Warfare and Long-Term Economic Development, 1789-1939
Theories of Technological Progress and the British Textile Industry from Kay to Cartwright
La industria textil británica continuá en el centro del debate sobre la revolución industrial. Las innovaciones técnicas en el período produjeron una aceleración extraordinaria del crecimiento del output y una considerable reducción de los precios de los tejidos. En este trabajo presentamos un estudio de la comunidad de los inventores responsables de la transformación tecnológica, lo que nos permite alcanzar una serie de conclusiones nuevas sobre…
Path dependency, or why Britain became an industrialized and urbanized economy long before France
Patrick Karl O'Brien, Path Dependency, or Why Britain Became an Industrialized and Urbanized Economy Long before France, The Economic History Review, New Series, Vol. 49, No. 2 (May, 1996), pp. 213-249
There Is Nothing Outside the Text, and There Is No Safety in Numbers: A Reply to Sullivan
Historians and economists have long been in need of index numbers to measure both the volume (real value) of activity that is undertaken to produce process or product innovations over time, and also a counterpart index that might capture the outcome of that activity (the volume of inventions) that come on stream year after year. For purposes of measurement the first index can in principle be equated (within tolerable limits of accuracy) with the …
The Industrial Revolution and British Society
The Rise of a Fiscal State in England, 1485-1815
Patrick K. O'Brien, Philip A. Hunt; The Rise of a Fiscal State in England, 1485–1815, Historical Research, Volume 66, Issue 160, 1 June 1993, Pages 129–176
Free trade, British hegemony and the international economic order in the nineteenth century
The theory (or rather the notion) that the international economy functioned more or less effectively for roughly a century down to 1914 because Great Britain provided the ‘public goods’ required for the smooth operation of the ‘liberal international order’ has become a textbook generalization. That notion emerged quite recently and can be traced to Kindleberger's attempt to explain the pronounced cyclical fluctuations experienced by the world eco…
Inventive Activity in the British Textile Industry, 1700–1800
An analysis of innovations in the eighteenth-century British textile industry is the basis for an evaluation of aggregate studies of invention during the Industrial Revolution, derived from patent evidence alone. Disaggregation of the data challenges recent generalizations concerning the pace and pattern of technical change over the period. Discontinuities in the nature of invention, promoting an acceleration in total factor productivity growth, …
Agricultural Productivity and European Industrialization, 1890-1980
Patrick K. O'Brien, Leandro Prados, De La Escosura, Agricultural Productivity and European Industrialization, 1890-1980, The Economic History Review, New Series, Vol. 45, No. 3, European Special Issue (Aug., 1992), pp. 514-536
The Foundations of European Industrialization: From the Perspective of the World
This article explores and engages with debates concerning the relation between internal and external ‘Development’ amongst nations. Types, trajectories, and patterns of economic growth and social structuring are investigated. Centering modes of trading and fiscal linkage and flow, the author concludes that ‘a perspective from Europe’, rather than a narrower ‘British’ view, has wider implications for the rest of the world
Public Finance in the Wars with France 1793–1815
The Costs and Benefits of British Imperialism 1846-1914
Journal Article THE COSTS AND BENEFITS OF BRITISH IMPERIALISM 1846–1914 Get access Patrick K. O'Brien Patrick K. O'Brien St. Antony's CollegeOxford Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Past & Present, Volume 120, Issue 1, August 1988, Pages 163–200, https://doi.org/10.1093/past/120.1.163 Published: 01 August 1988
The Political Economy of British Taxation, 1660-1815
Agricultural Productivity and European Industrialization, 1890-1980
Patrick K. O'Brien, Leandro Prados, De La Escosura, Agricultural Productivity and European Industrialization, 1890-1980, The Economic History Review, New Series, Vol. 45, No. 3, European Special Issue (Aug., 1992), pp. 514-536
The Rise of a Fiscal State in England, 1485-1815
Patrick K. O'Brien, Philip A. Hunt; The Rise of a Fiscal State in England, 1485–1815, Historical Research, Volume 66, Issue 160, 1 June 1993, Pages 129–176
Inventive Activity in the British Textile Industry, 1700–1800
An analysis of innovations in the eighteenth-century British textile industry is the basis for an evaluation of aggregate studies of invention during the Industrial Revolution, derived from patent evidence alone. Disaggregation of the data challenges recent generalizations concerning the pace and pattern of technical change over the period. Discontinuities in the nature of invention, promoting an acceleration in total factor productivity growth, …
The Costs and Benefits of British Imperialism 1846-1914
Journal Article THE COSTS AND BENEFITS OF BRITISH IMPERIALISM 1846–1914 Get access Patrick K. O'Brien Patrick K. O'Brien St. Antony's CollegeOxford Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Past & Present, Volume 120, Issue 1, August 1988, Pages 163–200, https://doi.org/10.1093/past/120.1.163 Published: 01 August 1988
Hegemony or Empire
Path dependency, or why Britain became an industrialized and urbanized economy long before France
Patrick Karl O'Brien, Path Dependency, or Why Britain Became an Industrialized and Urbanized Economy Long before France, The Economic History Review, New Series, Vol. 49, No. 2 (May, 1996), pp. 213-249
The Costs and Benefits for Europeans from their Empires Overseas
Large historical problems are stimulating to debate but difficult to specify and answer in ways that might carry forward our long-standing discourses in global economic history. The papers which form the basis of our essay deal with a meta question and are focused upon the economic consequences (the costs and benefits) for those European societies most actively involved in territorial expansion, colonization, world trade, capital exports and emig…
There Is Nothing Outside the Text, and There Is No Safety in Numbers: A Reply to Sullivan
Historians and economists have long been in need of index numbers to measure both the volume (real value) of activity that is undertaken to produce process or product innovations over time, and also a counterpart index that might capture the outcome of that activity (the volume of inventions) that come on stream year after year. For purposes of measurement the first index can in principle be equated (within tolerable limits of accuracy) with the …
Free trade, British hegemony and the international economic order in the nineteenth century
The theory (or rather the notion) that the international economy functioned more or less effectively for roughly a century down to 1914 because Great Britain provided the ‘public goods’ required for the smooth operation of the ‘liberal international order’ has become a textbook generalization. That notion emerged quite recently and can be traced to Kindleberger's attempt to explain the pronounced cyclical fluctuations experienced by the world eco…
Not an ordinary bank but a great engine of state: The Bank of England and the British economy, 1694-1844
From its foundation as a private corporation in 1694, the Bank of England extended large amounts of credit to support the British private economy and to support an increasingly centralised British state. The Bank helped the British state reach a position of geopolitical and economic hegemony in the international economic order. In this paper, we deploy recalibrated financial data to analyse an evolving trajectory of connections between the Britis…
Balance Sheets for the Acquisition, Retention and Loss of European Empires Overseas
Our essay will critically survey and attempt to offer an overall interpretation of a growing volume of publications by historians who have attempted to evaluate the costs and benefits for Europe's domestic economies flowing from some five centuries of involvement with empires overseas. That involvement began with the conquest of Ceuta by the Portuguese in 1417 and passed through two epochs: 1417-1825 and 1825-1974. After a first conjuncture marke…
Global Warfare and Long-Term Economic Development, 1789-1939
British Incomes and Property in the Early Nineteenth Century
The Future Is Another Country: Offshore Views of the British Industrial Revolution1
This article is built upon a dense description and inferences drawn from the diaries and memoirs of travellers who visited the British Isles between 1815 and 1850. The majority came from Mainland Europe and North America and arrived aware of the economic growth and social change underway in Britain. We comment upon and analyze the ways that they reported and the language they used to describe novel features of the British economy. We reflect upon…
Theories of Technological Progress and the British Textile Industry from Kay to Cartwright
La industria textil británica continuá en el centro del debate sobre la revolución industrial. Las innovaciones técnicas en el período produjeron una aceleración extraordinaria del crecimiento del output y una considerable reducción de los precios de los tejidos. En este trabajo presentamos un estudio de la comunidad de los inventores responsables de la transformación tecnológica, lo que nos permite alcanzar una serie de conclusiones nuevas sobre…
Britain's Economy Between the Wars: A Survey of a Counterrevolution in Economic History
Journal Article BRITAIN’S ECONOMY BETWEEN THE WARS: A SURVEY OF A COUNTERREVOLUTION IN ECONOMIC HISTORY* Get access Patrick K. O’Brien Patrick K. O’Brien St. Antony’s CollegeOxford Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Past & Present, Volume 115, Issue 1, May 1987, Pages 107–130, https://doi.org/10.1093/past/115.1.107 Published: 01 May 1987
Contentions of the Purse between England and its European Rivals from Henry V to George IV: A Conversation with Michael Mann 1
The Britishness of the first industrial revolution and the British contribution to the industrialization of ‘follower countries’ on the mainland, 1756–1914
(1997). The Britishness of the first industrial revolution and the British contribution to the industrialization of ‘follower countries’ on the mainland, 1756–1914. Diplomacy & Statecraft: Vol. 8, Britain and Europe, pp. 48-67
The Foundations of European Industrialization: From the Perspective of the World
This article explores and engages with debates concerning the relation between internal and external ‘Development’ amongst nations. Types, trajectories, and patterns of economic growth and social structuring are investigated. Centering modes of trading and fiscal linkage and flow, the author concludes that ‘a perspective from Europe’, rather than a narrower ‘British’ view, has wider implications for the rest of the world
The Reconstruction, Rehabilitation and Reconfiguration of the British Industrial Revolution as a Conjuncture in Global History
All historical research, however micro and focussed can be represented as part of a process of ‘reconfiguration’ Research is simply the crafts dominant and traditional activity of transforming archival evidence into printed narratives which validate, qualify and occasionally demolish dominant meta-narratives. Most historians continue to be engaged in Von Ranke's grand project for construction of history by making different, more durable and bette…
Les voies de passage vers la société industrielle en Grande-Bretagne et en France (1780-1914)
This article treats the comparative development of French and British economies during the nineteenth century. The focus is on the production of material goods, and the productivities in industry and agriculture are the principal indices under consideration. Our findings indicate that despite the French lateness in adopting factory technology, industrial productivity did not lag behind British levels, due mainly to a specialisation in French indu…
Agriculture and the Industrial Revolution
British Incomes and Property in the Early Nineteenth Century
Economic Development in Iran 1900-1970
Agriculture and the Industrial Revolution
Les voies de passage vers la société industrielle en Grande-Bretagne et en France (1780-1914)
This article treats the comparative development of French and British economies during the nineteenth century. The focus is on the production of material goods, and the productivities in industry and agriculture are the principal indices under consideration. Our findings indicate that despite the French lateness in adopting factory technology, industrial productivity did not lag behind British levels, due mainly to a specialisation in French indu…
Britain's Economy Between the Wars: A Survey of a Counterrevolution in Economic History
Journal Article BRITAIN’S ECONOMY BETWEEN THE WARS: A SURVEY OF A COUNTERREVOLUTION IN ECONOMIC HISTORY* Get access Patrick K. O’Brien Patrick K. O’Brien St. Antony’s CollegeOxford Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Past & Present, Volume 115, Issue 1, May 1987, Pages 107–130, https://doi.org/10.1093/past/115.1.107 Published: 01 May 1987
The Costs and Benefits of British Imperialism 1846-1914
Journal Article THE COSTS AND BENEFITS OF BRITISH IMPERIALISM 1846–1914 Get access Patrick K. O'Brien Patrick K. O'Brien St. Antony's CollegeOxford Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Past & Present, Volume 120, Issue 1, August 1988, Pages 163–200, https://doi.org/10.1093/past/120.1.163 Published: 01 August 1988
The Political Economy of British Taxation, 1660-1815
Public Finance in the Wars with France 1793–1815
The Foundations of European Industrialization: From the Perspective of the World
This article explores and engages with debates concerning the relation between internal and external ‘Development’ amongst nations. Types, trajectories, and patterns of economic growth and social structuring are investigated. Centering modes of trading and fiscal linkage and flow, the author concludes that ‘a perspective from Europe’, rather than a narrower ‘British’ view, has wider implications for the rest of the world
Free trade, British hegemony and the international economic order in the nineteenth century
The theory (or rather the notion) that the international economy functioned more or less effectively for roughly a century down to 1914 because Great Britain provided the ‘public goods’ required for the smooth operation of the ‘liberal international order’ has become a textbook generalization. That notion emerged quite recently and can be traced to Kindleberger's attempt to explain the pronounced cyclical fluctuations experienced by the world eco…
Inventive Activity in the British Textile Industry, 1700–1800
An analysis of innovations in the eighteenth-century British textile industry is the basis for an evaluation of aggregate studies of invention during the Industrial Revolution, derived from patent evidence alone. Disaggregation of the data challenges recent generalizations concerning the pace and pattern of technical change over the period. Discontinuities in the nature of invention, promoting an acceleration in total factor productivity growth, …
Agricultural Productivity and European Industrialization, 1890-1980
Patrick K. O'Brien, Leandro Prados, De La Escosura, Agricultural Productivity and European Industrialization, 1890-1980, The Economic History Review, New Series, Vol. 45, No. 3, European Special Issue (Aug., 1992), pp. 514-536
The Rise of a Fiscal State in England, 1485-1815
Patrick K. O'Brien, Philip A. Hunt; The Rise of a Fiscal State in England, 1485–1815, Historical Research, Volume 66, Issue 160, 1 June 1993, Pages 129–176
The Industrial Revolution and British Society
There Is Nothing Outside the Text, and There Is No Safety in Numbers: A Reply to Sullivan
Historians and economists have long been in need of index numbers to measure both the volume (real value) of activity that is undertaken to produce process or product innovations over time, and also a counterpart index that might capture the outcome of that activity (the volume of inventions) that come on stream year after year. For purposes of measurement the first index can in principle be equated (within tolerable limits of accuracy) with the …
Global Warfare and Long-Term Economic Development, 1789-1939
Theories of Technological Progress and the British Textile Industry from Kay to Cartwright
La industria textil británica continuá en el centro del debate sobre la revolución industrial. Las innovaciones técnicas en el período produjeron una aceleración extraordinaria del crecimiento del output y una considerable reducción de los precios de los tejidos. En este trabajo presentamos un estudio de la comunidad de los inventores responsables de la transformación tecnológica, lo que nos permite alcanzar una serie de conclusiones nuevas sobre…
Path dependency, or why Britain became an industrialized and urbanized economy long before France
Patrick Karl O'Brien, Path Dependency, or Why Britain Became an Industrialized and Urbanized Economy Long before France, The Economic History Review, New Series, Vol. 49, No. 2 (May, 1996), pp. 213-249
The Britishness of the first industrial revolution and the British contribution to the industrialization of ‘follower countries’ on the mainland, 1756–1914
(1997). The Britishness of the first industrial revolution and the British contribution to the industrialization of ‘follower countries’ on the mainland, 1756–1914. Diplomacy & Statecraft: Vol. 8, Britain and Europe, pp. 48-67
Political Biography: A Polemical Review of the Genre
My "polemic" deals with the biographies of statesmen who operated in the context of established systems of law, conventions, and accountability, and not with dictators and more or less absolute monarchs. I argue that unless abiographer contextualizes his/her subject in order to deal with (a) problems of vaUdation; (b) the counterf actual problem of dispensability; and (c) connections between the "life" and the achievements, then the genre is not …
The Costs and Benefits for Europeans from their Empires Overseas
Large historical problems are stimulating to debate but difficult to specify and answer in ways that might carry forward our long-standing discourses in global economic history. The papers which form the basis of our essay deal with a meta question and are focused upon the economic consequences (the costs and benefits) for those European societies most actively involved in territorial expansion, colonization, world trade, capital exports and emig…
Balance Sheets for the Acquisition, Retention and Loss of European Empires Overseas
Our essay will critically survey and attempt to offer an overall interpretation of a growing volume of publications by historians who have attempted to evaluate the costs and benefits for Europe's domestic economies flowing from some five centuries of involvement with empires overseas. That involvement began with the conquest of Ceuta by the Portuguese in 1417 and passed through two epochs: 1417-1825 and 1825-1974. After a first conjuncture marke…
The Reconstruction, Rehabilitation and Reconfiguration of the British Industrial Revolution as a Conjuncture in Global History
All historical research, however micro and focussed can be represented as part of a process of ‘reconfiguration’ Research is simply the crafts dominant and traditional activity of transforming archival evidence into printed narratives which validate, qualify and occasionally demolish dominant meta-narratives. Most historians continue to be engaged in Von Ranke's grand project for construction of history by making different, more durable and bette…
Hegemony or Empire
Contentions of the Purse between England and its European Rivals from Henry V to George IV: A Conversation with Michael Mann 1
Economics (22 works) · Political science (22 works) · Historical Economic and Social Studies (21 works) · Law (16 works) · History (15 works) · Economic history (12 works) · Economy (11 works) · Law (10 works) · Politics (10 works) · History (9 works)