Historical Analysis

Economic Histories

Economic historians have focused on the importance of consumption in everyday economic behavior and its role in economic change. They explore changing levels of expenditure and ownership of possessions and shifts in the popularity of different kinds of goods, for example, the move from woolen to cotton clothing during the eighteenth century. These are often related to wider economic trends—in this case, the move in textile manufacturing from cottage industry (wool) to factory production (cotton). To compensate for the lack of household financial accounts in all periods, they have used a variety of sources including probate inventories, insurance records, and court records. This has enabled a careful examination of exactly what kinds of things people owned, the materials used, length of ownership, and cost. This approach is particularly well developed for clothing and has established that there was a lower-class interest in clothes and fashion by the eighteenth century, especially in England and France (Styles 2007; Roche 1994). Historians have also used international flows of commodities, such as sugar or rubber, to explore the connections within the imperial and world economies since ca. 1700.

Some historians have addressed debates over supply versus demand factors in causing economic growth. Jan de Vries has controversially argued that an increase in the consumption of commodities among lower-class European households was crucial for laying the foundations for the Industrial Revolution. Once households acquired the desire for new or better food, clothes, or furniture, they began to direct more of their labor and time toward production for the market and away from self-sufficiency. This meant they received more payment in money, enabling them to buy more consumer goods. It also increased the amount of commodity production taking place. De Vries has called this the “industrious revolution” and sees it as crucial for creating both the demand for the goods that would be produced by factories, as well as the time-disciplined workers needed to labor there.

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