Professor John Munro passed away on December 23, 2013. This site is maintained and kept online as an archive. For more infomation please visit the Centre for Medieval Studies
Professor (Emeritus) John H. Munro passed away December 23, 2013
Updated: 7 March 2013
This is a course on comparative economic development and especially comparative industrialization and urbanization in modern Europe from the late seventeenth century up to (but not including) World War I and the Russian Revolution (1917). Unlike my ECO 301Y course, which is basically thematic and topical in organization, this course is based on the nation state: in view of the importance of governments and state economic policies (fiscal, monetary, commercial, social, etc.) in modern European economic development. Five nation states are covered, up to 1914 (i.e., to World War I): the Dutch Republic (the Republic of the United Provinces, which became the Kingdom of the Netherlands, after 1815), Great Britain (Ireland is omitted), France, Germany, and Russia.
The first term is devoted to the Dutch (chiefly by independent readings) and the English/British Industrial Revolution. The second term, completing the British story up to 1870, then examines the industrialization of France, Germany, and Russia in the nineteenth century (from the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 to the outbreak of World War I in 1914). It will conclude with a survey of major changes in the British economy from 1870 to 1914, to be viewed in the light of the new foreign competition from the major continental countries, and also the United States of America. We will see, in part thanks to the combination of Free Trade and the Gold Standard, Great Britain enjoyed by far the highest standard of living in Europe, on the eve of World War I (if lower than the American standard of living).
Within each country or nation state, our examination of economic development and industrialization will consider, first, market integration and state economic policies; then demographic developments (population growth and urbanization); and then we shall consider the changes, and the interactions of those changes, within each of the major economic sectors: agriculture, commerce (domestic and foreign trade), banking and finance, and then industrialization itself (in the mining and manufacturing industries).
The course will also consider the social consequences of economic changes, especially those of 19th-century urban industrialization -- and a major essay topic (each year) is devoted to the Standard of Living Debate during the Industrial Revolution. Indeed, a major issue in this course is the relevance of the Kuznet's Curve (named for a former Nobel prize winner in economics): does economic growth and modern industrialization necessary follow a U-shaped curve, so that such growth necessarily involves a transfer income from the lower to the upper strata, depressing living standards of the working classes in particular, who only much later enjoy the ultimate fruits of industrialization, in far higher living standards.
My Office Hours (John Munro): from mid-September 2012
The Teaching Assistant (TA) for ECO 303Y:
To gain access to the Blackboard site, you must first log-in: with your UTORid and password.
On-line summaries of lectures in ECO 303Y. This html web site contains both a summary of all lectures for the 24 weeks of this course, combined into one PDF file, and also individual PDF files for the individual summaries of each week's lecture -- posted only after the lecture has been given. They are presented chronologically, in the order presented, from mid-September 2012 to the end of classes in April 2013. Note that these summaries are provided in lieu of Power Point slides (as presented in my other course, ECO 301Y).
The bibliography lists and the individual bibliographies, in both short and long versions, are accessible in both html and pdf formats. But in order to retrieve the individual bibliographies you must use the hmtl files below, for the A and B essay topics, below, given in both the short and long formats. Within each list chosen, click on the highlighted and underlinded topic, in either the html or pdf format. Since it is not possible to download such files from a pdf document, no pdf version of these bibliographies is provided below. On the other hand, from the html lists below you are best advised to select the pdf version of the bibliograpy files, since the text and layout of the bibliographies are much clearer in that format; and indeed the statistical appendices can generally be read only in pdf format. Bibliographies in the short-format, usually in two pages, contain the key readings and a few questions to guide you in formulating your essays.
Bibliographic Guide to Some Readings in Modern European Economic History: chiefly to be used for term essays.
Formats and Other General Observations . Also in pdf format .
Recommended Readings for A and B List Essays in ECO 303Y. The Economic History of Modern Europe, to 1914
See also EH.Net [Economic History Network] Recommended list of readings in European Economic History , prepared by Professor Timothy Guinanne of Yale University (for EH.Teach).