SURFsara granted us computing time worth of 95.000 computing unit (SBU) to be spent in calculating global poverty since 1820, using Monte Carlo simulations. This computation time will be consumed within the PhD project of Michail Moatsos titled “Global Poverty and Inequality: Present and Past since 1820”.

• dr. Michail Moatsos

ATHENA envisions the creation of a historical database on flora and fauna species in cultural and natural contexts for the Netherlands. The ATHENA portal will hold information on historical contexts of human – nature relationships for a broad variety of plant and animal species and the landscapes and ecosystems they live(d) in. ATHENA does so by linking existing databases, but also by building and incorporating new ones.

For more information, have a look at the project website.

The project is based around a consortium of scholars based at Utrecht University, Radboud University Nijmegen, Alterra and Wageningen University.

• Thomas van Goethem (Radboud University)

As part of the large-scale CLARIAH project, the Structured Data Hub aims to connect and provide access to structured datasets containing socio-economic and demographic data. The project will also enable the visualisation and analysis of these data, in order to help find answers to important questions about inequality in the world and about historical demography.

CLARIAH (Common Lab Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities) is a consortium of over 40 partners – including all Dutch humanities research institutes, university libraries, heritage institutions, public organisations and businesses – which develops tools for the humanities, in order to facilitate the use of the increasingly large amounts of available digital data.

For more information, see the CLARIAH website.

• dr. Auke Rijpma
• dr. Ruben Schalk
• dr. Michail Moatsos

Does economic development contribute to and result in more ‘agency’, the power of individuals to decide for themselves? And is the reverse also true? Can we find a link between historical developments (e.g. the advent of literacy) and institutions (laws, family forms, political systems) which promoted agency and the actual economic developments in the various countries of the world? These questions are central in this research project.

Nobel Prize laureate Amartya Sen (1999) already argued that the ‘freedom’ to realize one’s potential is a major determinant and contributing factor of economic development. A crucial factor in this respect is ‘human capital formation’: education will increase the agency of people - enhance their possibilities to shape their own lives – and is at the same time an essential ingredient of economic development. We aim to study these interrelationships in depth, with a specific focus on gender. Given the crucial role of women in socialization (producing human capital of the new generation), we will look closely at (institutions creating) gender differences in agency.

Thus, we study the interaction between agency and economic development at two, interrelated levels: at the micro level of household and family formation (are men and women allowed and able to make their own choices in this respect, or are – for example – marriages arranged?) and at the macrolevel of the state (are people allowed and able to be involved in the political decision making process?). We have developed innovative ways to measure these variables on a global scale. This will allow us to contribute significantly to the important debates among social scientist and historians about these links. Moreover, we think that adding the dimension of gender will deepen the analysis of these relationships.

• dr. Auke Rijpma
• dr. Sarah Carmichael
• dr. Selin Dilli

In the Clio Infra project, various institutes and scientists are working together to answer questions surrounding global economic growth and inequality. To answer these questions they need information about causes and patterns of economic development, which is why the Clio Infra project is aimed at collecting and sharing data sets on the most important indicators of economic development. This data can be used to explain how and why global inequality came into existence and how it has developed.

For more information, see the project website.

For more information about the thematic data hubs that are part of the larger Clio Infra framework, have a look at the Clio Infra hubs page at the Centre for Global Economic History.

• dr. Auke Rijpma
• dr. Bas van Leeuwen
• dr. Michail Moatsos

Understanding the 'great' and 'little' divergences between Northwest Europe and the rest of Europe, and between Europe and the rest of the world, implies considerable challenges, both in terms of quantification and analysis. In terms of quantification, the major European challenges are to be found in the pre-1800 period, although much work remains to be done in quantifying post-1800 performance elsewhere. This proposed research project fits very tightly with the objectives of this call. We will be explicitly exploring the “relations between world regions and the factors shaping different development paths in a historical perspective”. We will be explicitly focussing on the experiences of Asia, Africa and Latin America, and will be drawing not only upon European-based scholars but on a Latin American partner to this end. In terms of the specific topic addressed, the proposal focuses explicitly on the way in which 'development processes have and are being affected by relations between world regions and countries', and on the links between uneven development and such relationships. The project will indeed look at whether and how uneven development is linked to such relations, both past and present; at 'the extent to which historical relationships such as colonial and post-colonial relations affect today's development paths'; at 'the role of urbanisation'; and at 'gender and development relations', to which we will be devoting an entire work package.

Over the past decades there has been an increasing scholarly interest in collective action because economic and social theories hypothesize that guilds and comparable bodies such as commons and water boards play a fundamental role in economic, social and political development. Such institutions develop rules for economic transactions, form an important part of the framework for market exchange, enhance socio-political skills (they are typically governed by meetings, councils and other institutions through which the members exercise some form of democratic control) and build social capital (via networking). Moreover, the Low Countries seem to have been particularly active in the development of such bodies, which may help to explain the particular political (the 'poldermodel') and economic paths this area has been following ever since. In order to study the origins and development of these bodies, historians of guilds from the Netherlands and from abroad are in the process of compiling data sets containing their most important characteristics.

More information

The research aims at contributing to the important societal debate from an economic-historical perspective, on the basis of a study of the long-term performance of the Dutch business system during the 20th century. It consists of four projects. The first three projects investigate corporate governance characteristics: (i) protective devices or takeover defenses; (ii) executives, supervisors and their networks; and (iii) dividend policy and financing. The fourth project is a synthesis in two respects, as it both describes the relations between governance characteristics in the previous projects and relates governance to performance. The synthesis will offer a chronological and thematic account of the development of the governance structure of Dutch business during the 20th century. It will incorporate the results of the other three projects dealing with different aspects of corporate governance, and analyze a number of case studies to show in more detail how the governance mechanisms operated in practice (or in some cases: failed to operate effectively), what the consequences were for performance of those companies and the role played by the different stakeholders. The themes of this project will be dealt with in detail, including the societal discussion about corporate governance and its impact on the actual management structure of Dutch companies.

• prof. dr. Keetie Sluyterman

• Abe de Jong (Erasmus University Rotterdam)

On 5 July 2007, exactly 100 years after the merger which created Royal Dutch Shell, this study into the history of Royal Dutch Shell at Shell headquarters was presented. In this study (that appeared in four volumes), it is explained how Royal Dutch Shell was among the handful of oil companies that acquired a significant part of the global markets in the First decades of the Twentieth Century. 

• dr. Joost Dankers
• prof. dr. Keetie Sluyterman

The national research project Dutch business in the 20th century (Bedrijfsgeschiedenis in Nederland in de Twintigste Eeuw (BINT)) had the competitiveness and changing characteristics of the Dutch business system during the twentieth century as its main focus. The goal was to make an in-depth analysis of the most important elements of the Dutch business system and their adaptation over time to the major economic, social and technological developments of the 20th century. The analysis is internationally comparative because only in this way, the typical Dutch characteristics can be highlighted. The analysis is formed by relevant social theories, particularly, though not exclusively, drawn from institutional economics.

The BINT Projectwas initiated by the Business History Research Group of Utrecht University and its Research Institute. The Netherlands Economic History Archive (NEHA), the Erasmus University Rotterdam and the Foundation for the History of Technology at Eindhoven University also participated.

For more information, have a look at the project website.

• dr. Joost Dankers
• prof. dr. Keetie Sluyterman
• dr. Bram Bouwens
• dr. Annette van den Berg