A Spatial Turn in Economic History?

 

CHEP Workshop held at the Centre de Sociologie des Organisations, Sciences Po Paris, on 5 June 2019   The workshop considered the growing interest in spatial approaches to the history of economic life. Themes examined included the usefulness of concepts borrowed from geographical studies such as distance, borders or density; the variety of methods to report location in urban, rural and other settings; and whether historians should (or should not) use old maps, recent maps or other types of spatial representation, such as charts of flows and networks.  

The format was a conversation rather than a series of formal presentations. Participants were invited to send in advance texts or images, either to showcase their own past or current work, or to offer important general references and significant case studies. At each session, three or four participants made brief opening remarks that initiated a general discussion around a set of interrelated questions, circulated in advance and available in the programme below.

Following the workshop, we put together a common library on Zotero that lists the bibliographic references mentioned by participants. This constitutes a useful tool to enter the subject from different perspectives. This library is not accessible online because it contains pdf files which we cannot disseminate freely, but you may request access by writing to anna.egea@sciencespo.fr. 

The workshop also served as the launch event of the new Centre for History and Economics in Paris.

For more information on the workshop and some testimonies from participants, please see this report on the website of the Association Française d’Histoire Économique.

 

Programme

Introduction Opening remarks by Emma Rothschild, Claire Lemercier and David Todd.

Session 1: Origins and Politics of Spatial Inequality Why do certain spaces become valued economically and privileged, while others are relegated to the margins and rendered invisible? With what sources and methods can we account for spatial heterogeneity or inequality and for their evolution over time? How did contemporaries consider and represent such issues? What commercial, political and fiscal instruments have been used to increase or reduce, and make visible or invisible, spatial inequality? The discussion began with remarks by Paul-André Rosental, Alexia Yates, Madeline Woker and Emma Rothschild.

Session 2: Commerce, Distance and Territories Economic exchange – especially international trade – is a long-established topic in economic geography, but several important historical and methodological problems remain unsolved. What distinguishes international from other types of trade? How can we take into consideration the variety of political units engaged in trade and how should we handle the primary evidence that they generated, especially in imperial and colonial contexts? How have agents and regulators of trade, including international trade, used maps, and what should economic historians make of such maps? What can a historical approach bring to classic questions in economic geography, such as the impact of distance on trade? The discussion began with remarks by Guillaume Daudin, Béatrice Dedinger and Francesca Trivellato.

Session 3: Circulations and Their Scale Circulations are often primarily considered from a social, cultural, political or environmental perspective. How can we identify a specifically economic dimension? Is distinguishing such an economic dimension useful or meaningful? How can we connect different spatial and temporal scales of analysis? What are the conceptual, methodological and source-related challenges posed by differences in scale? How should we take into consideration political and other borders when studying circulations? The discussion began with remarks by Camille Buat, Giacomo Parrinello and Renaud Morieux.

 

List of participants

Camille Buat (Paris, Centre d’Histoire de Sciences Po) Marie-Emmanuelle Chessel (Paris, Centre de Sociologie des Organisations, Sciences Po) Guillaume Daudin (Université de Paris-Dauphine) Béatrice Dedinger (Paris, Centre d’Histoire de Sciences Po) Nicolas Delalande (Paris, Centre d’Histoire de Sciences Po) Claire Lemercier (Paris, Centre de Sociologie des Organisations, Sciences Po) Renaud Morieux (Cambridge) Giacomo Parrinello (Paris, Centre d’Histoire de Sciences Po) Paul-André Rosental (Paris, Centre d’Histoire de Sciences Po) Emma Rothschild (Cambridge and Harvard) Gareth Stedman Jones (Queen Mary University London) David Todd (King’s College London) Francesca Trivellato (Princeton) Madeline Woker (Columbia) Alexia Yates (Manchester)

The event was organised with the support of Anna Egea (Paris, Centre de Sociologie des Organisations and Mary-Rose Cheadle (Cambridge, Centre for History and Economics).