Many of us today would find it incredibly difficult to list absolutely everything we own, but in the southwest German territory of Württemberg until 1900 such lists were drawn up over hundreds of years for most newly-married brides and bridegrooms and bereaved widows and widowers…Now a team of researchers, led by Professor Sheilagh Ogilvie, an economic historian at the University of Cambridge, and funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, is systematically studying these unrivalled documents for the first time to chart the history of how poor economies improve living standards. They hope that understanding the rise in human well-being in European economies over past centuries could hold lessons for developing economies today.
“300 years of list-making” at the University of Cambridge. I don’t really see how studying the advent of the industrial revolution in Europe is going to help developing countries today, but I’m fascinated by this project anyway. In the future, will researchers scour GroceryLists.org to trace the downfall of late capitalism?
Via the Morning News.
