Home ›› 04 Oct 2022 ›› Editorial
History is about individuals; economic history is about groups of people. It’s an over-simplification, but one that encapsulates why history is classified as part of the humanities, economic history as a social science. Both can be exciting and also interact; the story of Chinggis Khan is part of the history of Mongolian hordes sweeping across Asia. The actions and motives of a single person operate within, and may influence, the group of which they are a part.
In dealing with groups of people, we need to describe their collective behaviour. That means assessing the average of the group and the variation around it. This is alien to many historians for good reason: it doesn’t make much sense to talk about the average pope. But it makes a lot of sense to describe the average age at which people get married, because that has changed so much even in recent years, or to explain average income at different times in the past. To do this we have to use statistics and theory.
These words cause some historians to recoil. But statistics are just a method, not an end in themselves. They are no more difficult to understand than medieval handwriting or deciphering ancient DNA; once they’ve been learnt, they seem easy. Economic theory is no harder than political theory and both have their place in understanding the past. However, both statistics and theory need clear explanation; economic historians need to avoid jargon and mustn’t assume that what comes easily to them will make sense to their audience.
Studying the market in isolation does not help students to understand these historical developments which have affected all of us. If these questions are being evaded, then how can we enhance our understandings of contemporary societies? They are never taught about these issues in the main economic curriculum. And there are only a few departments dedicated to the study of economic history in the top universities in the West, who offer specialist courses on the history of economic development in regions like Africa, South Asia and Latin America. Moreover, in general, very little is being taught about the important issues in economic history such as the historical evolution of institutions, classes, slavery, power structure, finance and money, technology and innovation, and the living conditions of poorer countries. Market is inefficient. Capitalism has too many risk and externalities can be very large in financial institutions and can affect the whole country. Risk taking is under priced. As a corporation CEO, who is compelled to maximise profits, while ignores externalities. It means under capitalism, the impacts on others are not fully taken into consideration. Rational behaviour is very crucial assumption in the neoclassical model without any empirical evidence. They could not foresee in 2008 financial crisis due to assumption that consumers are rationale. Whenever free market fails, it needs bail out by the government.
The universities don’t operate in a societal vacuum. The need to encourage diversity of opinion resembles the automatic call for balance in the media, where counter-arguments are aired regardless of whether they warrant equal attention. There are numerous economic policies that could help to reduce wealth before tax and could reduce inequality, such as higher minimum wages, stronger workers’ union representations, anti-trust and corporate governance laws, better provisions for education and skill development and increased spending on social sectors.
Economic historians study how past economies changed, and the factors that could influence present and future economic development. They focus on practical questions about real economies. For instance, why are some countries rich and others poor? What forces shape inequality and what does historical experience reveal about current global economic developments and crises? Economic historians use concepts and theories from across the social sciences to study the historical development of economies and understand them in their social, political and cultural contexts.
Economic history is the study of power and ideology. Looking to the past, how did we get where we are today? The mainstream economists tend to neglect politics. This is clearly problematic. What drives globalisation of the market? Both economics and politics are intertwined. The mainstream economists present the capitalist system as an inherently stable and self-regulating mechanism while unemployment, overproduction and rising inequalities are seen as deviations from ‘equilibrium’, and ‘imperfections’, such as the development of monopolies.
Taking root around 12,000 years ago, agriculture triggered such a change in society and the way in which people lived that its development has been dubbed the “Neolithic Revolution.” Traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyles, followed by humans since their evolution, were swept aside in favour of permanent settlements and a reliable food supply. Out of agriculture, cities and civilisations grew, and because crops and animals could now be farmed to meet demand, the global population rocketed—from some five million people 10,000 years ago, to more than seven billion today.
There was no single factor, or combination of factors, that led people to take up farming in different parts of the world. In the Near East, for example, it’s thought that climatic changes at the end of the last ice age brought seasonal conditions that favored annual plants like wild cereals. Elsewhere, such as in East Asia, increased pressure on natural food resources may have forced people to find homegrown solutions. But whatever the reasons for its independent origins, farming sowed the seeds for the modern age.
The available agriculture depended on what part of the globe humans called home. Plants were individually domesticated all over the world, says Stock. For example, humans domesticated rice, millet, and sorghum in Africa; wheat and barley in the Levant; millet and rice in China; yams, bananas, and taro in Papua New Guinea; maize, sunflower, and squash in North America; and potatoes, quinoa, and other crops in South America.
Stock says that it took years for these domesticated plants to transform into large scale agriculture. He also notes that not everyone made the transition. Around 20,000 years ago, some hunter gatherers became more sedentary without ever necessarily moving into agriculture. Rather, they would just stay in one place for longer periods of time.
Plant Domestication
The wild progenitors of crops including wheat, barley, and peas are traced to the Near East region. Cereals were grown in Syria as long as 9,000 years ago, while figs were cultivated even earlier; prehistoric seedless fruits discovered in the Jordan Valley suggest fig trees were being planted some 11,300 years ago. Though the transition from wild harvesting was gradual, the switch from a nomadic to a settled way of life is marked by the appearance of early Neolithic villages with homes equipped with grinding stones for processing grain.
The origins of rice and millet farming date to the same Neolithic period in China. The world’s oldest known rice paddy fields, discovered in eastern China in 2007, reveal evidence of ancient cultivation techniques such as flood and fire control. In Mexico, squash cultivation began around 10,000 years ago, but corn (maize) had to wait for natural genetic mutations to be selected for in its wild ancestor, teosinte. While maize-like plants derived from teosinte appear to have been cultivated at least 9,000 years ago, the first directly dated corn cob dates only to around 5,500 years ago.
Corn later reached North America, where cultivated sunflowers also started to bloom some 5,000 years ago. This is also when potato growing in the Andes region of South America began.
Farmed Animals
Cattle, goats, sheep, and pigs all have their origins as farmed animals in the so-called Fertile Crescent, a region covering eastern Turkey, Iraq, and southwestern Iran. This region kick-started the Neolithic Revolution. Dates for the domestication of these animals range from between 13,000 to 10,000 years ago.
Genetic studies show that goats and other livestock accompanied the westward spread of agriculture into Europe, helping to revolutionize Stone Age society. While the extent to which farmers themselves migratedwest remains a subject of debate, the dramatic impact of dairy farming on Europeans is clearly stamped in their DNA. Prior to the arrival of domestic cattle in Europe, prehistoric populations weren’t able to stomach raw cow milk. But at some point during the spread of farming into southeastern Europe, a mutation occurred for lactose tolerance that increased in frequency through natural selection thanks to the nourishing benefits of milk. Judging from the prevalence of the milk-drinking gene in Europeans today—as high as 90 percent in populations of northern countries such as Sweden—the vast majority are descended from cow herders.
While our own landscaping research has gone on for decades, the history of irrigation dates back at least 8,000 years. The earliest known systems of irrigation originated in Egypt and Mesopotamia in 6,000 B.C. Fighting against the flooding of the Nile several months each year, ancient civilizations pioneered a technique to divert flood waters to nearby crop fields, thereby utilizing excess flood water for crops that would otherwise be difficult to grow due to lack of resources.
This ancient technique is credited as the basis of agricultural economies and societies across the world. As the process of applying controlled amounts of water to plants at needed intervals, irrigation aids in growing agricultural crops and maintaining vegetation in a way that conserves water, preserves soil nutrients and saves time and energy.
Before the Egyptian and Mesopotamian approach, primitive irrigation likely involved laborers carrying buckets of water from rivers and wells to water their crops. Increased innovation to control water flow where desired included innovations such as irrigation canals, dams, dikes, aqueducts and water storage facilities.
Nowadays, modern irrigation systems have evolved to include reservoirs, tanks and wells, with reservoirs serving to collect water from natural sources such as lakes and rainwater runoff. As our global agricultural output continues to rise, irrigation protects against droughts and famines, ensuring successful and widespread crop yields.
Even before recorded history, ancient cultures around the globe accidentally discovered and purposefully invented techniques to preserve foods, including cooling, freezing, boiling, drying, salting, smoking, pickling, and sugaring. These methods are so successful that all are still practiced today, often with the help of modern technologies. Food historiansbelieve that food preservation, along with agriculture, enabled human societies to form once food supplies could be safely stored in bulk, thereby diminishing the need to nomadically hunt and gather for sustenance. Rather than have to consume the kill or harvest immediately, preservation allowed for planning ahead for periods of potential hunger (for example, drought or winter).
The writer is MD and CEO of Community Bank. He can be contacted at [email protected]
