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This analysis is a test of the historical interpretation that a few Western Republicans kept the reform spirit alive in the 1920's through the use of pol'al insurgency against regular & conservative colleagues. Modern soc sci techniques are used to investigate 2 US senators, A. Capper & C. Curtis usually perceived by historians as exemplifying conflicting ideologies & party practices. The conclusion is that the diff's between the 2 senators do not justify the traditional distinction made between them. This finding should encourage a re-analysis of progressivism & insurgency in the 1920's. AA.

"Der Beitrag entwickelt folgende Argumente: 1. Historiker haben das Wachstum der Dienstleistungen nicht in konstanten Preisen gemessen, und es gibt keine gesicherte Korrelation zwischen dem Niveau des Pro-Kopf-Einkommens und dem Anteil der Dienstleistungen am Bruttoinlandprodukt. 2. Wenn Dienstleistungen als die Summe der Faktoreinkommen, die in diesem Sektor verdient wurden, gemessen werden und man mit diesen Daten Trendentwicklungen im Zeitverlauf oder das Pro-Kopf-Einkommen verschiedener Länder vergleichen will, so könnte das zu irreführenden Vorstellungen von den tatsächlichen Änderungen des Lebensstandards im Zeitverlauf und im Ländervergleich in Westeuropa führen. 3. Nach der üblichen Meßmethode erbrachten Dienstleistungen im 19. Jahrhundert einen großen und noch wachsenden Anteil am Volkseinkommen. Doch sind die bisher verwendeten Daten fehlerhaft, verzerrt und mehrdeutig. Was wir mit unseren Zahlen bis jetzt aufspüren, ist nur teilweise ein zusätzlicher Beitrag zur Warenproduktion für den Endverbraucher und für dessen Wohlfahrt. Hauptsächlich aber weisen die Zahlen lediglich die Verlagerung von bisher hauswirtschaftlich erzeugten Gütern auf den Markt nach." (Autorenreferat)

First published in 1978, Professor O'Brien's Economic Growth in Britain and France 1780-1914 is an original and pioneering exercise in comparative and quantitative economic history. It finds a controversial place in the debate on the question of French retardation in the 19th century and as a brave and important contribution towards the understanding of economic growth in Western Europe. The author attempts to comprehend and evaluate the economic performance of France through explicit comparisons with Britain, while considering British economic history from a French perspective. Challenging th

This article is a survey and critique of recent endeavours to establish statistical foundations for a chronology for the great divergence based upon trends and levels in relative wages. Our reading of the bibliography in Chinese labour history, together with a preliminary investigation into other primary sources, suggests that the Kuznetsian paradigm for empirical economics may not be viable for the construction of analytical narratives for the Chinese and other premodern imperial economies in South and West Asia. Nevertheless, two datasets currently in print will continue to be quoted to lend support to numerically grounded speculations for levels and trends in real wages and welfare for the families of wage‐dependent urban workers in China over the eighteenth century. Statistical evidence for the Ming and Qing dynasties calibrated for the purposes of comparing real wage levels for wage‐dependent labour between China and western Europe can, however, be placed on a spectrum for accuracy and inferential analysis that runs from 'unfounded guess work' to 'plausible conjectures'. The unwelcome contention of this article is that the data published and potentially available for China (and probably for India and the Ottoman Empire) stand close to the unfounded guess work end of that spectrum. Meanwhile, and as a speculative conclusion, we offer a conjecture that the 'real wages' for Qing China's tiny proletariat, whose income included high proportions of wages in kind, have remained as elusive as they were when the real wage debate began a decade ago.

This review examines four books from the series 'Constitutional Systems of the World': these books set out the experience of the US, Germany, Russia and South Africa. As introductions to each of these countries' experience with constitutions, each text is perfectly acceptable; the problems start when we begin to compare the books to each other. Then questions arise about the approaches taken by each individual author, and the overall objective behind the series.