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AbstractA host of studies on wealth inequality in pre‐industrial Europe has recently been published. Out of these, a narrative emerges of rising inequality in a context of emerging markets and growing state taxation, punctuated by calamities. By surveying the available material, this article highlights an element that is less systematically discussed in this literature: the role of associational organizations. They developed less regressive forms of taxation and redistribution, embedded the transfer and use of land and capital in coordination systems that curtailed accumulation, and sometimes even imposed maximums of wealth ownership. The article tentatively argues that the resulting downward effect on wealth inequality was found most conspicuously in societies where associations of middling groups of owners‐producers held strong positions in economic and political life, even despite the exclusive character of their organizations. Such societies were gradually eroded in the early modern period, most notably as a result of the emergence of factor markets and state centralization, and the associated processes of proletarianization and scale enlargement. This did not happen without opposition and conflict, however, as the process was sometimes halted and showed distinct geographical patterns, which in turn influenced patterns of wealth inequality.

AbstractThe advances in economic and social history over the past years enabled me to empirically test assumptions about the long-run development of markets. The review by Geoff Hodgson of the resulting book, The Invisible Hand?, is lucid but incomplete. I argue that the rise to dominance of factor markets, followed by that of financial markets, took place already in several early cases, and that all market economies, through an endogenous process, saw the accumulation of wealth and, next, the translation of this wealth into political leverage, creating a feedback loop with negative outcomes which is very hard to break.

AbstractIt is often assumed that the market economy and the open society reinforce each other and have risen together. Even those who are more skeptical about their long-run compatibility will usually agree that the rise of the two was part of a process of modernization, starting in early modern England and unfolding in the modern West. This article builds on the latest historical research to reject this assumption. It shows that several market economies existed much earlier in history. These were all preceded by social movements generating a more open society. In each of these cases, the functioning of the market economy slowly eroded social and, next, political openness, and later shriveled itself again. This endogenous, cycle-like process, in which the interaction of the market economy and the open society developed from positive to negative, may also be seen in modern cases, including the present USA.

AbstractA main instrument for better understanding the formation of institutions, and explaining the differences in their long-run development between periods and societies, would be to use history as a laboratory, allowing us to test the hypotheses developed in the social sciences. This paper discusses the study by Douglas Allen,The Institutional Revolution, in that context, in order to identify some of the pitfalls in the current attempts by economists to use historical analysis. Next, the paper places his English case into a comparative perspective, helped by the recent insights gained by economic and social history, to see how these pitfalls can be avoided. Based on this, I argue for comparisons at the regional, national and global levels, and for a multidimensional view which includes social contextualization, combined with an open eye for discontinuity in long-run patterns, in order to avoid one-dimensional and teleological approaches to institutional change.

AbstractThe conventional view of markets for land, labour, and capital as a modern, Western phenomenon is questionable. Factor markets did indeed exist in Iraq, and even thrived, in various parts of its pre-modern history, including the period around 2000bce, the "long" sixth century (c. 620-480bce), and the eighth and ninth centuriesce. By employing the long-term approach used in this issue ofjeshoand by placing the organization of these markets in their wider social-political context, we can understand better how these markets developed, how they functioned, and why they rose and declined again.