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A review of periodical literature for 2021 is presented, with topics that include knitwear industry in Scotland, wealth distribution, and British firms' strategic responses to Indianisation.

The article discusses the literature in economic and social history since 1850. A small group of papers looks at the problem of unemployment between the wars. All formally apply economic theory and statistical analysis, although from somewhat different theoretical traditions. Economist D. Matthews employs the Liverpool rational expectations model to test the counterfactual proposition that the Liberals' public works proposals of 1929 could have made a serious dent in the unemployment figures. The model replies in the affirmative, indeed suggests a larger permanent rise in employment than recently employed Keynesian models but only on conditions consistent with the well-known views of economist Patrick Minford and colleagues, that the resulting inflationary price rises would have had to lead to falls in the real value of unemployment benefits and wages. In other words, economist John Maynard Keynes may have been correct in his belief that economist Lloyd George's program could have created jobs, but his theoretical explanation was wrong.

The article presents a list of papers related to economic and social history of Great Britain and Ireland published in different journals. Some of the papers are: "Sixteenth-Century Probate Documents From Manchester," by M.J. Alexander; "The Buckinghamshire Posse Comitatus," by I.F.W. Beckett; "The Governesses: Letters from the Colonies, 1862-82," by P. Clarke; "Annals of the Labouring Poor: Social Change and Agrarian England," by K.D.M. Snell; "Systems of Land Holding Between Landowners and Farmers," by R. Stratton; "The Timing and Pattern of Technological Development in English Agriculture," by R.J. Sullivan; "Dearth and Marketing of Agricultural Produce," by W. Thwaites; "Rural Rebels in Southern England in the 1830s," by R. Wells; "The Union of 1707 and Scottish Development " by T.M. Devine and others. Some other papers are: "Studies in Late Anglo-Saxon Settlement," by M.L. Faull; "Comparative National Balance Sheets," by R.W. Goldsmiths; "The Cambridge Historical Encyclopedia of Great Britain and Ireland," by C. Haigh and the like.

This paper challenges the prevailing view among economic historians that tea and coffee were luxury articles of consumption prior to the nineteenth century. It reviews an array of available evidence, including national trade statistics and probate inventory studies. In particular, it examines the surprisingly wide social and economic diffusion of tea and coffee drinking among Amsterdam citizens of lower to middling economic status during the period of that city's ascendency and subsequent decline at the centre of global trade networks. Using the distribution of tea and coffee wares of both local and exotic manufacture across households of the artisanal and labouring classes, it seeks to map both the economic reach of the East Indian trade into the poorer parts of the city, as well as to locate the cultural meanings associated with the consumption of these new goods. New data to address this issue have been derived from a substantial collection of after-death inventories drawn up on the estates of middling and poor Amsterdam citizens in the middle decades of the eighteenth century by the Regents of the Municipal Orphanage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a list of literary publications related to the economic and social history of Great Britain and Ireland. Some of them are: "The Need for a Consular Service in France: An Eighteenth-Century British Memorandum," by J. Black; Extracts From the Account Books of St. Peter's Parish in Cork City, 1770-1814," by R. Folliott; "The Red Earl: The Papers of the Fifth Earl Spenser, 1835-1910," edited by P. Gordon; "The Rolls and Register of Bishop Oliver Sutton," edited by R.M.T. Hill; "The Port of Bristol, 1848-84," by D. Large; "Elizabeth Montagu: Bluestocking Turned Landlady," by J.V. Beckett; "Rural Poverty Eighty Years Ago," by R. Cotchin; "Agricultural Protection in Berkshire and opposition to the Collection of Agricultural Statistics," by J.P. Dodd; "Medieval Assarting Hamlets in Bilsdale, North-East Yorkshire," by J. McDonnell;" "English Settlements,"by J.N.L. Myres; "The Perception of Profit Before the Leasing of Demesnes,"by D. Postles; "Forestry in Northern Powys," by R.E. Stumbles.

This article provides information on various published papers related to economic and social changes in Great Britain since 1850. The concept of social control--essentially middle-class manipulation of the masses for the sake of social stability--that leapt abruptly to prominence in the late 1970s lies behind much of the work produced in 1984. Pat Thane looks at the question from the point of view of the recipient in her article, "The Working Class and State 'Welfare' in Britain, 1880-1914," and demonstrates that the working classes were not enthusiastic about welfare proposals from the state. Accepting the difficulty of discovering attitudes, she finds, through an examination of the records of several agencies, widespread suspicion of Liberal politics as a threat to working class independence. Further support from a different kind of article is brought by Victor Bailey in "In Darkest England and the Way Out: The Salvation Army, Social Reform and the Labour Movement, 1855-1910." This brings out the parallels between religious evangelism and socialism as moralizing agencies appealing to self-respect and working for social reform.

This article provides information on various published papers related to economic and social changes in Great Britain from 1500 to 1700. The yield of 1984 saw some recovery from the dearth of the previous year. There is still a lack of articles in economic history, which suggests a prolonged deviation of the course of the discipline towards social issues. Agricultural history, upon which there was little to report in 1985, has been better served in 1984, although much of the work is of a particular, local, and often specialized character. Michael Reed's article, "Enclosure in North Buckinghamshire, 1500-1750," stresses the importance of preparliamentary enclosure in a typical midland landscape and draws one's attention especially to the volume of enclosure by voluntary agreement. Changes in English agrarian society between 1500 and 1700 are examined in depth only for parts of the north. The article by R.W. Hoyle, "Lords, Tenants and Tenant Right in the Sixteenth Century: Four Studies," analyses the structure of four manors of north Yorkshire, England and shows that the regime of customary tenant right was flexible so far as the lord's options in managing his estates were concerned.

This article focuses on the standard of living of English workers during the Industrial Revolution in England and Wales. This paper mines an expanding data base and emerges with a far clearer picture of workers' fortunes after 1750. While optimists and pessimists can both draw support from the enterprise, the pessimists' case emerges with the greater need for redirection and repair. This is a rich source for consistent time series on well-defined occupations. Annual earnings are reported there for large numbers of employees in each occupational category', spanning the whole earnings distribution over age, tenure, and skill within a given occupational group. In the latter half of the eighteenth century, farm and non-farm common labourers gained ground 021 higher-paid workers,, the labour aristocracy especially. From 1815 to the middle of the nineteenth century, on the other hand, the gap between higher- and lower-paid workers widened dramatically. Finally, the cost-of-living index should use commodity weights which reflect workers' budgets shares.

The article discusses several periodical literature on British economic and social history published in various journals. Some of the papers mentioned in the article include, "The Social and Economic Effects of Plague in the Low Countries, 1349-1500," by W.P. Blockmans, "The Effects of the Black Death on English Higher Education," by William J. Courtenay, "Bury St. Edmunds and the Populations of Late Medieval English Towns, 1270-1530," by Robert S. Gottfried. In the investigation of demographic change the period of protracted population decline during the later middle ages continues to attract the attention of most scholars, with epidemiological studies about the origins, diffusion and effects of plague taking the centre of the stage. Students of English medieval demographic history have revealed considerable variations in the incidence of plague within particular epidemics at a point in time. Yet few, if any, would suggest any lessening of the importance of the disease in determining mortality through time and subscribe to the scepticism of other authors concerning the importance of plague as a determinant of the prolonged population decline of the later middle ages.

The article deals with agriculture and industrial revolution in Great Britain from 1659-1815. The literature of development economics and economic history has been marked by increased attention to agriculture's contribution to economic progress. Historians have not only taken proper cognizance of this theory and taxonomy but have added significantly to our comprehension of the way in which agriculture actually affected the pace and pattern of economic growth in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Agriculture's role in the industrialization of Europe, America, and Japan has certainly not been neglected or derogated. Here in Great Britain, agrarian history may be the most deeply studied aspect of the first Industrial Revolution, and recent research on agriculture from the Civil to the Great War has taken that branch of economic history to a high level of sophistication. And his volume of republished papers evinces a real feeling for the landscape, soil, and techniques of British farming, and displays the qualities of intellectual caution and gritty integrity, that are the hallmarks of agrarian historians who till a field of history where national data are always hard to find and where sensible inference depends upon wide reading and long reflection into the secrets of rural economy--secrets not readily accessible to strangers from towns.