| 11. |
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| 12. |
- Galli, Stefania, 1989, et al.
(författare)
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Thriving in a declining economy - Elite persistence in the West Indies, 1760-1914
- 2024
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The issue of how elites as a social group come to be, how they maintain their position and how they affect the society they come to control is very much at the centre of the inequality debate. The present paper studies one of the most extreme unequal societies ever recorded, that of the sugar-based economies in the West Indies, and examines the emergence and persistence of its economic elite by focusing on the island of St. Croix in the Danish West Indies. The study spans 154 years, enabling us to study long-run elite persistence along with the effects that major economic, institutional, and social changes had on it. Our study shows that elite persistence remained high throughout this period, despite several potential ‘critical junctures’ taking place. The Crucian elite not only managed to maintain its relative standing but also to accumulate a growing share of the total wealth available on the island. Maintaining a grip on the economy did, nonetheless, coincide with a severe and rapid impoverishment in absolute terms.
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| 13. |
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| 14. |
- Rönnbäck, Klas, 1974, et al.
(författare)
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A colonial cash cow: the return on investments in British Malaya, 1889-1969
- 2022
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Ingår i: Cliometrica. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1863-2505 .- 1863-2513. ; 16, s. 149-173
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Historical rates of return on investments have received increasing scholarly attention in recent years. Much literature has focused especially on colonies, where institutions have been argued to facilitate severe exploitation. In the present study, we examine the return on investments in an Asian colony, British Malaya, from 1889 to 1969 for a large sample of companies. Our results suggest that the return on investments in Malaya might have been among the highest in the world during the period studied. Nevertheless, this finding fits badly with theories of imperial exploitation and can only to a limited extent be explained by a higher risk premium. Instead, we argue that the main driver of the very high return on investments in Malaya was rather the substantial rise in global market prices of the output of the two main sectors of the Malayan economy, rubber and tin. The way that the process of decolonization unfolded in Malaya did, furthermore, not lead to any major nationalization of foreign-held assets, and did thereby not disrupt the return on investment in the region in the same way as decolonization did to the return on investment in some other colonies.
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| 15. |
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| 16. |
- Rönnbäck, Klas, 1974, et al.
(författare)
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Numeracy and the legacy of slavery Age-heaping in the Danish West Indies before and after emancipation from slavery, 1780s-1880s
- 2024
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In many slave societies, enslaved persons were barred from acquiring much education. What skills the enslaved persons nonetheless were able to acquire, and how this changed following emancipation, is not well known. We study quantitatively how a legacy of slavery impacted upon the development of basic numeracy skills. Our results show that numeracy skills started to improve in the population under study well before emancipation from slavery. We also show that the formal public and private schooling seems to have played a marginal role in this process. We therefore conclude that much of this learning was acquired in informal ways.
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| 17. |
- Rönnbäck, Klas, 1974, et al.
(författare)
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Slavery, Resistance and Repression: A Quantitative Empirical Investigation
- 2024
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In this article, we study what individual and social characteristics made it more likely for an individual to resist slavery. We employ a unique census from the Caribbean island of St. Croix in 1846, which allows us to study not only the characteristics of those that did resist slavery, but also of the whole enslaved population on the island. We analyze this data by using descriptive statistics as well as econometric analysis. Our findings show that relative deprivation played no role: individuals were as likely to resist slavery regardless of the relative status of the position they held. Resistance might have been more likely on small establishments, possibly the consequence of a greater level of trust among smaller groups of enslaved individuals. Gender also played a role in the types of resistance undertaken, and thereby possibly also in the risk of being detected and punished.
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| 18. |
- Rönnbäck, Klas, 1974, et al.
(författare)
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The Danish West Indies Panel : Danska Västindien-panelen
- 2024
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Ingår i: Svensk Nationell Datatjänst.
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Ekonomiskt-demografiskt paneldataset över Danska Västindien (dagens US Virgin Islands), 1760-1914. Datasetet innehåller demografisk information om populationen, samt deras ägande av fast egendom. Datasetet är insamlat från primärdatakällor i danska Rigsarkivets samlingar för mer än 50 benchmark-år. Datasetet innehåller information om historiska individer, men alla individer i datasetet är sedan länge avlidna varför det i juridisk mening inte är persondata.
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| 19. |
- Rönnbäck, Klas, 1974, et al.
(författare)
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The persistence of wealth Economic inequality in a Caribbean slave colony in the very long run
- 2024
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- It has been proposed that slave societies were the most unequal societies in recorded human history. What little evidence there is shows an ambiguous picture. We contribute with a study on the wealth distribution in a Caribbean society, based on individual-level data for the full population, combining tax and census records into the largest comparable historical dataset from the Global South. Our results show a distribution of wealth shockingly close to perfect inequality. Our results also show a remarkable degree of persistence: even after slavery was abolished, the freedmen never managed to accumulate physical wealth to any measurable degree.
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| 20. |
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