BHSP British Historical Statistics Project

1. BHSP British Historical Statistics Project BHSP: Introduction Roger Middleton (University of Bristol) BHSP Official Launch, Economic History Society Annual Conference, University of Durham, 27 March 2010 Roger Middleton

2. Biggest, highest since records began … Britain is today experiencing the longest period of sustained economic growth since records began in the year 1701. [Brown 2005] the biggest amount in any quarter in British economic history, according to the Office for National Statistics. [Daily Telegraph, 22 December 2009] The national debt has soared to 59.2% of GDP, the highest since records began in 1974-75, the Office for National Statistics said. [Guardian, 20 November 2009] the master-economist must … study the present in the light of the past for the purposes of the future. [Keynes 1924, p. 322] Roger Middleton

3. British Historical Statistics (BHS) Publication history: • Mitchell and Deane (1962) Abstract of British Historical Statistics • Mitchell and Jones (1971), adds new series and (broadly) takes terminal date from c. 1938 to 1960s, but not a new edition per se • Mitchell (1988) British Historical Statistics* Roger Middleton

4. Place of BHS in British economic historiography • MD62 a companion to Deane and Cole (1962) British economic growth, 1688-1959 • Feinstein (1972) ‘Big red book’, culmination of original DAE data project • Matthews, Feinstein and Odling-Smee (1982), British economic growth, 1856-1973, locus classicus of long-term growth studies Roger Middleton

5. Developments since MD88 • Table 1 shows significant developments in organisation, scale and scope between MD62 and M88 • However: • From outset, BHS data basically raw and unprocessed • Transcription errors • As befits origins, coverage is economic history and less history in the round Roger Middleton

6. Table 1 Scale and scope of BHS: MD62-M88 Roger Middleton

7. Developments since MD88 = Need for New Edition 1. The ongoing expansion of statistical knowledge of the past, this affecting the medieval through to the contemporary world, e.g. the huge amount of medieval data assembled and the deployed by Campbell (2008) in his Tawney lecture; the outputs of the contemporary CAMPOP group (for example, respectively Wrigley 2011 on the early English censuses and Shaw-Taylor’s ‘The occupational structure of Britain, 1379-1911’ project); and, for the modern world, Broadberry in his two productivity studies (1997; 2006). 2. A concurrent expansion in the topics and fields researched by historians since the 1980s, not least such data-rich areas as climate and energy use; 3. The ICT revolution and all that this entails for the demand for, and supply of, historical data; and 4. More recently, and the spur to BHSP, the appearance of the Historical Statistics of the United States Millennial Edition (HSUSME), published by CUP in five volumes (Carter et al. 2006) and online. Roger Middleton

8. Contemporary history and contemporary policy debate • Contemporary world: my particular focus in BHSP • Some key statistical works have been updated: • Feinstein (1972): series ended in 1965, since updated to 1990 by Sefton and Weale (1996); • Halsey and Webb (2000): effectively an ONS style Social Trends for the whole of the twentieth century; Butler and Butler (2000) for political trends; • But none come into twenty first century. • Key role played by ONS and StatBase, or perhaps not played: • ONS seem to have no commitment to historical series in their current mission statement; • their web site is – to put it mildly – disappointing; • At this distance ONS series do not easily map to M88 series. • Growing private provision of statistical materials on the web, much of it potentially pursuing ideological agendas – e.g. Figure 2, produced by ukpublicspending.co.uk* Roger Middleton

9. Would you trust these numbers? Roger Middleton

10. Consequences of no new BHS • Traditional lamentable quality of public debate in Britain compounded by the absence of easily accessible historical series presented in such a fashion that journalists might possibly take seriously comments about the quality of the evidence; • That said, some responsible journalists clearly need a new online BHS (this from Michael Blastland of BBC):* All that I wanted was numbers … You might think the spending numbers for education would be bread and butter to politics, the 1, 2, 3 of debate. But finding out how much the UK spent on education over the lifetime of the modern welfare state is far from simple. There is no single, easily- available source. The online trail, for example, often goes cold in the early 1980s. • BHSP will be that natural first port of call for journalists as well as for the expert research community. Roger Middleton

11. Project History, Objectives & Organisation • History • Begins in 2006 with early conversations with CUP just before the publication of HSUSME; • Brian Mitchell gives the green light; • One or two false starts … Roger Middleton

12. Project History, Objectives & Organisation • Organisation • Team assembles: three general editors • Roger Middleton (Bristol): late nineteenth-twenty first century, macroeconomic history, public finance • Nigel Goose (Hertfordshire): medieval-early modern • Michael Turner (Hull): eighteenth-nineteenth century, agrarian and beyond • Commissioning volume editors Roger Middleton

13. Project History, Objectives & Organisation • Objectives • Taking HSUSME as initial template to • Produce 5 print volumes • Online edition • Data plus essay model • Business model for production of chapters: commission > contributors > funding of underlying research • Recognising considerable differences between BHS and HSUSME, with respect to: • Time (MD start at 1199; M88 at 1280): earliest series in USHSME is palaeolithic • Territory: special issue of Ireland, but also British diaspora – want to include significant material on British empire and beyond Roger Middleton

14. Project History, Objectives & Organisation • The task ahead • HSUSME: 5 vols, 1,781 tables, 37,339 data series • Not possible yet to estimate what we will have • Achievements so far Roger Middleton

15. Table 2 BHS volume planning to date Roger Middleton

16. Our thanks to … • Brian Mitchell who gives us his blessing but wishes no further direct involvement; • Richard Fisher and Michael Watson for backing this project from the outset and persevering with the one or two false starts; • A Bristol alumni for seedcorn funding; also EHS and CUP for financial support; • Richard Sutch and Susan Carter for helpful advice so far on the daunting realities ahead and for coming to Durham to contribute to this session; and • Everyone for attending today … Which gets me to: Roger Middleton

17. What next? • Come to Meet the Editors session which follows this launch; • Discuss with the general editors; • Visit our interim web site: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/history/bhsp • Get involved, become a contributor … suggest people who can be contributors … Roger Middleton

18. References Brown, G. (2005) ‘Budget speech’, Hansard, 16 March. Butler, D.E. and Butler, G. (2000) Twentieth-century British political facts, 1900-2000,8th edn. London: Macmillan. Carter, S.B. et al. (eds) (2006) Historical statistics of the United States: earliest times to the present, 5 vols. New York: Cambridge University Press. Broadberry, S.N. (1997) The productivity race: British manufacturing in international perspective, 1850-1990. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ___ (2006) Market services and the productivity race, 1850-2000: British performance in international perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Deane, P.M. and Cole, W.A. (1962) British economic growth, 1688-1959: trends and structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Feinstein, C.H. (1972) National income, expenditure and output of the United Kingdom, 1855-1965. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Halsey, A.H. and Webb, J. (2000) Twentieth-century British social trends. London: Macmillan. Garner, A. (1993) British historical statistics: student investigations. London: Statistics for Education. Keynes, J.M. (1924) ‘Alfred Marshall, 1842-1924’, Economic Journal, 34 (3), pp. 311-72. Matthews, R.C.O. et al. (1982) British economic growth, 1856-1973. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Middleton, R. and Wardley, P. (1994) ‘Annual review of information technology developments for economic and social historians, 1993’, Economic History Review, 47 (2), pp. 374-407. Mitchell, B.R. (1988) British historical statistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ___ (2003a) International historical statistics: the Americas, 1750-2000. London: Palgrave. ___ (2003b) International historical statistics: Africa, Asia & Oceania, 1750-2000. London: Palgrave. ___ (2003c) International historical statistics: Europe, 1750-2000. London: Palgrave. ___ and Deane, P.M. (1962) Abstract of British historical statistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ___ and Jones, H.G. (1971) Second abstract of British historical statistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mokyr, J. (1989) ‘Review of Mitchell (1988)’, Journal of Economic History, 49 (4), pp. 1016–18. Sefton, J. and Weale, M.R. (1995) Reconciliation of national income and expenditure: balanced estimates of national income for the United Kingdom, 1920-1990. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wrigley, E.A. (2011) The early English censuses. Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming. Roger Middleton