Book Chapter

Looking for the islands of equality in a sea of inequality. Why did some societies in pre-industrial Europe have relatively low levels of wealth inequality?

  • Bas Van Bavel

This paper scrutinizes the insights won by recent studies in wealth inequality in pre-industrial Europe. It focuses on the regions and periods where levels of inequality were relatively low, trying to arrive at an inventory of causes of these exceptions. It discusses catastrophic events, colonization and revolution as possible causes, but argues that these only occasionally had a leveling effect, depending on the social and institutional context in which they occurred. Most clearly wealth accumulation was restricted, even by maximums on ownership, where associative organizations held a solid position, and market and state played lesser roles as coordination systems.

  • Keywords:
  • Economic inequality,
  • economic history,
  • European economic history,
  • pre-industrial age,
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Bas Van Bavel

Utrecht University, Netherlands - ORCID: 0000-0001-8686-0279

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  • Publication Year: 2020
  • Pages: 431-456
  • Content License: CC BY 4.0
  • © 2020 Author(s)

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  • Publication Year: 2020
  • Content License: CC BY 4.0
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Chapter Information

Chapter Title

Looking for the islands of equality in a sea of inequality. Why did some societies in pre-industrial Europe have relatively low levels of wealth inequality?

Authors

Bas Van Bavel

Language

English

DOI

10.36253/978-88-5518-053-5.27

Peer Reviewed

Publication Year

2020

Copyright Information

© 2020 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Bibliographic Information

Book Title

Disuguaglianza economica nelle società preindustriali: cause ed effetti / Economic inequality in pre-industrial societies: causes and effect

Editors

Giampiero Nigro

Peer Reviewed

Number of Pages

488

Publication Year

2020

Copyright Information

© 2020 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Publisher Name

Firenze University Press

DOI

10.36253/978-88-5518-053-5

ISBN Print

978-88-5518-052-8

eISBN (pdf)

978-88-5518-053-5

eISBN (xml)

978-88-5518-054-2

Series Title

Datini Studies in Economic History

Series ISSN

2975-1241

Series E-ISSN

2975-1195

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