Why this blog?
Have you ever realized the amazing amount of labour wasted every day in colleges and universities around the world? Tons of papers, exams, reading notes, etc. are written every year only to be forgotten in a computer file, land in the bin or being thrown into a fire to cook some sausages once summer comes. If every generation of students could build on their predecessors’ work they’d go further and faster and they’d create something lasting beyond the last exam.
I for one read tens of papers every month, this blog is thus mostly designed to pass on the knowledge I managed to gather from these readings. This sort of open source, qualitative, internet-based source (hack-ademia if you wish) is destined to overcome the five obstacles preventing one from accessing information: distance, time, money, language and the lack of direction.
Who are we?
Ben
I’m a Parisian born and bred, I’ve studied at the Sorbonne in my hometown and at the LSE in London.
I came to economic history by chance: one of my professor thought the word “entrepreneur” would sound cool in the title of my dissertation. I’m particularly interested in early modern European economic history, and by the issue of the slow rise of the market on the continent. For me, the escape from the Malthusian trap is and remains the most fascinating event that has taken place in the last 5,000 years.
I’ve just started a PhD at Utrecht University under Pr Clemens Kool in close collaboration with Pr Joost Jonker and Pr Oscar Gelderblom about the strategies of intitutional investors in the Netherlands and Belgium on the capital and money market from 1500 to 1800.
Manuel
I studied Economics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Ever since I was in college I have worked with researchers: among them, I can mention Dr. Enrique Dussel Peters and Dr. Graciela Márquez. In 2008, I was selected to participate as an economist in “Expedición 1808”, a cultural, multidisciplinary project on the bicentennial of the beginning of independence war in Spanish America made for the Mexico City government. The project derived in a TV show (still not broadcasted), a blog and some videocasts for Reforma, a Mexican newspaper. That trip brought me dear friends, incredible pics and an itch to do economic journalism.
One could say I also came to economic history by accident. Had I not studied the right course with the right professor, I would probably be working at the Mexican finance ministry or central bank. But economic history came to me as a persuasive way to explain the relative backwardness of cities, countries and regions. The sunk costs are now big enough to reinforce a positive incentive to further specialize in the area. For that I am thankful.
I am also privileged to work and gain research experience with several Mexican economic historians. I assist Dr. Carlos Marichal in financial history projects. I am also a teaching assistant in the Mexican
Economic History course taught by Dr. Antonio Ibarra. I also assist Dr. Luis Jáuregui, the president of the Mexican Economic History Association. I am the registration coordinator of the Second Latin American Economic History Congress, to be held in Tlatelolco, Mexico City, from February 3 to 5, 2010. I have also translated a paper from Dr. Alejandra Irigoin and assisted Dr. Guillermina del Valle.
Currently I write my B. A. thesis on monetary fragmentation during the independence war in Mexico, with a focus on a provincial mint (that of Guadalajara, a Western city of then New Spain). I intend to finish it by August 2009. I will then study a specialization course in economic history and apply for a Ph.D in several universities in the USA, Great Britain and Spain, to study either History or Economic History. I would like to do research on monetary, financial and macroeconomic history topics of Mexico and Latin America in the 19th century.
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This blog is dedicated to the memory of Larry Epstein.
