Economic and Environmental History Group
The mission of the Economic and Environmental History Group (RHI) is to offer temporal depth to societal debates and social theories on sustainable and equitable welfare development.
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Research
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Legacies of Colonialism and Slavery
Colonialism and slavery are pervasive historical phenomena which have left deep imprints on today’s world. Colonial empires have risen and collapsed throughout world history, but have never attained the massive, global scale that they did since 1500. Slavery is an equally ancient institution and practice that has known manifold forms and social relations.
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Coping with Environmental and Food Crises throughout History
The world today is facing enormous, interrelated challenges in terms of dealing with rapidly changing climate conditions and deteriorating natural resources while having to feed a consistently growing global population. While the global scale of the current food and environmental challenges is larger than ever before, historical societies similarly faced climate hazards and food shocks, including the consequences of massive deforestation, recurring droughts or floodings, pollution, and catastrophic famines.
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Roots of Health and Educational Inequalities
Why do people live healthier and longer lives in some countries than in others? Why do people in some countries have more opportunities for educational advancement than others? And how do health and education affect broader development processes? The ability to live a healthy life and expand one’s knowledge and skills depends on factors that operate over long periods of time.
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Long-Run Trends in Economic Inequality and Migration
Our world is characterized by large disparities in income and wealth, both within and between countries. While some people live in unprecedented affluence, others remain stuck in poverty. Global inequality is not a recent phenomenon, but has deep origins, going back multiple centuries.
Education
Our courses question aspects of the deep roots of human development by focussing on long-term processes of change.
Latest publications
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What happened to the workshop of West Africa? Resilience and decline of handicraft textiles in colonial northern Nigeria, 1911–52
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An education to colonise. The educational discrimination of indigenous people in colonial settings: lessons from Colombia and Mozambique
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The last free traders? Interwar trade policy in the Netherlands and Netherlands East Indies