N° 140 - EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY INTERNATIONAL TRADE STATISTICS SOURCES AND METHODS

Trade statistics are a unique source to broaden our understanding of early-modern economies and their evolution. Still, they have been under-utilized by researchers. This volume features a detailed panorama of early-modern trade statistics’ sources and discusses some of the ways they can be used to study the transformation of European commerce and economies in the late-eighteenth and early nineteenth century. It is of special interest for both economists and historians interested in the period of the first Industrial Revolution. In this special issue, Loïc Charles and Guillaume Daudin have gathered an wide-ranging list of scholars, experts in the economic history of early-modern trade from several countries. This volume include twenty-three short essays discussing the various available sources on trade data, as well as seven additional research papers. In total, it provides information on thirty five countries or areas. As to the research articles, three of them discuss methodological issues regarding the use of early trade statistics, and the remaining four others actually use some of these trade statistics to produce new insights.