Economic History Book Prize

Cambridge economic historian Sheilagh Ogilvie has been awarded the prestigious Gyorgy Ranki Prize for her book, State Corporatism and Proto-Industry: The Württemberg Black Forest, 1580-1797. She is co-winner of the prize, which is awarded by the Economic History Association for the best book on European Economic History published in 1997 or 1998.

Sheilagh Ogilvie is a University Lecturer in the Faculty of Economics and Politics. Her research addresses a variety of questions about the economic development of Europe from 1500 to 1800.

State Corporatism and Proto-Industry focuses on the Württemberg Black Forest, where a dense worsted industry arose in the 1560s. It possessed all the features of a classic "proto- industry" - those dense rural handicrafts which, it has been argued, helped to break down traditional society in Europe and prepare the way for factories and capitalism. But Dr Ogilvie shows that this did not happen. On the contrary, until at least 1800, traditional corporate institutions - communities, rural guilds, and merchant companies - exercised enormous power over the lives of ordinary individuals.

Dr Ogilvie argues that this system can best be described as "state corporatism": an alliance in which the expanding early modern state granted privileges to favoured groups in return for fiscal and regulatory co-operation. Furthermore, Württemberg was no anomaly in this respect. "State corporatism" prevailed in many other European proto-industries. Dr Ogilvie argues that this was a key reason why many European societies remained stagnant and poor, until privileged groups lost their state-enforced privileges over the economy.