Why were Dutch East Indiamen so slow?

The speed of ships is a crucial variable in shipping productivity. Despite the dominance of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in Eurasian trade in the early modern era, its ships were generally slower than those of other companies. This article investigates the causes of this gap in shipping speeds. We dismiss reasons that highlight more numerous stops, longer routes, inferior navigation and restrictive instructions, and emphasize differences in ship design resulting from constraints imposed by the Dutch shallow inland waterways, and the slow adoption of copper sheathing in the late eighteenth century, as plausible explanations.

New series for agricultural prices in London, 1770­1914.

New annual series for the prices of major agricultural commodities sold in London markets between 1770 and 1914 are presented. These series are based on bimonthly observations drawn from newspaper market reports. The products covered are wheat, barley (grinding and malting), oats, potatoes, hay, butter, beef, mutton, and pork. Annual prices are calculated for both calendar and production years. The new series are compared to existing series.

Background migration: the Irish (and other strangers) in mid-Victorian Hertfordshire.

Relatively few Irish had settled in Hertfordshire by the time of the 1851 census. Those that did were older, more skilled, less residentially segregated, and more likely to be married to a local person than were the Irish-born in London and other large cities in Britain. The Irish-born in Hertfordshire were also less skilled and less intermarried than were county residents born in Scotland, Wales and Yorkshire. All of these migrant groups were very rare in rural areas of the county and very few of the migrants were involved in agriculture, despite the passage of large numbers of Irish harvesters through the county each year.