1. Joy through Statistics
History Foundation
Joy through Statistics
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History Foundation

2. Historians and Counting
Economic historians do it
Demographic historians have always done it
Social historians began to do it in the 1960s
Political historians have to do it
Even educated students do it in dissertations
It really isn’t difficult
You don’t even have to count – Excel will do it for you
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History Foundation

3. What has pushed quantification?
‘Democratisation’ of history - history of the mass rather than of GREAT MEN - note the impact of the Annales school
The ‘explosion’ of the social sciences in UK universities in the 1960s.
The advent of cheap computing and cheap analytical packages
Professionalisation of society
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History Foundation

4. Advantages of quantification
Only with statistics can you study the masses
Even with very limited processing, descriptive statistics can give greater accuracy than words
Only with statistics is is possible to infer with any real confidence
Using time series, it is possible to analyse with some confidence
Elaborate analytical models can be tested
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History Foundation

5. Disadvantages of Quantification
Data my not be robust or precisely what the historian needs
Analytical techniques can be abused (Sir Cyril Burt) or be very sensitive to minor changes in the way data are ordered (UK Industrial Revolution)
Quantification can only suggest relationships, the historian must interpret the results
Historical models are very controversial (US RRs)
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History Foundation

6. An Example: Marriage in early 15th Century Tuscany
Maristella Bottincini, ‘A loveless economy’, Journal of Economic History, 59 (1999)
She asks: Did couples marry for love or was marriage a politico-economic union of families?
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History Foundation

7. What sources do Quantitative historians use?
She worked in the State archives in Florence
She used dowries registered between 1415 and 1436
Dowries were given by the bride’s family in marriage and were legal contracts
She also used the Tuscan property census of 1427
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History Foundation

8. What questions do historians ask, Part 1 (characteristics of sample)?
Males
Females 18 54 14 31 22 30 15 23 27 24 26 16 17 25
What age were males and females at marriage?
Use mean? (average )
How to cope with outliers?
Use mode (commonest - 25)
Use median (midpoint - 25)
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History Foundation

9. Step 1: enter the data into a spreadsheet
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10. Step 2: Decide on formulae
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11. Step 3: Let Excel calculate the results
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12. Marriage in 15th Century Tuscany, I
Women tended to marry very young
Female celibacy was virtually unknown
Mean age of marriage for women was just under 19
Modal age was 16
Mean age for men was just under 28
Modal age was 25
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History Foundation

13. More refined descriptive statistics: marriage and social status
Did daughters marry ‘up’ or ‘down’?
She measures social status from the size of family wealth in the 1427 census and by occupation of father or groom
Occupation is either in peasant agriculture or higher status non-agricultural work
In her terminology agr and nonagr
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History Foundation

14. Marriage in 15th Century Tuscany, II
54% of all marriages were between peasant brides and peasant grooms; 14% between non-peasant brides and non-peasant grooms; the remaining 32% were ‘mixed’
A significant proportion (57%) of women ‘married down’ to grooms with lower family wealth
Slightly fewer (43%) ‘married up’ to husbands of higher status or higher family wealth
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History Foundation

15. What questions do historians ask, Part 2 (relationships between variables)?
Did parents use the dowry (given by the father of the bride, but controlled by the groom or his father) to ‘make matches’?
Do parents act altruistically and ‘support’ daughters who marry ‘social inferiors’ by giving bigger dowries?
Do they act opportunistically and seek ‘socially superior’ mates for their daughters by offering big dowries for good catches?
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16. Measures of association between variables
Answers can be found to these questions by demonstrating whether there are statistically significant relationships between dowry size and social status through regression or correlation
Data on dowry size is from the legal records & on the wealth of bride and groom families from the census of wealth
Is there a statistical association between size of dowries and patterns of marriage?
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History Foundation

17. Step 1a: enter data into spreadsheet
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18. Step 1b: Complete data entry
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19. Step 1b (again): Complete data entry
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20. Step 2: Decide on formulae
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21. Step 3a: Let Excel calculate results
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History Foundation

22. Step 3b: Let Excel calculate results
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History Foundation

23. What about love and marriage? Dowries as compensation
A daughter provides household service and work for her parents but consumes goods & services
A wife provides similar household service and work and also consumes, but she also produces and raises children and cherishes her husband
The daughter is thus a net cost to her parents & that cost mounts the longer she stays at home
Do parents offer big dowries for older daughters?
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History Foundation

24. Love and Marriage: Correlation Coefficients
Were positive between size of dowry and age of bride - it cost more to get rid of older daughters
Were very positive between size of dowry and second marriage - widowed daughters were a big cost
Were more weakly positive between dowry size and daughter who married down
Were not positive when daughters married up
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History Foundation

25. Conclusions
Ability to handle quantitative data is an essential tool for the historian
Computerisation has democratised computation
Botticini’s work shows that culture, attitudes and even family dynamics can be investigated using these methods
Her analysis has richness and depth that can come only from a wide range of information
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History Foundation

26. Further Materials
Mark Overton has prepared a number of basic statistical exercises available from the History Foundation web-site and will cover them in his lecture next semester
This will act as a bridge to the best book on the introduction to quantitative techniques for historians, Pat Hudson, History by Numbers (2000).
Review this lecture on
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History Foundation