Herman Freudenberger

A Peculiar Sample: The Selection of Slaves for the New Orleans Market

Domestic slave traders selected taller slaves for shipment to the New Orleans market in order to increase their profits. Because traded slaves made up a large share of the slaves shipped coastwise, age/height profiles constructed from the shipping manifests are biased upwards. The extent of the bias appears to be small for adult slaves but not for children; those listed on the manifests were taller than the general population of a comparable age.

Fashion, Sumptuary Laws, and Business

A remarkable instance of the interaction of business, society, and government unfolds in this study of the origins and effects of seventeenth-and eighteenth-century restrictions on luxury.

State Intervention as an Obstacle to Economic Growth in the Habsburg Monarchy

State intervention as an obstacle to economic growth and development is a proposition that is especially intriguing in connection with the Habsburg monarchy of the eighteenth century. The posing of the question forces the historian to consider whether it can be applied to the problem of a static society ruled by a dynasty and controlled by a large agglomeration of urban-corporate and rural-manorial structures. What is a state in this context and what are obstacles to economic progress?

A Peculiar Sample: A Reply to Steckel and Ziebarth

Steckel and Ziebarth (2014) find that biases in height by age imposed by traders versus non-traders were negligible. Importantly, their method of identifying traders differs from that of Pritchett and Freudenberger (1992). Using a sample of inward coastwise manifests for the port of New Orleans, we show that Steckel and Ziebarth made errors classifying shippers, that they underestimate the relative number of slaves shipped by traders, and that their empirical estimates of selection bias are attenuated towards zero.

Three Mercantilistic Proto-Factories

The role of “proto-factories” in the industrial development of eighteenth-century Europe is explored through comparison of three Bohemian examples.

Records of the Bohemian Iron Industry, 1694–1875: The Basis for a Comprehensive Study of Modern Factories

In the manner of the Creole tradesmen of Louisiana, whose lagniappe to their patrons is legendary, the Editor offers a similar bonus to readers of the Review . Instead of trifling presents added to a purchase, however, our lagniappe will be notes and documents illustrative of the evolution of business enterprise.