Information for Offer Holders 2022-23

Guidance on Graduate Course Choice and seminar sign-up procedure is here. Please read this guidance carefully to ensure you understand requirements and are aware of the deadlines.

• Index of Courses (showing course availability for 2022-23)
• Graduate course guides 2022-23
• MSc Economic History
• MSc Economic History (Research)
• Erasmus Mundus MA Global Studies
• MSc Political Economy of Late Development
• MSc Course videos are available here.

Please note that not all courses will be offered every year.  Courses are selected online via LSE For You at the beginning Week 0 (w/c 20th September), and allocation to courses will be confirmed by the end of that week.  Please ensure you follow the procedure to avoid disappointment.

Please take some time to familiarise yourself with your programme regulations.

A list of Frequently Asked questions can be found here.

Please note, these books are listed as a general introduction to Economic History and may not appear on the reading lists of the courses that you actually take - they are presented as a starting point. 

In addition to the books listed here, students following MSc Political Economy of Late Development are advised to read these two books prior to starting DV400:

Chang, Ha-joon (2014), Economics: The User's Guide (Penguin); and

Kohli, A (2004), State-Directed Development: Political Power and Industrialisation in the Global Periphery (CUP)

For preliminary readings relating to individual courses please follow this link.

• Acemoglu, D. and Robinson, J. (2012), Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty, London: Profile.
• Allen, R.C. (2009), The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Austin, Gareth M. & Kaoru Sugihara (eds.) Labour-intensive industrialisation in Global History (London: Routledge 2013).
• Baten, Joerg (2016), A History of the Global Economy. Cambridge.
• Broadberry, S. and O’Rourke, K. (eds.) (2010), The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Crafts, N.F.R. and Fearon, P. (2013), The Great Depression of the 1930s: Lessons for Today, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Darwin, J. (2007), After Tamerlane: The Rise and Fall of Global Empires, 1400-2000, London: Allen Lane.
• Engerman, Stanley L. & Kenneth L. Sokoloff Economic Development in the Americas since 1500: endowments and institutions (Cambridge: CUP/NBER 2012).
• Findlay, R. and O’Rourke, K. (2009), Power and Plenty: Trade, War, and the World Economy in the Second Millennium (Princeton Economic History of the Western World), Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Floud, Roderick, Fogel, Robert, Harris, Bernard, and Hong, Sok Chul (2011), The Changing Body: health, nutrition, and human development in the western world since 1700. Cambridge.
• Greif, A. (2006) Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy: Lessons from Medieval Trade (Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Hatcher, J. and Bailey, M (2001), Modelling the Middle Ages: The History and Theory of England’s Economic Development, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Herschman, Albert O. (2013), The Passions and the Interests: political arguments for capitalism before its triumph. Princeton.
• Hobson, John M. (2021) Multicultural Origins of the Global Economy, Beyond the Western-Centric Frontier. CUP.
• King, Mervyn (2016), The End of Alchemy: money, banking and the future.  Little, Brown.
• Livi-Bacci, Massimo (2012), A Concise History of World Population.  Wiley Blackwell.
• Mackenzie, D (2006), An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape Markets. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
• Morgan, Mary S. (2012), The World in the Model: How Economists Work and Think, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• North, D.C., Wallis, J.J. and Weingast, B. (2009), Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History, Cambridge; Cambridge University Press.
• Parthasarathi, P. (2011), Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not: Global Divergence, 1600-1850, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Pomeranz, K. (2000), The Great Divergence: China, Europe and the Making of the Modern World Economy, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Reinhart, C.M. and Rogoff, K.S. (2009), This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Rosenthal, J-L and Wong, R. Bin (2011), Before and Beyond Divergence: The Politics of Economic Change in China and Europe, Harvard University Press.
• Roy, T. (2012), India in the World Economy: From Antiquity to the Present (New Approaches to Asian History), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Von Glahn, Richard (2016), The Economic History of China from Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century (CUP)
• Yun-Casalilla, B. and O’Brien, P. (2011), The Rise of Fiscal States: A Global History, 1500-1914, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.