Virtual Issue in Honor of Professor Nicholas Crafts (1949 – 2023)
Nick Crafts passed away on 6 October 2023. Born in Nottingham in 1949, he was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge where he graduated with a BA in economics in 1970. During his academic career he held posts at Oxford, the LSE, Leeds, Warwick and Sussex. He was a Fellow of the British Academy, a former President of the Economic History Society and the Royal Economic Society. In recognition of his contributions to economics and economics history he was honoured with a CBE in 2014.
Nick was arguably the most prominent British economic historian of his generation. His groundbreaking work significantly enhanced our understanding of the key historical turning point of the Industrial Revolution. His book, British Economic Growth during the Industrial Revolution published in 1985 swiftly became an indispensable reading for all historians working on that topic. Even today, while some of the underlying data may have aged, this concise book remains useful in illuminating key issues and research questions. His broader research agenda devoted to the study of the sources of long run economic growth remained consistent and imaginative for more than 40 years. He also investigated adjacent themes such as technical progress, demography, economic geography, macroeconomic performance and policies, and structural change, producing seminal research papers across these domains.
At a personal level, Nick was extremely generous and supportive, especially with PhD students and junior colleagues, particularly enjoying spending time with them. In his interactions, he was direct and to the point, with little patience for any kind of posture or pretention.
One standing feature of almost all of his research contributions worth stressing is that he made use of relatively simple analytical tools. Clear and original thinking allowed him to develop extremely important insights from basic premises, eschewing unnecessary technicalities. In this time and age, where many economic history papers succumb to methodological trends and prioritize technical complexity over substantive depth, reflecting on Crafts' work serves as a poignant reminder of other possibilities, particularly for budding economic historians.
Nick was a stalwart contributor to the European Review of Economic History since its very inception (he had a paper published in volume 1 in 1997). We have decided to pay a special tribute to commemorate his career and dedication to economic history by collecting all of his papers published in our journal throughout the years in a virtual special issue.
Christopher Meissner
Steven Nafziger
Alessandro Nuvolari
