Economic history

Mousehold Heath (1810) by John Sell Cotman. Drawing on paper. According to the UK Government, between 1604 and 1914 enclosure Bills enacted by Parliament restricted access to formerly open communal land comprising just over a fifth of the total area of England. Courtesy the Trustees of the British Museum

Something for everyone. Workers at a Daimler-Benz car plant listen to a speech by a visiting dignitary in West Germany circa 1972. Photo by Ernst Haas/Getty

Residents line up for cow beans provided by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to ease an ongoing food crisis caused by the Boko Haram insurgency. Mainok village, Western Borno State, Nigeria, 11 February 2017. Photo by Ashley Gilbertson/VII/Headpress

Guilin, China. 1979. Photo by Hiroji Kubota/Magnum

‘Culling Tea’ (c1869), attributed to Lai Fong (or Afong, Chinese, 1839-90). Courtesy The Met Museum, New York

Firefighters applaud medical workers in Manhattan, New York, on 7 April 2020. Photo B A Van Sise/NurPhoto via Getty

Architects office, 1966. Photo by H Armstrong Roberts/Getty Images

Jewish bankers from the Canticles of Holy Mary. Codice of El Escorial. Written in Galician-Portuguese. Reign of Alfonso X. 13th century. Courtesy the Museum of the Americas, Madrid/Wikimedia

A hunting party brings back a bowhead whale during the spring whaling season near Utqiagvik (formerly Barrow), Alaska. Photo by Kate Orlinsky/National Geographic

Atwater Kent radio assembly line, Philadelphia, 1925. Photo courtesy Library of Congress

Dark Satanic Mills. October 1948. Photo Robert Capa © International Center of Photography

The August 1926 edition of Radio Broadcast magazine, three years before the 1929 crash. Scan courtesy of Americanradiohistory.com

Detail from Cerro Rico and the Imperial Municipality of Potosí (1758), by Gaspar Miguel de Berrío. Courtesy Museo Universitario Charcas, Sucre, Bolivia/AKG

Child mine workers in South Pittston Pennsylvania c1908-11. They worked a mile underground for as little as 75c a day. Photograph by Lewis Hine/Library of Congress

The Hongs at Canton (c1820), unknown artist. Chinese school. Photo by AKG London

Shipping on the Clyde, Glasgow (1881), by John Atkinson Grimshaw. Courtesy Wikimedia

Roping calves, Paradise Valley, Nevada, in 1979. Photo by Carl Fleischhauer/Library of Congress

Detail from Nagasaki Harbour (c1833-6), by Kawahara Keiga. Ink and colour on silk. On the left is the crescent-shaped island of Deshima (flying the national flag), from which the Dutch were the only Westerners to trade with Japan from 1641 to 1859. Courtesy the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

The man who knew too much. Alan Greenspan pictured in 1990. Photo by Terry Ashe/Life/Getty

Brain work. Office clerks, United States, 1915. Photo courtesy Library of Congress

‘Smoke stacks’ (1942), Alfred T Palmer. Courtesy the Library of Congress

pingnews/Flickr

US President Bill Clinton standing in Red Square during a Moscow summit in January 1994. Photo by Diana Walker/Time Life Pictures/Getty

Lemon vendors in Palermo, Sicily, in 1943. Photo by J R Eyerman/LIFE Picture Collection/Getty

A 1937 poster for the Rural Electrification Program. From the invention of Edisons light bulb, mass electrification outside the big cities took half a century. Graphic design by Lester Beall, photo courtesy of the Library of Congress