Introduction

By the mid-nineteenth century most seamen who manned the world's merchant marines were recruited on exchanges which at least superficially resembled markets, places where buyers (masters) and sellers (seamen) of maritime labour reached agreement on conditions of employment. There is nothing startling about this; at least in the western world, most labour was hired in this way. Yet we know little about how the process worked - or works. Indeed, notwithstanding its admitted importance, labour economics remains one of the least developed sub-disciplines of the broader profession. But if these generalizations are broadly true - as I believe them to be - there are signs that things are changing. The publication in 1989 of the essays that comprise Markets in History was a major watershed. In maritime history, it can be argued that the appearance three years later of Charles P. Kindleberger's idiosyncratic Mariners and Markets served a similar function. There can be little doubt that maritime historians needed prodding. Indeed, one of the defining characteristics of maritime economic history has been that even studies which clearly focus on labour have tended to be relatively unconcerned about markets.

Economists have typically treated labour, along with land and capital, as one of the three standard factors of production. As a result, it has long been generally accepted that a rational treatment of labour was fundamental both to theory and to an understanding of the way an economy functions. Yet most economists would agree that not all labour issues properly belong to the sphere of economics. Indeed, most labour economists have largely (but not exclusively) concentrated on the allocation function. In so doing neo-classicists have tended to make four assumptions: 1) that labour markets are recognizably free; 2) that individuals offer well-defined labour services; 3) that the labour offered is voluntary; and 4) that at some point labour markets will clear, whatever that means.

This is not the place for a full-blown critique of neo-classical assumptions. But it is important to recognize that it is virtually impossible to operationalize many of these assumptions clearly and discretely and hence to test their validity.