Oeppen, Jim (E.)
(J. E. Oeppen)

PERSONAL: Male.

ADDRESSES: Office—University of Cambridge, Department of Geography, Downing Place Cambridge CB2 3EN, England. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, England, senior research associate.

WRITINGS:

(With Michael Chisholm) The Changing Pattern of Employment: Regional Specialisation and Industrial Localisation in Britain, Croom Helm (London, England), 1973.

(As J. E. Oeppen, with E. A. Wrigley, R. S. Schofield, and R. S. Davies) English Population History from Family Reconstitution, 1580-1837: A Reconstruction, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1997.

Contributor to books, including R. S. Schofield and Ronald Lee, The Population History of England, 1541-1871, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1981, revised edition Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1989. Contributor to periodicals, including Economic History Review and Science.

SIDELIGHTS: Jim Oeppen is a major contributor to the groundbreaking 1981 work The Population History of England, 1541-1871 and a coauthor of its companion volume, English Population History from Family Reconstitution, 1580-1837: A Reconstruction. In The Population History of England Oeppen and coauthors E. A. Wrigley and R. S. Schofield "proposed an interpretation of the dynamics of population change which has since won almost universal acceptance," according to Roy Porter in the London Review of Books. Joel Mokyr, writing in the Journal of Modern History, called The Population History of England "one of the most influential and widely discussed books in English history published in the 1980s and certainly the most important book on demographic history published in the past two decades."

English Population History from Family Reconstitution, published in 1997, was written by Oeppen, Wrigley, Schofield, and R. S. Davies. The authors compiled their data using "family reconstitution," a sophisticated methodology developed by French scholar Louis Henry. As Porter wrote, "family reconstitution aims to exploit to the full the fact that parish registers record baptisms, marriages, and burials. Where such registers have been conscientiously kept, and if a sufficient percentage of parishioners passed all their lives in their native parish, it should be possible … to plot precisely when identifiable individuals got married, when their children came along, and when they died; in other words, one could move from mere aggregates to a reconstruction of the demographically significant moments in the lives of actual people."

Oeppen and his coauthors limited themselves to studying the records of twenty-six English parishes between the years 1580 and 1837, a weakness cited by some critics. English Population History from Family Reconstitution "squeezes out every last drop of demographic information," wrote Mokyr, who added, "These efforts, however, result in making the book rather too long and to a large extent inaccessible for nonspecialists—and, at times, even a bit tedious for the initiated. Indeed, the fastidiousness with which the authors constantly defend the representativeness of their sample underlines the concern all readers must have about generalizing from so small a sample to two and a half centuries worth of change for the country as a whole."

Neil Tranter, however, writing in the English Historical Review, praised English Population History from Family Reconstitution, stating that "it is impossible to do adequate justice to the rich diversity and unprecedented depth of this evidence, which both confirms and considerably extends the conclusions previously reached on the basis of the aggregative techniques utilized in The Population History of England." Because of the efforts of Oeppen and his coauthors, Tranter remarked, "we already possess an understanding of the facts of England's early modern demographic evolution which was barely imaginable a generation or so ago. Much, at least, of the sound, empirical platform necessary for the successful pursuit of explanation is now available. It is inconceivable that historical demographers of the future will fail to benefit from it."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Economic History Review, May, 1998, N. F. R. Crafts, review of English Population History from Family Reconstitution, 1580-1837: A Reconstruction, p. 401.

English Historical Review, February, 1998, Neil Tranter, review of English Population History from Family Reconstitution, 1580-1837, p. 125.

Historical Journal, September, 1998, R. A. Houston, review of English Population History from Family Reconstitution, 1580-1837, p. 909.

International Review of Social History, April, 1999, Stephen King, review of English Population History from Family Reconstitution, 1580-1837, p. 89.

Journal of Economic History, June, 1999, Michael R. Haines, review of English Population History from Family Reconstitution, 1580-1837, p. 517.

Journal of Historical Geography, April, 2000, Gerry Kearns, review of English Population History from Family Reconstitution, 1580-1837, p. 298.

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, spring, 1998, David Levine, review of English Population History from Family Reconstitution, 1580-1837, p. 605.

Journal of Modern History, June, 1999, Joel Mokyr, review of English Population History from Family Reconstitution, 1580-1837, p. 455.

Journal of Social History, spring, 1999, Ernest Benz, review of English Population History from Family Reconstitution, 1580-1837, p. 689.

London Review of Books, March 5, 1998, Roy Porter, review of English Population History from Family Reconstitution, 1580-1837, pp. 18-19.