Works in Progress

How do rulers distribute goods to remain in power and avoid conflict? More specifically, how did this dynamic function in historical Europe? Exigent scholarship argues that European monarchs primarily relied on land to buy off potential challengers. This paper shows that while land grants were prevalent, European monarchs distributed more than just land to elites, suggesting that non-land goods distributed from autocrats to elites could also form credible commitment devices between the two parties. Using micro-level evidence from three novel data sets covering England from 1226 to 1572 that: categorize 480,000 charters and patents granted to elites in English counties, identify rebellious counties for 32 civil conflicts, and identify 502 elites and the grants they received before the Second Barons' War, the paper examines whether distributing land and other goods insulated European autocrats from elite revolt. Though preliminary county-level results are inconclusive, the individual-level results show that elites who received land grants were 48.6 percentage points less likely to rebel. Receiving a non-land grant did not impact an elite's probability of rebelling.

A great deal of historical scholarship has been dedicated to documenting the impetuses and consequences of the Great Migration, the movement of millions of black people from the American South to other regions of the country between 1910 and 1970. Political science literature on the Great Migration has focused predominantly on the ways in which the influx of Black people to new communities impacted the political preferences and behaviors of white people. This paper reorients this literature to center the experiences of black people. We theorize that where displaced black people migrated during this period can be understood as a function of characteristics of the places from which and to which they were migrating. We differentiate between migration on account of economic opportunity and migration spurred by racial violence. We also consider the degree to which these forces influence migration to places with state capacity and strong black civil society. To test out theory, we leverage U.S. micro census data from 1900 to 1930 to track jsut under 6 million black individuals’ moving patterns as well as collect novel data on aspects of black civil society, and spread of the boll weevil cotton plague throughout the early 20th century. Our findings suggest that individuals who experienced racial violence were more likely to migrate within the American South than move North or West. Individuals moving in the wake of the boll weevil cotton pest were more likely to move North and also more likely to move to areas with strong black civil society. Our paper represents a significant and distinct contribution to literature on the internal migration because of its focus on explaining the migration, agency, and strategic calculations of Black Americans during the Great Migration.

Do brothers (uncles) destabilize autocracies that practice primogeniture succession? Historical work on European monarchies highlights how ambitious uncles can gruesomely depose their nephews in hereditary succession regimes to take the throne for themselves. But this work clashes with the growing literature in political science that shows the regime stabilizing effects of succession rules, like primogeniture. The paper presents a simple model showing that brother challengers to the throne will only make an attempt should they not have any living nephews. Relying on family and conflict data from 33 European monarchies practicing primogeniture from 1000 to 1800, I find that when a monarch dies, the effect of that monarch having a brother decreases the probability of conflict by 25.2 percentage points should the monarch also have a son. Additionally, qualitative analysis from a novel dataset on the familial relationship between principal combatants in 101 European conflicts shows brothers of deceased monarchs rather challenge family members other than their nephews for the throne. In short, uncles are not evil.