External Data Sets
Afro-Louisiana slave database
From 1719.
Dr. Gwendolyn Hall, Professor Emerita at Rutgers.
http://www.ibiblio.org/laslave/downloads.php
Asia, Europe and North America mortality data
From 1751.
University of California - Berkeley, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research Mortality Database.
http://www.mortality.org/
Canadian macroeconomic indicators
From 1871.
Queen’s University MADGIC Library.
http://library.queensu.ca/webdoc/ssdc/HistoricalMacroEconomicData
China Multi-Generational Panel Dataset, Liaoning
From 1749-1909.
Data Sharing for Demographic Research (DSDR).
http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/DSDR/studies/27063
Colonial Latin America economic datasets
From circa 1500-1900.
History Data Desk is a personal site maintained by Richard L. Garner (PhD, retired).
http://www.insidemydesk.com/hdd.html
Alternatively, the site can be accessed from here:
https://home.comcast.net/~richardgarner05/tepaske.html
Correlates of War
Data cataloging the history of war and conflict (and some economic data, e.g. “Bilateral Trade, 1870-2006”). From 1816.
Correlates of War Project, Department of Political Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
http://www.correlatesofwar.org/
Data Sharing for Demographic Research (DSDR)
Demographic datasets. From 1705 (“Census of Turin, Italy, 1705”). To view historical datasets, search a blank field and sort results by time period (oldest).
Data Sharing for Demographic Research (DSDR), hosted by ICPSR.
http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/DSDR/index.jsp
Demographic, Social, Educational and Economic Data for France
From 1833-1925.
Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR).
http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/ICPSR/studies/07529
European Medieval and Early Modern Data Bank
From circa 1300s.
Rutgers University.
http://www2.scc.rutgers.edu/memdb/
Gary King’s Dataverse Page
Datasets compiled by the David Florence Professor of Government at Harvard University.
http://gking.harvard.edu/data
Geo Data Portal
A large collection of contemporary environmental science data, though some datasets go as far back as 1870 (e.g. Ocean Acidification).
United Nations Environment Programme.
http://geodata.grid.unep.ch./#
Global Price and Income History Group
From 10th century. Data is presented in an interactive map format.
http://gpih.ucdavis.edu/
Hong Kong Economic History Database
From 1935.
Hong Kong Institute for Monetary Research.
http://www.hkimr.org/history_database.asp
India, Indonesia and Japan data on human capital
From the late 19th century. A site maintained by Dr. Bas van Leeuwen, Warwick University.
http://www.basvanleeuwen.net/Data.htm
Israel socioeconomic data
From 1950s. Request permission in writing. Data is in SPSS, SAS, STATA formats.
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israeli Social Sciences Data Center.
http://isdc.huji.ac.il/eholding.shtml
Japan Historical Statistics
A large collection of social science data from 1868 to date. In Excel format.
Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.
http://www.stat.go.jp/english/data/chouki/
Japan trade data
From 1930. Click on .xls files for Excel data.
The History and Economic Development Group.
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/filearea.cgi?LMGT1=HEDG/
Netherlands National Accounts data
From 1800-1913. Click on source file on the left bar to download database in Access format.
University of Groningen.
http://nationalaccounts.niwi.knaw.nl/start.htm
Norwegian census data
For 1865, 1875, and 1900.
University of Tromsø, Norwegian Historical Data Center.
http://www.rhd.uit.no/indexeng.html
Penn World Table
From 1950.
Purchasing power parity and national income data for various countries.
Center for International Comparisons of Production, Income and Prices, University of Pennsylvania.
http://pwt.econ.upenn.edu/index.html
Political Regimes and Regime Transitions in Africa
From 1910-1994.
Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR).
http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/ICPSR/studies/06996
The Polity IV Project
Political authority data (democratic and autocratic measurements) of countries from 1800-2009
http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity4.htm
Puerto Rico Census Project
From 1910.
Data Sharing for Demographic Research (DSDR).
http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/DSDR/studies/
4343?sortBy=8&classification=DSDR.V.&archive=DSDR
Scottish Economic History
From 1550 to 1780.
International Institute of Social History.
http://www.iisg.nl/hpw/scotland/
Slave movements in the 18th and 19th century
SPSS or SAS needed & free registration to view.
University of Wisconsin-Madison Data and Information Services Center.
http://www.disc.wisc.edu/slavedata/index.html
Swedish macroeconomic and demographic data
From 1735.
Lund University Department of Economic History.
http://www.ehl.lu.se/database/LU-MADD/
The Long-Term Effects of Africa’s Slave Trades
From 1400 to present. Country level data on historic slave exports during the Indian Ocean, trans-Atlantic, Red Sea, and trans-Saharan slave trades each century from 1400 to 1900.
Harvard University.
www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/nunn/data_nunn
Time Series Data Library
A collection of about 800 time series datasets from a range of topics. The site contains mainly contemporary datasets, though includes a handful of historical data (.e.g “Real daily wages in pounds, England. 1260 – 1994”).
Maintained by Rob Hyndman, Associate Professor in the Department of Econometrics & Business Statistics at Monash University, Australia.
http://robjhyndman.com/TSDL/
http://www.popcenter.berkeley.edu/
US (historical) census data
From 1790.
University of Virginia Library.
http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/collections/stats/histcensus/
US, UK, China and Japan historical economic indicators – prices, household consumption, income and output
From 1264 (UK), 1774 (US), 1879 (Japan), 1952 (China).
Measuring Worth is an independently run website by Economics professors nationwide.
http://www.measuringworth.org/datasets.html
US, UK, France and Germany Macrohistory Database
Economic datasets of the from pre-World War I period to the mid-20th century. Data is separated into 16 broad chapters ranging from interest rates to foreign trade.
National Bureau of Economic Research.
http://www.nber.org/databases/macrohistory/contents/index.html
Vancouver and parts of British Columbia census data
From 1871.
Vancouver Island University.
http://vihistory.uvic.ca/content/census/census.php
Volkstellingen 1795-1971 (Dutch Census 1795-1971)
From 1795-1971.
Netherlands Institute for Scientific Information Services and Statistics Netherlands.
http://www.volkstellingen.nl/en/