Oliver Haythorne

Economic and Social History (2024 cohort)

My research aims to take an econometric look at how well the Reichstag, the legislative and representative body of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, functioned in the late sixteenth century. The Empire has long been understood as an anomaly, or simply as broken. The late sixteenth century is perhaps one of the least systematically investigated periods of all, between the drama of Charles V’s reign from 1519 to 1556 and the Thirty Years’ War from 1618 to 1648. I aim to use econometric techniques and models from contemporary political science and political economy to study how far the Reichstag worked to produce consensus and implement laws across the body of the Empire – or not.

I completed my undergraduate degree in pure history at Corpus Christi College, Oxford in 2024, graduating in the top 10 of finalists across the university and thus winning a Gibbs Book Prize. My research has increasingly taken me towards quantitative methodologies to investigate the problems of Holy Roman history, combining the best of traditional historical scholarship with modern econometric methods. While my BA thesis only used static game theory, I look forward to working with more sophisticated methods going forward.