  The aim of this work is to test to what extent the star cluster population of
a galaxy can be utilised to constrain or estimate the star formation history,
with the Large Magellanic Cloud as our testbed. We follow two methods to
extract information about the star formation rate from star clusters, either
using only the most massive clusters (Maschberger & Kroupa 2007) or using the
whole cluster population, albeit this is only possible for a shorter age span.
We compare these results with the star formation history derived from
colour-magnitude diagrams and find good overall agreement for the most recent
approximately 1 Gyr. For later ages, and especially during the "cluster age
gap", there is a deficiency of star clusters in relation to the star formation
rate derived from the colour-magnitude diagram. The star formation rates
following from the whole cluster population lie a factor of approximately 10
lower than the star formation rates deduced from the most massive clusters or
from the colour-magnitude diagram, suggesting that only approximately 10 per
cent of all stars form in long-lived bound star clusters.
