The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor

by David S. Landes

  14. Aldcroft, “Europe’s Third World?”, p. 2. The pioneer work on these historical comparisons comes from Paul Bairoch; see his “Main Trends in National Economic Disparities.”

  15. Yet even in these apparently straightforward matters, one can make egregious mistakes. See the discussion in J. Cuenca Esteban, “British Textile Prices,” of N. F. R. Crafts’ and Knick Harley’s cotton cloth prices, used in the calculation of British industrial growth. These latter purport to show increases (sic) or stability of cotton prices over the course of the Industrial Revolution. They were, unfortunately, badly chosen for the purpose (among other things, the indexes rest on contract rather than market prices), in part no doubt because of convenience and availability. Still, all kinds of alarm bells should have gone off. Numbers should make sense, and anyone who is ready to believe that yarn or cloth prices stood still or went up after the invention of the water frame, mule, and power loom is ready to believe anything. On the dangers and banality of numerical credulity, see Landes, “What Room for Accident in History?”

  16. Theodore W. Schultz, “On Investing in Specialized Human Capital,” p. 343.

  17. Jeffrey Williamson figures 0.3 percent—“New Views on the Impact,” p. 1.

  18. Crafts, “British Industrialization in an International Context,” p. 425. For a more reliable, empirical analysis of growth and gains across the industrial board, see Temin, “Two Views.”

  19. See the article, “The Price of Light,” The Economist, 22 October 1994, p. 84.

  20. For an early example of such avoidance, see Youngson, Possibilities of Economic Progress, ch. viii: “The Acceleration of Economic Progress in Great Britain, 1750-1800,” especially p. 117: “…nothing can be proved or disproved about the economy as a whole.” Youngson avers there that “progress was never constant” and that the respective contributions of different sectors were always changing. Result: many trees, no forest.

  21. Ward, “Industrial Revolution and Imperialism,” p. 58, commenting on Cain and Hopkins, “Gentlemanly Capitalism,” pp. 510-12. It does not seem to me that Cain and Hopkins quite say that.

  22. Eric Jones in Growth Recurring, p. 19. See Landes, “The Fable of the Dead Horse,” which deals with the larger debate.

  23. Cited in Massie, Dreadnought, p. 475.

  CHAPTER 14

  1. As cited in McCloskey, “1780-1860: A Survey,” p. 243.

  2. As cited by White, “Cultural Climates and Technological Advance,” in Medieval Religion and Technology, p. 221, n. 16. The sermon, it should be noted, was delivered in the vernacular. I have slightly modified the White translation of the original.

  3. In his Coloquios dos simples e drogas he cousas medicinais da India [Dialogues on the Simples, Drugs, and Materia medica of India] (Goa, 1563), cited in Goodman, “Scientific Revolution,” pp. 168-69.

  4. Quoted in Smith, Science and Society, p. 51. Cf. today’s version of this dependence on mathematics, this time in the field of cosmology: “…supergravity theory, Kaluza-Klein theory, and the Standard Model [work], but we are at a total loss to explain why…. String field theory exists, but it taunts us because we are not smart enough to solve it. The problem is that while 21st-century physics fell accidentally into the 20th century, 21st century mathematics hasn’t been invented yet.” Michio Kaku, Hyperspace (New York: Oxford, 1993), cited New York Times, 20 March 1994, “Book Review,” p. 21.

  5. The reference here is to the work of Frances Yates: Giordano Bruno and “The Hermetic Tradition.” Yates suggests that the scientific revolution may well be seen as a two-step process: “the first phase consisting of an animistic universe operated by magic, the second phase of a mathematical universe operated by mechanics”—“The Hermetic Tradition,” p. 273.

  6. Hansen, “Science and Magic,” p. 495.

  7. Cf. Edward Rosen, “Was Copernicus a Hermctist?” in Roger H. Stuewer, ed., Historical and Philosophical Perspectives of Science, pp. 163-71: “…out of Renaissance magic and astrology came, not modern science, but modern magic and astrology,” cited in Hansen “Science and Magic,” p. 505 n. 35. Of course, if one sees science as derivative rather than autonomous, one can lament “the ungrateful way science ‘repaid’ its debt: by bankrupting magic’s metaphysics” (ibid., p. 497).

  8. Ibid.

  9. I owe this reference to Mr. Noah Efron, doctoral candidate at the Hebrew University, currently preparing a thesis on the response of Jewish scholars to the new science of the seventeenth century.

  10. Cf. Sarton, “Arabic Science,” p. 321: “While the Western people had discovered the secret of experimental science and were using the new methods with increasing confidence and frequency, Muslim doctors were rereading the selfsame books and turning in hopeless circles. Stagnation in the vicinity of progressing people means regression; the distance between Eastern and Western thought was steadily increasing, the Western men went further and further ahead and the Muslims—remaining where they were—were left further and further behind.”

  11. Dumas, Scientific Instruments, pp. 49-55.

  12. Sarton cites an Algerian-Turkish claimant to the invention of logarithms: Ibn Hamza al-Maghribi—“Arabic Science,” p. 305, n. 2. The operative question is, to what end?

  13. Cited in R. Lenoble, “The Seventeenth-Century Scientific Revolution,” in Taton, ed., A General History of the Sciences, II: The Beginnings of Modern Science, p. 183.

  14. Dooley, “Processo a Galileo,” English translation, pp. 8-9.

  15. Landes, Revolution in Time, pp. 125-27. Part of the problem was that Hooke was hoping to profit from this and related horological ideas and was afraid he would lose a fortune if he revealed his secret. So he ended up with nothing.

  16. “Although Dr. Black’s theory of latent heat did not suggest my improvements on the steam-engine, yet the knowledge upon various subjects which he was pleased to communicate to me, and the correct modes of reasoning, and of making experiments of which he set me the example, certainly conduced very much to facilitate the progress of my inventions….” Fleming, “Latent Heat,” citing John Robinson, A System of Mechanical Philosophy (Edinburgh, 1822), II, ix.

  17. On all this, see Musson and Robinson, Science and Technology, pp. 80-81.

  18. On efforts of industrial spies to learn about a silk-throwing mill established in 1681 at Utrecht in Holland, see Davids, “Openness or Secrecy?” p. 338.

  19. On Lombe and mechanized silk throwing: Wadsworth and Mann, Cotton Trade, pp. 106-108; Usher, History of Mechanical Inventions, pp. 275-76.

  CHAPTER 15

  1. Compare the analysis of the contribution of agriculture to Japanese economic development in Ohkawa and Rosovsky, “A Century of Japanese Economic Growth,” and Hayami and Ruttan, “Korean Rice, Taiwan Rice.”

  2. On market gardening, see F. J. Fisher, “Development of the London Food Market.”

  3. Some historians would emphasize the material constraints. Thus Wrigley on coal as the key factor—People, Cities and Wealth, pp. 90-91: “…in this world [of Adam Smith] there was a ceiling to the possible size of industrial production set by the difficulty of expanding raw material supply at constant or declining prices as long as most industrial raw materials were organic. When this was no longer true, the ceiling disappeared.” For transport as the key, see Szostak, Role of Transportation.

  4. On the question of accident and chance in economic history, see Landes, “What Room for Accident in History? Explaining Big Changes by Small Events.” This is in part a response to a well-known and perhaps intentionally provocative essay by Nick Crafts on the question of ex ante probabilities: “Industrial Revolution in Britain and France: Some Thoughts on the Question ‘Why Was England First?’”

  5. This point begs a lot of questions. Some would argue—more in the past than now—that the most productive economy would be one directed from above. Such a command economy implies government appropriation of the surplus, the better to reinvest it with planning aforethought. Or would argue that government d
oes some things better than the market docs. But that’s another book, and other people have written it. Cf. Kuttner, Everything for Sale.

  6. One of the best discussions here is in Liah Greenfeld, “The Worth of Nations,” p. 580 and passim. Recall again Adam Smith’s justification of the navigation acts in terms of national power—Wealth of Nations, Book IV, ch. 2.

  7. Cf. Berend and Ránki, European Periphery, p. 66, on limits to state action in the poor, underdeveloped societies of eastern and southeastern Europe. Also Batou and David, “Nationalisme économique,” p. 6, concerning the lack of a sufficiently broad “social consensus” in nineteenth-century Poland.

  8. Wealth of Nations, Book IV, ch. 5: “Digression on the Corn Trade.”

  9. Macfarlane, “On Individualism.” Industry in the countryside: we have already noted the importance of rural putting-out in bringing previously unused or underused labor into production. For the merchant-manufacturer, such labor was cheap and profitable; for the rural cottager, the new work opportunities meant a substantial increase in income. Cf. Faujas de Saint Fond, Journey Through England, Vol. I. In 1778 a French inspector of manufactures opposed the introduction of spinning machinery into France because it would prevent the spread of cottage industry; he was less interested in economic development than in the income of the rural population. Wadsworth and Mann, Cotton Trade, p. 504, n. 2.

  10. Fortescue, Governance, pp. 114-15. Cf. similar sentiments a century later by Bishop John Aylmer, cited in Fisher, ed., Essays in the Economic and Social History, pp. 12-13.

  11. On the significance of such sentiment, cf. Greenfeld, “The Worth of Nations.”

  12. Cf. Crouzet, “Les sources de la richesse de l’Angleterre, vues par les Français du XVIIIe siècle,” in his De la supériorité, ch. 5, and the sources given there, pp. 488-93. Also Lacoste, Voyage philosophique, I, 93; Chantreau, Voyage, I, 7; Moritz, Travels, p. 31. Et al.

  13. Defoe, A Plan of the English Commerce, pp. 76-77.

  14. Crouzet, De la supériorité, p. 115, citing J. Meyer, L’armement nantais dans la deuxième moitié du XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1968), p. 252; and Crouzet, “Les Français,” p. 28. The statement dates from 1792. On the link between high consumption and industrialization (demand and supply), see the important article by de Vries, “The Industrial Revolution.”

  15. On Biencourt, see Crouzet, De la superiorite, p. 115.

  16. See among others McKendrick, Brewer, and Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society; Hopkins, Birmingham; Shammas, The Pre-industrial Consumer; Weatherill, Consumer Behaviour; Berg, ed., Markets and Manufacture; and Berg, Age of Manufactures (2d ed.).

  17. Cf. Muller, “Justus Möser,” pp. 170-71.

  18. On the effort of the Habsburg emperor to remedy these wrongs through a controversial ordinance of 1731, ibid. pp. 162-63.

  19. Thus Warren Scoville, The Persecution of Huguenots.

  20. On these tenacious, yet highly diluted Jews, ready for quick assimilation, see Endelman, Radical Assimilation, pp. 9-33.

  21. Cf. Crouzet, “The Huguenots and the English Financial Revolution,” in Higonnet et al., eds., Favorites of Fortune, pp. 221-66.

  22. Studeny, L’invention de la vitesse, p. 184.

  23. Fukazawa, “Non-Agricultural Production,” pp. 314-15.

  24. Raychaudhuri, “Non-Agricultural Production,” p. 286.

  25. Thus Raychaudhuri, ibid., p. 295: “If necessity is the mother of invention, its pressure in the Indian case was not insistent.”

  26. Ibid., pp. 286-87.

  27. F. Buchanan, A Journey from Madras…(1807), cited ibid., p. 291. Raychaudhuri agrees.

  28. Brennig, “Textile Producers,” p. 86. The words in quotes are his.

  29. On these Banjara (a nomadic caste) caravans, see Habib, Agrarian System, p. 62, and Brennig, “Textile Producers,” pp. 68-69. As Brennig puts it, “time was of little importance.”

  30. Chaudhuri, Trading World, Appendix 5, Table C. 20, pp. 540-41.

  31. Wadsworth and Mann, The Cotton Trade, p. 117.

  32. Spear, The Nabobs, p. 75. Indian shipbuilders, be it noted, were highly reputed and built vessels not only for locals but for customers in other parts of Asia. The Europeans relied on them almost exclusively, not only because their work was good (teak was better than oak) and cost less, but also because European-made vessels were already in well-used condition by the time they reached the Indian Ocean.

  33. Habib, “Potentialities,” p. 63.

  34. Raychaudhuri, “Non-Agricultural Production,” p. 292, speaks of Indian shipwrights riveting planks and says this was superior to European caulking. Is this a misreading for “rabbeting”? On Indian techniques, see Barendse, “Shipbuilding” and Bhattacharya, “A Note on Shipbuilding.” This ferruginous temper was an old story in Europe. Gimpel, Medieval Machine, pp. 65-66, cites the number and variety of nails kept in store: half a million in Calais in 1390; tens of thousands in a dozen different sizes (listed with their prices) at York Castle in 1327. The specialization of nails by use is indicative of the sophistication of this technology.

  35. Kuppuram, “A Survey of Some Select Industries,” p. 46.

  36. Habib, “Potentialities,” p. 62 and n. 4, citing J. Ovington, A Voyage to Surat in the Year 1689 (London, 1929), pp. 166-67. Ovington says that Indian craftsmen found it hard to make clocks because dust clogged the wheels. Implausible. That may have been a problem, but not insoluble with Indian technology. As for Chinese clocks, they were poor imitations of European work. On Claude Martin, who left a large estate that still finances schools called La Martinière in Lucknow, Calcutta, and Lyons, see Landes, Revolution in Time and L’heure qu’il est.

  37. Chaudhuri, Trading World, pp. 273-74. Cf. Bernier, Voyage dans les états, p. 168.

  38. Kerr, “Colonialism and Technological Choice,” pp. 95-97. Kerr sees the Indian choice as quite rational, but rationality is a function of ends as well as means.

  CHAPTER 16

  1. Cf. the references to McCloskey in Landes, “Fable,” p. 163, n. 27. Pollard, Peaceful Conquest, does not see the story of European industrialization as one of strenuous response to the British challenge, but rather as a harmonious diffusion of technology along lines defined by the market. It was that…too. Cf. Davis, “Industrialization in Britain and Europe,” pp. 54-55.

  2. Cited by Crouzet, De la superiorite, p. 105.

  3. Ibid., p. 107.

  4. Voltaire, Essai sur les moeurs et l’esprit des nations (Paris: Gamier, 1963), II, 695-97; cited in Crouzet, “Les Français,” p. 24. The date of the first Navigation Act was actually 1651, followed by another in 1660, just after the restoration of the monarchy.

  5. Crouzet, De la supériorité, p. 110. Crouzet notes (p. 489, n. 28) that this resentment of English trade practices is already found in Jacques Savary’s commercial manual, Le parfait négotiant (1st ed. 1675). On the other hand, a memorandum of 1711 states that England went over to heavy protection only after France had set the example and that the English actually traded more fairly [noblement] than other nations. One should not take these opinions as more than perceptions.

  6. So Crouzet, tongue-in-cheek, citing a variety of sources, p. 490, n. 31.

  7. Riem, IV, 17.

  8. Mirabeau, p. 47.

  9. Karl Marx, preface to Capital, p. 13. One consequence of this faith in laws was the definition of a properly socialist path to development, with strong emphasis on the priority of heavy industry—a kind of metallurgical fetishism. (It was no accident that Josef Dzhugashvili took Stalin [steel] as his nom de parti)

  10. Although empirical research has long demonstrated the particularities of national patterns of development (see, for example, Clapham, Economic Development [1923]), the myth of “a single and multilinear model of industrialization based on the English experience” remains an irresistible strawman, to be knocked down by successive revisions of an allegedly conventional wisdom. Thus the wonderful (in more ways than one) findings of O’Brien and Keyder, Economic Growt
h in Britain and France, which announced with flourishes that France had found its own “path to the twentieth century.” For a critical if indulgent view of these exercises in iconoclasm, see Davis, “Industrialization in Britain and Europe,” pp. 48-54.

  11. This is the sense of Jordi Nadal in his Fracaso de la Revolution industrial en España, which he describes as an “analysis of the causes that limit the attempt to apply in Spain the classic model—English style—of economic development.”

  12. Good, Economic Rise, pp. 11-12; Kemp, Industrialization, pp. 26-27. For what we would call today a politically correct attack on the bias of such We-centered temporalities, see Fabian, Time and the Other. Cf. Landes, “Time of Our Lives,” p. 719, n. 7.

  13. Cf. Domar, “Causes of Slavery or Serfdom.”

  14. Cited in Bradley, Guns for the Tsar, p. 132.

  15. Crisp, “Labour and Industrialization in Russia,” in Mathias and Postan, eds., The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, Vol. VII, Pt. 2, p. 330. This figure (4 m.) represented some 6.5 percent of total population. Small, then, relatively, but large absolutely.

  16. Some scholars would stress the incompleteness of the emancipation, in particular the maintenance of collective village obligations, as the reason for its inefficacy—cf. Gerschenkron, “Die Vorbedingungen,” p. 25. As the above text indicates, I would put more stress on the effect of freedom on the workforce in industry—those already there and those to be recruited.

  17. Report of spring 1859, cited in Hamerow, Social Foundations, p. 120. The phrase “prohibitive system” is an allusion to prohibitions on the import of certain manufactures, particularly cottons, by way of protecting and promoting the local infant industry.

  18. By the middle of the 1860s, sixteen states of the German Confederation with 34 million inhabitants had come under the new dispensation; seven states with 7 million people were in the process of transition; and twelve states with only 3.5 million people, most of them agricultural in character, held out for the old order—Hamerow, Social Foundations, p. 121.