{"id":54,"date":"2012-01-01T11:28:42","date_gmt":"2012-01-01T11:28:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.petersahui.com\/optimist\/?p=54"},"modified":"2012-01-01T11:31:47","modified_gmt":"2012-01-01T11:31:47","slug":"why-the-west-industrialised-before-the-rest-david-landes-the-wealth-and-poverty-of-nations-kenneth-pomeranzs-the-great-divergence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.petersahui.com\/optimist\/2012\/01\/why-the-west-industrialised-before-the-rest-david-landes-the-wealth-and-poverty-of-nations-kenneth-pomeranzs-the-great-divergence\/","title":{"rendered":"Why the West industrialised before the rest: David Landes\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 The Wealth and Poverty of Nations; Kenneth Pomeranz\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s The Great Divergence"},"content":{"rendered":"

Still in search of why the Industrial Revolution occurred, why it came first in Britain, and why the West beat the Rest to the punch, I turned to two more books: David Landes\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 The Wealth and Poverty of Nations<\/em><\/strong>, and Kenneth Pomeranz\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s The Great Divergence<\/em><\/strong>. Written in very different styles, and offering very different explanations, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m glad to have read them together.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Please note I am not an expert in the topics covered by these books; rather, my perspective is that of an interested lay reader.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor, by David S Landes (1998, my edition 1999)<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Landes offers, by and large, the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153classic\u00e2\u20ac\u009d explanation. Europe, he argues, built its Industrial Revolution on the back of (1) the Scientific Revolution (in contrast to the Islamic and Chinese worlds) that led to the creation of power technology; and (2) supply and demand making it practical<\/em> to use that technology. That demand was for cotton; according to Landes, despite waterwheel-powered silk spinning machines existing long, long before, it could not have been done with that material due to its higher cost and hence, more limited demand. But with cotton, Landes writes, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the growth of the textile industry was beginning to outstrip labor supply,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and power machinery, installed in factories, was just the answer.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In turn, Landes argues that Britain industrialised before the rest of Europe for several reasons: greater pre-industrial purchasing power and a higher standard of living, which encouraged \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a manufacture that aimed at a large national and international market and focused on standardized goods of moderate price\u00e2\u20ac\u201djust the kind that lent themselves to machine production\u00e2\u20ac\u009d; and culture and institutions \u00e2\u20ac\u201c i.e. blessed with the Protestant ethic, relatively greater liberty and less religious persecution than the Continent, etc.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Just as classic is Landes\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 explanation for the failure of imperial China to industrialise. He claims despite the enterprising spirit of its people, it was closed-minded to science, stifled by hidebound mandarins whose \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cultural triumphalism combined with petty downward tyranny\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the comparison with Pomeranz\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s view, of which we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll soon see more, is striking. However, Japan is a different story. Landes believes (though, he says, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153with no way of proving this\u00e2\u20ac\u009d) that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153even without a European industrial revolution, the Japanese would sooner or later have made their own\u00e2\u20ac\u009d based on rising economic productivity, a cottage cotton industry, the work ethic of Edo-era merchants\u00c2\u00a0 and more. The following description is worth quoting in full:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We have the inventory of a village \u00e2\u20ac\u0153general store\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in 1813. The variety of goods is astonishing, some of them distinctive markers of an economy in an advanced preindustrial stage: thus a large range of manufactures, including hardware and garments that farm households had once made for themselves; and writing implements and paper in a country where literacy was not easy to come by. One could not at that date have found such a store in the Continental European countryside, except perhaps in the watchmaking districts of Switzerland.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

As a last note, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations<\/em> benefits from brisk, punchy prose (though watch out for the odd broadsides fired at rival intellectual schools!), and beyond being an economic history, it also makes for an interesting read about world<\/em> history.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

At the bottom of this post, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll return to evaluating this book; for now, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll see how the other title differs.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Great Divergence: China, Europe and the Making of the Modern World Economy, by Kenneth Pomeranz (2000)<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Taking the opposite approach to Landes, Pomeranz argues that differences between institutions market structures, attitudes to women working, living standards, etc, cannot explain the divergence between Europe, China, and Japan, because<\/strong> the advanced regions within each (respectively, Britain, the lower Yangzi, and the Kanto and Kinai regions) were far too similar<\/strong>. All had similar forms of business organisation, and the early stages of industrialisation anyway did not have the same capital requirements as railroads did later. All were open to commerce. All were relatively prosperous (here, the same Japanese general store cited by Landes makes a return!), and all had elites who sniped at commoners\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 consumerism:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mirrors, clocks, furniture, framed pictures, china, silverware, linen, books, jewelry, and silk clothing, to name just a few items, all became increasingly \u00e2\u20ac\u0153necessary\u00e2\u20ac\u009d signs of status for well-off western Europeans…<\/p>\n

China also became increasingly crammed with paintings, sculptures, fine furniture, and so on… and as wealth could increasingly be converted to status through consumption<\/em> (rather than through buying office, or land, or education for one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s children), published guidebooks began to offer advice on how to evaluate and display such objects properly…<\/p>\n

By the eighteenth century [in Japan, there were] strictures against \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcgold, silver and ivory\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 decorations in the homes of peasants<\/em> and complaints about how samurai and even daimyo had been ruined attempting to keep up with the consumption habits of wealthy commoners.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

And, Pomeranz argues, they all faced similar ecological constraints<\/strong>: they could very well all have ended up in a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153proto-industrial cul-de-sac\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, where\u00c2\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the basic production and consumption of textiles, though often cited as the onset of \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcindustrialisation\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, could not have changed that path, since it offered no solution to a basic quandary: that the production of food, fibre, fuel and building supplies all competed for increasingly scarce land<\/strong>\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

How, then, did the West break out of that cul-de-sac? As far as Pomeranz is concerned, Europe \u00e2\u20ac\u201c or, rather, Britain \u00e2\u20ac\u201c lucked out. First, says Pomeranz, Britain had plentiful coal deposits that were close to its industrial heartland<\/strong>, whereas China\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s coal deposits, in the northwest, were on the wrong side of the country from its most prosperous regions. Second, Britain benefited from access to the New World<\/strong>, which supplied calories (in the form of sugar \u00e2\u20ac\u201c mass imports of North American grain only began well after <\/em>the Industrial Revolution) and fibre (cotton), and thus freed it from the constraints of limited domestic land.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A note on readability \u00e2\u20ac\u201c this is a crunchy academic work, not<\/em> a lively popular history, and it reads as such. For a boiled-down version of Pomeranz\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s thesis, you can check out Columbia University\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Asia for Educators\u00e2\u20ac\u009d page<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

My assessment<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For a reader looking for an introduction to the topic, I think the Landes book is well worth a look.<\/strong> It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s easy to read and provides a good overview of the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153traditional\u00e2\u20ac\u009d view<\/strong>. Landes\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 tendency to stake out his beliefs is useful for someone who may not be aware of which issues are controversial to begin with! It doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t hurt that Landes\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 asides are often just as thought-provoking as the main story<\/strong>. For example, as a free-trader myself, Landes deserves credit for making me sit back and think, when he points out the flaw in the textbook use of comparative advantage to dismiss concern about domestic industry: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s comparative advantage may not be tomorrow\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d However,<\/strong> I would definitely<\/em> want corroboration before accepting his description of, in particular, China\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s economy\/society.<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And that takes us to Pomeranz\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s book. On the face of it, his theory \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and the underlying assertions that the richest parts of China had institutions the equal of Britain\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u201c are mutually exclusive with Landes\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 arguments about European institutional\/economic advantages.<\/strong> Which could be right?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Criticisms of Pomeranz\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s thesis fall into three categories \u00e2\u20ac\u201c disputes about the data underpinning his conclusions, disagreements with his logic, and those that are both <\/strong>(e.g. does he give adequate shrift to the acceleration of Western technological progress?). And while I might not be qualified to judge the former, I do find some of the latter to be convincing.<\/strong> For example, Pomeranz doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t explain why other Western countries \u00e2\u20ac\u201c including coal-poor, water-power-rich France \u00e2\u20ac\u201c plus Japan, but no other non-Western country<\/em>, were able to follow Britain into the industrial age. Still, his ideas remain interesting, and I was particularly fascinated by his description of Chinese commerce and society, so far removed from the caricatures of oriental despotism. Given the density of Pomeranz\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s book, I would hesitate to recommend it to a casual reader, but I found it a rewarding read all the same.<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Am I fully convinced by either?<\/strong> Well, for one, does it have to be one or the other? Who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s to say that a future author will not be able to reconcile the two theses? Maybe a future author already has<\/em>; Ian Morris\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s claim that trade across the North Atlantic stimulated Western European inventiveness<\/a> makes much more sense to me after reading about one area in which Pomeranz and Landes agree: the marvels of Western \u00e2\u20ac\u0153instruments<\/em> \u00e2\u20ac\u201c clocks, watches, telescopes, eyeglasses, etc.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Certainly I feel enlightened<\/em> by both, and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what matters.<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For a specialist\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s take on these two books, I refer you to economist Brad DeLong\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s reviews, here<\/a> and here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

You can buy The Wealth and Poverty of Nations from Amazon US here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

You can buy The Great Divergence from Amazon US here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Still in search of why the Industrial Revolution occurred, why it came first in Britain, and why the West beat the Rest to the punch, I turned to two more books: David Landes\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.petersahui.com\/optimist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.petersahui.com\/optimist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.petersahui.com\/optimist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.petersahui.com\/optimist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.petersahui.com\/optimist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.petersahui.com\/optimist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.petersahui.com\/optimist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.petersahui.com\/optimist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.petersahui.com\/optimist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}