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Culture, Clocks, and Comparative Costs David Landes on the Wealth of the West and the Poverty of the Rest

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 June 2011

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Extract

It would be hard to find a more fundamental question in economic history than the one professor Landes asks in his latest book: why are some nations so rich and some so poor? To every economist and economic historian analysing this problem is an immense intellectual challenge. Landes however does not merely tackle it from a strictly intellectual perspective. He also hopes that by writing the book under review he can contribute to an answer and thereby help the poor to become healthier and wealthier. He approaches his subject historically. He does so not just because he is a historian, but also because he thinks the best way to understand a problem is to ask: How and why did we get where we are?

Type
David Landes' The Wealth and Poverty of Nations
Information
Itinerario , Volume 22 , Issue 4 , 1998 , pp. 67 - 89
Copyright
Copyright © Research Institute for History, Leiden University 1998

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References

Notes

1 Landes, D.S., The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are so Rich and Some Are so Poor (London 1998) XX–XXI.Google Scholar

2 Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, 516.

3 Ibid., XX.

4 Ibid., 522.

5 Ibid.

6 North, D.C. and Thomas, R.P., The Rise of the Western World: A New Economic History (Cambridge 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fukuyama, F., Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity (London 1995)Google Scholar; Putnam, R.D., with R. Leonardi and R.Y. Nanetti, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton 1993).Google Scholar

7 Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, 184–185 and 250–251.

8 Ibid., XXI.

9 Among scholars who study ‘the Rise of the West’, however, attention to geographical circumstances has always been something quite self-evident. Some recent examples: Cosandey, D., Le secret de l'Occident: Du miracle passé au marasme présent (Paris 1997)Google Scholar; Diamond, J., Guns, Germs and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 years (London 1997)Google Scholar; Jones, E.L., The European Miracle: Environments, Economies and Geopolitics in the History of Europe and Asia (second edition: Cambridge 1987)Google Scholar; Kiesewetter, H., Das einzigartige Europa: Zufällige und notwendige Faktoren der Industrialisierung (Gōttingen 1996)Google Scholar; Macfarlane, A., The Savage Wars of Peace: Japan and England and the Malthusian Trap (Oxford 1997)Google Scholar and Sanderson, S., Social Evolutionism: A General Theory of Historical Development (Oxford 1995).Google Scholar

10 It is Landes himself who says so. See, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, 203.

11 Ibid., 137.

12 For estimates see Engerman, S.L. and Neves, J.C. Das, ‘The Bricks of Empire 1415–1999: 585 Years of Portuguese Emigration’, The Journal of European Economic History 26 (1997) 471–510Google Scholar, table I on page 478 and Woude, A. van der, ‘Les Provinces-Unies’ in: Bardet, J-P and Dupaquier, J. eds, Histoire des populations de l'Europe. I: Des origines aux prémices de la révolution demographique (Paris 1997) 425–444Google Scholar, Tableau 70, on page 429.

13 Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, 140.

14 Ibid., 140.

15 Ibid., 439.

16 Landes, D.S., The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present (Cambridge 1969).Google Scholar

17 Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, 194–195. See also Landes, D.S., “The Fable of the Dead Horse; Or the Industrial Revolution Revisited’ in: Mokyr, J. ed., The British Industrial Revolution: An Economic Perspective (Boulder 1993) 132–170Google Scholar; Landes, D.S., ‘What Room for Accident in History? Explaining Big Changes by Small Events’, Economic History Review 47 (1994) 637–656CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Landes, D.S., ‘Some further Thoughts on Accident in History: A Reply to Professor Crafts’, Economic History Review 48 (1995) 599–601.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 For data on the dominance and lead of the first industrial nation see for example Bairoch, P., Victoires et déboires: Histoire économique et sociale du monde du XVIe siècle à nos jours (Paris 1997) Tome I, 404 and Tome II, 28–32.Google Scholar

19 Blaut, J.M., The Colonizer's Model of the World: Geographical Diffusionism and Eurocentric History (New York 1993) 59–94.Google Scholar

20 Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, 26.

21 Ibid., 23.

22 Ibid., 27.

23 Ibid., 169.

24 Ibid., 22–23.

25 Ibid., 46.

26 Ibid., 23. Although Europeans indeed had more non-human power-sources at their disposal than people in other societies, one should not make too much of this. See Smil, V., Energy in World History (Boulder 1994) 224–235Google Scholar, where it is estimated that in 1200, eighty per cent of Europe's total energy supply of prime movers – people, animals, windmills and water wheels – still consisted of human energy, as compared to ninety percent for China in the year 500. Apparently Smil has no data for China's energy-supply in 1200. But there is every reason to suppose that the importance of human labour-power will have diminished compared with 700 years earlier. The picture changes substantially however when we look at the situation in the eighteenth century and take into account the role of wood as a source of energy. At that time Europeans consumed 14,000 calories of energy per capita, the Chinese only 4600. The fundamental difference was in the importance of wood, 7200 calories as against 360 and animal power, 5000 calories as against 2000. See Malanima, P., Economia preindustriale: Mille anni: dal IX al XVIII secolo (Milan 1995) 96–98.Google Scholar

27 W.H. McNeill, ‘How the West Won’, The New York Review of Books, 23 April 1998, 37–39.

28 Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, 516.

29 Ibid., 516.

30 Ibid.

31 Ibid., 523.

32 Ibid.

33 Ibid., 478.

34 See for example Chapter 21, in which he is constantly talking about China and the Chinese being such and such – mostly something nonprogressive – whereas what he actually is referring to, is the behaviour and thinking of the tiny group of Chinese people who happened to be in charge.

35 Ibid., 516.

36 Ibid., 45.

37 Ibid., 477.

38 Ibid., 517.

39 Ibid., 58–59 and 174–179.

40 See for example van den Hoven, B.E.M., Work in Ancient and Medieval Thought: Ancient Philosophers, Medieval Monks and Theologians and their Concept of Work, Occupations and Technology (Amsterdam 1996) and Cosandey, Le secret de l'Occident.Google Scholar

41 Peyrefitte, A., La société de confiance: essai sur les origines et la nature du développement (Paris 1995).Google Scholar

42 Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, 221–223.

43 Compare Jones, The European Miracle, 105.

44 Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, 223.

45 Ibid., 219.

46 Ibid., 217.

47 Ibid., 234.

48 Ibid., 520.

49 Ibid., 217–223.

50 Ibid., 231–255.

51 See for some very explicit statements to this effect 266, 375, 473 and the chapters on Japan. For further information see Bairoch, P., Economics and World History: Myths and Paradoxes (New York 1993) 16–55, which shows that protectionism and economic growth could, and, very often, did go hand in hand.Google Scholar

52 See for example. The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, 492–495.

53 For his view that nations can be said to compete economically and will continue to do so for quite some time to come, see for example The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, 461 and 519. Negative remarks on the theorem of comparative advantage are spread throughout the book. I therefore refer to the Index.

54 For Krugman's views see Krugman, P., Pop Internationalism (Cambridge, Mass., 1996). For McCloskey's see The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, 560 note 28 and http://www.eh.net/ehnet/Archives/eh.res/jun-98/, 4 June 1998.Google Scholar

55 McNeill, ‘How the West Won’, 39 and P. Krugman, ‘The Trouble with History’, a review of Landes' book and of Yergin, D. and Joseph Stanislaw, The Commanding Heights: The Battle between Government and the Marketplace that is Remaking the Modern World (New York 1998)Google Scholarhttp://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/yergin.html. 56 For comments on these concepts see Ragin, Ch.C., The Comparative Method: Moving beyond Qualitative and Quantitative Strategies (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1987) 34–52.Google Scholar 57 Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, 543 note 5; 565 note 16; 566, note 19.

58 Ibid., 58–59.

59 See for example Epstein, S.R., Freedom and Growth: The European Miracle, London School of Economics & Political Science: Working Papers in Economic History 22/94, October 1994.Google Scholar

60 Braudel, F., Cìvìlìsatìon matérìelle, économic et capìtalisme, XVe-XVIII sìècle (Paris 1979) passim. See for example Volume I, 7–13; Volume II, 7–9 and chapter 5, and Volume III, 537–548.Google Scholar

61 For a concise and intelligent analysis of recent debates on free trade and protectionism see Friedman, M., The New York Review of Books, 8 October 1998, 32–36Google Scholar, reviewing Buchanan, P.J., The Great Betrayal: How American Sovereignty and Social Justice Are Being Sacrificed to the Gods of the Global Economy (London 1998)Google Scholar and Yergin and Stanislaw, The Commanding Heights.

62 See for example Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, 492–495.

63 As Landes suggests on, for example, page 294. I have not been able to find places in Ricardo's work where he explicitly states that comparative costs must be static. On the other hand, I have not found an explanation of how they could be made to change and what that would imply. In practice countries can and have specialised in different things at different times. I have looked in Ricardo, D., On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (edited with an introduction by Hartwell, R.M.; Harmondsworth 1971). The book was first edited in 1817.Google Scholar

64 Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, 453.

65 See note 54.

66 Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, 513.

67 Ibid., XXI.

68 Ibid., 513.

69 Ibid., 29.

70 Compare for example: ‘[…] other societies were falling behind Europe [in technology] even before the opening of the world (fifteenth century on) and the great confrontation’, 54; ‘[…] some countries made an industrial revolution and became rich; and others did not and stayed poor. The process of selection actually began much earlier, during the age of discovery’, 168–169.

71 Ibid., XXI.

72 Ibid., XX and 525.

73 Ibid., 23.

74 Ibid., 553, 220–223.

75 Smith, A., An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations I (Indianapolis 1981) 208, see further passim under China. (I refer to the edition of the Liberty Fund.)Google Scholar

76 Murphey, R., The Outsiders: The Western Experience in India and China (Ann Arbor 1977) chapter 9.Google Scholar

77 Compare with: Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, 24.

78 See Frank, A.G., ReORIENT: Global Economy in the Asian Age (Berkeley 1998) 165–184.Google Scholar

79 Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, 55.

80 For this expression see Fairbank, J.K. and Goldman, M., China: A New History (enlarged edition; Cambridge 1998) 167–186.Google Scholar

81 Elvin, M., The Pattern of the Chinese Past (Stanford 1973) part 3.Google Scholar

82 See Goldstone, J.A., ‘The Problem of the “Early Modern World”’, The Journal of Social and Economic History of the Orient 41 (1998) 249–284, with whose views I completely agree.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

83 Elvin, M., Another History: Essays on China from a European Perspective (Broadway Australia 1996) I.Google Scholar

84 For some examples of how scholars should not treat those with whom they disagree see pages 54, 89, 514.

85 Landes, D.S. & Tilly, Ch., History as Social Science (Englewood Cliffs 1971).Google Scholar

86 Krugman, “The Trouble with History’.

87 See http://econ161.berkeley.edu/Econ_Articles/Reviews/landes.html. Although I do not think Landes would agree with lesson number 3 that Brad de Long derives from his work.