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A Farewell to Alms: a Brief Economic History of the World (Princeton A Farewell to Alms the princeton economic history of the western world Joel Mokyr, Editor Growth in a Traditional Society: The French Countryside, 1450–1815, by Philip T. Hoffman The Vanishing Irish: Households, Migration, and the Rural Economy in Ireland, 1850–1914, by Timothy W. Guinnane Black ’47 and Beyond: The Great Irish Famine in History, Economy, and Memory, by Cormac Ó Gráda The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy, by Kenneth Pomeranz The Big Problem of Small Change, by Thomas J. Sargent and François R. Velde Farm to Factory: A Reinterpretation of the Soviet Industrial Revolution, by Robert C. Allen Quarter Notes and Bank Notes: The Economics of Music Composition in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, by F. M. Scherer The Strictures of Inheritance: The Dutch Economy in the Nineteenth Century, by Jan Luiten van Zanden and Arthur van Riel Understanding the Process of Economic Change, by Douglass C. North Feeding the World: An Economic History of World Agriculture, 1800–2000, by Giovanni Federico Cultures Merging: A Historical and Economic Critique of Culture, by Eric L. Jones The European Economy since 1945: Coordinated Capitalism and Beyond, by Barry Eichengreen War, Wine, and Taxes: The Political Economy of Anglo-French Trade, 1689–1900, by John V. C. Nye A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World, by Gregory Clark A Farewell to Alms a brief economic history of the world Gregory Clark princeton university press Princeton and Oxford Copyright © 2007 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 3 Market Place, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1SY All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Clark, Gregory, 1957– A farewell to alms : a brief economic history of the world / Gregory Clark. p. cm. — (The Princeton economic history of the Western world) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-691-12135-2 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Economic history. I. Title. HC21.C63 2007 330.9—dc22 2007015166 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available Publication of this book has been aided by ____________ This book has been composed in Adobe Garamond by Princeton Editorial Associates, Inc., Scottsdale, Arizona Printed on acid-free paper. ∞ press.princeton.edu Printed in the United States of America 10987654321 To Mary, Maximilian, Madeline, and Innis Contents Preface ix Acknowledgments xi 1 Introduction: The Sixteen-Page Economic History of the World The Malthusian Trap: Economic Life to 2 The Logic of the Malthusian Economy 3 Living Standards 4 Fertility 5 Life Expectancy 6 Malthus and Darwin: Survival of the Richest 7 Technological Advance 8 Institutions and Growth 9 The Emergence of Modern Man The Industrial Revolution 10 Modern Growth: The Wealth of Nations 11 The Puzzle of the Industrial Revolution 12 The Industrial Revolution in England 13 Why England? Why Not China, India, or Japan? 14 Social Consequences The Great Divergence 15 World Growth since 1800 16 The Proximate Sources of Divergence 17 Why Isn’t the Whole World Developed? 18 Conclusion: Strange New World Technical Appendix References Index Figure Credits viii Preface This book takes a bold approach to history. It discerns, within a welter of often sketchy and sometimes conflicting empirical evidence, simple structures that describe mankind’s long history—structures that can accommodate the startling facts about human history and the present world detailed in these pages. It is an unabashed attempt at big history, in the tradition of The Wealth of Nations, Das Kapital, The Rise of the Western World, and most recently Guns, Germs, and Steel. All these books, like this one, ask: How did we get here? Why did it take so long? Why are some rich and some poor? Where are we headed? Intellectual curiosity alone makes these compelling questions. But while the book is focused on history, it also speaks to modern economic policy. For the text details how economists, and the institutions they inhabit, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, have adopted a false picture of preindustrial societies, and of the eventual causes of modern growth. These fanciful notions underlie current policies to cure the ills of the poor countries of the world, such as those represented by the Washington Consensus. Though the book is about economics, we shall see that in the long run economic institutions, psychology, culture, politics, and sociology are deeply interwoven. Our very nature—our desires, our aspirations, our interactions— was shaped by past economic institutions, and it now in turn shapes modern economic systems. This book thus also has much to offer readers interested in anthropology and political, social, and even cultural history. ix Fortunately for the reader, a simple set of ideas can carry us a long way in explaining the evolution of the world economy through the millennia. No formal economics training is necessary to understand any of what follows. Thus—though the issues grappled with here are ones that remain on the agendas of the most technically oriented economists—they are issues that readers innocent of the elaborate theoretical apparatus can fully appreciate. Doubtless some of the arguments developed here will prove over- simplified, or merely false. They are certainly controversial, even among my colleagues in economic history. But far better such error than the usual dreary academic sins, which now seem to define so much writing in the humanities, of willful obfuscation and jargon-laden vacuity. As Darwin himself noted, “false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness: and when this is done, one path towards error is closed and the road to truth is often at the same time opened.”1 Thus my hope is that, even if the book is wrong in parts, it will be clearly and productively wrong, leading us toward the light. Underlying the book is a wealth of data I have assembled on the history of the English economy between 1200 and 1870. To make the book easier on the reader, figures and tables that rely on this data set are not individually ref- erenced. Where a source is not indicated for a figure or a table, or for a por- tion of a figure or a table, the underlying data and its sources will be found in Clark (2007b). This book is the product of twenty years of labor in a particularly obscure corner of the academic vineyard: quantitative economic history. I am fortunate that the economics and history professions both so lightly regard these vines that a single scholar can claim whole centuries as his personal garden, and tend it reflectively and unmolested. But I hope that the book will also inter- est professional economists and historians, and remind them that a constant diet of Gallo can dull the palate. 1. Darwin, 1998, 629. x Acknowledgments In writing this book I have accumulated a list of debts that is Trumpian in scale. The first is to those who commented on the manuscript or related papers, saving me from countless embarrassments and suggesting important revisions: Cliff Bekar, Steven Broadberry, Bruce Charlton, Anthony Clark, Alexander Field, James Fulford, Regina Grafe, Eric Jones, Oscar Jorda, Madeline Mc- Comb, Mary McComb, Tom Mayer, Joel Mokyr, Jim Oeppen, Cormac Ó Gráda, Kevin O’Rourke, James Robinson, Kevin Salyer, James Simpson, Jef- frey Williamson, and Susan Wolcott. I owe a special debt to my editors—Joel Mokyr, the series editor for the Princeton Economic History of the Western World, and Peter Dougherty of Princeton University Press—for their patience and wise counsel in the face of significant provocation. Peter Strupp of Prince- ton Editorial Associates copyedited the manuscript with astonishing attention to both detail and content. My second debt is to my colleagues at the University of California, Davis. The economics department here is an astonishingly lively and collegial place. Alan Olmstead made Davis a center for economic history. His leadership of the All-UC Group in Economic History helped make California the world center of economic history. Peter Lindert has ageless enthusiasm, energy, and generos- ity. Alan Taylor threatens to transform this neglected corner of the vineyard into a grand cru. My colleagues in economics—especially Paul Bergin, Colin Cameron, Kevin Hoover, Hilary Hoynes, Oscar Jorda, Chris Knittel, Doug Miller, Marianne Page, Giovanni Peri, Kadee Russ, Kevin Salyer, Ann Stevens, and Deborah Swenson—made every day fun, stimulating, and entertaining. xi I am grateful to Gillian Hamilton, David Jacks, and Susan Wolcott, past co-authors whose work is incorporated in this book. Several research assistants helped collect or code the data underlying much of this work: David Brown, Robert Eyler, Melanie Guldi, Peter Hohn, Eric Jamelske, David Nystrom, and Shahar Sansani. Shahar was diligent beyond duty in finding the correct citations for the many sources. My fifth debt is to the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Institute for Ad- vanced Study) for a fellowship in 2005–06 that gave me the time and impe- tus to bring this project to completion. The library staff there, particularly Marianne Buck, were wonderfully helpful in tracking down sources and potential illustrations. Three grants from the National Science Foundation (SES 02-41376, SES 00-95616, and SES 91-22191) over the past fifteen years funded much of the data collection underlying the book. Another more general obligation of long standing is to the teachers of Holy Cross High School, Hamilton, Scotland. It would be hard to imagine a more ramshackle hodgepodge of buildings, and the discipline was at times medieval. But the teachers were dedicated, knowledgeable, and generous with their time for no reward beyond the satisfaction of a job well done.
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