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

by David S. Landes

  26. The words cited are those of Professor Francis Hamilton, reviewing Lewis, The Middle East, in the TLS of 8 December 1995, p. 4. Roy Mottahedeh, “The Islamic Movement,” p. 123, is also hopeful. He notes the role of women political leaders in a number of Islamic (but not Arab) countries, and states that “the enfranchisement of women offers a compelling proof of the ability of Islamic political cultures to evolve.” Yes and no: what is “compelling”? The status of women in these countries, even secular Turkey, remains constrained by Islamic prescriptions and custom, to the point where we must temper our assumptions about the liberating power of political rights. We must also keep in mind the spatial segmentation of societies where cities evolve differently from countryside. Turkey, with Istanbul in one world and time, Anatolia in another, and Anatolia crowding into Istanbul, is a fascinating case study of this cultural and temporal schizophrenia. Hence the election returns of late 1995, which gave a plurality to the Islamist party.

  27. Mottahedeh, “Clash of Civilizations,” p. 11.

  28. Barakat, Arab World, p. 105.

  29. Mosteshar, Unveiled, p. 353. This book, a tumbleweed basket of experience and observation, is a fascinating insight into an Iran that thought it was modernizing; that made a revolution in the name of greater freedom and saw it hijacked by religious fundamentalists; and then saw the clock turned back centuries. And a terrifying insight into the nature of a sloppy, capricious tyranny: eyes and tongues everywhere, vengeful snitches, undefined rules, random violence.

  30. On Latin America, see among other things, Calvin Sims, “Justice in Peru: Rape Victim Is Pressed to Marry Attacker,” N.T. Times, 3 December 1997, p. Al.

  31. Makiya, Cruelty and Silence, p. 298, citing a Palestinian nurse from Acre. Cf. Goodwin, Price of Honor, p. 4.

  32. Ajami, Arab Predicament, p. 233.

  33. On oil as a misfortune, see Ajami, Arab Predicament.

  34. Fisk, “Sept journées,” p. 7—an important article.

  35. See Landes, “Passionate Pilgrims.”

  36. Said, Orientalism, p. 327.

  37. In Tidrick, Heart Beguiling Araby, which is not tender toward the British victims of romantic illusion. See the foreword by Albert Hourani.

  38. The quotations are from Francis Robinson, “Through the Minefield,” pp. 3-4. Robinson, a professor at the University of London, is generally sympathetic to Lewis and respectful of his scholarship. His observations of the intellectual climate are all the more telling.

  39. This stress on motive shows again in Said’s denunciation of Western work on Islam and Arab societies. Rather than confront data and theses, he dismisses the whole business as inspired by “antagonisms and hostility,” by “cultural antipathy.” See his lecture at the College de France, “Comment l’Occident voit les Arabes,” Le Monde, 3 December 1996, p. 16.

  40. See Nicholas D. Kristof, “Japan’s Feminine Falsetto Falls Right Out of Favor,” NT Times, 13 December 1995, p. A-l.

  41. Nolte and Hastings, “Meiji State’s Policy,” p. 157.

  42. Ibid.

  43. See Sheryl WuDunn, “On Tokyo’s Packed Trains, Molesters Are Brazen,” NT. Times, 17 December 1995, p. A-3.

  44. Shimai Soshitsu, cited in Uno, “Women and Changes,” p. 33.

  CHAPTER 25

  1. In recent years, an effort has been expended to test by the numbers what was once a little contested orthodoxy: among others, Davis and Huttenback, Mammon and the Pursuit of Empire; or on an individual case, Kimura, “The Economics of Japanese Imperialism in Korea,” especially pp. 568-70. Michael Adas, “‘High’ Imperialism,” pp. 327-28, terms these “grand attempts to draw up balance sheets” an exercise in “oversimplification and ultimately futility.” Translation: they don’t come out as the materialist interpreters of imperialism would like; not enough profit.

  2. Klor de Alva, “Postcolonization,” p. 242.

  3. Ibid., p. 267. Cf. Prakash, in Prakash, ed., After Colonialism, p. 3.

  4. On this, see especially Bartlett, Making of Europe.

  5. Hopkins, Economic History, p. 256.

  6. Hyam, Britain’s Imperial Century, p. 290, cites the consolation of the “bottle, the bullet, and the bible” (source not given) and offers figures on alcohol consumption, not only by officials and officers, but also of course by the troops and subalterns. On sex, he cites (p. 291) Alfred Milner (1854-1925), activist proconsul in South Africa: “Sex enters into these Great Matters of State. It always has, it always will. It is never recorded, therefore history will never be intelligible.” The historian may safely assume that in such private matters, the scattered relationships we know about are only the tip. Cf. Hyam, Empire and Sexuality.

  7. Cook, The Long Fuse, p. 227, citing Charles Stuart in a letter of 1775 to his father the earl of Bute, after fighting the American rebels at the Battle of Bunker Hill.

  8. On empire as blood lust, see Lindqvist, “Exterminate All the Brutes,” pp. 52 ff. I do not think he exaggerates.

  9. Hence the seminal article of Gallagher and Robinson, “The Imperialism of Free Trade.”

  10. Cf. Landes, Bankers and Pashas, ch. 3, on the practices and profits of informal imperialism.

  11. Hyam, Britain’s Imperial Century, p. 164.

  12. Cf. S. Erlanger, “Retired People Are Struggling in the New Russia,” N.T Times, 8 August 1995, p. A-3: “This House of Veterans, opened in 1986 and already crumbling in typical Soviet fashion….”

  13. Harrison, Inside the Third World, p. 336.

  14. Murray, The Development of Capitalism in Colonial Indochina.

  15. On the use of the term neocolonialism, see Stavrianos, Global Rift, pp. 177-78.

  16. Harrison, Inside the Third World, ch. 17: “The Alienation Machine: The Uneducated and the Miseducated.” See p. 325: “It is bad enough that French children must addle their brains with these stilted and constipated works, but to teach them to African children is positively criminal.” (I don’t know. I am moved by Andromaque.)

  17. Mill, Principles of Political Economy, cited in Meier, “Theoretical Issues,” pp. 42-43.

  18. On the “costly and futile wars” of Latin America, see Harrison, Inside the Third World, p. 384 f. But add to his list the conflicts between Mexico and the United States and abortive incursions from the United States into British Canada. Some Mexican maps still show Texas and the southwestern United States as Mexican territory, waiting to be reclaimed.

  19. Harrison, Inside the Third World, p. 388, cites S. E. Finer to the effect that of 104 coups d’etat between 1962 and 1975, all but a handful took place in Third World countries. In 1975, one quarter of all member states in the UN were ruled by regimes that had come to power via a coup.

  20. Alam, “Colonialism, Decolonisation and Growth Rates,” p. 235 and n. 2, would not agree. He notes that in the nineteenth century those countries that developed modern manufacturing sectors were “either sovereign or self-governing states” and infers that “domestic control over economic policies was a necessary condition for industrialisation.”

  21. India 23,627 miles; China 665 miles—Kerr, “Colonialism and Technological Choice,” pp. 93-94. On belated British support for Indian iron and steel manufacture, see Bahl, “Emergence,” and her Making of the Indian Working Class.

  22. See the response to a fall-off of Japanese manufactured imports during World War I. Ho, “Colonialism and Development,” in Myers and Peattie, eds., Japanese Colonial Empire, p. 365.

  23. Mark Peattie in Myers and Peattie, eds., Japanese Colonial Empire, p. 23. On these data and the special reasons for development in Korea and Taiwan, where Japanese policy was further shaped by strategic military considerations and the need for cheap food, see Alam, “Colonialism,” pp. 250-53; and Hayami and Ruttan, “Korean Rice, Taiwan Rice.”

  24. On Japanese complacency in the matter of Korea, see the N.T. Times, 12 October 1995, p. A-5; 14 November 1995, p. A-14. On Korean memory and outrage, Yoichi Serikawa, “Deux peuples empetres dans leur passe [two peoples mired i
n their past],” Courrier international, 211 (17-25 Nov. 1994), p. 32, with illustration of a wax figure exhibit in the Korean independence memorial showing Japanese army torture of a Korean patriot. On the larger matter of aggression before and during World War II, see Buruma, The Wages of Guilt. The latest “flap” has come over the statement of a Japanese official that “Japan did some good things. Japan built schools in every town in Korea to raise the standard of education and also constructed railroads and ports.”

  25. The pro-Japanese point of view, as expressed by a Westerner, speaks of “modern and superbly efficient police forces, supplemented by the clever exploitation of indigenous systems of community control.” Peattie in Myers and Peattie, eds., The Japanese Colonial Empire, p. 27.

  26. Ibid., p. 47.

  27. Patel, “Rates of Industrial Growth.”

  CHAPTER 26

  1. Israel, The Dutch Republic, p. 850. Like the Japanese, who also prefer to see the history of their country in terms of divine intervention through favorable winds (kamikaze), the Dutch and English have attributed the success of the invasion to a “Protestant wind”—strong easterlies that sped the Armada across the North Sea and locked the English fleet in the Thames, where all it could do was watch the enemy go by—ibid., p. 851.

  2. Wealth of Nations, Book I, ch. ix: “Of the Profits of Stock.”

  3. Ibid., Book I, ch. viii: “Of the Wages of Labour.”

  4. Cited in Wallerstein, “Dutch Hegemony,” p. 98. Such apparent precision must be taken with a grain of salt, but the overall trend is unmistakable.

  5. Vandenbroeke, “Regional Economy,” p. 170, argues that these low-wage industries posed a terrible challenge to Britain, which found a riposte in mechanization; but the same argument can be used to account for Dutch failure: they did not mechanize.

  6. Most of the above is from Israel, The Dutch Republic, pp. 998-1003. See also Wallerstein, “Dutch Hegemony.”

  7. Israel, Dutch Republic, p. 1011.

  8. On the decline of Venetian wool output, see Rapp, Industry and Economic Decline, pp. 140-41, 148, and n. 24; and Sella, “Rise and Fall.” Trade policy seems to have been appallingly counterproductive. On migration of capital to the mainland, see Woolf, “Venice and the Terraferma.” Also Ciriacono, “Venetian Economy” and “Venise et la Venetie.”

  9. Cf. van Zanden, “The Dutch Economy in the Very Long Run.”

  10. Cf. Mokyr, Industrialization in the Low Countries, who makes the wage comparison with Belgium. But Dutch wages, if higher than Belgian along the coast, were just as low in the interior and lower overall than those in England, for example. Griffiths, Industrial Retardation, pp. 3, 62-65, argues that the causes of Dutch lateness have to be sought elsewhere; that Belgium then had a strong industrial base and could modernize more easily. It had good coal resources, a precociously mechanized cotton and wool manufacture, an old yet vigorous tradition of metallurgy, and the beginnings of machine building in the Liegeois. The Netherlands had once been strong in industry, but after a century of decline, it had trouble starting up.

  11. Mokyr, Lever of Riches, p. 260, notes the persistence of Luddite opposition to cotton-spinning machinery in the Netherlands.

  12. H. J. Koenen, Voorlezingen over de geschiedenis der nijverheid in Nederland (Haarlem, 1956), p. 140, cited in Griffiths, Industrial Retardation, p. 41.

  13. Peter W. Klein, Traditionele ondernemers en economische groei in Nederland, 1850-1914 (Haarlem, 1966), p. 3, cited in Griffiths, Industrial Retardation, p. 42.

  14. Griffiths, Industrial Retardation, p. 121.

  15. On this later period, cf. Pollard, Peaceful Conquest, pp. 237-38. The quiet entry of the Netherlands into the world of modern industry is reflected in the general indifference of economic histories. The country barely gets on stage.

  16. Cited from a 1693 edition in Chaudhuri, Trading World of Asia, p. 5.

  17. On French sensibilities, cf. Ratcliffe, “Great Britain and Tariff Reform,” p. 102.

  18. On clocks and American manufacture, see Landes, Revolution in Time, pp. 310-13. On firearms, Smith, Harpers Ferry A rmory and the New Technology; Uselding, “Technical Progress at the Springfield Armory.”

  19. On this wake-up call, see Rosenberg, American System of Manufactures.

  20. Supple, “Fear of Failing.” The address is in large part a reprise of Clapham’s thoughts and tone on the subject, as expressed in his Economic History of Modern Britain, III (1938), ch. 3: “The Course of Industrial Change.”

  21. Cf. Tomlinson, “Inventing ‘Decline’” also Supple, “Fear of Failing,” pp. 442-43.

  22. Supple, p. 444, speaks of “disturbing psychological and political repercussions.”

  23. Supple, p. 444, n. 9, citing W. A. P. Manser, Britain in the Balance (1971), p. 179.

  24. Cf. Clapham, Economic History, II, 113, writing in gloomy 1932 of the trade crisis of 1885: “The mechanical and industrial movement has become once for all international, and there is very little echelon in the advance…. Engines are toiling indifferendy for all. Mechanical or scientific industrial monopolies are short lived.” Clapham did not know the word “convergence,” but he understood the phenomenon. Also ibid., Ill, 122: “Haifa continent is likely in course of time to raise more coal and make more steel than a small island….” How are the mighty fallen!

  25. On the good fortune of being among the rich, Clapham, ibid., Ill, 554; McCloskey, If You’re So Smart, p. 48; Supple, “Fear of Failing,” p. 443: “…the differences between Britain and other advanced societies are much less (and much less important) than the differences between the advanced and less developed countries.” McCloskey actually waxes indignant that people so fortunate should complain that they are losing ground to other rich people: “at best tasteless in a world of real tragedies… at worst…immoral self-involvement, nationalist guff….” That’s the trouble with people: they think first of Number One. They also think that being first is better than being second or fourteenth.

  26. Cited in Burn, Age of Equipoise, p. 64.

  27. W. S. Jevons, Methods of Social Reform (London: Macmilfan, 1883), pp. 181-82, cited in Supple, “Official Economic Inquiry,” p. 325.

  28. Here is McCloskey, offering compatriots cold comfort: “Americans are better off when Japan ‘defeats’ them at car-making, because then they will do something they are comparatively good at—banking, say, or growing soybeans—and let the Japanese do the car making or the consumer electronics.” McCloskey, “1066 and a Wave of Gadgets,” in McCloskey and Dormois, eds., “British Industrial ‘Decline,’” p. 21.

  29. McCloskey, Econ. Hist. Rev., 2d ser., 3 (1970).

  30. Cf. Wilson, British Business History, pp. 90-93. One would have expected these ambivalent distributors to sort things out and focus on the more profitable brands. Or the manufacturers to set up their own sales and service networks, as occurred in the United States and later on in Japan.

  31. Peter H. Lindert and Keith Trace in McCloskey, ed., Essays on a Mature Economy, p. 242.

  32. Wilson, “Economy and Society,” pp. 185,190, cited in Dintenfass, “Converging Accounts,” p. 19.

  33. The quotes are from Dintenfass, “Converging Accounts,” p. 22. The optimists have been equally dismissive of entrepreneurial testimony to poor performance. See Edgerton, “Science and Technology in British Business History” and Science, Technology, p. 11. For a pessimistic view based on business histories, Coleman and MacLeod, “Attitudes to New Techniques.”

  34. Floud, “Britain,” in Floud and McCloskey, eds., “Economic History,” 1st ed., II, 23.

  35. McCloskey, “International Differences in Productivity?” in McCloskey, ed., Essays on a Mature Economy, pp. 286-87.

  36. Habakkuk, American and British Technology, p. 212.

  37. Cf. Clapham, Economic History, III, 131.

  38. Davenport-Hines and Jones, eds., British Business in Asia, p. 21. One could make similar observations about the British steel manufacture. British makers had every prefe
rence and advantage in the Indian market and yet saw themselves increasingly displaced: 8,000 for Belgian steel in 1885/86 as against 98,000 for the U.K.; 280,000 for Belgium in 1895/96 as against 274,000 for the U.K.—and this, in spite of British steel’s reputation as superior. Saul, Studies in British Overseas Trade, p. 199.

  39. Charles Wilson, “Economy and Society,” in Payne, “Industrial Entrepreneurship,” p. 208.

  40. James Foreman-Peck, “The Balance of Technological Transfers 1870-1914,” in McCloskey and Dormois, eds., “British Industrial ‘Decline,’” p. 11, dismisses the loss as “merely a different pattern of international specialisation.” Pollard, Britain’s Prime, ch. 3, sees dyestuffs as small stuff.

  41. Friswell and Levinstein cited in Haber, Chemical Industry, p. 168. (This is just the kind of witness that the optimists find awkward; so they dismiss it as self-interested.) The best-known Jews in British chemicals were the managing partners in Brunner, Mond & Co., the leading firm in alkali manufacture. They brought in the Solvay process, without effect on the outworn technology of the rest of the industry—except, that is, to encourage them to shelter themselves behind agreements in restraint of trade. Brunner, Mond went along and garnered monopoly rents.

  42. Rubinstein, Capitalism, Culture and Decline, pp. 94-96, makes much of British contributions in pure science, recognized by a disproportionate share of Nobel prizes. But he says little about applications, except to agree that most of these “often, now regularly” found use in other countries. On the electrical industry, where engineering clearly mattered, see Byatt, British Electrical Industry, pp. 188-90: “British business men were not very good at using their engineers.” For a favorable view of British scientific and technical education, see Edgerton, Science, Technology, especially ch. 5.

  43. See, among others, Landes, The Unbound Prometheus, ch. 5; and Wiener, English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit. Also a passing remark by Habakkuk, American and British, p. 212: “An Englishman’s choice of career was, it is true, very much influenced by tradition, convention and inertia, and no doubt in England these tended to channel talent away from business towards the professions.” On the other hand, see Dintenfass, Decline, pp. 61-64.