61. S. Füssel, 2005, Gutenberg and the Impact of Printing (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate).
62. U. Neddermeyer, 1997, “Why Were There No Riots of the Scribes?,” Gazette du Livre Médiéval 31 (1): 1–8.
63. Quoted in ibid., 7.
64. Ibid., 8.
65. Mokyr, 1992a, The Lever of Riches, 57.
66. Quoted in B. Gille, 1969, “The Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries in the Western World,” in A History of Technology and Invention: Progress through the Ages, ed. M. Daumas and trans. E. B. Hennessy (New York: Crown), 2:135–36.
67. On Bauer, Zonca, and Drebbel, see Mokyr, 1992a, The Lever of Riches, chapter 4.
68. Ibid., 58.
69. On the steam engine, see R. C. Allen, 2009a, The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), chapter 7.
70. F. Reuleaux, 1876, Kinematics of Machinery: Outlines of a Theory of Machines, trans. A.B.W. Kennedy (London: Macmillan), 9.
71. On Galileo’s theory of mechanics, see D. Cardwell, 1972, Turning Points in Western Technology: A Study of Technology, Science and History (New York: Science History Publications).
72. On the machine maker, see Cardwell, 2001, Wheels, Clocks, and Rockets, 44.
73. For underground transport, horse-driven treadmills were introduced.
74. On advances in mining, new husbandry, and the seed drill, see Mokyr, 1992a, The Lever of Riches, chapter 4.
75. On the worker-replacing effects of the gig mill, see A. Randall, 1991, Before the Luddites: Custom, Community and Machinery in the English Woollen Industry, 1776–1809 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 120.
76. Quoted in Acemoglu and Robinson, 2012, Why Nations Fail, 176.
77. For more on examples of resistance to replacing technologies, see L. A. White, 2016, Modern Capitalist Culture (New York: Routledge), 77.
78. For more on the Leiden riots, see R. Patterson, 1957, “Spinning and Weaving,” in A History of Technology, vol. 3, From the Renaissance to the Industrial Revolution, c. 1500–c. 1750, ed. C. Singer, E. J. Holmyard, A. R. Hall, and T. I. Williams (New York: Oxford University Press), 167.
79. Acemoglu and Robinson, 2012, Why Nations Fail, 197.
80. I. A. Gadd and P. Wallis, 2002, Guilds, Society, and Economy in London 1450–1800 (London: Centre for Metropolitan History).
81. S. Ogilvie, 2019, The European Guilds, 5.
82. K. Desmet, A. Greif, and S. Parente, 2018, “Spatial Competition, Innovation and Institutions: The Industrial Revolution and the Great Divergence” (Working Paper. 24727, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA); J. Mokyr, 1998, “The Political Economy of Technological Change,” in Technological Revolutions in Europe: Historical Perspectives, ed. K. Bruland and M. Berg (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar), 39–64.
83. S. R. Epstein, 1998, “Craft Guilds, Apprenticeship and Technological Change in Preindustrial Europe,” Journal of Economic History 58 (3): 684–713.
84. Ibid., 696.
85. Ogilvie, 2019, The European Guilds, 415
86. Ibid., 410.
87. C. Dent, 2006, “Patent Policy in Early Modern England: Jobs, Trade and Regulation,” Legal History 10 (1): 79–80.
88. In particular, the Thirty Years’ War put pressure on governments to constantly modernize their armies.
89. Q. Wright, 1942, A Study of War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 1:215.
90. C. Tilly, 1975, The Formation of National States in Western Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 42.
91. N. Ferguson, 2012, Civilization: The West and the Rest (New York: Penguin), 37.
92. N. Rosenberg and L. E. Birdzell, 1986, How the West Grew Rich: The Economic Transformation of the Western World (London: Basic), 138.
93. On the age of instruments, see Mokyr, 1992, The Lever of Riches, chapter 4.
94. Cardwell, 2001, Wheels, Clocks, and Rockets, 107.
Chapter 2
1. G. Clark, 2008. A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 39.
2. Quoted in ibid.
3. D. Cannadine, 1977, “The Landowner as Millionaire: The Finances of the Dukes of Devonshire, c. 1800–c. 1926,” Agricultural History Review 25 (2): 77–97.
4. P. H. Lindert, 2000b, “When Did Inequality Rise in Britain and America?,” Journal of Income Distribution 9 (1): 11–25.
5. H. A. Taine, 1958, Notes on England, 1860–70, trans. E. Hyams (London: Strahan), 181. See also Cannadine, 1977, “The Landowner as Millionaire.”
6. See P. H. Lindert, 1986, “Unequal English Wealth since 1670,” Journal of Political Economy 94 (6): 1127–62.
7. T. Piketty, 2014, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), figure 3.1.
8. See, for example, C. Boix, and F. Rosenbluth, 2014, “Bones of Contention: The Political Economy of Height Inequality,” American Political Science Review 108 (1): 1–22.
9. J. Diamond, 1987, “The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race,” Discover, May 1, 64–66.
10. See J. J. Rousseau, [1755] 1999, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (New York: Oxford University Press).
11. See, for example, P. Eveleth and J. M. Tanner, 1976, Worldwide Variation in Human Growth, Cambridge Studies in Biological & Evolutionary Anthropology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
12. G. J. Armelagos and M. N. Cohen, Paleopathology at the Origins of Agriculture (Orlando, FL: Academic Press).
13. C. S. Larsen, 1995, “Biological Changes in Human Populations with Agriculture,” Annual Review of Anthropology 24 (1): 185–213.
14. A. Mummert, E. Esche, J. Robinson, and G. J. Armelagos, 2011. “Stature and Robusticity During the Agricultural Transition: Evidence from the Bioarchaeological Record,” Economics and Human Biology 9 (3): 284–301.
15. Larsen, 1995, “Biological Changes in Human Populations with Agriculture.”
16. K. Marx and F. Engels, [1848] 1967, The Communist Manifesto, trans. Samuel Moore (London: Penguin), 55.
17. On population pressure, see E. Boserup, 1965. The Condition of Agricultural Growth: The Economics of Agrarian Change under Population Pressure (London: Allen and Unwin).
18. J. Diamond, 1987, “The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race.”
19. M. L. Bacci, 2017, A Concise History of World Population (London: John Wiley and Sons).
20. During the time period 1–1500, higher land productivity appears to have had significant effects on population density but insignificant effects on the standard of living. See Q. Ashraf and O. Galor, 2011, “Dynamics and Stagnation in the Malthusian Epoch,” American Economic Review 101 (5): 2003–41.
21. For an overview, see J. Mokyr and H. J. Voth, 2010, “Understanding Growth in Europe, 1700–1870: Theory and Evidence,” in The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Europe, ed. S. Broadberry and K. O’Rourke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1:7–42.
22. O. Galor and D. N. Weil, 2000, “Population, Technology, and Growth: From Malthusian Stagnation to the Demographic Transition and Beyond,” American Economic Review 90 (4): 806–28; G. Clark, 2008, A Farewell to Alms.
23. For example, Ronald Lee and Michael Anderson cast doubt on the idea that the world was still Malthusian after 1500, showing that very little of the long-term variation in either fertility or mortality can be explained by wage patterns (2002, “Malthus in State Space: Macroeconomic-Demographic Relations in English History, 1540 to 1870,” Journal of Population Economics 15 [2]: 195–220). Esteban Nicolini also found that after 1650, the fertility effect became much weaker (2007, “Was Malthus Right? A VAR Analysis of Economic and Demographic Interactions in Pre-Industrial England,” European Review of Economic History 11 [1]: 99–121).
24. Using per capita gross domestic product (GDP) estimates for England, Alessandro Nuvolari and Mattia Ricci find that the period 1250–1580 was a Malthusian phase with no positive growth. During the period 1580–1780, however, Ma
lthusian constraints appear to have relaxed, leading to a positive growth rate. (Nuvolari and Ricci, 2013, “Economic Growth in England, 1250–1850: Some New Estimates Using a Demand Side Approach,” Rivista di Storia Economica 29 [1]: 31–54.)
25. R. C. Allen, 2009, “How Prosperous Were the Romans? Evidence from Diocletian’s Price Edict (AD 301),” in Quantifying the Roman Economic: Methods and Problems, ed. Alan Bowman and Andrew Wilson (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 327–45.
26. J. Bolt and J. L. Van Zanden, 2014, “The Maddison Project: Collaborative Research on Historical National Accounts,” Economic History Review 67 (3): 627–51.
27. A notable exception to stagnant growth outside the North Sea area are the per capita GDP estimates for northern Italy: per capita GDP there is suggested to have nearly doubled in the period 1–1300. However, there are good reasons to believe that these estimates are overstated, as has been suggested by several scholars (Bolt and Van Zanden, 2014, “The Maddison Project”; W. Scheidel, and S. J. Friesen, 2009, “The Size of the Economy and the Distribution of Income in the Roman Empire,” Journal of Roman Studies 99 (March): 61–91). In the period 1300–1800, per capita GDP in northern Italy is estimated to have declined.
28. A. Maddison, 2005, Growth and Interaction in the World Economy: The Roots of Modernity (Washington: AEI Press), 21.
29. See J. De Vries, 2008, The Industrious Revolution: Consumer Behavior and the Household Economy, 1650 to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
30. See S. D. Chapman, 1967, The Early Factory Masters: The Transition to the Factory System in the Midlands Textile Industry (Exeter, UK: David and Charles).
31. F. F. Mendels, 1972, “Proto-industrialization: The First Phase of the Industrialization Process,” Journal of Economic History 32 (1): 241–61.
32. P. H. Lindert and J. G. Williamson, 1982, “Revising England’s Social Tables 1688–1812,” Explorations in Economic History 19 (4): 385–408.
33. A. Maddison, 2002, The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective (Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development).
34. Based on data from the 1086 Domesday Book and the numbers published by Gregory King in 1688, Graeme Snooks has estimated that the British economy grew at an annual rate of 0.29 percent in per capita terms (1994, “New Perspectives on the Industrial Revolution,” in Was the Industrial Revolution Necessary?, ed. G. D. Snooks [London: Routledge], 1–26).
35. D. Defoe, [1724] 1971, A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain (London: Penguin), 432.
36. A. Smith, [1776] 1976, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 365–66.
37. As noted above, a larger share of this wealth was appropriated by a fraction of the population. But although everyone didn’t gain equally from growth, most workers lived well above subsistence levels. Based on King’s 1688 social table of Britain, Allen estimates that the poorest group—consisting of cottagers, paupers, and vagrants—earned just about enough to buy a bare-bones subsistence basket. This group was probably no better off than hunter-gatherers several millennia before, but they accounted for less than a fifth of Britain’s population. Other groups were substantially better off: Manufacturing workers, agricultural laborers, building craftsmen, miners, soldiers, sailors, and domestic servants (who made up 35 percent of the population) earned almost three times a subsistence income. And the largest category (consisting of shopkeepers, manufacturers, and farmers) earned as much as five times a subsistence income, while the wealthiest (including the landed classes and the bourgeoisie) could afford about twenty subsistence baskets (R. C. Allen, 2009a, The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press], table 2.5).
38. Defoe, [1724] 1971, A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain, 338.
39. On downward social mobility, see G. Clark and G. Hamilton, 2006, “Survival of the Richest: The Malthusian Mechanism in Pre-Industrial England,” Journal of Economic History 66 (3): 707–36.
40. Smith, [1776] 1976, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 432.
41. M. Doepke and F. Zilibotti, 2008, “Occupational Choice and the Spirit of Capitalism, Quarterly Journal of Economics 123 (2): 747–93.
42. D. N. McCloskey, 2010, The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
43. Marx and Engels, [1848] 1967, The Communist Manifesto, 35.
44. F. Crouzet, 1985, The First Industrialists: The Problems of Origins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
45. Defoe, [1724] 1971, A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain.
46. Crouzet, 1985, The First Industrialists, 4.
Chapter 3
1. On Schumpeterian versus Smithian growth in the preindustrial world, see J. Mokyr, 1992a, The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress (New York: Oxford University Press).
2. J. A. Schumpeter, 1939, Business Cycles (New York: McGraw-Hill), 1:161–74.
3. T. Malthus, [1798] 2013, An Essay on the Principle of Population, Digireads. com, 279, Kindle.
4. H. J. Habakkuk, 1962, American and British Technology in the Nineteenth Century: The Search for Labour Saving Inventions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 22.
5. S. Lilley, 1966, Men, Machines and History: The Story of Tools and Machines in Relation to Social Progress (Paris: International Publishers).
6. In Czech, robota means forced labor of the kind that serfs had to perform on their master’s lands and is derived from rab, meaning slave.
7. A. Young, 1772, Political Essays Concerning the Present State of the British Empire (London: printed for W. Strahan and T. Cadell).
8. On cheap labor and mechanization, see R. Hornbeck and S. Naidu, 2014, “When the Levee Breaks: Black Migration and Economic Development in the American South,” American Economic Review 104 (3): 963–90.
9. R. C. Allen, 2009a, The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
10. Robert Allen follows in the footsteps of the economist Sir John Habakkuk, who argued that the scarcity of labor in antebellum America, together with its abundance of land, led to high wages that in turn produced efforts to substitute machines for workers (1962, American and British Technology in the Nineteenth Century).
11. Edward Anthony Wrigley has also argued that productivity soared during the Industrial Revolution because of the abundance of coal at the disposal of the British worker. He suggests that the switch from an organic economy to an energy-rich one was at the heart of the Industrial Revolution (2010, Energy and the English Industrial Revolution [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press]).
12. For revised wages of spinners, see J. Humphries and B. Schneider, forthcoming, “Spinning the Industrial Revolution,” Economic History Review. For evidence suggesting that real wages in England in the period 1650–1800 were lower than previously thought, see J. Z. Stephenson, 2018, “ ‘Real’ Wages? Contractors, Workers, and Pay in London Building Trades, 1650–1800,” Economic History Review 71 (1): 106–32.
13. Mokyr, 1992a, The Lever of Riches, 151.
14. J. Diamond, 1998, Guns, Germs and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years (New York: Random House), chapter 13.
15. For a detailed summaryof supply-side hurdles to innovation, see Mokyr, 1992a, The Lever of Riches, chapter 7.
16. J. Mokyr, 2011, The Enlightened Economy: Britain and the Industrial Revolution, 1700–1850 (London: Penguin), Kindle.
17. M. Weber, 1927, General Economic History (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books).
18. B. Russell, 1946, History of Western Philosophy and Its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances: From the Earliest Times to the Present Day (New York: Simon & Schuster), 110.
19. Mokyr, 1992a, The Lever of Riches, 196.
20. L. White, 1967, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis,” Science 155 (3767): 1
205.
21. Mokyr, 1992a, The Lever of Riches, 203.
22. Mokyr, 2011, The Enlightened Economy, introduction.
23. See, for example, D. C. North and B. R. Weingast, 1989, “Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth-Century England,” Journal of Economic History 49 (4): 803–32; D. C. North, 1991, “Institutions,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 5 (1): 97–112.
24. D. Acemoglu, S. Johnson, and J. Robinson, 2005, “The Rise of Europe: Atlantic Trade, Institutional Change, and Economic Growth,” American Economic Review 95 (3): 546–79.
25. On commercial partnerships and the prevention of royal monopolies see R. Davis, 1973, English Overseas Trade 1500–1700 (London: Macmillan), 41; R. Cameron, 1993, A Concise Economic History of the World from Paleolithic Times to the Present, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press), 127; Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson, 2005, “The Rise of Europe,” 568.
26. See, for example, W. C. Scoville, 1960, The Persecution of Huguenots and French Economic Development, 1680–1720 (Berkeley: University of California Press).
27. Of course, parliaments didn’t exist only in Britain and the Dutch Republic. Beginning in twelfth-century Spain, they gradually spread across Western Europe. Medieval parliaments were independent bodies that represented various social groups, including members of three estates (the nobility, the clergy, and, in some instances, the peasantry), and provided checks on the crown by granting taxes and taking an active role in the legislative process. However, after their initial rise and relative success during the late Middle Ages, monarchs often refused to convene their parliament and found various ways to limit their powers.
28. J. L. Van Zanden, E. Buringh, and M. Bosker, 2012, “The Rise and Decline of European Parliaments, 1188–1789,” Economic History Review 65 (3): 835–61.
29. Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson, 2005, “The Rise of Europe,” 546–79.
30. On the Bill of Rights, see G. W. Cox, 2012, “Was the Glorious Revolution a Constitutional Watershed?,” Journal of Economic History 72 (3): 567–600.
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