Robert Carson Allen The Economic Historian
Background
Robert Carson Allen
Reward He has been awarded the Ranki Prize of the Economic History Association
Robert Carson Allen is Professor of Economic History at New York University Abu Dhabi. His research interests are economic history, technological change and public policy and he has written extensively on English agricultural history. He has also studied international competition in the steel industry, the extinction of Bowhead Whales in the Eastern Arctic, and contemporary policies on education.
Books
1992: Enclosure and the Yeoman: The Agricultural Development of the South Midlands, 1450-1850
2003: Farm to Factory: A Re-interpretation of the Soviet Industrial Revolution
2007: Engels' Pause: A Pessimist`s Guide to the British Industrial Revolution, Economics Series Working Papers 315, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
2009: The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective
2011: Global economic history: a very short introduction
2017: The Industrial Revolution: a very short introduction
Review of a Book
Global Economic History: A Very Short Introduction
Contents
Chapter 2 The rise of the West
Chapter 3 The Industrial Revolution
Chapter 4 The ascent of the rich
Chapter 5 The great empires
Chapter 6 The Americas
Chapter 7 Africa
Chapter 8 The standard model and late industrialization
Chapter 9 Big Push industrialization
Introduction
The crux of this book is the development of economics and its various components. In particular, the author reconstructs the historical and geographical reasons which, the western countries, have led the current world economy. Why the economic growth did took off in Europe but not other continents? And why did their fate becomes different? This book tries to give answers to these and other questions. Robert C. Allen is a global distinguished professor of Economic History at the New York University of Abu Dhabi. His research areas focus on the economic history, economic development and technological change and he published many books and articles in different thematic areas. The book Global Economic History: A very shot Introduction,170 pages, published by OUP Oxford, 15 September 2011, and available in major online bookstores, is volume 282 of very short Introduction series from the Oxford University Press.
The main purpose of the author
The main purpose of the author is to expose the main causes for the unequal world that we are living today by using historical examples and by analyzing the factors that have influenced the economic growth. He tries to discuss briefly and give an answer for the global fundamental question “Why are some countries rich and others poor?” As a study period, he took the last 500 years and divides it in to 3 main periods. The first period was from 1500 to about 1800, the Mercantilist era, begins with voyage of Da Gama and Columbus and ends with the Industrial revolution. The second period is the 19th Century which mainly characterized by the Industrial Revolution. And the third period is the 20th Century, where invention of new technologies plays a great role in the production system. He also explains about Industrialization and de-industrialization as one of the major causes of the divergence in the world income.
Robert C. Allen explores the fundamental factors like geography, instituting, culture and “accidents of history” played a role on how the world becomes increasingly unequal. Based on these factors, he put technology change, globalization and economic policy as immediate causes of unequal development. As we can find clearly stated in the book, the major implication for economic development in success in global economy includes the growth in urbanization and rural manufacturing, growing cities and high-wage economy put great demand on agricultural for food and labor, growing in urban demand also led to energy revolution in both England and the Netherlands, and the high-wage economy generated a high level of literacy, numeracy and skill formation in general.
The author discuss also about the Industrial Revolution (roughly 1760 to 1850) which is considered as a turning point in the world history. He points out technological change as main reasons the Industrial Revolution. And he explains why the technological revolution happened in England rather than the Netherlands or France. As a reason he put Cultural and Political context of these countries. As an example he took the English constitution and France absolute monarchy system to show how favorable political system has an impact on the innovation. Since the taxation and security of property where different in the two countries, the English law was favorable for the Industrial Revolution. The other factor that explained by the author was the emerging scientific culture as a means for sustainable industrial revolution. The British inventors spent more time and money on doing research and development to invent machines that can produce cheaper by increasing the use of capital to save labor cost. As a result they invent steam power mechanization of cotton spinning. Since cotton was the first industry to be transformed by factory production, the process of mechanization of cotton spinning brought different innovators to invent machines which help to produce more and mark on the cotton industry.
Robert C. Allen also explains how Europe was able to catch up Britain by putting standard development strategy which was built by Napoleon’s industrial revolution. Building railways investment banks and the model iron Industry were among the factors for the raise of West Europe discussed by the author. The points that was discussed by the author was the important feature of the 19th Century was the development of entirely new industries automobile, petroleum, electricity and chemicals. Another feature of the new industry was that many were related to development in the natural sciences.
The author points out the economic history of the empires of East Europe and Asia, America and Africa. About the Empires of East Europe and Asia, he points out about how the Industrial Revolution in West drove their manufacturing out of market. He put his thoughts of technology globalization and state policy as factors drove economic success and failure in those countries. For the American economic history, the author begin his explanation by giving the different development route of North and South America run back to the colonial period and rooted in geography and demography. While he shows the four supportive policies of Industrialization of USA were, mass education, transportation improvement, national bank and tariff to protect the industry, he also states the American independence and the establishment of the government and adaptation of constitution has an impact to took off the economy in the antebellum period (1790-1860 before the civil war) increase the population and income per head. Caribbean economy was characterized by the sugar and other corps like coffee and export of the product to Europe. The economic progress of the Latin America courtiers like Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Peru and Andes mountains was discussed in detail.
Regarding the African Economic history, Allen, discusses by identifying the structures and the contingent events that have kept Africa poor for so long. To understand why Africa is poor today, he said that, we must understand why it was poor before 1500. Since the poverty of Africa was not new and goes beyond the period. One of the reasons was because most of the courtiers in Africa were not advanced agrarian civilization. The detrimental contribution of colonialism to the development of economy was the other issue discussed by the author. African colonialism created remarkable bad institutions. Colonial governments did not attempt to African population. Land and labor policies adopted by the colonials were less favorable to native interest.
The other points that Robert C. Allen explain on this book are about the two models that introduced for late Industrialization. One of them is the Standard Model which works for the USA and Westerns and later on Russia and Japan follow them. The other countries which use this model were Latin America and they undertake the strategy and dependency theory led to a comprehensive application of the standard model. The model in the above area generated a modest economic growth but not enough to close the gap with the west and it was replaced by the Big Push Industrialization. As of the authors explanation the only way large countries have been able to grow so fast was by constructing all the elements of advanced economy-steel mills, power plants, vehicle factories, cities and so on simultaneously and this is Big Push Industrialization. He puts Soviet Union as a classic example of the Big Push. The other countries which benefited from it were Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. By using the big push, China was another country discussed in this book and it is explained their modern economic history by dividing in two periods, planning (1950-78) and reforming period (1978 to present). This helps to country to be one among the middle-income countries.
My point of view
The author takes very important steps to show the history of economic growth in the world. The book tried to explain in a convincing manner the world’s economic growth which is different in one country or continent from the other. Though it is difficult to summarize the big subject of the economics, the small book contains different charts, list of illustrations and tables to give a clear idea of the topics discussed.
The importance of political and legal institutions is mostly debated. For those who think that the government’s impact is less in economic development of one country, it gives a clear idea on how good government, peace and order can flourish the economic activity. Taking the example of British, America and other developed courtiers, the government’s different policies and strategies including the mass education, we can see that it is possible to make significant change in the economic development.
The book emphasizes main points as factors for economic development-geography, natural resource, institutions and industrialization. Based on this, it is clear to understand how the underdeveloped countries can close the gap with the most developed countries by investing more on their dependable situation. In my opinion, thought it was clearly stated the development progress of developed countries, it did not show on why and how the collaboration of every country can make an impact for the common economic development of each county. In this globalized world, we cannot miss the point of growing together since the happening in one country or continent whether it is bad or good can affect the other.
In general, the ideas on this book flow clearly and the language is easy to understand for those who are not experts in Economics. Given the purpose of the very short introduction format, Robert C. Allen handles it surprisingly. In my point of view, the small pocket size book of the Global Economic History is most suitable for those who want to have a general idea of the world economy.
Summary: Global Economic History: A Very Short Introduction
⬤ Chapter 1 The great divergence
One of the biggest inequality in the world is the inequality between nations (some are really rich and others really poor), so the fundamental question is "Why some countries are rich and others are poor?" Economic historians find the causes in a dynamic process of historical change.
Differences in prosperity between countries in 1500 were small. The present division between rich and poor largely emerged since Vasco da Gama sailed to India and Columbus discovered the Americas. We can divide the last 500 years into three periods:
- 1500-1800: mercantilist era. It begun with the voyages of Columbus and da Gama, which led to an integrate economy, and ended with the Industrial Revolution. In this period the leading European countries sought to increase their trade. But economic development was not the objective.
- Catch-up: by the time Napoleon was defeated in Waterloo in 1815, Britain was established a lead in industry and was out-competing other countries. At this point, Western Europe and the USA made economic development a priority and tried to achieve with a set of four policies (unified national market, eliminating internal tariffs and building infrastructures and of course establishing a mass education to upgrade the labour force. These policies were successful in some countries, like Western Europe and North America, other countries were less lucky, like some Latin American countries.
- In the 20th century, the policies that had worked in Western Europe, especially in German and in the USA proved less effective in countries that had not yet developed. Most technology is invented in rich countries. Much of this new-technology is not cost-effective in low-wage countries, but it is what they need in order to catch up the West.
First of all, we have to learn “when” some countries became rich. Between 1500 and 1800, today’s rich countries forged a small lead that can be measured in terms of GDP. In 1820, Europe was already the richest continent. The most prosperous country was the Netherlands. The industrial revolution had been under way for two generations, Great Britain was the second richest economy. The rest of the world lagged behind, Africa was the poorest continent.
Between 1820 and the present, the income gaps have expanded with only a few exceptions. The countries that were richest in 1820 have grown the most. There are also some exceptions, East Asia is the most important. Japan was the greatest success of the 20th century, for it was indubitably a poor country in 1820. Equally dramatic has been the growth of the south Korea and Taiwan.
Industrialization and de-industrialization have been major causes of the divergence in world incomes. Production per person was lower in Asia than in the richer countries of Western Europe. By 1913 the world had been transformed. Not only had British output grown enormously, but manufacturing had declined in China and India due to the mechanized producers in the West. In the 19th century, Asia was transformed from the world’s manufacturing centre into classic underdeveloped countries specialized in the production and export of agricultural commodities.
Key turning points:
- From 1750 to 1880, the British Industrial Revolution was the major event. It was British competition that destroyed traditional manufacturing in Asia.
- 1880 up to the second world war was marked by the industrialization of the USA and continental Europe including Germany.
- Since second world war, the USSR’s share of world manufacturing output rose until 1980’s and then crashed after the economic decline of Post-soviet countries.
Real wages
GDP is not an adequate measure of wellbeing because it leaves out many factors such as health, life expectancy and educational attainment. These problems can be finessed by calculating “real wages”, that is, the standard of living that can be bought with one’s earnings.
Focus on labourers. To measure their standard of living, their wages must be compared to the prices of consumer goods, and those prices must be averaged to calculate a consumer price index. “Bare-bones subsistence” -- least-cost way of staying alive. Quasi-vegetarian diet, boiled grain, legumes and butter. The non-food spending is restricted to scraps of cloth, a bit of fuel and the oddcandle. It was enough to support a family at bare-bones subsistence. By 18th century a great divergence had occurred in Europe: the standards living on the continent collapsed and labourers earned only enough to purchase the necessary.
Real wages have diverged as dramatically as GDP per head. In 1820, the London real wage was already four times subsistence. Bare-bone subsistence has further implication for social wellbeing and economic progress. People living on the bare-bones diet are short (not more than 167 cm). in this case also life expectation is cut and also the health in general declines. Furthermore, people living at subsistence are less well educated. Bare-bones subsistence is a poverty trap
⬤ Chapter 2 The rise of the West
Why has the world become unequal?
An essential role was played by: geography, institutions, culture and “accident of history”. Geography is important. Malaria holds back the tropics and Britain’s coal deposits supported the Industrial Revolution. One of the aims of technology is to reduce the burden of bad geography
Culture has been a popular explanation for economic success. Weber supported the idea that Protestantism made northern Europeans more rational and hard-working than anyone else (even if this theory was true in 1905, not today). Another cultural argument claims that farmers in the Third World are poor because of their methods and instruments. They are poor because they receive low prices for their crops and they don’t have the appropriate technology- not because they refuse to use it.
There of course aspects that affect economic performance. In particular, literacy and numeracy have been necessary conditions for economic success since the 17th century. Literacy and numeracy are spread by mass education, which became a universal strategy for economic development.
Economic success is the result of secure property rights, low taxes and minimal government. Arbitrary government is bad for growth because it leads to high taxes, corruption etc. Examples are the absolutist monarchies, which prohibited international trade, properties, or life itself.
Successful economic development was due to a replacement of absolutism with representative government.
- Netherlands revolt against Spanish rule and organized itself as a republic and the country grew rapidly.
- English economy suffered under James I and Charles I, but with the civil war they culminated with Glorious Revolution (1688) and in this way absolutism was checked and economy boomed.
The first globalization
The Industrial Revolution was the first phase of globalization, that began in the late 15th century with the voyages of Columbus and da Gama. The great diversion begins with the first globalization. Globalization required ships that could sail the high seas and not everyone had the possibility to have them.
But the most dramatic impact was in the Voyages of discovery.In 1498, Vasco da Gama reached India and filled his ship with pepper. It was the arrival of the English and Dutch East Indies companies that broke Portugal’s maritime monopoly and cut the European price by two-thirds.
Columbus, financed by King Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, reached the Americas and that changed the history of the world. These two voyages set off a scramble of empire, and Portugal and Spain were the early winners. In the battles of Diu, Portugal defeated venetian, Ottoman and Asian forces and established their hegemony in the Indian Ocean. They reached also Indonesia and then they accidentally discovered Brazil (1500). Spain’s empire was even richer, with the conquest of Aztec Empire (by Hernan Cortes), the Inca empire (by Francisco Pizarro) and later of Bolivia and Mexico and their large silver deposits.
It was not until the 17th century that the northern Europeans became important imperialists. Their favourite organization was an East Indies company, that combined imperialism with private enterprise. These companies were capitalized and established trading posts abroad. The English East India Company was charted in 1600 and its Dutch counterpart two years later.
The Dutch East Indies Company created a Dutch Empire at the expense of the Portuguese. They made Jakarta the capital of their Indonesian possession and then they also seized Brazil.
The English also created an empire in the 17th century and they defeated the Portuguese in a naval battle. By 1647, the East India Company had 23 establishments in India. The English state actively expanded its empire. The first step was made by Cromwell during the Commonwealth and continued after the Restoration. This mercantilist measure was intended to exclude the Dutch from trading with the English empire. After the Restoration of Charles II, the Navigation Acts were extended, also the Navy was expanded, and more wars were fought against the Dutch. Their economy grew rapidly by exporting tobacco, rice, wheat and meat to England and the Caribbean.
English and Dutch trade with their colonies drove their economy forward. Also, the occupational structure changed. The population of the main European countries can be divided into three groups: agricultural, urban and rural non-agricultural. By the eve of the Industrial Revolution there had been big changes. England was the most transformed country, they reached one million (population) in 1800. Most of these people were engaged in manufacturing industries, and their products were shipped across Europe and, sometimes, around the world. The Netherlands were even more urbanized than England and also had large export-oriented rural industries. The rest of Europe was much less transformed. Spain was particularly unlucky, because silver imports led to much greater inflation in Spain and, as result, Spanish agriculture and manufacturing became uncompetitive.
Success in the global economy had major implications for economic development including:
- The growth in urbanization and rural manufacturing increased the demand for labour. Living standards were high in London and Amsterdam.
- Growing cities and a high- wage economy put great demands on agriculture for food and labour. Result - agricultural revolution in both England and Netherlands.
- The high-wage economy generated a high level of literacy, numeracy and skill formation in general. Literacy rose everywhere in Europe, but the growth was greatest in north-western Europe. The rise of literacy was due to the high-wage commercial economy, which provided parents with the money to pay for schooling their children.
⬤ Chapter 3 The Industrial Revolution
The I.D was a turning point in the world history and inaugurated the era of sustained economic growth. The revolution was the result of all the transformations we discussed before. Britain was continuously extending the world’s technology frontier. Technology changes was in fact the motor of the I.R: there were famous inventions like steam engine, machines to spin and weave the cotton and process to refine iron. In the 19th century, engineers extended the 18th century inventions across the board and so the steam engine was applied to transportation and so on. But why did this Revolution happen in England rather than in the Netherlands, France or in China or India?
Cultural and political context.
The I.D took place in a particular political and cultural context that was favourable to innovation. English constitution was far to be democratic: much of the power remained with the Crown, in particular the power to make war and peace. The English constitution had many features that promoted economic growth.
The Industrial Revolution 1760-1850.
It was a turning point in world history, it inaugurated the era of sustained economic growth. The R was the result of the transformations of the early modern economy. In the century after 1760 the rate of economic growth achieved was very low, however, Britain was continuously extending the world’s technology frontier. Moreover, the great achievement of the I.R was that it led to continuous growth.
Technological change was the motor of the I.R (steam engine, machines to spin and weave cotton).In addition, there were a host of simpler machines that raised labour productivity in unglamorous industries, there was also a range of new English products like wed wood porcelain inspired by Asian manufactures.
Why was the revolutionary technology invented in England? Cultural and Political context:
The I.R took place in a particular political and cultural context that was favourable to innovation. The English constitution has been a model for European liberals and modern economist. It was far from democratic. The English constitution had many features that promoted economic growth, although they were not the one stressed by modern economist who emphasize restrictions on taxation and the security of property. While French monarchs claimed to be absolute and they could not increase taxes without consent and it was due to a crisis in public finances that precipitated the revolution 1789. The nobility in France were exempt from taxation, while in 1693 the English parliament imposed a land tax on peers as well as commoners. Most tax revenue was raised from excise duties on consumer goods, they were born by workers who were not represented in parliament.
Moreover, most of the England’s money was spent on the army and the navy. the navy was directed to expand Britain’s empire and promote the country’s commerce. Even the workers gained from this since imperialism was the basis of the high-wage economy. Growth was also promoted by parliament’s power to take people’s property against their wishes, not possible in France.
In addition to a favourable political system, the industrial revolution was sustained by the emerging scientific culture. The scientific revolution on the 17c led to discoveries about the natural world applied by inventors in the 18c. there were the view that the world is governed by laws that can be discovered by observation (newton’s model of the solar system).Popular culture was more directly transformed by social changes. The most powerful changes were urbanization and the growth of commerce. They spread the literacy and numeracy, in fact by 18c most sons received several years of primary education, girls too.
Explaining the industrial revolution: Why it was British?
The explanation lies in Britain’s unique structure of wages and prices. Britain high wage, cheap energy economy made it profitable for British firms to invent and use the breakthrough technologies of the I.R.
In the late 1500s, the wage rate relative to the price of capital services was similar in south-England, France and Austria. By the middle of 18c labour relative to capital was more expensive in England than on the continent.
In the early 19c labour was even cheaper relative to capital in India than it was in France or Austria.It was the same story with energy. Britain had the cheapest energy in the world.As a result, businesses in England found it profitable to use technology that saved on expensive labour by increasing the use of cheap energy and capital. British workers became more productive (secret of economic growth). Asia and Africa opposite result.
The Cotton Industry:
Eric Hobswam wrote: whoever says industrial revolution says cotton
Cotton was the first industry to be transformed by factory production. Britain’s expansion came at the expense of India, China and the middle east. When these countries began to re-industrialise, cotton was one of the first industries they turned to
17c China and India had the world’s largest cotton industries. Cotton was also produced in small centres across Asia and Africa. The various east indies companies began to ship cotton to Europe in the late 17c where they successfully competed against linen and wool, the principal European textiles. Cotton was so successful that France prohibited its import in 1686. In this market English cloth competed against Indian cloth, but this was possible only if machines were invented to reduce labour.
James Hargreaves’ spinning jenny developed in the mid 1760s, was the first commercially successful machine, followed closely by Richard Arkwright’s water frame, and became the basis of mechanical spinning for a century. The key is that the machines they invented increased the use of capital to save labour. Consequently, they were profitable to use where labour was expensive, and capital was cheap. That is why the I.R was British
1. The bales of raw cotton were broken open and the dirt and debris removed.
2. The cotton was carded, the strands of cotton were aligned into a roving by dragging the cotton between cards studded with pins.
3. The roving was spun into yarn
All of these stages were mechanized. Richard Arkwright’s greatest achievement was to design a mill, in which machines laid out in a logical sequence and which became the model for the aryl cotton mill. Spinning was the crux of the problem.
James Hargreaves’ spinning jenny invented in 1760s was the first commercially spinning machine. Crompton’s mule was the last great spinning machines. The jenny and the water frame made England competitive with Indian producers in coarse yarn. The mule made England the low-cost producers in fine yarn. All of them reduced the hours of labour needed to produce one pound of yarn. They increased the capital required per pound.
As a result, the cost saving from mechanical spinning was higher where labour was more expensive. For instance, in Britain 150 Arkwright mills were erected in the 1780s.Relative profitably was similar with the spinning jenny. There was no point in spending much time or money to invent mechanical spinning in France or India since it was no profitable to use it there.
The situation didn’t remain like this, that’s why the I.R spread to other countries. A long list of inventors improved the mule over the next half century, they economized on capital’s well as on labour. By the 1820s improved cotton machinery in low-wage economies such as Mexico and India. By the 1870s, factory cotton production began to shift into the third world.
The Steam Engine:
It was the most transformative technology of the I.R since it allowed mechanical power to be used in a wide range of industries as well as in railways and ocean ships. Steam power was a spin-off of the scientific revolution.
In 1675 the French man Denis Papin make a crude, proto steam engine. A practical one was completed by Thomas Newcomen in 1712 in Dudley.
The steam engine emphasizes the importance of economic incentives in inducing invention. The science of the engine was pan-European, but the ReD (research and development) was conducted in England because that was where it paid to use the steam engine. Its purpose was to drain mines, in addition, the early steam engines burned vast quantities of coal, so they were cost-effective only where energy was cheap (case of Britain).
In the 1840s engineers studied and modified the engine, reducing its energy requirements and smoothing its delivery of power. Coal consumption per horse-power hour of power was cut from 44 pounds in the Newcomen engines of the 1730s to one pound in the triple expansion marine engines of the late 19c.
This allowed the I.R to spread abroad and the whole world to industrialize.
Continuing Invention:
18th century: continuous stream of innovations. Cotton continued to be a focus effort, while the 18c inventions had turned spinning into a factory system.
Cartwright patented his first loom in 1785 and improved his version in 1792.By the 1820s the power loom was displacing hand looms in England, but they continued in use until the 1850s. The power loom greatly increased capital costs, while reducing labour costs, so its adoption was sensitive to factor prices as well as the relative efficiency of the 2 methods. Power loom was taken up more rapidly in the USA than it was in Britain. By the 1820s wages were already higher in the USA and the pattern of technological innovation reflected that difference. Cotton also lead the way in the application of steam power to factories. However, most factories were driven by water power until the 1840s. It was only then that the fuel consumption of steam engines had dropped sufficiently to make them a cheaper source of power. After that the use of steam power industry expanded continuously
Steam power also revolutionized transportation in the 19c, but they were all unsuccessful since they could not negotiate the unpaved roads. One solution was to put the engine on the rails. In the18c iron rails replaced wood, and the line were extended. In 1804 Richard Trevithick built the first locomotive for a railway, from then on, colliery railways became the testing ground for steam locomotives.The first general-purpose railway was the 35- mile Liverpool and Manchester line, opened in 1830. It was a great success and set off a frenzy of railway promotion in Britain. Steam power was also applied to water travel. The first working vessels were French and the first commercially successful ship was Robert Fulton’s Clermont, which plied the Hudson river from 1870. By the middle of the 19c, steam was deplaning sail in ocean transportation. Britain became the centre of world shipbuilding in view of its pre-eminence in iron and engineering. Brunel’s great western and his Great Britain in 1843 was the first ship to be built of run and to use a propeller instead of paddle wheels.
As the coal requirements of steam engines were reduced, ship could sail longer distances with the same amount of coal, and the distance for which steal could undercut sail lengthened. Steam power is an example of a general-purpose technology (GTP).GTP: is a technology that can be applied to a variety of uses. Other GTP include electricity and computers. Their contribution to economic growth takes place long after their invention. By the middle of the 19c, the potential of steam was finally being realized as it was applied widely to transportation and industry. Half of the growth of labour productivity in Britain in the mid-19c was due to steam. This long-run-pay-off is an important reason that economic growth continued through the century, another reason was the growing application of science to industry.
⬤ Chapter 4 The ascent of the rich
Between 1815 and 1870, I.D spread from Britain to the continent with remarkable success. West European countries not only catch up the leader, but they also joined Britain in forming a group of innovators. Also, North America joined the innovation club, even if its role was as “first among equals”. Institutionalists believe that the continental development was held back by archaic institutions. These in fact were swept away by the French Revolution, which was exported to most of Europe by the armies and by Napoleon. Everywhere they conquered, they also re-modelled Europe in their image (the “Code Napoleon”). Britain’s early start meant that British manufactories could out-compete those on the continent and also that the technology of the I.D was inappropriate for continental countries, where wages were lower and energy prices higher. In the 19th century, a package of development policies emerged that many countries followed
The standard development strategy, which built on Napoleon’s institutional revolution, had four imperatives:
- Create a large international market by abolishing internal tariffs and improving transportation
- Erect an external tariff to protect “infant industries”
- Create banks to stabilize the currency and provide business with capital
- Established mass education to speed the adoption and invention of technology.
This strategy helped continental Europe to catch up Britain. Germany is a good example: it was divided into hundreds of independent political units, but after the Congress of Vienna, the number was whittled down to 38. The same happened in Prussia where they also abolished internal traffics and created a common external tariff to keep out British manufacturers. The first German railway was built just five years after the Liverpool to Manchester railway. Both Germany and France opened banks, which financed the great expansion of German industry between 1880 and the IWW.
Between 1815 and 1870, all of the major industries of I.R were established on the continent on a profitable basis. Thanks to cost decline it became possible to make new-style mills profitable to erect. So that also France and Germany started spinning cotton. Moreover, a modern iron industry was established in the continent and charcoal was replaced by coke. Coke iron, however, was not cost-effective in the manufacture of rolled iron until after 1750.
Western Europe built railways, and Europe’s locomotive were as advanced as Britain’s. the same was true of steel. Before 1850, steel was too expensive. The problem consisted in the melt of pure pig iron, which required 1500°C. The first solution was a converter, and then was a regenerative furnace that could reach very high temperatures.
By 1870, production levels on the continent were still far behind those of Britain. This changed by the IWW. In fact, by 1913 the three continental countries had out-paced Britain.
The changes in manufacturing production had important political implications. Britain was the “workshop of the world”. The USA and Germany increased their production by increasing their exports.
The USA surpassed Britain, becoming the world’s technological leader. What is striking is the difference between the rich countries and the rest of the world.
An important feature of the late 19th century was the development of new industries- cars, petroleum, electricity…Automobiles, indeed, required a range of innovation covering engines, starting system, suspensions, electricity and so forth. In these years lot of physicist and chemists won many Nobel Prizes. We mention Fritz Haber, who discovered the process to convert atmospheric nitrogen to ammonia.
The Macro-Economic Character of Technological Progress:
Most R&D (Research and Development) has been carried out in today’s rich countries. New products and process that they pioneered were addressed to their needs and suited to their circumstances. In particular, high wages induced them to invent products that economized on labour by increasing the use of capital.
High wages > more capital-intensive production > higher wages.
A consequence is that there is a world “production function”, which is the mathematical relationship that indicates how much GDP a country can produce with its labour and capital. More capital per workers translates into more output per worker.
For some countries we can measure output per worker and capital per worker back to the I.R. With these data we can compare what happened “over time” to what happened “across space”. Considering USA from 1820 to 1990, we can see that the trajectory of USA’s development follows the same pattern as rich and poor countries. The USA, as befits the world’s technological leader, has usually got a bit more output from its capital and labour than other countries, while Germany has accumulated more capital per workers. The correspondence between growth over time and differences across space is a direct consequence of the fact that the technological possibilities in the world were created by the rich countries as they developed. The reason that poor countries are poor is because they use technology that was developed by rich countries in the past. One example is the manufacture of clothing: the key is the sewing machine.
But why don’t Peru, Zimbabwe, Malawi and India adopt the technology of the western countries and become rich? The answer is that it would not pay. It only pays to substitute that much capital for labour when wages are high relative to capital costs. When capital per workers is high it takes a lot more capital per workers to increase output per worker. Today’s poor countries missed the elevator and so they have low wages and high capital costs. The situation became even more difficult when the USA became the economic leader with the highest wage economy.
⬤ Chapter 5 The great empires
To the West of Europe were empire. Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople, and they extended to the middle East and North Africa. The Persian Empire lasted for thousands of years. India had emperors, Japan had emperors and China was the greatest empire of all. Europeans have been aware of the riches of Asia for millennia, and that is the reason why they tried to sail there.
Not everyone accepted that the East was prosperous:
- Adam Smith thought that the problem was the state prohibition on foreign trade and a suspect insecurity of private property.
- Malthus thought that the problem was the universal marriage that resulted in high fertility and so low incomes.
- Marx thought that it was a pre-capitalistic social structure that failed to sustain individual initiative.
Globalization and De-Industrialization:
Few of the great empires had a good 19th century. India became a British colony and Chinese Ottoman and Russian emperors were overthrown by 1920.The great empire started 19th century with the largest manufacturing industries and ended the century with these industries destroyed and without any new modern factory.
1. Technology
2. Globalization
3. State policy
I.R in the West drove Asian manufactories out of business because:
2) Steamships and railways made international competition more intense and the world economy became more and more integrated.
These developments were the results of comparative advantage- one of fundamental principles of economics. According to this theory, countries that trade with each other specialize in the production of commodities that they can produce efficiently. For example India, India was cut off from the rest of the world and the only way to increase its consumption of cotton cloth would be reducing employment in the farming and shifting the workers to spinning and weaving. If it became possible to trade internationally and the price of cloth relative to wheat in the world market was less than the ratio implied by domestic production techniques, then India would have found it advantageous to export wheat and import cloth.
Before Vasco da Gama, market connections between Europe and Asia were tenuous. Each continent was cut off from the rest of the world. All the new technologies (starting from global navigation to the Internet) reduced the costs of international transactions and brought countries into more intense competition. The result has been the underdevelopment of the third world.
Government policy was the third factor affecting economic performance. The USA and Western Europe met the challenge of cheap British imports. Colonies were not in a position to entertain such a strategy since their economies were subordinated.
Cotton Textiles:
We can see these themes in action in the history of cotton textile production in India and Britain. The productivity of cotton production in Britain rose during I.R as machinery was perfected. Increase in British manufacturing wasn’t matched by an equal increase in India. Comparative advantage implies that unbalanced productivity growth of the I.R should have furthered industrial development in England, while de-industrializing India. And that is what happened.
The shift of comparative advantage occurred in an age of falling transport costs, which intensified the ramifications. Transports costs declined, and the efficiency of ships improved. So that trade was dominated by the English and Dutch East Indies companies. The fourth Anglo-Dutch war was the final blow: the Dutch company was so weakened that its charter was allowed to expire in 1800.English company lost its trading monopoly in 1813.
The effect of unbalanced productivity growth and declining shipping costs shows up in the history of cotton prices in England and India. The conclusion was that India was a great potential market for British products if only competition were allowed.
The story was repeated with weaving. The markets were integrated, so that developments in one affected the other. The impact on India was large. The country shifted from being a major exporter to a major importer. The spinning industry was wholly destroyed. This was the de-industrialization big time. Although, every country has a comparative advantage in something. As India lost its advantage in manufacturing, it gained an advantage in agriculture, so that in the end cotton was much cheaper in India.
The story of Indian textiles was the story of much of the Third World in the 19th century. Even when nations were independent, technical change and falling transport costs turned them into modern underdevelopment countries.
Modern Industry in India:
Was India destined to remain a less developed country that exported primary products and imported manufactured? Did British domain help it or hurt it?India experienced some industrial development; the notable successes were the jute and cotton industries. Both investors financed the growth of jute mills in Bengal and by the 1st WW the industry was the largest in the world. India needed the standard development policies that helped Western Europe and the USA catch up to Britain.
⬤ Chapter 6 The Americas
The incorporation of the Americas into the global economy has had a lot of ramifications for the Old world and the New World. Native American population collapsed, indigenous were replaced with European and the Americas themselves exemplify the world split between a rich North and a poor South.
This difference between North and South run back to the colonial period and are rooted in geography and demography.
- Geography: South America contained most of the indigenous population and had the greatest wealth and it was also further from Europe. Geography is important because it affected the ability to trade with Europe. Obviously, North America was advantage: first, it was closer to Europe and they could produce and export much more products than South Americans. Furthermore, North America was fertile, and the interior of the continent could be easily reached thanks to the main rivers. On the other hand, South America’s activity was in Mexico and in the Andes, but rivers didn’t connect these regions, so that trade costs were high.
- Demography: the temperate climate of most of USA and much of South America, let European settle in a good way. Instead, in place such as Caribbean and Amazon depressed the growth of European population. The difference in population reflected geography. The arrival of Europeans was a catastrophe for the natives. Much of the decline was due to new illnesses for which natives had no immunity. [in Mexico population declined by over 90%]. The situation was very different in North America because there were few natives to begin with.
Colonial Economic of North America.
Settlement is the theme of the colonial history of the USA. Some settlers were motivated by the desire to create their own religion autocracy rather than submit to the hegemony of another creed. Instead, most settlers were motivated by economic gain, and even the Puritans expected to earn the same standards of living in Massachusetts that they could have in England.
Settlement and exporting were connected in British North America. Staple thesis: it contended that the growth of a region was determined by the growth of its exports to Europe. Sales provided the money to buy manufactured goods, which were imported from Britain, rather than produced in the colony, since British were large and realized economy of scale and so they could produce more efficiently than small colonial firms. It’s better to exchange their products for clothing than to set upon making of cloth.
Staple colonies had three characteristics:
2) Exports amounted to a large share of colonial income, with the remainder being support services.
3) The returns to settlers and their capital exceeded returns in Europe by a margin covering the costs and risks of moving to the colony.
A good example is Pennsylvania: the colony was founded in 1681 and was suited to the cultivation of wheat. Its exports competed with Irish and English products. As a result, prices in Philadelphia and London moved up and down together. [the seven years war and the American Revolution were the exceptions that proved the rule].
As the economy growth, it attracted more labour from Europe. England and its North America colonies were prosperous places, with wages four to five subsistence [in Florence instead, there were wages dropped to bare-bones subsistence]. The economy of England performed less satisfactorily in the early 18th century: wages in Massachusetts were on a par with London but lower than in Pennsylvania. Massachusetts holds an iconic place in American history, but its economy was precarious due to the lack in agricultural staple. New Englanders also created a large shipping industry that generated substantial foreign earnings and annoyed the English mercantilists.
Another important example is the Caribbean sugar, and the turning point is represented by the Portuguese occupation of Sao Tomé.
“SUGAR COLONIES” (another America) A Caribbean colony only grew sugar and coffee and they exported to Europe. Mortality on sugar plantations was very high and new slaves were so cheap that the slaves were replenished by purchase rather than natural increase. Many features of the Caribbean were replicated in the colonies of the future USA. The south had the valuable staples (rice and Tobacco) and in the end the south was richer than the northern colonies and attracted more settlers and became the destination of most slaves. South Carolina was first settled in 1670. In the next decades, they searched for a staple and eventually stumbled on rice. The social structure of coastal areas where rice was grown became increasingly like the Caribbean sugar island. The population became almost black. The white population (half of the total), retreated towards the interior and they were far from self-sufficient since they supplied the rice plantations with food.
The British colonies differed in terms of economic and social inequality. New England and the Middle Atlantic colonies were egalitarian. Some slaves were present, but slavery wasn’t important in agriculture.
Why was literacy high in the colonies? > economic advantage
Colonial Economy of Latin America:
Different regions > different development trajectories.
We need to distinguish:
- Caribbean and Brazil
- The Southern cone > Argentina, Chile, Uruguay.
- Mexico and the Andes.
We have already talked about Caribbean economy and a similar development occurred in Brazil. It was close enough to Europe to export sugar. The plantation was operated with native Americans slaves, the substituted with Africans. When Portugal was united with Spain, the Dutch war against Spain was extended to Portugal and they also occupied Brazil. They took the knowledge of sugar production and its cultivation was introduced in the Caribbean. So that the price of sugar in Amsterdam rose increasingly and Brazil could not compete at that price.
The southern cone of Latin America was like North America, it had a small native population that was killed off by disease etc. The Pampas could produce beef and wheat at least as well as Pennsylvania, but Argentina was too far from Europe and Chile was even more remote. The economic history of these countries began in the middle of 19th century, when ships were sufficiently improved.
So that the price of sugar in Amsterdam rose increasingly and Brazil could not compete at that price. The southern cone of Latin America was like North America, it had a small native population that was killed off by disease etc. The Pampas could produce beef and wheat at least as well as Pennsylvania, but Argentina was too far from Europe and Chile was even more remote. The economic history of these countries began in the middle of 19th century, when ships were sufficiently improved. The most important Spanish colonies were Mexico and the Andes. Their histories were determined by conquest. Spanish founded dense populations, great cities. The “conquistadores” overthrew the Aztec and the Incas, and they put themselves in their place. Native religions were suppressed, their books burnt, and Catholicism established as a new religion. Native wages were very low, and they weren’t enough for a family to survive. The abuses were so severe that the Spanish Crown prohibited aboriginal slavery and limited the power of the “conquistadores”. Forced labour was a strategy: the “mita”, which had been an Inca system of labour conscription, was revived to provide workers for the silver mines. Another important difference from North America was geography: indeed, the market on the west coast of America were better integrated with Asia than with Europe.
Mexico is more puzzling. The problem of Mexico was the high cost of moving goods between the sea and the interior. Isolation was reinforced by Spanish laws that prohibited trade with any country but Spain. The only product that Mexico and the Andes could export was silver. Silver had disadvantages as the principal export, first of all because it was inflationary. Moreover, silver did not generate many jobs. Third, much of the income generated by silver mining accrued to a small circle of rich owners and that brought to a high inequality in Latin America. Before 1650, Mexico exhibited a pattern that is common in many pre-industrialized economies: population and wages were inversely related. When the Spanish arrived, the population was very high and wages very low. As the natives collapsed, the wages rose. After 1650, the inverse relationship between relationship between population and the wage broke down. While the Mexican economy grew in the colonial period, the society was remarkably unequal.
Independence: USA
The USA declared independence from Britain in 1776 and its system of government was established. The economy took off in the antebellum period. The population increased a lot. One can interpret the antebellum economy as another example of the staple theory. The greatest staple of all was cotton. Its cultivation then spread across the US South and slave imports expanded until Congress prohibited them in 1808. The slave population grew by natural increase and the growth was validated by the rapid expansion of the cotton textile industry. Cotton was also responsible for the industrialization of the northeast since southern plantations and western farms were the markets for its products
1) Mass education
2) Transportation improvements to expand the market
3) National bank to stabilize the currency
4) Tariff to protect industry
These policies were applied by many countries after they were popularized by List. The constitution itself was a first step towards implementation since it abolished state tariffs and created legal basis for a national market. Before 1816, the USA had only a low tariff. Protectionism became a characteristically American policy as Northeast interests took charge of the country.US cotton manufacturing grew rapidly behind the tariff wall. USA industry was the 2nd only after British.
Cotton and wheat exports were not substantial enough to drive the antebellum economy and moreover, the labour market performed better than the staples theory predicts. With American independence and European warfare, the USA real wage grew continuously while British wages stagnated. The rise in GDP and wages indicates that the USA had developed the capacity to generate rising productivity through its own efforts. The abundance of free land on the frontier generated high real wages and these induced businesses to invent labor-saving technology that pushed up GDP per head and raised wages even further
So that by the 1820s, the real wage in America was higher than in Britain and America was taking the world lead in industrial technology. The success of the American economy depends on the application of inventive engineering across the full spectrum of industries. The successful response required a large pool of potential inventors.
Independence: Latin America
The Spanish Empire lasted 300 years as an alliance between the monarchy and the white colonial elites. Spain’s Bourbon kings tried to create a modern fiscal-military state, but they found resistance in the colonies. Resistance to Madrid was tempered by the racial and economic divisions in colonial society. Although, re-establishment of the empire proved impossible. In Mexico, Hidalgo led a revolt of natives against the ruling “peninsulares” (Spanish-born withes). Independence was achieved in 1821.
Independence > decades of economic stagnation and the result was the de-industrialization as in India. Real wages slumped from twice subsistence to bare-bone subsistence. The textile industries were also hurt by British imports. Most Mexican cloth was wool. Lucas Alaman introduced a tariff on cotton textile imports. However, a national market wasn’t created, and also mass education was ignored.
The results were mixed: on one hand, cotton spinning mills were established. On the other hand, there was not stimulation to an engineering industry since the machines were imported.
With the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz, a national market was created through an extensive programme of railway building and the abolition of taxes for goods crossing state boundaries.
Economic development was even in this case a mixed success: on one hand some impressive industrial growth was achieve. On the other hand, there was little local contribution to technological progress since foreign engineers simply installed foreign-designed factories.
Education and Invention:
Why did American economy grow so much more rapidly than the Mexican?US success is attributed to the high quality of institution and Mexico’s performance to the low quality of its. The US advantage ran from an English system of property rights and courts, legislative checks on the executive, democracy. Mexican disadvantages included the natives’ communal ownership of land, social and racial inequality and so on.
Economic policies had greater impact on the economy than these institutions. A national market was created by the Constitution, a national banking system was created, and mass education began. It wasn’t the absence of Enlightenment that held Mexico back. Literacy is an indicator. In Mexico also the white population was highly illiterate. Literacy was essential in the new technological world. In the USA started to establish more schools and universities. This happened in USA rather than in Mexico because the North American colonies wanted to achieve a European standard of living. Moreover, governments were keener to build schools in the USA than in Latin America. Mexico was run by a white elite whose interests were not served by schooling masses. Inequality was very high.
⬤ Chapter 7 Africa
African poverty in not new (sub-Saharan was poor in 1500 and it remains so),despite the income per head that has occurred.
The aim is to identify the contingent events and structures that have kept Africa poor.
Colonial ideology: the poverty of Africans is attributed to their laziness or lack of intelligence. Subtler versions=African are bounded by tradition or no commercial values. (none of these stands up to historical explanation).
Institutional explanations: the poorest country in Africa today are the ones that exported the most slaves, however the countries that resisted the slaves are still poor today.
Colonialism is another favourite explanation: its aim was to transfer wealth from Africans to Europeans.
Dependency theorists: say too much globalization. Africa concentration on exporting primary products has worked to the continent disadvantage in the long run.
Corruption, interventionism and authorities of Africa governments were considering another reason. If failed states were replaced by western run administrations, the economies would take off, it only if the foreigners got it right.
So, we can say that the answer about why Africa is still poor today turns on geography, democracy and the origin of agriculture, the social and economic structure of 1500 and then determined how the continent responded to globalization and imperialism.
Africa and the Great Divergence Debate:
Sub-Saharan Africa was poor in 1500 because it was not an advanced agrarian civilization. It was not able to have the IR.
The agrarian civilizations had man advantages that set them apart from Africa (elements necessary for economic growth, advancement of trade for the development of reading, invention and diffusion of modern technology. Africa’s historical trajectory was influenced by the nature of early agriculture and its relationship to demography.
Ethiopia was the only part of sub-Saharan Africa to develop an advanced agrarian civilization.
The farming system of west Africa was responsive to new opportunities as they rose. Between the 1st and 8th centuries CE, new crops were introduced from Asia (plantains, coco yams, etc). the repertoire was broadened again in the 16c with the introduction of maize from the Americas and this quickly became an “unchanging tradition” as an explanation of African poverty.
The domestication of crops resulted in a permanent farming village and a rise in the birth rate. In the Ethiopia, where tropical diseases were absent the population grew very fast. As a land became scarce the state and the aristocracy imposed taxes on it. Communal property easy privatized and landless labour emerged
The growth in population in west Africa was restrained because tropical disease (malaria, sleeping sickness) kept mortality high. West-Africa remained a land-abundant farming region, and shifting cultivation was the response to that circumstance. An example is the yako group. They lived in the rainforest of eastern Nigeria and subsisted on yams. After harvesting, the land was allowed to revert and new land was cleared for planting. Consequently there was no class of landless labours in the village, nor was there a demand for land to buy or rent since anyone could clear a plot without depriving anyone else. Cultivating yarms and harvesting oil and wine from palms did not require much work and provide enough food for subsistence.
The diet of a yako family was overwhelmingly vegetable, a small amount of bush meat, in addition the family consumed palm oil and half a gallon of palm wine per day. (these people were at bare-bones subsistence).
The low population density and high transportation costs limited the possibilities for specialized manufactures supporting large markets. There was an iron industry, but total production was low, also cotton was grown, but as with iron, production was at a low level.
Instead of buying manufactures, people made their own implements and bark clothing, consequently the range of available consumer goods was limited, and people grow food only for their needs, nothing more.
There were two styles of politics: The band or tribe, a confederation of the cultivators in an area. They organize the allocation of the land and resolve disputes and the men constituted a militia defended the territory. Leaders were like chiefs. The political system was relatively egalitarian.
Shifting cultivation gave rise to hierarchal social organization (large amount of leisure enjoyed by cultivators). If they were compelled to work more, they would grow food beyond their subsistence requirements and that surplus could support complete idleness. The attraction of idleness and power made slavery compelling, but an empty landed presented slave with opportunity to run away. So, African chiefs eliminated this option by slave-raiding in other regions, so actives did not the local language or how to survive there.
Slavery was common in Africa before the Europeans arrived.
The Africans state were different from states in advanced agricultural economies. Agrarian states could support themselves through taxing land or renting out state property, but this was not possible in Africa since land was so abundant as to be worthless. As a result, African states lacked the legal and cultural institutions that advanced agricultural societies used to organize private property. The exception that prove the rules were the west African empires where farmland was communally owned and slavery widespread. Islam was adopted in these empires and contributed writing and property law to solve their administrative problems.
THE SLAVE TRADE: The arrival of Europeans led to profound changes in societies practising shifting cultivation, for the Europeans introduced a far broader range of goods than the natives possessed. It never took long for aboriginals or Africans to realize that cotton was better than bark or that guns were more deadly than spears.
To buy European kettles, axes and cloth, the natives sell their staple in return, increasing their working year to produce it for export. West Africa exported gold to the Mediterranean and Arab worlds, but in 16c a more important export emerged: slaves.
The sugar economy of the Americas generated a great demand for labour that could be satisfied most cheaply by buying workers. The captives were marched to the coast where they were sold to European ships. The African kings used the proceeds to buy firearms, textiles and alcohol.
Between 1500 and 1850 million slaves were exported to the new world or in Asia.
Legitimate Commerce:
In the 18c enlightened and religious opinion turned against slavery and the trade was abolished in the brutish empire in 1807. Slaves were replaced with the so-called legitimate commerce.
The first new product was palm oil.
Francis Swanky (English magistrate) told to a British parliamentary committee how the new export trades increased the work effort of Africans by providing them with the opportunity to purchase consumer goods: cotton cloth amounted to over half of Britain’s export to west Africa and also firearms.
Nigeria was the largest exporter, but production spread throughout west Africa.
The commercial possibilities were enlarged in the middle of the 19c, when it was discovered that palm oil could be raised on plantations. Their biggest purchase were cloth and clothing but they also bought cutlery, utensils cosmetics etc. since the reason Africans produced palm oil was to buy Europeans goods, their incentive depends on how much cloth they could get for each can of oil they sold.
Graph from 1817 to the present about the price of palm l relative to cotton cloth at Est African ports: in the case of palm oil there was a sharp rise in the price of oil relative to cloth from 1818 to the middle of 19c, so Africans could get more cloth for their oil and that induced them to increase production. Also, British imports rose.
Cocoa was another great success: the bean was indigenous and introduced into Africa in the 19c.
In Britain the price of cocoa doubled with respect to the price of cotton cloth between 1840-1880 and that increase prompted Africans to experiment with its production. This posed a challenge to communal property systems, which let any tribal member occupy empty land.
As a consequence, aircons modified their system of property to facilitate it’s growing:
- First solution was to separate ownership of the trees from ownership of the land
- A more radical solution was affected by the kobo. Groups of kobo purchased land from other tribes and divided it among themselves in individual tenure. Once they had developed their plots they repeated the process moving westward. Migration and homestanding required a high level of investment, financed with savings from cocoa.
Colonialism:
European colonialism began with the Portuguese in the 15-16c. the other leading European powers established forts on the coast of West Africa to facilitate slave trading and the Dutch on the cape of good hope in 1652. European colonialism became more earnest in the 19c.
Colonies were acquired for economic, as well as strategic reasons. Their aim was to supply tropical products to the imperial power and be a market for its manufactures and providing places for its citizens to settle and investments for its bourgeoisie. Empires were regarded as civilizing mission that would spread Christianity and raise native culture to the standard of Europe.
Colonialism proved more detrimental to economic development in Africa. African colonialism created bad institutions. The early African colonies were organized through “direct rule” in which the colonial government applied metropolitan law throughout its territory to settlers and natives.
By the late 19c direct rule was replaced by indirect rule. The colonial state applied metropolitan law to settlers and cities, moreover there were chiefs to control the natives in the countryside.
Custom was redefined to suit colonial purposes. “barbaric customs” like slavery were eliminated although it continued in practice while chief’s right to demand unpaid labour were retained. In that way forced labour became a normal feature of colonial life. Chiefs were given more authority than rulers had before colonialism, the chiefs became the foremen of empire, laying taxes, compelling labour and using their powers to amass personal fortunes.
Colonial governments adopted only one element of the standard 19c development model = TRANSPORTATION IMPROVEMENTS. By the ww1 Kilometres of railway were opened in sub-Saharan Africa, financed by private investment and were intended to facilitate exporting primary products by linking the interior to ports. Tariffs were kept at low level for revenue purposes only.
The colonial economy was integrated into the world market. As ocean freight rates declined and overland transport cost fell, the prices of European manufactures declined in Africa and the prices of primary products increased. The production and export of products like palm oil and nuts shot up, while the production of cotton textile declined.
Arica became specialized in the production of primary products.
Colonial governments didn’t attempt to educate the African population. Literacy rates remained very low until after independence. Colonial governments also made no effort to establish local banks to finance investment. Some colonies did promote foreign investment, but t was at the expense of Africans.
There were differences between colonies:
- The Belgian, the Germany and French colonies in west Africa adopted land and labour policies that were less favourable to native interests. Land was expropriated by colonial governments and given to European investors. Africans were conscripted to work on plantations and build railways.
- At the opposite pole there were the settler’s colonies
The cape town colony had Dutch German settlers when it was taken over by the British in 1806. The European population grew following the discovers of diamonds and gold.
After the 1835 the bores advanced out of the cape colony into the Transvaal seining quantities of land from the Africans. The bores established the Orange Free State and the south African republic, which were incorporated to south Africa after they were conquered by the British in the war of 1899-1902. The British were no more sympathetic to African land rights.
In 1913 the natives land act made illegal for the Africans to buy or lease land outside of the native reserves.
In Zimbabwe when the Fast Track Land Reform Programme started white farmers owned million hectares of the country’s best land, while African families million hectares of poorer-quality communal land.
The law of real property is a system that protects privilege rather than a system that encourages every zone to advance their interests by making mutually advantageous trades. Dispossessing the natives from the land was a policy to secure their labour as well as sass to acquire their land.
Contemporary Poverty in Historical Perspective:
In the 19c, west Africa embarked on a trajectory that had much in common with the colonies of north America. The economy was export-oriented, the Africans pushed back the rainforest in response to high prices in global markets and income was ploughed back into businesses. However, all this progress failed to spark off modern economic growth.
The immediate explanation in contained in figures 17-18 (page 107): they show that the real prices of palm oil and cocoa have trended downwards since the early 20c. both prices fell during the ww1and during the ww2 and 1930s . World market prices trended erratically upwards after the ww2and hit peaks higher than those of the 1890s. in the principal the increases in income occurred to the state rather than the farmers, because the growers were forced to sell third cocoa to a state-owned marketing board that resold the product internationally.
Ostensibly, the marketing board protected the growers from fluctuations in the world market by paying steady prices, but in reality, the boards creamed off the rising surplus from international sales. Keeping prices low, the marketing boards reduced the incentive to expand production, as well as keeping the rural population poor.
FIGURE19: Shows the combined real earnings per day of a yakow family harvesting both palm oil and kernels. Their efficiency did not change over the period. The earnings from palm oil followed the same rollercoaster as its price.
Since 1980 the real incomes of palm producers have been a slow as they ever were in the 1930s. cocoa producers have seen a similar long run drop, but they missed the rising incomes of the 1960s -1970s since the cocoa marketing world did not pass the high world market prices on to the growers.
The situation is the same with all Africa’s agricultural exports. The reason that Africa is so poor is because the continent´s agriculture generates a ww1 standard of living.
There are 2 reasons why African agriculture does not do better:
- The fall in the price of farm exports= there are 3 reasons for this:
- The invention and cheapening of substitute products, the advent of petroleum industry, which resulted better and less expensive than palm oil, paraffin another petroleum product and eclectic lights.
- Competition with Asian producers= plants grew better in Asia than Africa. Since the ww2 Malaysian and Indonesian exports have dominated world markets and forced down the prices received by Africans
- Expansion of production in Africa itself: cultivation of cocoa expanded westward. The work force was drawn from impoverished regions across west Africa. Output was increased, and prices were fallen, so African poverty is vicious circle in which low wages keep down export prices and low prices keep down wages.
- Productivity is low and stagnant. In Africa there has been little research. Mechanisation is another source of productivity growth. Progress has been lethargic in the village sector. Simple machines reduce the need for labour but at the cost of more capital, so these machines are not profitable on small farms in west Africa due to the low wage rate. This labour market imbalance reflects developments of the last 50 years. One has been the growth in population, but the experience of the tropical regions suggest that the immediate cause was a fall in mortality rates.
- The failure of Africa to industrialize
There are 3 economic explanation for the lack of industry:
North America exported wheat to Europe since wheat production is land-intensive and the use had abundant land relative to its population. Africa has a lower population, so its comparative advantage lies in commodities that use its land and resources, they export primary products. In the use the counterpart to land abundance was high wages which would have made manufacturing uncompetitive with imports. The situation is different in Africa, because wages are low and manufacturing firms do not find profitable to locate there. The reason is, that cost would be high since production would be inefficient.
One reason for low productivity might be uneducated works.
Another reason for low productivity is the absence of other complementary firms. In rich countries, production takes place in urban networks where firm support each other by providing specialized products and services. These external economies of scale raise productivity and allow firms to pay high wages while remaining competitive. In Africa this can never happen since no firm finds it profitable to set up business in the absence of network.
Final argument is technological: wages in Africa are too law to make it profitable to use the highly capital-intensive technology of modern industry.
The most popular explanations for African poverty are institutional rather than economic. One aspect of bad institutions is endemic warfare. Poverty itself is an abuse of warfare. Low wages causing war, which in turn retrains the economy, leading to low wages.
In addition, there is the problem of colonial indirect rule. Another aspect of bad institutions´ is the corruption and undemocratic character of many states. Newly independent African states inherited constitutions hat include racial distinctions and embedded the tribal and administrative structures of indirect rule. These states have been successful in eliminating tribalism. In most countries there are separate systems of administration for urban and rural areas:
The former has modern system of law and the latter are divided in tribes.
Much of rural Africa is governed by a layer of non-elected corrupt potentates who can extort income and labour services from the citizenry and extract rents from the national administration.
The ideology of the 960s saw development as a process in which the urban economy grew at the expense of the rural. The colonial state had used the system of indirect rule to govern the country side for the benefit of the colonial power. the leader of independent states benefits the city at the expense of the countryside. In addition, farmers were forced to sell crops to government marketing boards, so that food could be cheap to urban workers and export crops could be taxed by paying the peasants low prices for products that were sold in international markets at high prices. These efforts brought little industrialization but increased corruption and authoritarianism.
Radical and Marxist Leninist allowed a different path but with similar outcomes
⬤ Chapter 8 The standard model and late industrialization
By 1850, Europe and North America had pulled ahead of the rest of the world. The new problem was: how could poor countries catch up the richest?
Colonies could do little, their actions were limited by imperial power. Independents states instead, could apply the standard model that had worked for the USA and Western Europe power.
Imperial Russia:
Russia was the most backward part in Europe. Peter the Great tried to turn it into a modern power. He built a new port and many factories. The post-emancipation government adopted the standard development model with some medication:
- A national market was created through a vast program of railway construction.
- Tariffs were used to build up industry and Russia developed an important engineering industry. The state promoted also light industry with high tariffs on cotton textiles and moderate tariffs on row cotton.
- The biggest innovation was in economic policy: private banks were too weak, so Russia relied on foreign capital. Railways were financed by selling securities abroad. Direct investments became the principal means of bringing advanced technology to the country.
- Education was expanded and by IWW almost half of adult population was literate.
The roots of Japan’s success lie in Tokugawa period (I period). Society was divided into castes (samurai, peasants, artisans and merchants) and it was ruled by lords (daimyo). Restrictions were imposed on international trade and contacts and inbound ships were only allowed from China, Korea and Netherlands. Since wages were low, the Japanese invented technology that increased the employment of labour in order to raise the productivity. Labour was deployed constructing irrigation system. Productivity processes was also improved. Domains tried to attract industries and support researchto raise their productivity. Tokugawa development produced uneven prosperity, but the wages of labourers stayed at bare-bones subsistence. Nonetheless, lot of people lived in cities, which were the largest in the world. Life expectancy increased, and more than a half of adult men were literate.
The Meiji Restoration:
In 1830, the British attacked China. Without a modern navy, Japan felt it had to agree and signed treaties with the USA, Britain, France and Russia. In 1867, the Emperor Meiji ascended the throne. The slogan of the modernizers was “rich countries, strong army”. All the feudal domains were surrendered by the Emperor. The four orders of society were abolished, so anyone could take any job. A written constitutional monarch on the Prussian model was adopted. The state also abolished traditional Japanese time and replaced it with the Western 24-hour clock. Modern transportation required modern time.
Meiji Economic Development:
1. The first was the creation of a national market
2. The second was universal education. Thousands of Japanese were sent abroad to study, as a result education progressed much earlier in Japan than in other countries. Mass education was an important reason for Japan’s success in adopting modern technology.
The other components of the development model were harder to implement: the Tokugawa Japan had nothing like modern banks and all the system was chaotic. It was impossible to use tariffs to promote industrial development, moreover the state intervened directly in the economy through “target industrial policy”. Foreign technicians guided the project, but then a school to train Japanese engineers was created. Japanese business would not introduce modern technology at the required pace, so the state had to be the entrepreneur: state-owned mined and factories were established, but most were commercial failures. Japanese business solved the problem importing technology by re-engineering it to make it appropriate for Japanese conditions. By the late 19th century wages were much higher in the West than they were in Japan, that because this configuration was inappropriate for Japan and resulted in high costs. An example is the silk-reeling: the machines were made of wood rather than in metal and the power came from men turning cranks rather than an engine. It was the same story with cotton: the “garabo” could be produced cheaply by local carpenters and produced yarn similar to that produced by hands wheels. By the 20th century Japan was the world’s low-cost spinner of cotton and was out-competing the Indians and Chinese as well as the British. The Japanese experimented with US farm machinery in the 1870s, but it was unsuccessful because it used too much capital.
The Imperial Period, 1905-40:
While Japanese society was overhauled in the Meiji period change in economic structure was slow. Exports of these products paid for imported machinery and row materials. Industrial growth accelerated between 1905 and 1940: the metallurgical, engineering, and chemical industries were founded in this period. These advances coincided with the full implementation of the standard development model. The banking system had matured to the point that it could finance industrial development. Yawata Steel Works were established for strategic reasons. The IWW gave a boost to Japanese business since European imports were cut off. After the war, the military undertook research in conjunction with private companies, and promoted key industries like automobiles, trucks and aircrafts. One of Japan’s most famous products was the Mitsubishi Zero fighter. Rather than producing component for inventories that required capital to finance, Japanese business produced components only as they were needed. “Just in time” production is a technique that has proved to be so productive that it is now used in settings where capital is cheap as well as where capital is dear. Foreign investment was an unimportant channel of importing Western technology.
Japan’s application of standard development model was a mixed success: an urban society with advanced industries was created. Per capita GDP increased. These achievements were impressive, looking at the stagnation that gripped most of the third world. The slow growth of economy was reflected in weaknesses in the labour market.
Latin America:
Mexico, the Andes, Brazil, and Caribbean had been part of the world economy since the 16th century, but Southern America was too far from Europe for trade. After 1860, efficient steamships were created and made it profitable to export from there. Meat exports were added to the list in 1877 with the first refrigerated ship. Export boomed and by 1900, the southern cone was one of the richest regions on the world.
Many Latin countries were too small to become industrial nations and continued to export primary products and import manufactures.
First 90’000 km of railway were laid in Argentina, Mexico, Brazil and Chile. Then, tariffs protected industries like textiles and iron. Russian model was followed with investments financed abroad. A notable lapse was the failure to provide universal education. Argentina was the great exception, and as a result it led the continent.
The low priced of the continent’s agriculture exports lent weight to arguments for industrial development. This was turned into a doctrine: the so called “dependency theory”, which contended that the prices of the primary products exported by Latin America were falling with respect to the prices of the manufactured imports and recommended state promotion of industry to counter the trend. The history of palm oil and cocoa are in accord to this theory since their priced have fallen with respect to the price of cotton cloth since the mid-19th century. Dependency theory led to a comprehensive application of the standard model. Education was finally made universal. Development banks were created, and foreign investments became the vehicle for financing industry and introducing advanced technology. Per capita income more than doubled. But foreign debt grew as well, and Mexico defaulted in 1982 and Latina America went into recession.
The differences in wages between rich and poor countries had grown and a new problem appeared: the new technology involved not only high capital to labour ratios but also large plant sizes. Automobiles are an important example: most Latin American countries promoted their production, but market were too small for efficient operation. The MES (minimum efficient size) for a vehicle assembly plants were 200.000 autos per year. Only seven companies produced at least one million autos per year and had engine, transmission and assembly plants of MES. Latin American car markets were smaller, and industries was far too small to realize the economies of large-scale production. The upshot was that the cost of producing an automobile in Argentina was 2.5 times the cost in the USA.
The End of the Standard Model:
In Tsarist Russia, Japan, and Latin America, the Standard model generated modest economic growth, but it was not enough. They could not use the standard model and the result was the slow growth of labour. Tsarist Russia and Latin America suffered from high inequality and political instability. These problems have worsened with time as the scale of efficient production has increased and capital to labour rations have become even greater in rich countries. The standard model had reached the end of its useful life.
⬤ Chapter 9 Big Push industrialization
The West pulled further ahead, but some countries bucked the trend and caught up > Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and the Soviet Union. In these countries, growth was very rapid, and the gap was closed in half a century. The only way to grow so fast is by constructing all the element of an advanced economy: steel mills, power plants, vehicle factories, cities and so on. Everything at the same time, this is the BIG PUSH industrialization. It raises problems since everything is built ahead of supply and demand. Every investment depends on faith that the complementary investments will materialize.
Soviet Economic Development:
The Soviet Union is the classic example of Big Push. The 1917 revolution was followed by 4 years of civil war, won by Bolsheviks, who conceded ownership of the land and its equal division among the farming population. By 1928, the New Economic Policy had revived the economy.
The USSR faced the same problems as other poor countries: most of population lived in the countryside and was engaged in handicraft production and small-scale agriculture. The country needed to build a modern, urban economy and this required massive investments in modern technology. FIVE YEAR PLANE became its symbol. Since Soviet businesses were state-owned they could be directed with instruction from the top.
The Soviet Big Push began with the first five-year plan in 1928, this grow strategy rested on four legs:
- The first was channeling investment into heavy industry in machinery production. All.
- The second was the use of de call demanding output targets to direct business operation. Bank credit was liberally given to business. The Hard-budget constraints was replaced by soft budget constraints.
- Agriculture was collectivized. Politically, this was the most controversial policy, since peasants preferred small family farms and periodic redistribution of land by the village to ensure equality.
- Mass education: schooling was made universal and compulsory.
By 1940 (with German invasion), thousands of factories, dams, power plants had been built. Pig iron production had increased twice as much as Britain produced. The investment rat rose from 8%to 19%. The production of consumer products also increased but by a smaller amount. Partly, it reflected priorities, partly it was due to the disastrous collectivization of agriculture. The IIWW was a huge blow to the USSR, 15 % of the soviet citizens lost their lives, and housing and factories were destroyed. The capital was restored by 1950 and the economic growth resumed. And then it all went wrong. The growth rate gradually declined, and when President Gorbachev called for restructuration it was too late.
What went right? Why did GDP per head grow so rapidly from 1928 to 1970?
GDP grew rapidly since Soviet institutions were effective in building large scale, modern factories. They increased the capacity to build structures and equipment, and soft budget created jobs got people who would otherwise have been unemployed. Even the collectivization of agriculture contributed by accelerating the migration of the people to the cities. The second reason why GDP per head grew rapidly was because population grew slow, that’s due to excess of mortality from collectivization and IIWW.
What went wrong? Why did growth slow in the 1970s and 1980s?
The answer included the end of the surplus labor economy, the investments on Siberian economy, the arms race with the USA, the increased difficulty of planning once technological catch-up was completed and the task was to design the future.
Japan:
The aims of Japanese policy before IIWW were summarized in the slogan “rich country, strong army”. Japan needed a Big Push to close the income gap with the West and the project was remarkably successful: by 1990, West European living standards had been achieved. Japan accomplished this advance by reversing the technology policy that it pursued in the Meiji and Imperial periods. The capital stock grew so rapidly that a high-wage economy was created within a generation.
After IIWW industrialization required a new planning MITI: Ministry of International Trade and Industry. MITI concerned itself with two kinds of problems: one related to the scale of production. Steel wasone of Japanese’s successes. A key feature of steel production is that costs are minimized with large-scale. Japanese’s steel was at least 50% more expensive than US or European’s. MITI’s objective was to restructure Japan’s industry so that all steel was produced in mills of efficient size. MITI’s power came from its control of the banking system and its authority to allocate foreign exchange. Japan was the world’s low-cost steel producer due its commitment to modern capital-intensive technology. Who was going to buy all that steel? Shipbuilding, automobiles, machinery, and construction were major domestic purchasers. Japanese firms had more capital per worker than their US counterparts, and the Japanese capital was more effective thanks to “just in time” delivery.
A third planning problem was to ensure an expansion of consumer demand in Japan to purchase an expansion of consumer demand in Japan to purchase these consumer durables. Rising incomes from the expansion of employment led to a revolution in lifestyle as Japanese bought refrigerators and automobiles made with large supply of steel. A final planning problem is related to international market. Japanese steel industry was exporting almost one-third of its output, mainly in USA. The US production of steel and autos collapsed under the impact of Japanese competition. So that USA elected to cut tariffs but only if other countries did likewise. Japan grew rapidly by closing three gaps with the West- in capital per workers, education per worker, and productivity. This was done by 1990, and Japan was then like any other advanced country. The post-1990 growth slowdown was inevitable.
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South Korea and Taiwan have followed Japan in catching up to the West. Both ere Japan colonies. Modern educational systems were created, but the emphasis was on teaching Japanese rather than Korean or Taiwanese. Infrastructures and agricultural development aimed to make the colonies food suppliers for Japan.
Following the ww2, the Japanese were expelled, and their land holding redistributed among the rural population, creating egalitarian peasant societies.
In the 1950sboth countries pursued industrialization. South Korea followed the Japanese big push model. Advanced technology was imported and mastered by Korean firms, since foreign firms were excluded from the country. The state restricted imports to protect the Korean manufactures. High quality and performance were advanced by requiring these firms to export large fractions of their production.
Korea established the heavy industries. When the communist seized power in 1949, GDP per capita was at rock bottom. By 2006 China was among the middle-income countries.
The unusual answer is “free market reform” but it is incomplete. The economic history of china since 1949 divides into 2 periods:
- The Planning Period (1950-78).
- The Reform period (1978 to the present)
Two reforms were particularly important:
- 1979 AND 1981 State procurement agencies increased their purchase prices by a total of 40-50% for production beyond the obligatory deliveries.
- Collective cultivation was replaced by Household responsibilities System (HRS): the land of the collectives was divided into small farms leased to families, who were obliged to deliver their share of the commune’s plan obligation, but who were allowed to keep the income from sales at the high prices for production that exceeded quotas. Farm output surged. Grain production was very important. Since the rise in prices and the HRS increased the financial incentive for peasants to increase output, the conclusion is that the policy changes caused the output growth. The reason that Chinese farmers could increase output was because they could use advanced technology as rural institutions were reformed
Increasing grain yields requires 3 improvements under Chinese conditions:
- Better water control
- High yielding-seed
- Fertilizer the increasing in the supply of water contributed to the growth in grain output during the planning period.
Dramatic yield increases required seed that responded to fertilizer, cause the plant topples over preventing the formation of grain. The most famous Japanese rice was IR-8, which was developed at the international rice research institute in the Philippines and released in 1966. Its successor has been the basis of the green revolution in Asia.
With the diffusion of the new dwarf rice that caused Chinese farm output to explode. High-yielding rice gives high yields only if it is heavily fertilized. Efforts to increase fertilizer production in the 1960s had not been particularly successful, so in 1973-4 the state purchased 13 ammonia factories from foreign suppliers. These came on stream in the late 1970s and provided the fertilizer that caused yields to shoot up.
The character of technological change in Chinese agriculture resembles that of Japan and reflects the development of technology tailored to the country’s factor proportions.
The history of the Green Revolution in China differs in this respect from its history in India, where mechanization accompanied the adoption of high-yielding crops. Access to cheaper credit gave large scale farmers the advantage in India and they increased the size of their holdings at the expanse of small farmers (who often lost their land). Farm machinery allowed fewer people to cultivate the sol.
China avoided these conflicts and preserved small farms. Reforms have also transformed the industrial sector: After 1978 “township and village enterprisers” (TVEs) were promoted by local party officials. Consumer good production had lagged and the (TVEs) filled the gap, selling their goods in the free market.
The consumer goods industries had low capital to labour ratios, so the TVEs used appropriate technology for China (it is why they succeeded in market competition).Between 1979-1996 TVE employment grew and GDP increased from 6% to 26%.Marketization was extended throughout the state sector from the mid 1980s when the state froze its plan targets and allowed enterprises to sell production beyond plan requirements on the free market
In 1992 endorsed the socialist market economy and the central planning was abolished. Subsequent a financial system was created to take the place of state allocation of investment and converted state owned enterprises from government departments into public owned corporations. The reform of state-owned industry has involved dep cuts in employment and closing down unproductive capacity. This is a result that USSR never accomplished. As investment has become more market-driven, the investment rate has remained high. The state remains active in guiding investment in energy and heavy industries. The steel industry has continued to grow explosively. Even if China’s population is much more than other countries, China’s has reached the consumption level of rich countries.
Why have its mediocre markets institutions worked as well as they have?
Legacies from the planning period played a role. This include a highly educated population, a large industrial sector, low mortality and fertility rates, and, despite the Cultural Revolution, a scientific establishment with significant ReD capabilities. Life expectancy has increased. if the country grows so rapidly as in the last 3 decades, it will close the gap with the west and china will become the world’s biggest manufacturing nation
Study Questions: Global Economic History: A Very Short Introduction
1. What is the “Great Divergence”?
2. When did the Great Divergence occur?
Chapter 2 The rise of the West
Chapter 3 The Industrial Revolution
Chapter 4 The ascent of the rich
Chapter 5 The great empires
Chapter 6 The Americas
Chapter 7 Africa
Chapter 8 The standard model and late industrialization
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Further Reading:
- J.R. Walker. 2019. Global Economic Historyby Robert C. Allen. from: https://www.studocu.com/en-gb/document/universite-de-lille/international-political-economy/econ448gehquex/7868711
- Mulumebet Assefa Kassa. 2017. Book Review For Economic Histroy. from: https://www.studocu.com/en-gb/document/sapienza-universita-di-roma/fondamenti-di-scienze-sociali/book-review-for-economic-histroy/2134490
- National Archives. Marshall Plan (1948). from: https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/marshall-plan#:~:text=On%20April%203%2C%201948%2C%20President,economic%20infrastructure%20of%20postwar%20Europe.
- Niels Verhoye. GEH Robert Allen summary. from: https://www.studocu.com/en-gb/document/universiteit-gent/global-economic-history/geh-robert-allen-summary/13265529
- NYU Abu Dhabi. Robert Allen. from: https://web.archive.org/web/20171114040659/http://nyuad.nyu.edu/en/academics/faculty/robert-allen.html
- Oxford Academic. Global Economic History: A Very Short Introduction. from: https://academic.oup.com/book/458
- Priscilla Mariani. Economic history 1-9. from: https://www.studocu.com/en-gb/document/universita-degli-studi-di-siena/economic-history/economic-history-1-9/6476165
- Readery. ประวัติศาสตร์เศรษฐกิจโลก: ความรู้ฉบับพกพา Global Economic History: A Very Short Introduction Robert C. Allen. from: https://readery.co/9786168221075
- Silvia Martini. Global Economic History. from: https://www.studocu.com/en-gb/document/universita-degli-studi-di-siena/economia-aziendale/global-economic-history/3779050
- Studocu. CH 5 - Global Economic History: A Very Short Introduction / Europe's second logistic. from: https://www.studocu.com/en-gb/document/universita-commerciale-luigi-bocconi/storia-economica-economic-history/ch-5-global-economic-history-a-very-short-introduction/19167525
- Studocu. CH 6 - Global Economic History: A Very Short Introduction / Economic Nationalism and Imperialism (mid-15th;mid-17th). from: https://www.studocu.com/en-gb/document/universita-commerciale-luigi-bocconi/storia-economica-economic-history/ch-6-global-economic-history-a-very-short-introduction/19167526
- Studocu. CH 11 - Global Economic History: A Very Short Introduction / Strategic Sectors. from: https://www.studocu.com/en-gb/document/universita-commerciale-luigi-bocconi/storia-economica-economic-history/ch-11-global-economic-history-a-very-short-introduction/19167528
- Studocu. CH 14 - Global Economic History: A Very Short Introduction / International Economic Disintegration. from: https://www.studocu.com/en-gb/document/universita-commerciale-luigi-bocconi/storia-economica-economic-history/ch-14-global-economic-history-a-very-short-introduction/19167529
- Studocu. CH 15 - Global Economic History: A Very Short Introduction / Rebuild the world economic. 1945-1973. from: https://www.studocu.com/en-gb/document/universita-commerciale-luigi-bocconi/storia-economica-economic-history/ch-15-global-economic-history-a-very-short-introduction/19167530
- Studocu. Topic 7 - Chapter 15 Summary / Topic 7: Economic Development A2er 1945. from: https://www.studocu.com/en-gb/document/universita-commerciale-luigi-bocconi/storia-economica-economic-history/topic-7-chapter-15-summary/20949360
- Studocu. Summary Article of The British Industrial Revolution by Bob Allen / Why was the Industrial Revolution British?. from: https://www.studocu.com/en-gb/document/universita-commerciale-luigi-bocconi/storia-economica-economic-history/summary-article-of-the-british-industrial-revolution-by-bob-allen/17945462
- Wikipedia. Bob Allen (economic historian). from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Allen_(economic_historian)
- สมคิด พุทธศรี และ ศุภณัฏฐ์ ศศิวุฒิวัฒน์. 2562. ประวัติศาสตร์เศรษฐกิจโลก : ความรู้ฉบับพกพา = Global economic history : a very short introduction / Robert C. Allen.
