The Great Divergence
... Alors que les pays européens devinrent les maîtres du monde, la Chine passa du rang de puissance mondiale à celui de pays sous-développé . Elle voit dans l'IA une 448 opportunité historique d'inverser les rôles. Comme le résume Gaspard Koenig, « 4C ou CCCC : Chine Capitaliste Confucéenne Communiste. ...
... Si cette contrainte n'est pas physique, c'est exactement cela « vendre du temps de cerveau disponible à des annonceurs ». Au-delà, le marché des données personnelles n'est pas autre chose qu'un marché humain : on vend, on achète, on exploite des hommes.La liberté, historiquement, a d'abord été un statut : celui des citoyens jouissant d'une condition sociale et politique garantie par un ensemble de198 Arnaud Beltrame.448 droits et de devoirs leur permettant de participer à la vie de la cité. ...
... This paper examines the process through which modern steelmaking emerged and clarifies the role of science and 'Industrial Enlightenment'. This discussion is also important in determining how to view the role of science in economic development and in considering 'the Great Divergence' [48] and 'the Great Knowledge Transcendence' [30]. In addition, the examination of this paper will show how to create radical innovations that are completely different from existing paradigms, and how to create new technological paradigms to overcome difficulties such as the recent Covid-19 pandemic and environmental problems. ...
... 19 See also [67] regarding to the role of demand on the emergence of technological paradigms. 20 The discussions of [2,13,48] are interesting, but the discussion in this paper is similar to that of [35,36]. However, [35], emphasizes the reduction of the cost of access to knowledge as a result of the ICT revolution, while [64] analyses the chained evolution of science and technology as generating the ICT revolution as in this paper. ...
Scientific knowledge is crucial to opening up new possibilities for major technological advances. When did science become important for economic development? The steam engine was the earliest major science-based invention. Conversely, the role of science has not been regarded as important in the innovations leading to modern steelmaking. In addition, how did science begin to play an important role? Mokyr focuses on the ‘Industrial Enlightenment’, which has its origins in the Baconian program of the seventeenth century. However, the role of science is often not regarded as important in the emergence of modern steelmaking technology. This paper examines the process through which modern steelmaking emerged and clarifies the role of science and ‘Industrial Enlightenment’. This discussion is also important in determining how to view the role of science in economic development and in considering ‘the Great Divergence’ and ‘the Great Knowledge Transcendence’. In addition, the examination of this paper will show how to create radical innovations that are completely different from existing paradigms, and how to create new technological paradigms to overcome difficulties such as the recent Covid-19 pandemic and environmental problems. When much time elapses between scientific and technological advances, the role of science is often not regarded as important and sensational innovations such as the Bessemer process are emphasized. However, this is not a proper evaluation. The role of ‘Industrial Enlightenment’ on the supply side must also be recognized as significant in the emergence of modern steelmaking technology.
... The origin of imported cotton changed: the United States eclipsed former producers like Turkey and the Levant, and its imports share increased from 55% in 1820 to 93% in 1860. At that time, it would have taken about 6 million hectares of French countryside -that is 20% of the agricultural area-to produce the 123,000 tonnes of imported cotton (Pomeranz, 2001). The period 1830-1860 was also marked by a steep growth in imports of raw wool. ...
... A term introduced byPomeranz (2001) to designate extra-territorial hectares that serve the development of a country's economy.10 Usually, calorific values for a kilo are respectively of 3000 kcal for timber and 7000 kcal for coal(Kander et al., 2014, p. 60). ...
This article explores long-term trends and patterns of material use in France for a 185-year period. It is the first long-term study of material flows for France with national and yearly data for most of the period. Based on a material flow analysis (MFA) that is fully consistent with current standards of economy-wide MFAs and covers domestic extraction, imports, and exports of materials, we investigated the evolution of the French metabolism from industrialization to financialized capitalism. Over the whole period, there is a 9-fold increase in domestic material consumption, an expansion of material use per capita, and a spectacular addition of abiotic resources (fossil fuels and minerals) to biotic materials. Using a world-ecology framework, we exhibit a specific metabolic path: that of a state benefiting from successive world-systems for its economic development through massive material imports.
... Fossil fuels "provided a form of energy that did not compete with food production or other uses of land" while significantly augmenting the productivity of labor (Hornborg, 2013, p. 47). This freed up immense tracts of previously farmed land for alternative use and 'liberated' rural workers to move to cities to fill rapidly growing industrial factories (Pomeranz, 2000). ...
This thesis builds upon the emerging field of "ecological macroeconomics" to study how dominant development patterns are constituted by and reproduce global inequalities and environmental degradation. Chapter 2 reviews and categorizes the available literature in ecological macroeconomics, noting its contributions to studying economy-environment dynamics. Chapter 3 critically assesses the ecological macroeconomics framework. It is argued that the field can better analyze environmental challenges by considering nature as inherently political: human-nature relations are regulated through social conflicts in ways that benefit some groups over others. This approach is applied in chapter 4, which uses a "Core-Periphery" (balance-ofpayments constrained growth) model to explore how global environmental inequalities are produced by 'green' sustainability initiatives. The increasing efficiency within a high-income Core region is shown to depend on displacing carbon-intensive activities to the low-income Periphery. Chapter 5 then extends the analysis to understand financialization, presented here as a global dynamic of environmental (re- )organization that supports accumulation in the Core at the expense of social and environmental stability in the Periphery. This dynamic is permitted by the subordination of Peripheral countries within the organization of global monetary, productive and environmental relations. Chapter 6 summarizes and concludes. The evidence presented throughout the thesis signal that for ecological macroeconomics to address contemporary challenges, it must adopt a political view of nature
... Fossil fuels "provided a form of energy that did not compete with food production or other uses of land" while significantly augmenting the productivity of labor (Hornborg, 2013, p. 47). This freed up immense tracts of previously farmed land for alternative use and 'liberated' rural workers to move to cities to fill rapidly growing industrial factories (Pomeranz, 2000). ...
Cette thèse s’appuie sur le domaine émergent de la « macroéconomie écologique » pour étudier la manière dont les modèles dominants de développement sont la source d’inégalités mondiales et de dégrada- tion de l’environnement tout autant qu’ils en résultent. Le chapitre 2 propose une revue de la littérature sur la macroéconomie écolo- gique, et répertorie cinq thématiques à travers lesquelles elle contri- bue à la compréhension des dynamiques économie-environnement. Le chapitre 3 procède ensuite à une évaluation critique du cadre de la macroéconomie écologique, fondée sur l’idée qu’une analyse ri- goureuse des défis environnementaux requiert d’appréhender la na- ture comme intrinsèquement politique et organisée par des conflits sociaux. Cette approche est mise en pratique dans le chapitre 4, qui utilise un modèle « Centre-Périphérie » (croissance contrainte par la balance des paiements) pour étudier la manière dont les inégalités environnementales mondiales peuvent être renforcées par la transi- tion vers une économie « verte ». En particulier, l’augmentation de l’efficacité énergétique et environnementale au « Centre » (pays à re- venu élevé) dépend de la délocalisation des activités à forte intensité de carbone dans la Périphérie (pays à revenu faible). Le chapitre 5 élargit l’analyse en abordant la thématique de la financiarisation via le cadre théorique de cette thèse. La financiarisation peut alors être comprise comme une dynamique mondiale de (ré)organisation envi- ronnementale, soutenant l’accumulation dans le Centre au détriment de la stabilité sociale et environnementale dans la Périphérie. Cette dynamique est permise par la subordination des pays de la Périphérie dans l’organisation des relations monétaires, productives et environ- nementales mondiales. Le chapitre 6 résume et conclut. Les éléments présentés tout au long de la thèse signalent que pour être en mesure de relever les défis actuels, la macroéconomie écologique se doit de développer une vision politique de la nature.
... However, change was coming and had already started in Western Europe and its possessions in North America, opening the way for the Industrial Revolution's tremendous economic growth and what historians now refer to as the "Great Divergence," the historically widening economic gap that started to appear between the West and the rest of the world in the late 18th century (Pomeranz, 2021). ...
[Introduction] Happiness studies have drawn more and more attention in management, psychology and human resource research over the past years. Furthermore, workers increasingly have the option of working beyond regular business hours, outside of the office, or from the convenience of their homes. New ways of working (NWW) have received approval and were largely adopted after the COVID-19 pandemic from the workforce and management executives thus far because it would result in more effective and economical work processes.
[Research Purpose] Little is understood about how NWW affects workers and their happiness at work (HAW). This research is focusing on consultants' subjective experiences, feelings, and thoughts in their working experiences. The purpose of this study is to understand the impacts of NWW on HAW.
[Methodology] To fully study HAW associated with NWW phenomena, a qualitative method was performed and 9 interviews were conducted. The nine respondents all work in the consulting industry but in different fields such as consulting for the pharmaceutical and transport industries but mainly for the financial industry. The average respondent was 29 years old and had 5 years of experience.
[Results and Conclusion] From the collected results, this thesis can support that NWW has a huge influence on happiness at work for consultants. NWW tends to increase overall happiness and empower consultants to feel more free, flexible and autonomous in their everyday work. However, challenges could be identified as well from a consultant's point of view linked with the adoption of NWW. The results are clear on the dimension of happiness that is the most challenged by the NWW: social interaction.
... But with the Americas opened for exploitation, and an army of African slave labour at hand, over the course of the 17th and 18th centuries there occurred a 'great divergence' between the European and non-European worlds, as Kenneth Pomeranz, amongst others, has extensively documented. 8 Put to one side the IR obsession with Westphalia and 1648: it was 1492 which sparked the much more significant restructuring of global order, with legacies which reverberate to this day. 9 The significance of this here is that this great restructuring of global social relations was accompanied by an equivalent reconfiguration of global carbon. ...
If international relations can be theorised as ‘inter-textual’, then why not also – or indeed better – as ‘inter-carbonic’? For, not only is the modern history of carbon to a large degree international; in addition, many of the key historical junctures and defining features of modern international politics are grounded in carbon or, more precisely, in the various socio-ecological practices and processes through which carbon has been exploited and deposited, mobilised and represented, recycled and transformed. In what follows I seek to make this case, arguing that carbon and international relations have been mutually constitutive ever since the dawn of modernity in 1492, and that they will inevitably remain so well into the future, as the global economy’s dependence on fossil carbon continues unabated and the planet inexorably warms. Will climate change generate widespread conflict, or even civilisational collapse? How are contemporary power dynamics limiting responses to climate change? And how, conversely, might 21st-century world order be transformed by processes of decarbonisation? Building on research in political ecology, I argue that a dialectical sensitivity to ‘inter-carbonic relations’ is required to properly answer these questions. Scholars and students of International Relations, I suggest, need to approach climate change by positioning the element C at the very centre of their analyses.
... The case has also been made that the agricultural and industrial revolutions constituted transformative change on a higher level than that of other periods (Bocquet-Appel 2011 ;Pomeranz 2021;McCloskey 2004). Both of these revolutions constituted extreme and unprecedented changes to human life: a transition from people living as hunter-gatherers to large, settled civilizations; and a transition to mechanized manufacturing and factories, leading to unprecedented population growth and rising quality of life (Morris 2013;Clark 2007). ...
The terms ‘human-level artificial intelligence’ and ‘artificial general intelligence’ are widely used to refer to the possibility of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) with potentially extreme impacts on society. These terms are poorly defined and do not necessarily indicate what is most important with respect to future societal impacts. We suggest that the term ‘transformative AI’ is a helpful alternative, reflecting the possibility that advanced AI systems could have very large impacts on society without reaching human-level cognitive abilities. To be most useful, however, more analysis of what it means for AI to be ‘transformative’ is needed. In this paper, we propose three different levels on which AI might be said to be transformative, associated with different levels of societal change. We suggest that these distinctions would improve conversations between policy makers and decision makers concerning the mid- to long-term impacts of advances in AI. Further, we feel this would have a positive effect on strategic foresight efforts involving advanced AI, which we expect to illuminate paths to alternative futures. We conclude with a discussion of the benefits of our new framework and by highlighting directions for future work in this area.
... Coal is the largest source of solid fossil fuel in the world (Miller, 2011). Being a cheap and substantial energy resource, it has fuelled the industrialisation of Europe, North America, and Asia (Pomeranz, 2021). Regrettably, this success comes at a high cost, as its long-term usage has severe effects on air, water, soil, ecosystems, animal and human health (Hendryx et al., 2020). ...
... En la actualidad puede parecer natural incluir a Arica, la ciudad ubicada más al norte del territorio chileno, como parte de una historia de Chile, y sin embargo ello es más bien reciente. Arica está asociada con el altiplano desde alrededor de la mitad del primer milenio de nuestra era con la expansión de la cultura Tiwanaku (Muñoz et al., 2017); y durante el siglo XVII fue parte de la primera y principal ruta global de comercio, la plata del Potosí que alimentaba el comercio entre Europa y Asia (Choque y Muñoz, 2016;Rosenblitt, 2013), el cual llegó a afectar las dinámicas monetarias de la China de los Ming (Pomeranz, 2000). Al mismo tiempo, lo que en esos años correspondía a Chile solo exportaba sebo al Perú, ajeno a todos esos flujos. ...
Un diagnóstico común sobre la situación de los territorios en Chile es su alto grado de concentración y de centralismo, con un núcleo dinámico en Santiago y una situación más estancada fuera de la capital. Es una imagen que, de hecho, es extendida en la autorrepresentación que maneja la propia sociedad chilena de sí misma. Este capítulo intenta mostrar que si se examina la evolución de la concentración territorial, en particular de la demográfica de Chile a largo plazo, y en particular de la zona central desde el siglo XVI en adelante, se encuentra que dicha concentración no ha sido una constante. Así, durante la conquista el núcleo de la colonia se ubica fuera de ese territorio (en la zona al sur del Biobío), mientras durante el siglo XVII y hasta mediados del siglo XIX se experimenta un periodo de desconcentración. Tampoco en el periodo reciente corresponde exactamente a ese diagnóstico clásico: el constante centralismo ha mostrado ser compatible con importantes dinámicas de crecimiento fuera de Santiago.
... 3. The renewed significance given to the interaction between core and periphery in the development of modernity (Pomeranz, 2000;Buzan and Lawson, 2015). From this point of view, the core-periphery relationship is a crucial constituent of the contemporary international system as much as anarchy and distribution of power. ...
East Asia is increasingly at the centre of debates among International Relations (IR) scholars. China's political, economic, and military ascendency is increasingly considered as a crucial test case for main approaches to IR. Despite this renewed attention, mainstream theories employed to analyse contemporary Asia are still remarkably Euro-centric. A wave of studies has argued in favour of a broad ‘decolonization’ of theoretical concepts used to analyse East Asia as well as other regions. These efforts have produced several distinct research agendas. Firstly, critical and post-colonial theorists have worked on the par destruens , highlighting the inherent Euro-centrism of many IR concepts and theories. Secondly, scholars such as Buzan and Acharya have promoted the idea of Global IR, seeking to advance a ‘non-Western’ and non-Euro-centric research agenda. This agenda has found fertile ground especially in China, where several scholars have tried to promote a Chinese School of IR. This article has three main purposes. Firstly, it briefly explores the issue of Eurocentrism in IR studies dedicated to East Asia. Secondly, it maps the theoretical debates aimed at overcoming it, looking in particular at the ‘Global IR’ research programme and the so-called Chinese School. Finally, it sketches a few other possible avenues of research for a very much needed cooperation between Global IR and area studies.
... Pomeranz argues that, compared to other European nations, Britain benefited through a triangular trade of supply whereby it provided manufactures to the North American colonies, which in turn supplied food for the enslaved labourers in the Caribbean, who produced crops, particularly sugar. 44 This was yet another triangular trade. Pellizzari similarly recently argued that trade "between North America and the Caribbean was crucial to the economic growth of the early modern British empire." ...
In 2007 several permanent museum galleries were created in England that discuss the subject of the transatlantic slave trade and slavery. This article critiques one recurring image within many of these sites: the diagrams of the slave trade triangle. Drawing on analyses of the slave trade by historians, from Eric Williams to recent contributions, as well as understanding of the behaviour of museum visitors, it appeals to museums for more complex diagrams to be included in future installations at public history sites. Methodologically, close analysis of current museum installations frames exploration of the historical complexities and geographic expanse of enslavement-associated commerce, a term coined within the article. Future diagrams reflecting these complications will more accurately represent historical scholarship and the importance of enslaved labour to global commerce, rather than understating this by focusing solely on the slave trade triangle.
... ' One of the merits of non-Eurocentric global history is precisely to have liberated the non-Western world from the apathetic drowsiness in which liberal or Marxist Eurocentrism attempted to relegate it (Hobson 2004). In this regard, the 'great divergence' (Pomeranz 2000) of the 19 th century is scarcely intelligible outside of the setting of the 'Eurasian revolution' (Darwin 2008), which between 1750 and 1830 disrupted the balance of the first modern age. This was not only about independence and revolution in the Euro-Atlantic area. ...
Aníbal Quijano has been one of the most astute and purposeful Latin American social theorists of the second half of the 20th century. His pioneering essays on the ‘Coloniality of Power’ not only inspired the project of Modernity/Coloniality/Decoloniality, but have also influenced countless intellectuals and activists who were not necessarily involved in the so-called ‘Decolonial Turn.’ While Quijano has not left behind a text in which all of the characteristics of his theory on ‘Coloniality’ are systematised, it can be argued that the lengthy essay ‘Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism and Latin America,’ published for the first time twenty years ago, was intended to provide such an overview of his thought. The purpose of this forum is to critically debate the legacy of the Peruvian sociologist during a period which Quijano himself later described as the ‘Root Crisis of the Coloniality of Global Power.’ In the first section, José Gandarilla presents the Latin American antecedents and precursors of the use of the term ‘Coloniality.’ Next, Haydeé García reflects on the interdisciplinary perspective in Aníbal Quijano, the weight of totality, and its historical articulations. Finally, Daniele Benzi opens up and addresses some queries regarding ‘colonial/modern and Eurocentered capitalism,’ from the perspective of macro-historical sociology.
... More broadly, they allowed the English economy to escape the Malthusian ecological prison it was locked in until the fi rst half of the eighteenth century. 6 Robert Allen turned eventually to the coal and iron issue in a chapter of his British industrial revolution in global perspective , where he reappraised Abraham Darby's contribution to industrial history. 7 First, he noticed the strange nature of this 'innovation': Darby himself did not invent the coke, which was used from the end of the seventeenth century for ale and beer brewing. ...
... By the turn of the 20 th century the global division of labor brought about by the Great Divergence (Pomeranz, 2000) was firmly established. At the onset of the industrial revolution in 1750, the share in world manufacturing output of Asia, Africa and Latin America combined accounted for 73 per cent and in 1860 still for 36.6 per cent. ...
Does what you exported matter? We build a new global commodity-level export database for the previous era of globalization and find persistence in productive capabilities proxied by economic
complexity, export diversification, and sophistication across a century. We also show that
productive capabilities at the turn of the 20th century are a powerful predictor of today’s income
levels. We demonstrate that our results are not driven by persistence in geography or institutions. The persistence mechanism is the complementarity between past and future productive capabilities with one important qualification, the persistent negative effect of European overseas colonization. We also study shocks that undermined persistence, confirm the resource curse hypothesis for the long run and find a positive but slow effect of democratization.
... No doubt a great deal of this malaise has been precipitated by the general cultural shift asserting the "decline of the West" (among others, Robertson,1986;Goldstone, 2002), claiming that there is nothing unique about "the West," (Conrad, 2012) that its Enlightenment either did not happen or happened also in the non-West, and that "the great divergence" only happened in the mid-to late 19 th century (Pomeranz, 2000). ...
... The Legacies of British Slave-Ownership project aimed to build on this work and investigate the legacies of the absentees. Our questions drew on Williams and the new scholarship of economic historians such as Inikori (2002), Pomeranz (2000), Hudson (2014), andBeck Ryden (2009). But we also adopted the approaches of the "new imperial history," insisting on the entanglement of metropole and colony. ...
... Recent historical work has done much to demolish these assumptions (e.g. Pomeranz 2000;Christian 2004;Bayly 2004;Osterhammel 2014). So too has work in IR, which has demonstrated the diverse range of polities that constitute historical international orders (e.g. ...
... Las dinámicas de la modernidad en su inicio son globales, y sí se puede decir que en esas dinámicas Europa es un primus inter pares el resto del mundo no es simplemente un receptor (es cosa de recordar, por ejemplo, que los Otomanos se mostraron más eficientes que los europeos en su uso de armas de fuego o de infantería disciplinada por bastante tiempo). 317 Como Milanović 2019 ha enfatizado, y entonces la descolonización posterior resultará crucial para futuros procesos de convergencia 318 El imperio Mogol un cuarto de la riqueza global, Fisher 2018, Cap. 6, p. 93 319 De hecho, parte importante del argumento original de Pomeranz (2000) era institucional, ver Cap 2, es en buena parte sobre barreras y profundidad de mercados y en eso mostrar que la diferencia no era tan alta 320 Rowe 2012 Y si el núcleo de la naciente economía global está en el noroeste Europeo (los Países Bajos primero, luego incluyendo Inglaterra) y es ahí que la modernidad aparece en primer lugar como una fuerza dominante (ver sección G de este capítulo), eso no puede entenderse sin las conexiones globales de las que eran parte. ...
Un primer esbozo (borrador) del proyecto de una historia general de las formas institucionales, desde las primeras ciudades hasta el presente.
... In turn, technological change exhibits some regularity, consisting of waves of disruptive innovation (Schumpter, 1942;Bresnahan and Trajtenberg, 1995;Mokyr, 1990;Perez, 2010;Pomeranz, 2000). Weak codification or high ongoing potential for extension and recombination of technologies leads to high dependence on frequent and complex interactions among inventors and innovators, on the one hand, and supply chains designed to incorporate the possibility of rapid change, on the other (Rosenberg, 1982). ...
This paper presents new evidence on long-run patterns of interregional inequality in the United States. The evidence points to a fundamental shift from convergence to divergence, prompting a reconsideration of theory. The paper augments existing demand-side theories, linking them to historical perspectives on disruptive innovation and industrial revolutions. It offers an integrated account of convergence and divergence that matches the facts. The resulting perspective directs attention to workers that are complementary to the current revolution; as well as to the contingency of policy effects on whether or not the regions are in a mode of convergence or divergence.
... The Song clearly had a higher level of development than any contemporary state in feudal Europe and the Mughal Empire at its height was wealthier than any individual state in Europe of its time, though perhaps not of the composite Habsburg Empire with its vast possessions in the New World. All of this raises the questions of why did not capitalism, or more specifically the 'Industrial Revolution' , emerge endogenously in either Mughal India or China under the Song or any later dynasty, and why was there a 'Great Divergence' (Pomeranz 2000) between the living standards of Europe and Asia at least by the nineteenth century, if not even earlier. ...
This chapter studies the political and economic evolution of trade and international relations of the counties and regions of Asia, both between themselves and the rest of the world, over the past millennium, paying particular attention to the geographic and cultural background; the underlying demographic and economic mechanism of the classical Malthus-Ricardo model; the Pax Mongolica and overland trade along the Silk Roads during the Middle Ages; the European intrusion at the turn of the fifteenth century and the impact of the discovery of the New World; the spread of European imperialism and the rise of nationalism and the achievement of independence. A final section discusses the comparative evolution of Europe and Asia and the question of why the Industrial Revolution did not first occur in Asia.
... Commercial capitalism and the Industrial Revolution did not arise as the result of a long, progressive process; they arose from necessity. 10 Contrary to China, which could profit from its large and united empire, the European continent gradually stalled in an ecological bottleneck: scarcity of energy and scarcity of raw materials. The responses to this bottleneck (coal and industrial technology, colonization) gave Europe a considerable advantage afterwards: more efficient technical knowledge and a network of colonies (an Atlantic trade system). ...
Over recent decades, almost every area of historical study has seen its global turn – from consumption to finance, from politics to migration, from social order to cultural patterns. This volume reflects the vibrant state of global history scholarship in Europe and examines to what extent global history is practiced and conceptualised distinctively within Europe.
Drawing together contributions from scholars from France, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the UK, the book offers a sweeping overview of the state of the field. In particular, the contributors look at histories of colonialism and imperial expansion, knowledge circulation and mobility across borders.
This book reflects the diversity of current scholarship on global and transnational history and will offer important insights for anyone interested in understanding the cutting edge of research in this area.
... The origin of imported cotton changed: the United States eclipsed former producers like Turkey and the Levant, and its imports share increased from 55% in 1820 to 93% in 1860. At that time, it would have taken about 6 million hectares of French countryside -that is 20% of the agricultural area -to produce the 123,000 tonnes of imported cotton (Pomeranz, 2001). The period 1830-1860 was also marked by a steep growth in imports of raw wool. ...
This article explores long-term trends and patterns of material use in France for a 185-year period. It is the first long-term study of material flows for France with national and yearly data for most of the period. Based on a material flow analysis (MFA) that is fully consistent with current standards of economy-wide MFAs and covers domestic extraction, imports, and exports of materials, we investigated the evolution of the French metabolism from industrialization to financialized capitalism. Over the whole period, there is a 9-fold increase in domestic material consumption, an expansion of material use per capita, and a spectacular addition of abiotic resources (fossil fuels and minerals) to biotic materials. Using a world-ecology framework, we exhibit a specific metabolic path: that of a state benefiting from successive world-systems for its economic development through massive material imports.
... In the literature concerning the West, a confrontation between Manchester and the lower Yangzi valley is relevant (Pomeranz, 2000). The flourishing of the Song dynasty, when the Chinese invented the compass, toilet paper, mechanical printing, and more is prodigious: an excellence that medieval Europe did not have and that it had only afterwards, managing to make up for the delay and establishing a miracle (Jones, 1981) -which until then was not there (Abu-Lughod, 1989). ...
... Modernizing the Middle East Rostow Gerschenkron Lerner Parsons Rostow 1975 78 Mustafa Kemal Atatürk 1960Gilman, 2003Shah, 2011: 23 20 79 Maier , Bhambra, 2007;Blaut, 1993;Darwin, 2008;Pomeranz, 2000 1978 21 ...
This paper argues that it is both an ethical and an epistemological necessity to re-cognize modernity from a native perspective. Once we dare to give up the conventional perspective, problematize modernity, and
explore its contingencies and complexities in history, we will know that the mainstream understanding of modernity is a Eurocentric hegemonic discourse. This discourse has not only created many myths about Europe, but also has led us to misunderstand our own history – we were even glad to do so. This articlee explores the conceptual history of “modern” and modernity as well as the sociology of knowledge about research on modernity and modernization. Putting them back in their historical context of the alternating hegemony between the East and West on the one hand and between Europe and the USA on the other hand, and exploring the changing meaning of the reference to “the West”, I demonstrate why modernity is a hegemonic discourse. Finally, I appeal for an active search for Taiwan’s standpoint and, with this, build a local view about the world and history.
... For example, based on a comparative analysis of European wages in the eighteenth century, Allen (2009) suggested that the high level of real wages in England instigated the industrial revolution by leading to a wave of innovations that permitted the substitution of capital for labour. Pomeranz (2000) initiated another field of data-rich research, arguing that Europe and Asia were characterized by similar levels of development until the early nineteenth century. In the wake of this publication, Shiue and Keller (2007) collected thousands of grain prices to show that grain markets were as integrated in China as in Europe until the eighteenth century; the industrial revolution was accompanied by greater market integration in Europe afterwards. ...
Macroeconomic analysis is not just a game of equations; it is a narrative of the real. We argue in this article for a re-evaluation of the importance of narratives. Because each financial crisis is a unique event, the narrative is the natural form of analysis. In addition, the effects of economic policies can no longer be analysed independently of the narratives appropriated by economic agents (Schiller, 2017) and policy makers (Friedman and Schwartz, 1963). There is a twofold value in adding the historical dimension. Economic history is instructive by multiplying case studies, i.e. by increasing the variety of policy successes and failures analysed. History also loosens the shackles of our preconceptions, since comparing the past and present calls into question the exceptional nature of what we are living.
... Raisonnement très répandu dans la philosophie contemporaine, adversaire de toute détermination culturelle qui ne pourrait être déconstruite, on retrouve depuis peu des tendances similaires dans l'historiographie. Pour Kenneth Pomeranz (2001), la grande divergence entre la Chine et l'Europe ne remonterait qu'au XVIII e siècle, certaines contingences historiques, telle la présence de mines de charbon en Angleterre pour fournir une source d'énergie indispensable à l'épanouissement de l'industrie ou de colonies pourvoyeuses de matières premières, ayant conduit l'Angleterre à expérimenter une révolution industrielle avant le reste du monde. Déclencheur d'une vive polémique entre Pomeranz et Philip Huang (2002), cette thèse écarte l'hypothèse que l'évolution politique et culturelle de ces deux espaces fournit bien des éléments d'explication à ces « contingences ». ...
Avancé en 1859 par Karl Marx pour caractériser l'Inde, le concept de mode de production asiatique fut élargi pour expliquer la stagnation de toute l'Asie au XIXe siècle. Critiqué sévèrement au XXe siècle pour des raisons politiques, sa pertinence économique fut peu questionnée. Or, dans le cas de la Chine, le blocage de la croissance provoqué régulièrement par l'action des collectivités locales pourrait réhabiliter en partie l'analyse de Marx.
... See alsoSuenaga (2018) about the emergence of modern steelmaking technology.26 Although the discussions of Allen (2011),Clark (2007) andPomeranz (2000) are interesting, the discussion in this paper is similar to that ofMokyr (2002;2005). However,Mokyr (2002) emphasises the reduction in costs of access to knowledge as a result of the ICT revolution, while Suenaga (2015a) analyses the chained evolution of science and technology as generating an ICT revolution by using the same model in this paper. ...
While the long-term prospects of the global economy are unclear, the emergence of technological paradigms is expected. The emergence of technological paradigms is the most important phenomenon in innovation and economic development. However, it is negligent of economists, particularly neo-Schumpeterians and researchers of innovation, that the understanding of this process is still limited. The economic development considered in this paper is the emergence of technological paradigms. Moreover, the emergence of technological paradigms based on deeper layers generates new industries and economic development. The purpose of this paper is to examine the process by which the technological paradigm of the heat engine emerges and develops, based on a theory of the technological paradigms or economic development.
The Anthropocene epoch, characterized by human-caused planetary-scale transformations like climate change and ocean acidification, today is usually associated with the period beginning in the mid-twentieth century. Taking an oceanic perspective on the Anthropocene in Asia, the article argues that oceanic and terrestrial energy regimes synchronized since the 1950s when, for the first time in history, oceanic ghost acres turned marine spaces into a major fuel source. Despite global connections between offshore oil regions located in North America, Asia, and other places going back to the late nineteenth century, Asia’s contingent offshore oil field locations and their physical geographies, combined with political factors, inhibited large-scale offshore drilling before the 1950s. These characteristics of marine spaces meant that Asian political elites and their developmentalist agendas became the guiding force in exploring offshore fields, a process that was hardly dominated by corporate capitalism or structural choice limitations due to the legacies of colonialism.
Chapter 1. Introduction
Over the past three centuries, health of Europeans has improved spectacularly, with a doubling of life expectancy at birth. Below the surface of these changes in life expectancy lies a fascinating pattern of rising and then falling diseases. The explanation of these trends has been a battle of ideas, between those who believed rising life expectancy to be a by-product of economic development, and others who have emphasized the role of human agency, in the form of public health and medical care. This book exploits an unique dataset of long-term trends in around 40 diseases, and their variations between European countries, to identify the main drivers of secular trends in population health.
Chapter 2. Long-term trends in population health
This chapter reviews secular trends in mortality, causes of death, morbidity, height, and disability-free life expectancy since 1700. While mortality declined, trends in morbidity have been somewhat less favourable, so that the number of both healthy and unhealthy life-years has increased. A preview of the disease-specific changes presented in subsequent chapters shows that trends have mostly occurred in a striking pattern of ‘rise-and-fall’. These findings are then used to present a modified version of the ‘epidemiologic transition’, with three stages: a first stage in which ‘health problems of pre-industrial societies’ started to decline, a second stage in which ‘health problems of industrializing societies’ started to decline, and a third stage in which ‘health problems of affluent societies’ started to decline.
Chapter 3. Understanding trends in population health
As a theoretical background to the analysis of long-term changes in population health, this chapter presents an ‘ecological-evolutionary theory’ of the origins of disease, which stipulates that most diseases are caused by ‘unfavourable exchanges’ between the human organism and its external environment, often in combination with one or more ‘failures in the design’ of the organism. The crucial role of environmental factors implies that population health is very sensitive to economic, political and sociocultural conditions. This chapter then reviews long-term trends in these conditions, such as improvements in living standards, the rise of the modern state, and the advent of the ‘Enlightenment’, as well as changes in the organization and effectiveness of public health and medical care. All these factors have made demonstrable contributions to improvements in population health.
Chapter 4. Health problems of pre-industrial societies
In the pre-industrial period, mortality trends in Europe were characterized by frequent mortality crises, often in connection with war, famine and/or epidemics. This chapter reviews long-term trends in wars and war-related deaths, in homicide, and in the occurrence of famines, and then looks at secular trends in four diseases that often caused massive epidemics: plague, smallpox, typhus and malaria. The rise of these health problems, often in the distant past, is traced, as well as their ultimate decline. The factors involved in their decline range from better diplomacy to draining marshes, and from vaccination to the ‘civilization process’, and were often facilitated by economic, political and sociocultural change. There were striking differences between European regions in the timing of the decline of health problems of pre-industrial societies, with Northern and Western Europe taking the lead.
Chapter 5. Health problems of industrializing societies
Industrialization and urbanization were accompanied by a rise and then decline of many different diseases. This chapter first traces the history of a number of communicable diseases, including three intestinal infections (cholera, dysentery and typhoid), tuberculosis, syphilis, four childhood infections (scarlet fever, measles, whooping cough and diphtheria ) and two respiratory infections (pneumonia and influenza). It then traces long-term trends in maternal, infant and perinatal mortality, and in three nutrient deficiencies (pellagra, rickets and goitre), peptic ulcer and appendicitis, and lung diseases caused by occupational and environmental exposures (such as pneumoconiosis, mesothelioma and the non-specific effects of air pollution). The factors involved in the ultimate decline of these diseases were many, with an important role for public health interventions. There were striking differences between European regions in the timing of the decline of health problems of industrializing societies, with Northern and Western Europe again often taking the lead.
Chapter 6. Health problems of affluent societies
After the conquest of many infectious diseases and other health problems of industrializing societies, morbidity and mortality patterns in Europe became dominated by a range of chronic diseases, including ischaemic heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, diabetes mellitus, various cancers, liver cirrhosis, dementia, and depression, as well as by injuries, including road traffic injuries and suicide. More recently, a new ‘plague’ occurred in the form of AIDS. This chapter traces long-term trends in these diseases, which again often manifested themselves in a striking pattern of ‘rise-and-fall’. Among the factors involved in the ultimate decline of these diseases, improvements in the effectiveness of medical care now also played a prominent role than in the past, but economic, political and sociocultural changes were still important in the background. As in previous periods, there were striking differences between European regions in the timing of the decline of these health problems, with Northern, Western and Southern Europe taking the lead.
Chapter 7. Why?
This chapter returns to a more general view-point, and addresses a number of deeper ‘why’-questions. Why did European population health improve? Based on the findings of the previous chapters, an attempt is made to apportion credit to different forms of human agency, including public health and medical care. It is argued that, in the final instance, these population health improvements were caused by an increase in rational thinking. And why did some countries rush ahead or lag behind? To address this question, this chapter reviews the experience of five extraordinary countries, namely Sweden, the Netherlands, Spain, Albania and Russia. It concludes on an important role for both political and sociocultural conditions in shaping long-term trends in population health.
Chapter 8. Outlook
This short chapter contains a summary of the main conclusions of this book, as well as an analysis of the main risks to keeping population health at its current, high levels. Threats include increased geopolitical instability, increasing socioeconomic inequality, and global environmental changes such as climate change. We also can no longer ignore the damage that has been done to other living species, which is one of the darkest sides of human progress in the previous centuries.
El siglo XVIII, cuando ya existen ciertos procesos de globalización y comercialización de las economías, pero no se ha desarrollado todavía una economía industrializada, es un momento relevante para preguntarse por las posibilidades del estándar de vida sin la industrialización, y todo lo que ella ha conllevado. Se pueden encontrar tanto interpretaciones que enfatizan una pobreza generalizada como las que enfatizan una importante participación en nuevas culturas de consumo. Una revisión de la literatura permite aventurar que, al menos en las zonas más 'avanzadas', no resultaban extraños ingresos de trabajadores manuales superiores a niveles de subsistencia, la existencia de capas medias relativamente numerosas (aunque lejanas a la mayoría de la población) y la incorporación-aunque menor-a circuitos de consumo modestos. Lejos de una imagen de sociedad de consumo, pero tampoco es un mundo limitado a la subsistencia mínima-un cierto estándar de vida modesto que era asequible a proporciones importantes de la población, parece ser lo máximo que un mundo pre-industrial podía otorgar.
El propósito de este texto es examinar el sistema de comercio global desde una perspectiva multidisciplinar que permita dimensionar los impactos ambientales y sociales causados por los principios teóricos y jurídicos sobre los que se basa dicho sistema. Para ello, primero se retoman fundamentos teóricos provenientes de la economía ecológica de acuerdo a los cuales el proceso económico se alimenta de energía disponible y produce energía no-disponible. Posteriormente, se analizan los principios de Trato Nacional y Nación Más Favorecida a partir de los cuales el comercio global genera entropía en el medio ambiente y e ignora desigualdades históricas globales. Por último, la noción utilitaria de bienestar individual es analizada a la luz del impacto ambiental y social del consumo, habilitado en gran medida por el comercio global. El artículo concluye que la reestructuración del comercio global es necesaria para afrontar las crisis ambiental y social actuales.
This paper examines the changing industrial ecosystem of smart cities in Korea using both input–output and structural path analysis from 1960 to 2015. The industry type of the input–output tables used in the Bank of Korea was reclassified into nine categories: Agriculture and Mining, Traditional Manufacturing, IT Manufacturing, Construction, Energy, IT Services, Knowledge Services, Traditional Services and other unclassified. The paper identified the changing patterns of an industrial ecosystem of smart cities in Korea. The study found that smart industries such as smart buildings and smart vehicles are anchor industries in Korean smart cities, and they are positively correlated with three other industries: IT Manufacturing, IT Services and Knowledge Services. The results of the input–output and structural path analysis show that the conventional industrial structure of labor-intensive manufacturing and diesel and petroleum cars has been transformed to the emerging high-tech industries and services in smart cities. Smart industries such as IT Manufacturing, IT Services and Knowledge Services have led to sustainable national economic growth, with greater value-added than other industries. The underlying demand for smart industries in Korea is rapidly growing, suggesting that other industries will seek further informatization, automatization and smartification. Consequently, smart industries are emerging as anchor industries which create value chains of new industries, serving as accelerators or incubators, for the development of other industries.
En medio de nubarrones políticos y turbulencias económicas, en 2018 falleció una figura central del pensamiento crítico latinoamericano: Aníbal Quijano. En este artículo/homenaje se argumenta que sus escritos sobre la “colonialidad del poder” expresan al mismo tiempo la culminación y síntesis más original de las problemáticas debatidas en las ciencias sociales de la región en el siglo XX. Sin embargo, con el afán de contribuir a la discusión sobre un pensamiento crítico latinoamericano acorde con los desafíos del siglo XXI, también se plantea un conjunto de cuestiones que su legado intelectual deja abiertas. Ellas remiten, por un lado, a la profundidad y alcance de la “colonialidad del poder” a la luz de las interpretaciones de historia global y sociología macro-histórica sobre la expansión mundial europea. Por el otro, interrogan su vigencia a raíz del declive hegemónico estadounidense y de las dinámicas en curso en la economía política global del capitalismo.
Since the 1950s, interpreters of John Locke have debated whether his ideas about political economy figured among the intellectual sources of capitalist development. While some have labeled Locke a mercantile or agrarian “capitalist thinker,” others have insisted that, although a mercantilist, he was in no sense a theorist of capitalism. By reconstructing the relationship between Locke's ideas and the capitalist society of his day, this article challenges the prevailing terms through which commentators have traditionally interpreted his political economy and its place in the history of capitalism. I interpret Locke's perspectives on capital accumulation, foreign trade, and labor discipline throughout the 1690s as a reflection of the historical rise of export-oriented cycles of commodity manufacturing in the English countryside known as “proto-industrialization.” Moreover, I claim that, because proto-industrialization was tied to the expansion of England's colonial economy, this neglected context of Locke's economic doctrine sheds new light on his vision of empire. Looking to his writings on Ireland, I argue that Locke pursued proto-industrial economic reform by combining a hierarchical, stadial theory of progress with an imperial policy aimed at “improving” the colonies through decreed patterns of production and exchange that favored metropolitan trade.
Nasser Mohajer and Kaveh Yazdani, "Reading Marx in the Divergence Debate", in Benjamin Zachariah, Lutz Raphael & Brigitta Bernet (eds.), What’s Left of Marxism: Historiography and the Possibilities of Thinking with Marxian Themes and Concepts, Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg 2020, pp. 173-240.
The article consists of the following sections: 1) Developments in Britain and Europe in Global Perspective; 2) The so-called Original Accumulation; 3) Against Trans-Historicity; 4) The Middle Ages; 5) The Transition Period; 6) Agrarian Capitalism versus Urban Commercialisation; 7) The State; 8) Financial Capitalism and Mercantilism; 9) Extra-European Stimuli to the Accumulation Process; 10) Beyond Marx – Contributions and Confines; 11) Original Accumulation – Precondition or Ongoing Process?; 12) Conclusion
Over the past three centuries, health of Europeans has improved spectacularly, with a doubling of life expectancy at birth. Below the surface of these changes in life expectancy lies a fascinating pattern of rising and then falling diseases. The explanation of these trends has been a battle of ideas, between those who believed rising life expectancy to be a by-product of economic development, and others who have emphasized the role of human agency, in the form of public health and medical care. This book exploits an unique dataset of long-term trends in around 40 diseases, and their variations between European countries, to identify the main drivers of secular trends in population health. This chapter reviews secular trends in mortality, causes of death, morbidity, height, and disability-free life expectancy since 1700. While mortality declined, trends in morbidity have been somewhat less favourable, so that the number of both healthy and unhealthy life-years has increased. A preview of the disease-specific changes presented in subsequent chapters shows that trends have mostly occurred in a striking pattern of ‘rise-and-fall’. These findings are then used to present a modified version of the ‘epidemiologic transition’, with three stages: a first stage in which ‘health problems of pre-industrial societies’ started to decline, a second stage in which ‘health problems of industrializing societies’ started to decline, and a third stage in which ‘health problems of affluent societies’ started to decline. As a theoretical background to the analysis of long-term changes in population health, this chapter presents an ‘ecological-evolutionary theory’ of the origins of disease, which stipulates that most diseases are caused by ‘unfavourable exchanges’ between the human organism and its external environment, often in combination with one or more ‘failures in the design’ of the organism. The crucial role of environmental factors implies that population health is very sensitive to economic, political and sociocultural conditions. This chapter then reviews long-term trends in these conditions, such as improvements in living standards, the rise of the modern state, and the advent of the ‘Enlightenment’, as well as changes in the organization and effectiveness of public health and medical care. All these factors have made demonstrable contributions to improvements in population health. In the pre-industrial period, mortality trends in Europe were characterized by frequent mortality crises, often in connection with war, famine and/or epidemics. This chapter reviews long-term trends in wars and war-related deaths, in homicide, and in the occurrence of famines, and then looks at secular trends in four diseases that often caused massive epidemics: plague, smallpox, typhus and malaria. The rise of these health problems, often in the distant past, is traced, as well as their ultimate decline. The factors involved in their decline range from better diplomacy to draining marshes, and from vaccination to the ‘civilization process’, and were often facilitated by economic, political and sociocultural change. There were striking differences between European regions in the timing of the decline of health problems of pre-industrial societies, with Northern and Western Europe taking the lead. Industrialization and urbanization were accompanied by a rise and then decline of many different diseases. This chapter first traces the history of a number of communicable diseases, including three intestinal infections (cholera, dysentery and typhoid), tuberculosis, syphilis, four childhood infections (scarlet fever, measles, whooping cough and diphtheria ) and two respiratory infections (pneumonia and influenza). It then traces long-term trends in maternal, infant and perinatal mortality, and in three nutrient deficiencies (pellagra, rickets and goitre), peptic ulcer and appendicitis, and lung diseases caused by occupational and environmental exposures (such as pneumoconiosis, mesothelioma and the non-specific effects of air pollution). The factors involved in the ultimate decline of these diseases were many, with an important role for public health interventions. There were striking differences between European regions in the timing of the decline of health problems of industrializing societies, with Northern and Western Europe again often taking the lead. After the conquest of many infectious diseases and other health problems of industrializing societies, morbidity and mortality patterns in Europe became dominated by a range of chronic diseases, including ischaemic heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, diabetes mellitus, various cancers, liver cirrhosis, dementia, and depression, as well as by injuries, including road traffic injuries and suicide. More recently, a new ‘plague’ occurred in the form of aids. This chapter traces long-term trends in these diseases, which again often manifested themselves in a striking pattern of ‘rise-and-fall’. Among the factors involved in the ultimate decline of these diseases, improvements in the effectiveness of medical care now also played a prominent role than in the past, but economic, political and sociocultural changes were still important in the background. As in previous periods, there were striking differences between European regions in the timing of the decline of these health problems, with Northern, Western and Southern Europe taking the lead. This chapter returns to a more general view-point, and addresses a number of deeper ‘why’-questions. Why did European population health improve? Based on the findings of the previous chapters, an attempt is made to apportion credit to different forms of human agency, including public health and medical care. It is argued that, in the final instance, these population health improvements were caused by an increase in rational thinking. And why did some countries rush ahead or lag behind? To address this question, this chapter reviews the experience of five extraordinary countries, namely Sweden, the Netherlands, Spain, Albania and Russia. It concludes on an important role for both political and sociocultural conditions in shaping long-term trends in population health. This short chapter contains a summary of the main conclusions of this book, as well as an analysis of the main risks to keeping population health at its current, high levels. Threats include increased geopolitical instability, increasing socioeconomic inequality, and global environmental changes such as climate change. We also can no longer ignore the damage that has been done to other living species, which is one of the darkest sides of human progress in the previous centuries.
The international order created under the auspices of "American hegemony" appears to be unraveling during the erratic and nationalistic leadership of Donald Trump, and the growing geopolitical and geoeconomic competition between the United States and China. Many commentators fear that such tensions will lead to the demise of the so-called rules-based international order in particular, and to the declining influence of values, principles and norms associated with "the West" in general. This paper analyses these developments by putting them in historical context, considering what was distinctive about the "rise of the West", and explaining why the relative decline of American influence may prove so consequential. The key questions that animate the discussion are: what is at stake in the possible decline of the West? Does the rise of China presage the emergence of a very different sort of international order than the one currently dominant?
Cheap and abundant coal fuelled the industrialization of Europe, North America and Asia. However, the price tag on coal has never reflected the external cost to society; coal combustion produces more than a third of today’s global CO2 emissions and is a major contributor to local adverse effects on the environment and public health, such as biodiversity loss and respiratory diseases. Here, we show that phasing out coal yields substantial local environmental and health benefits that outweigh the direct policy costs due to shortening of the energy supply. Phasing out coal is thus a no-regret strategy
for most world regions, even when only accounting for domestic effects and neglecting the global benefits from slowing climate change. Our results suggest that these domestic effects potentially eliminate much of the free-rider problem caused by the discrepancy between the national burden of decarbonization costs and the internationally shared benefits of climate change impact mitigation. This, combined with the profound effect of closing around half of the global CO2 emissions gap towards the 2 °C target, makes coal phase-out policies attractive candidates for the iterative strengthening of the nationally determined contributions pledged by the countries under the Paris Agreement.
This paper presents new evidence on U.S. interregional inequality between 1860 and 2017. This evidence indicates that the economic geography of the U.S. has undergone periodic alternations between convergence and divergence, a fact not well explained by existing theory. In response, we articulate a theory of alternating waves, where major technology shocks initially concentrate, and eventually deconcentrate demand for skilled workers performing complementary tasks. Labor supply responds to these centripetal and centrifugal forces. These reversals yield the observed patterns of rising and falling interregional inequality. We trace out the implications of this theory in academic and policy terms.
We document differences in the elasticity of agricultural output with respect to land in temperate and tropical regions. We estimate this elasticity from the relationship of rural labour/land ratios and agroclimatic constraints using global district‐level data. We find that the elasticity in temperate areas (0.285) is higher than in the tropics (0.126), and that this is not an artefact of the level of development. The land elasticity influences the degree of decreasing returns to labour and capital in agriculture, and thus how sensitive living standards are to shocks in productivity and population. Evidence from the postwar mortality transition supports this prediction.
How have human knowledge, technology and living standards made progress? Many economists focus on the era after the Industrial Revolution around 1800 A.D. Although growth rates certainly increased after this, what was the situation in the era before it? For example, referring to ‘the great divergence’ and ‘the proto-industrialisation’, there are many discussions about the economic level before the Industrial Revolution. However, they often focus on the era immediately before it. Nevertheless, what were the levels of knowledge, technology and living standards in the eras of the Roman Empire or the Palaeolithic Age? In this paper, we focus on the Palaeolithic Age when human knowledge started to progress greatly, and we examine whether the theory of knowledge progress in the modern economy can be applied to the Palaeolithic Age. If this theory can be applied to the earlier era, it means that there is a high possibility that we can explain the advances in human knowledge over about 2.6 million years (or more) by the theory.
This book focuses on the significant role of West African consumers in the development of the global economy. It explores their demand for Indian cotton textiles and how their consumption shaped patterns of global trade, influencing economies and businesses from Western Europe to South Asia. In turn, the book examines how cotton textile production in southern India responded to this demand. Through this perspective of a south-south economic history, the study foregrounds African agency and considers the lasting impact on production and exports in South Asia. It also considers how European commercial and imperial expansion provided a complex web of networks, linking West African consumers and Indian weavers. Crucially, it demonstrates the emergence of the modern global economy.
Globalization is the intensification of the spatial organization of social relations and transactions, which put distant localities and local activities at a level of worldwide range, consequence and significance. These activities cluster into new reality like a globally operating market system and a globally developing technoscience. The question is to what extent a global civil society will come about too. At the level of internationally operating firms management styles will have to be developed to enhance the understanding of cultural heterogeneity within this global civil society. Cultural complexity will increase due to the intensification of interactions and transactions. Within and between internationally operating firms. Communicative rationality in terms of dialogue and conversations should be reinforced to deal adequately with this complexity. Communicative rationality perceives language not only as a mere representation of an objective reality but also as a human practice in a social context. Firms operating as communities of practice will enhance through proper management styles the reciprocal understanding we need in a world economy.
Land was an unambiguous constraint for growth in the pre-industrial period. In Britain it was overcome partly through the transition from traditional land-based goods to coal (vertical expansion) and partly through accessing overseas land, primarily from colonies (horizontal expansion). Kenneth Pomeranz suggested that horizontal expansion may have outweighed vertical expansion in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Taking a more complete approach to trade, we find that Britain was a net exporter of land embodied in traded commodities, apart from in the early nineteenth century, when potash (rather than cotton or timber) constituted the major land-demanding import from North America. The vertical expansion was generally larger than the horizontal expansion. In other words, Britain was not simply appropriating flows of land and resources from abroad but simultaneously providing its trading partners with even more land-expanding resources.
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