A continuously rising standard of living would have been an alien concept to anyone living in Europe (or anywhere else) before 1500. People lived and worked much as their parents and grandparents had, and most of them produced food…
Tag: review
The Foundations of the Scientific Revolution
The Scientific Revolution occurred when new methods — notably mathematical reasoning and experimentation — were adopted, but at the time of the Revolution, both mathematics and experimentation had been known to Europeans for centuries…
The Enlightenment in Britain and France
The Enlightenment marked a change in the way that humans understood themselves. Before the Enlightenment, they were bit players under God’s direction; after the Enlightenment, they stood at center stage…
The Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was influenced by both the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment…
The Division of the World
W. Arthur Lewis explains how the world divided into manufacturers and primary producers…
More on the Division of the World
Long-distance trade grew rapidly during the nineteenth century. Third World countries increased their production of primary products, and decreased their production of industrial goods. The gap between the per capita incomes of the West and those of the Third World widened substantially…
How Modern Science Came to China
China was not exposed to Euclid’s geometry until the arrival of the Jesuits in the late sixteenth century. It was not exposed to Newtonian mechanics until 1849, more than 160 years after the publication of Principia…
The Transformation of Japan after the Meiji Restoration
In the three or four decades that followed the Meiji Restoration, Japan utterly transformed itself. The transformation was wide-ranging, deliberate, determined, and profound. By the beginning of World War I, Japan could justly claim to be among the leading nations of the world…
One Hundred and Fifty Years of American Growth
American technological progress was rapid between 1920 and 1970, and slow after 1970. Why was it so rapid before 1970? Why was it so slow after 1970?
Why Nations Fail: Extractive and Inclusive Institutions
Acemoglu and Robinson’s goal is to explain why some nations are rich and others are poor. They present a theory based on the interaction between political and economic institutions. Casual empiricism suggests that its explanatory power is quite strong…
Merchants and Mechanics 