Global Economic History: A Very Short Introduction

This book is part of the OUP's "Very Short Introduction" series of slim volumes (each would fit in a jacket pocket) covering a wide variety of topics, written by an expert in the relevant field, and aimed at the general reader. Each is about 100+ pages long (this one is about 170 pages), complete with maps, illustrations, a bibliography and an index. This one has lots of charts.I’m a fan of the series, having read about two dozen of them. One criticism I do have is that sometimes their titles can be misleading. This history covers 'only' the last 500 years and operates at the national and supranational level. It addresses, as it says in the opening paragraph, “the fundamental question – ‘why are some countries rich and others poor?’” (The question of why some people are poor in rich countries isn’t addressed). Furthermore, it deals with the history of traditional industries such as textiles, steel, etc without covering the emergence of newer industries such as computers and biotech.The author takes as his starting point 1500 because for him the present division between rich and poor largely emerged after Europeans reach America and India by sea. He divides the period since then into three, 1500 to 1800 as the mercantilist period, the 19th century as the catch-up period where western countries tried to catch up with Britain’s industrialization and the 20th century as the period where some non-Western counties caught up by a “Big Push” while others failed.In chapters 1 and 2 he looks at “The Great Divergence” and “The Rise of the West” where he is very much of the California school.Chapter 3 asks why the Industrial Revolution started in Britain and he ascribes it to a combination of high wages, cheap energy and access to cotton, with nods to the Glorious and Scientific revolutions.Chapter 4, “The Ascent of the Rich”, describes how certain Western countries caught up with and even surpassed Britain by adopting a fourfold strategy: creating a large internal market by eliminating internal tariffs, having external tariffs to protect fledgling native businesses from British imports, a banking system to provide a stable currency and capital for investment, and mass education to provide a skilled workforce.Chapter 5, “The Great Empires”, deals with how the non-Western great powers had a bad 19th century and how the globalized effects of the Industrial Revolution led to deindustrialization in Asia.Chapter 6 covers the Americas and the very different paths taken and outcomes achieved north and south of the Rio Grande, both pre- and post-independence.Chapter 7 begins by telling us African poverty isn’t new and that Sub-Saharan Africa was the poorest part of the world in 1500 (Australia barely merits a mention). The author rightly argues that to understand why Sub-Saharan Africa is poor today we must understand why it was poor in 1500 – he attributes this to the fact that Sub-Saharan Africa, already handicapped by diseases, lacked the advantages of the advanced agricultural societies, productive agriculture, diversified manufacturing and the necessary institutional and cultural resources (writing, the maths needed for land surveying, a written legal code, etc) to advance. The slave trade and colonialism would only exacerbate the situation.Chapter 8, “The standard model and late industralization”, covers the catch-up efforts in tsarist Russia, Meiji Japan and Latin America to catch up using the methods outlined in chapter 4.Chapter 9 covers the efforts by the Soviet Union and some East Asian countries to catch up through “Big Push Industrialization”, i.e. through building steel mills, power plants, car factories etc.A brief Epilogue (concluding that, "The best policy to effect economic development, therefore, remains very much in dispute."), reviews how few countries have managed to catch up with West. Basically, if you exclude those few with oil wells or diamond mines, your left with countries that cluster together on an Inglehart World Values Chart and are neighbours on Huntington’s map and this is where to my mind the author’s account is an overly materialistic one in that he pays insufficient attention to the effect of culture. For example, for centuries the great Islamic empires rejected the introduction of printing. Similarly, there was a reluctance by the Chinese elites to adopt non-Chinese learning and method whereas the Japanese rulers, even when they tightly controlled access to Japan by foreigners, were more willing to learn, so Japan became wealthy while China is still playing catch-up. Such factors don’t get covered by the author.The one factual error I noticed is that on page 133 he refers to Germany invading the USSR in 1940. That happened in 1941.

I've come to expect good things from the Very Short Introductions series, but I must say this one is particularly good. It gives a very clear overview of the development of modern economic systems, in perfectly paced chronological order, along with touching on the main economic theorists in their historical contexts where relevant. It even manages to fit in the odd joke! All in all if you're looking for a good gateway to understanding modern economic theory then this is definitely a fantastic starting point.

I've read about 50 of the the VSI series and this was one of my favourites. I work in finance, read a lot of economics, and studied economics modules at uni, so it was a positive surprise to learn so much from this book, with the author covering times and countries that are often overlooked. I found the writing style excellent and it was a joy to read, and I have recommended it to many friends since.

I like this series, and all are good. However, I'd already read Vince Cable's new book and Acemoglu-Robinson so really only skimmed this in the end.

The book focuses mainly on the Great Divergence - the rapid economic growth in the West and the slow one in the Rest since the 1500s to the present day. Different causes and explanations for the phenomenon have been briefly discussed; however, Pr. Robert Allen favors a certain approach while he's critical of other ones. Nevertheless he does not detour from scholarly impartiality in his judgments, and his insights are quite sound. The breadth of material covered in this little book is rather fascinating. Not only is it a good introduction to the subject, it can establish a very firm ground for one's further research.