Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T12:19:28.589Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Explaining the industrial transition: a non-Malthusian perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2008

GEORGE GRANTHAM
GEORGE GRANTHAM*
Affiliation:
McGill University, Department of Economics, Montreal, Canada, george.grantham@mcgill.ca
Get access

Extract

The large-scale structure of world economic history exhibits three steady states punctuated by two phase transitions. The first transition arrived with the domestication of plants and animals; the second with the invention of engines capable of converting thermal to mechanical energy for applications in mining, manufacturing, and transportation. Yet, although both transitions led to increases in the absolute size of the economy, they affected the standard of living differently. Whereas the Industrial Revolution resulted in sustained growth in real per capita income for more than two centuries, over nine millennia the Agricultural Revolution spent itself in population growth that left per capita income insignificantly higher, and possibly lower than the level prevailing under hunting and gathering. This pattern raises three fundamental questions in economic history: why did the first great technological transition produce secular stasis in living standards? Why has the second yielded both steady growth in population and rising living standards? What triggered the transition from the stationary agricultural state to the progressive industrial state?

Type
Research Article
Information
European Review of Economic History , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , August 2008 , pp. 155 - 165
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Audoin-Rouzeau, F. (1995). Compter et mesurer les os animaux. Pour une histoire de l'élévage en Europe de l'Antiquité aux temps modernes. Histoire et mesure 10, pp. 277–312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Becker, G., Murphy, K. and Tamura, R. (1990). Human capital, fertility and economic growth. Journal of Political Economy 98, pp. 512–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, B. M. S. and Overton, M. A. (1993). A new perspective on medieval and early modern agriculture: six centuries of Norfolk farming, c. 1250 – c. 1850. Past & Present 141, pp. 38–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chaix, L. and Desse, J. (1994). L'os et sa mesure. Archéozoologie et archéométrie. Histoire et mesure 9, pp. 339–63.Google Scholar
Chevet, J.-M. (1993). Les crises démographique en France à la fin du xviie et au xviiie siècle: un essai de mesure. Histoire et mesure 8, pp. 117–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, G. (2007). Farm wages, population, and economic growth, England 1209–1869. Economic History Review 60 (1), pp. 97–135.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Derville, A. (1987). Dîmes, rendements du blé et ‘révolution agricole’ dans nord de la France au moyen âge. Annales, ESC 42, pp. 1411–32.Google Scholar
Findlay, R. and Lundahl, M. (2002). Toward a factor proportions approach to economic history: population, precious metals, and prices from the Black Death to the Price Revolution. In Findlay, R., Jonung, L. and Lundahl, M. (eds.), Bertil Ohlin: A Centennial Celebration (1899–1999). Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT Press, pp. 495–526.Google Scholar
Fogel, R. W. (2004). Escape from Hunger and Premature Death, 1700–2100. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grant, A. (1988). Animal resources. In Astill, G. and Grant, A. (eds.), The Countryside of Medieval England. London: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Grantham, G. (1997). Espaces privilégiés: productivité agricole et zones d'approvisionnement dans l'Europe pré-industrielle. Annales. Histoire, sciences socials 3, pp. 697–725.Google Scholar
Grantham, G. (1999). Contra Ricardo: on the macroeconomics of preindustrial economies. European Review of Economic History 2, pp. 199–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kadish, A. (1989). Historians, Economists and Economic History. London and New York: Routledge (1989).Google Scholar
Karakacili, E. (2004). English agrarian labor productivity before the Black Death: a case study. Journal of Economic History 64, pp. 24–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, R. (1987). Population dynamics of human and other animals. Demography 24, p. 450.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lee, R. (1993). Accidental and systematic change in population history: homeostasis in a stochastic setting. Explorations in Economic History 30 (1), pp. 1–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nicolini, E. A. (2007). Was Malthus right? A VAR analysis of economic and demographic interactions in pre-industrial England. European Review of Economic History 11, pp. 99–121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parker, G. (ed.) (1997). The Thirty Years War. 2nd edn. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Stephenson, M. J. (1988). Wool yields in the medieval economy. Economic History Review 41, pp. 368–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thorold Rogers, J. E. (1891). The Economic Interpretation of History. London and New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.Google Scholar
Weir, D. (1984). Life under pressure: France and England, 1670–1870. Journal of Economic History 44, pp. 27–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wrigley, E. A. (2006). The transition to an advanced organic economy: half a millennium of English agriculture. Economic History Review 59, pp. 435–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Usher, Abbot Payton (1954). A History of Mechanical Invention. Boston: Beacon Hill.Google Scholar