that have been made by social scientists in the last few decades in a dispassionate, objective fashion. While we do have opinions on what we view as the most convincing hypotheses regarding the origins of sustained economic growth – we have both written on this topic in our own academic work – the goal of this book is not to privilege our preferred theories at the expense of others. The first half of this book simply presents, as objectively as possible, the major hypotheses and debates on the origins of sustained economic growth. If it were not for our book, a reader who wants to get an idea of the current state of the literature would have to read countless books and articles, each putting forth their own hypotheses. This is still a useful exercise, as there is much nuance that we will have to skip over. But presumably most of our readers have lives outside of reading academic tracts. If you want to get an idea of where the debates stand, we’ve done the time-consuming part for you.
The first half of the book classifies and surveys the major strands of literature related to the origins of sustained economic growth: geography, politics, institutions, markets and states, culture, human capital, demography, and colonization. Many explanations fall into multiple categories. Likewise, some are well suited for one time and place but not for others. For instance, coal deposits likely played a role in Britain’s rise but not Japan’s, religion may have played a role in the Middle East’s economic growth but not in China’s, and so on. In some cases, factors that hamper economic growth under some conditions favor it in others. Take, for instance, the ruggedness of the African terrain. In general, ruggedness is bad for prosperity. Rugged terrain is difficult to traverse (thus hampering trade) and difficult to farm. However, in Africa, Nunn and Puga (2012) find that ruggedness had a positive effect on income. This was because it mitigated the impact of the slave trade: rugged terrain was more difficult for raiders to traverse and easier for those pursued to hide within. Long-run economic growth, on which the slave trade had such a large negative effect (a fact we will cover in Chapter 6), was thus indirectly promoted (see Figure 1.7).
Most theories on the origins of economic growth are concerned with pushing one side of the debate. As a result, less attention has been given to how the various theories are connected. A phenomenon as important and widespread as the origin of modern economic growth is almost certainly not monocausal. For example, many theories attempt to account for the role that institutions played in economic growth. Institutions are those legal, political, and religious features of a society that determine the “rules of the game” which dictate the costs and benefits of taking certain actions. Some institutions are viewed as being good for economic growth, such as those that protect property rights, encourage investment in public goods, and apply laws equally to all people. Yet, where “good institutions” come from is a difficult question to answer. Sometimes, they come from geographic conditions. For instance, where geographic conditions were not suitable for exploitation, colonial powers tended to invest in institutional development that, perhaps for unintended reasons, had positive effects on long-run growth (Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson, 2001, 2002). In fact, Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson (2002) argue that this resulted in a “reversal of fortunes”: those places that were flush with natural endowments at the end of the medieval period were also the places that were most easily exploited. As a result, those places tended to get worse (colonial) institutions, and are largely poorer today. The reversal is seen in Figure 1.8, which plots urbanization rates (an indicator of economic potential) against modern per capita GDP. Past urbanization rates are negatively correlated with modern income, while modern urbanization rates are positively correlated with income. Geography alone cannot explain this pattern, although geography may have worked through institutions to create the reversal of fortunes.
In other cases, institutions may operate through their impact on culture to affect economic growth. For instance, in a study of the long-term developments of trust, Nunn and Wantchekon (2011) find that places in Africa that were more prone to slave raids in the past are less trusting in the present day. It is understandable why people in the past who were subject to slave raids would be mistrusting of others, even neighbors, who may have wanted to enslave them. The fact that a culture of mistrust persists to the present suggests that culture is “sticky,” and thus helps determine long-run economic fortunes.
Throughout the book, we draw on the most up-to-date social scientific research and data in the context of recent debates among economic historians, development economists, political scientists, and historical sociologists. One important development in the past twenty years is that discussions of the origins of economic growth have gone global. It is no longer sufficient to narrow one’s attention to Great Britain or Western Europe. For instance, one of the biggest debates in the literature is on the origins of the “Great Divergence” between Western Europe and China. The term “Great Divergence” was made famous by Pomeranz (2000), who argued that the divergence between China and the West happened relatively late (after 1750) and was a result of the existence of coal reserves in England and the opening up of the New World, which relieved population pressures and provided new and abundant raw materials. This view has been subject to much debate, with new data suggesting the divergence may have occurred prior to industrialization (Allen, Bassino, Ma, Moll-Murata, and van Zanden, 2011; Brandt, Ma, and Rawski, 2014; Broadberry, Guan, and Li, 2018).
Figure 1.7 Ruggedness and income in African and non-African countries
Data sources: Nunn and Puga (2012) for ruggedness, Bolt and van Zanden (2020) for GDP per capita.
Figure 1.8 The reversal of fortunes within formerly colonized nations, 1500–1995
Data sources: Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson (2002) for urbanization, Bolt and van Zanden (2020) for GDP per capita.
In the final chapters, we assess the relative strengths and weaknesses of the major arguments and lay out the ones we find the most convincing. Our focus shifts to Britain, the home of the Industrial Revolution, and ultimately the first country to achieve modern, sustained economic growth. We ask, “What were the preconditions that made sustained economic growth possible in northwestern Europe?” We then address the flip-side of this question: “Why did sustained economic growth not first happen elsewhere?” Next we delve into the Industrial Revolution itself, as well as its connection to sustained economic growth. We explore what we find to be the most convincing explanations of its causes, linking these back to the broader sources of sustained, long-run economic growth.
The first set of explanations that we prefer – both for the onset of industrialization and for modern economic growth – emphasize the link between economic and political development. Such explanations touch on topics like institutional change, the growth of state capacity, and the rule of law. In our reading of the literature and of history, we find it difficult to tell a compelling story of long-run economic growth while ignoring the role that political institutions played in encouraging or (more often than not) dampening economic growth.
The second set of explanations that we find convincing are those that highlight the role of culture. To be clear, we do not mean the type of Eurocentric explanations popular in the early 20th century that made claims regarding the supremacy of some aspect of European culture. We mean culture in the way cultural anthropologists use the term: those heuristics employed by people to interpret the complex world around them (Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman, 1981; Boyd and Richerson, 1985; Henrich, 2015). Recent scholarship demonstrates that culture is amenable to serious social scientific study. Several insights can be
