Stephen Broadberry/Kyoji Fukao (eds.), The Cambridge Economic History of the Modern World. Volume 1 – 1700 to 1870, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2021, 496 S., € 145.

Stephen, Broadberry Kyoji, Fukao (eds.) The Cambridge Economic History of the Modern World. Volume 1 – 1700 to 1870 Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2021 € 145. 1 496

When did modern economic growth start? It is a question that has made a high amount of ink flow, and economic historians do not necessarily agree on when it began. To start with, there is much debate about what modern economic growth means. In their introduction to «The Cambridge Economic History of the Modern World. Volume 1 – 1700 to 1870», Stephen Broadberry and Kyoji Fukao justifiably define it as «the sustained increase of per capita incomes together with population growth», and describe it as «surely one of the most important developments in world history» (1).

This book is a prime example of world/global history of the highest quality, and despite the often complex topics/data is highly accessible to both experts and non-experts alike. Broadberry and Fukao state that traditionally economic historians saw the world as stuck in a Malthusian trap until the 18th century. Any short-term gain in living standards led to an increase in population, resulting in a quick end to economic growth. However, and the chapters in this impressive book make that ably clear, this view needs modification. In the words of Broadberry and Fukao: «Clearly, there was not just considerable variation in outcomes between the main regions [the West versus the rest, so to say, ML], as would be consistent with the traditional view, but also systematic variation in outcomes within regions» (3).

In his own chapter, Broadberry states that traditionally economic historians have seen the Industrial Revolution as a marking for the start of the modern world. However, as he shows in many insightful tables, «although industry increased its share of nominal GDP more rapidly than services until around 1700, this ceased to be the case during the Industrial Revolution period. This may at first sight seem surprising, but can be explained by a decline in the relative price of industrial goods [...]. By contrast, the more modest productivity improvements in services led to an increase in their relative price, so that the share of services in nominal GDP increased more rapidly than the share of industry after 1700» (25). Broadberry also shows that when looking at the GDP per head, Britain only surpassed the Netherlands in 1800 (27). The impact of the Industrial Revolution on the living standards of the British people remains a hotly debated topic. Broadberry concludes: «The simple factual question of whether living standards rose or fell cannot settle the debate because of the counterfactual question of whether living standards were better than they would have been in the absence of industrialization» (41).

Since the publication of Kenneth Pommeranz' ground-breaking «The Great Divergence. China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy» an intense debate has erupted among (economic) historians about the question when Great Britain (and in its track the rest of the West) surpassed China as the largest economy in the world. The members of the so-called «California School» stated that until 1800, there was little difference between the regions – China in fact leading in many respects. Pommeranz stated that only good luck and fortune could explain the radical turn in England's trajectory after the turn of the 19th century.

However, as Christopher Isett shows in his chapter, the divergence must have started earlier. For example, whereas labour productivity in China failed to grow, in England it nearly doubled between 1600 and 1800, «with epoch-making consequences for the English economy» (98). Apart from the Great Divergence, there was also a Little Divergence in Europe, when the economic centre of gravity shifted from the Mediterranean to Northwestern Europe, first to the Dutch Republic and later to Great Britain. As Jan Luiten van Zanden, Bas van Leeuwen and Yi Xu show in their chapter on living standards and inequality, industrialisation played an important role here, especially in Britain, «but in other parts of the North Sea area comparable changes in services and agriculture produced comparable advances in well-being [...]. The ‹Great Divergence› [...] was in many ways a continuation of trends already at play in the eighteenth century» (406f.).

Warfare also played an important (just how important is difficult to quantify) part in the rise of Western European states, as concluded by Philip T. Hoffmann and Tirthankar Roy: «The heavy spending on war in western Europe fuelled the improvements in gunpowder technology, whether it was deadlier guns and artillery, faster warships with more arms, or better tactics and fortifications [...]. Other parts of the world eventually lagged behind. They fought less often, spent less money on war, relied on technologies other than gunpowder that were more effective against their enemies, or faced greater obstacles to learning while fighting» (472f.). The consequences would be immense: during the course of the 19th century Europe would subdue almost the whole world.

Economic developments played an immensely important role in this process. The various chapters in «The Cambridge Economic History of the Modern World» make expertly clear what caused these changes. The scope of the book is broad, literally global in its approach, also paying extensive attention to Africa (see Patrick Manning's insightful chapter) and Latin America. Although the price of the volume is ridiculously high, it is to be hoped that the book will find its way to a large audience.