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The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor

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The object of this book is to survey and explain the fast or slow economic development of different parts of the world from about 1500 to the present. Landes mainly takes a regional perspective looking at Europe, Asia, Middle East, Latin America, and so on with some refinement to the national scale (e.g. China vs. Japan, Britain vs. Spain).

Landes strongly advocates the point of view that cultural values (work ethic, thriftiness, attitudes toward change, technology, women) are primary determinants of economic success or failure. Although many, including myself, find this thesis lacking and controversial, there is still an abundance of interesting and useful information in this book.

On the plus side, Landes offers a wealth of fascinating anecdotes, introductory information on the history of technology that was new to me, a clear and definite argument, and above all gives the reader some sense of the importance of culture in the economic realm. Although I personally feel that Landes overstates the importance of culture, the points he makes do have some validity and are generally under appreciated. Moreover, the author is remarkably fair minded for someone advocating a controversial thesis.

Don't be fooled by the reviewers that make fun of the author for suggesting that eating with chopsticks has given Asians manual dexterity that is advantageous to their high-tech manufacturing sector. In fairness to the author, this statement is a single sentence in a 500 page book and he immediately admits that most of his colleagues smirk when they hear it.

On the minus side, the author verges on severe cultural stereotypes a few too many times. The Asians are all thrifty and hard working while the Latins have been brain washed by the Catholic church. Landes more or less ignores several non-cultural challenges that poor countries face: unfair pressure from wealthy countries to open their markets, scarcity of capital & technology, a brain drain that leaves the best and brightest in the developed world. Finally, a remarkable failure is that Landes doesn't examine the idea that cultural values may be largely determined by the material & economic conditions of a country.

The book's writing style is casual and conversational, but sometimes unclear and confusing. Many times I was not sure exactly what the author meant and wished he had written a complete sentence instead of a short and vague phrase.

The bottom line is that the book is a worthy read. While not fully convincing, I found myself having a new appreciation for the importance of cultural values in the economic realm.

As Amazon readers may note this is a controversial book, generating more than 140 reviews since it was first published in 1998. The continuing interest is due at least in part to its promotion by some political conservatives as an answer to books like Guns, Gems, and Steel by Jared Diamond. Indeed the very relevance of this book to contemporary policy-making is the fuel that maintains the flames of a healthy debate between those on the Left and Right. Landes' arguments are forceful and convincing as far as they go and his book is essential reading for every student of world history and economics. Whether his model takes us ultimately in the direction we as a civilization really want to follow is a more subtle and profound question.

First, let's refute some false charges against Landes. He is not a racist, or an apologist for capitalist exploitation, or an ethno-centrist. He fully acknowledges the influence that geography and natural resources have on a nation's development potential and his critique of European colonialism is devastating. He completely rejects the theory of comparative advantage and long sections of the book are devoted to describing the exploitation of women and children in the early industrial periods of England and Japan.

Landes is equally critical of forces that restrict or deny freedom of thought, showing clearly how they held back nations that should have played a more dominant role in world economics. In the case of European development the single most important villain was the Catholic Church but authoritarian and totalitarian regimes of all stripes come in for condemnation.

In a nutshell Landes argues that cultural values like honesty, thrift, initiative, respect for property rights, and openness to new ideas are the key determinants of whether nations succeed or fail economically. We've heard this argument before and Landes explicitly acknowledges his debt to Max Weber, the nineteenth century sociologist who popularized the idea of the `Protestant ethic' as a historical force.

China is a major test case for Landes. Despite an impressive lead in technology, from gunpowder to printing, during the early years of European expansion, China failed to take advantage of that lead and came under European domination. The problem was not a lack of technical ability on the part of the Chinese but the fact that the nation was controlled by an imperial court that had no interest in using practical knowledge. The people at the top had everything they needed and saw no reason to allow local entrepreneurs to develop a free market economy. Such an economy might create local power centers which could challenge central authority so all such efforts were quashed before they could begin.

The centralized totalitarian rule of Chairman Mao in the twentieth century can be viewed as just a modern manifestation of this continuing characteristic of Chinese civilization. When, after Mao's death, the communists changed course and decided that capitalism was not so bad after all, the result has been the fastest growing economy in the world, fueled by foreign investors who had enough confidence that they would see a return on their investment. All of which seems to prove Landes' argument that initiative, openness to new economic (but not political) ideas, etc. bring wealth to a society just about every time.

At least for some in the society. The problem for emerging economic giants like China and India is that only one in five, chiefly city dwellers, enjoy the fruits of their society's newfound prosperity. As to how to solve this problem of equitable distribution or the problem of workers who lose their jobs to cheaper labor markets overseas Landes admits he has no answers.

Thus, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations is a splendid analysis of world economic development up until the beginning of the 21st century but it does not address the really profound problems now emerging. In particular it says nothing about the coming revolution on the horizon brought about by genetic engineering, robotics, and nanotechnology. Nor does it address the equally important issue of global economic fragility due to extreme interdependence and complexity. For these the key books are The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph Tainter, arguably the most important book of the 20th century; Collapse: How Societies Choose to Succeed or Fail by Jared Diamond; and, if one is up to a darker but nonetheless carefully reasoned analysis, The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler.

Society is far more fragile than most Americans realize. This reviewer, having lived and worked in places like Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, El Salvador and many others, knows from first hand experience that the civilization we take for granted is a frightfully thin veneer. Once shattered it cannot be easily restored. Nor should we be lulled into the false belief that it could never happen here. We have only to look at our government's grossly incompetent response to a catastrophe affecting just a handful of states (Hurricane Katrina) to realize the impossibility of an effective response to a catastrophe national in scope.

Which is why The Wealth and Power of Nations and the others cited above are so important. Heaven forbid that an economic or natural catastrophe should thrust upon us global political and economic disintegration but an honest analysis must admit the possibility. Should that happen we may hope that the wisdom and insights contained in books like these will guide those who survive toward a new, wiser, more responsible, and more gentle civilization.

"The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why some are so rich and some are so poor" is a reflective, interesting, and a well-written book. The author possesses an amazing knowledge, both historical and geographical. While he is an academic and therefore at times goes into unnecessary detail or support of his arguments, he serves us the occasional entertaining anecdote, which makes this book both readable and funny.

To explain why the economic development in the world (from about 1500 to the present) has happened at different paces and with different degrees of success is not an easy task to undertake. To do so successfully is even harder.

Landes strongly advocates the point of view that cultural values, such as technology, thriftiness, work ethic, and women, are the primary factors of economic success or failure. I truly enjoyed reading the authors observations on the various cultures and their economic successes and failures (a little minus here is Landes tendency to lean on the cultural stereotype just a few too many times). I now have a better understanding for the importance of cultural values in the economic area. Why the UK fell behind the rest of Europe, or why China by deliberately choosing to isolate the country, lost their economical/technological jump-start on Europe. I also have a greater awareness of the effects of religion; that there can be little doubt that the religious-based repression/bias towards women will continue to slow the economic development and success of the societies in which this still occur.

There is an abundance of interesting and useful information in this book, and I did learn a lot of new facts from this book. Nevertheless, I am not sure that I am left with a better understanding of the key factors that drive economic success. I can't help feeling that I worked my way through the five hundred pages waiting for the "little extra" - that never came. So even if Landis handles the facts and analysis very well, I still miss is the one, grand theory that explains it all.

Bottom line, "The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why some are so rich and some are so poor" is a superb historical overview, but it doesn't quite deliver what it promises - the one theory that wraps up everything, and offers some insights to the question that we all ask ourselves: "Why some are so rich and some are so poor".

This is one of the most ill tempered and unfashionable books that I have read in a long time. Perhaps it could have only been written by a scholar in the waning days of his career (Landes has gone emeritus at Harvard). A young scholar could never get away with Landes's crankiness and his targeting of sacred cows. The book is so politically incorrect that it defies belief. Landes challenges nearly every tenet widely held among scholars about the principal motors of history in the past millenium. Moreover, this book is hopelessly Euro-Centric, a crime punishable by instant career termination among the untenured ranks of professors.

Landes might be easy enough to dismiss and forget. But should we? Can a man with Landes credentials be so easily written off? And must history only be conceived of on a small scale?

The answers to both questions are, I believe, no. Landes credentials are impeccable. His Unbound Prometheus is a central text in the history of technology and one that I used in my own classroom for years. And his Revolution in Time is the most important book ever written about clocks, timekeeping, and the implacable rhythms of modernity. Years ago, when I had a question about a timepiece circa 1600 that I found described in archival sources, whom did I write to but David Landes?

Likewise, Landes efforts to tell the big picture should never be proscribed. On the contrary, I believe that such efforts should be the noblest goal of the historian. The stream of meaningless monographs that no one reads issuing from American universities is already too broad and needs to be counterbalanced with at least a trickle of "universal histories." Landes follows a long tradition, which includes such historians as Arnold Toynbee, and more recently William McNeill (whom he acknowledges in his preface), and Alfred Crosby (whom he references).

If Landes's thesis can be stated simply, it is this: the defining feature of the modern world is the creation of wealth--so much wealth that the present is completely different from the past. How did this happen, and why did it happen where it did? And why did it not happen elsewhere? Landes's analysis has direct relevance to today's world because the results of the differential economic developments are manifested in growing relative inequalities in contemporary societies, where the gap between the richest (Switzerland) and poorest (Mozambique) nations in terms of wealth creation, is 400 to 1 (p.20). For Landes, as for the majority of ordinary people in the world, the central issue of existence is how much wealth society creates or allows its members to create for themselves and how such wealth is distributed. Landes encapsulates the salient injustice of the twenty-first century: "The world is divided roughly into three kinds of nations: those that spend lots of money to keep their weight down; those whose people eat to live; and those whose people don't know where the next meal is coming from." (p.xix).

What caused this historical divergence among nations? Like most good historians Landes is multi-causal in his explanations. He accepts geographical and biological factors as significant in the overall equation. But, principally, historian of technology that he is, he suggests that the invention, development, and organization of technology in the West (He takes issue with those who think its non-Western roots are very important) is the most crucial cause of wealth creation. In other words it was the Industrial Revolution.

Why the West? (And specifically, Why northern Europe?) His explanation here can only be called Weberian and indeed he quotes Max Weber in this book. The West invented and especially sustained technology because of a conjunction of cultural characteristics that it possessed or developed. In fact, the great abundance of some contemporary nations is only chimerical unless undergirded by similar cultural traits. While the West was first in creating modern industry and enjoying its fruits, some countries in other parts of the world have likewise developed the kind of mentality that can successfully produce and maintain wealth. Others, however, which are currently rich, will soon be poor again for lack of sustaining structures. According to Landes, the prosperity of the Mid-Eastern Sheikdoms will collapse along with their overinflated economies and lifestyles once their oil is gone. Finally, he suggests that the majority of nations have never seriously entered this wealth creation derby at all.

In his analysis Landes is always the moralist rather than the true social scientist. He ends his book on a moral note, writing "that the most successful cures for poverty come from within' (p.523)" "You want high productivity? Then you should live to work and get happiness as a by-product. (p.523) This will seem nothing but pap to most of the poor around the world. The rhetoric of self-help always seems empty to those on the edge of starvation.

Neither will Landes's explanations find much support among his peers. More theoretically elegant explanations reign in the rarified atmosphere of academia. Landes refers to and rejects all such theories: core and periphery theories of Wallerstein, colonial and imperial economic oppression theories favored by Marxists and scholars of many persuasions, and the dependentista theory elaborated by Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who subsequently abandoned it as it moved towards the pinnacle of his political career, the presidency of Brazil. (p.510-11) Landes believes such theories only distort history. The bad guys in his own narrative are not, for example, British imperialists, who after all treated the inhabitants of India no worse than the preceding oppressors, the Moghuls. (p. 161) Nor are the bad guys American imperialists, who with a kind of feckless naivete now march unchallenged throughout (and over?) the world, but who at least have always been maker and doers. For Landes, the pantheon of bad guys would more likely include the Spanish, who squandered the riches of an empire on pomp and pretension. (p.169). He quotes the Dominican Republic's Juan Bosch to good effect (p.310):

We [Santo Domingo] became an economy of the West, not the most developed models of Europe, but of the Spanish model. Spain transmitted to us everything it had: its language, its architecture, its religion, its dress and its food, its military tradition and its judicial and civil institutions; wheat, livestock, sugar-cane, even our dogs and chickens. But we couldn't receive from Spain Western methods of production and distribution, techniques, capital, and the ideas of European society, because Spain didn't have them. We knew the evangelical but not the works of Erasmus. Composicion Social Dominicana

There is much to praise and perhaps an equal amount to criticize in Landes. His frankness is refreshing but sometimes nearly insufferable. He never seeks to explain away historical phenomena by secondary elaboration or slight of hand, but faces them head on. He has no patience at all for privilege, injustice, and tyranny, and never shrinks from calling a spade a spade. He believes humans to be active forces in their own destinies, not simply pawns in someone else's chess game. He is a strong advocate of women's rights and, indeed, believes that gender equality is essential to the development of wealthy and healthy democratic societies. For him, a nation cannot really thrive when half of its members is disadvantaged.

But Landes ethnocentricity is constantly irksome. His theme of the West First, West First seems arrogant to say the least. He is an absolutist, a triumphalist, and a moralist in an age of scholarly relativists. He is decidedly old fashioned and overly righteous when he treats the science vs. religion theme without nuance, mostly adhering to the discredited "warfare metaphor" employed by Andrew Dickson White more than a century ago. And like White, Landes at times appears anti-Catholic. And his brief mention of magic as nothing but superstition allies him with historians of science who wrote two generations ago. Landes history is too linear and too progressivist. Moreover, Landes has not an iota of anthropological sensibility and therefore misses entire dimensions of other times and places. All is seen through the veil of America at the end of the twentieth century.

This book is bound to annoy readers around the globe. It is a hard pill to swallow, but maybe we should all take our medicine.

I did not agree with everything in this book, but I sure learned a lot from reading it.

I read this book because I was starting to read John Hobson's _Eastern_Origins_of_Western_Civilisation_. In Hobson's introduction, he made it clear that his book is largely a response to the view of history represented by the book I am reviewing right now. I stopped reading Hobson's book and read this one first, and I am very glad I did. (For one thing, Landes has written a terrific example of a history book that is actually enjoyable to read, as well as informative.)

As a conversation, these two books have a great deal to offer. Neither is completely balanced, but between them, they cover a great deal of ground, both in terms of historical content and in terms of how the two authors understand the same events. Reading these two books together taught me a great deal, both about history, and about the historian's profession.

I strongly recommend that if you read one of these two books, you read the other. Be warned that if you agree with one, the other will probably infuriate you, but if you can stay the course, you will be both better informed and a bit wiser at the end of it all.

The work of Prof. David S. Landes is totally prejudiced by a strong bias against southern european catholic states, very especially, Portugal and Spain. He intends that the expulsion of the jewish communities from those countries in the last decade of the 15th century, and the predominance of the catholic religion also in those socities, led them to an historical state of underdevelopment, not yet completely surpassed, by opposition to what happened with the northern european societies, mainly the english and the dutch one.

Firstly, although the expulsion of the jewish communities was a regretable evenment, it is useful to remember that the major part of their members found refuge in such countries like Morocco, the nowadays Bosnia, Greece and Turkey (the sefardi diaspora), but none of those places became an economical power by this simple fact. It is easily recognizable that they share an almost similar level of development with Portugal and Spain - Greece - or a worse one - Morocco, Bosnia and Turkey.

Secondly, the two following centuries - the 16th and the 17th - were the portuguese and spanish golden age, an era of discoveries and imperial conquests, the highest peak on the power of the iberian nations, and, until the middle of the next century - the 18th -, the gap between northern and southern european countries was not so big as Prof. David S. Landes sustains. Really, he falls in contradiction when he quotes, on the page 232 of his book, a table of the estimated G.N.P. per capita for selected countries relative to the year of 1830 (in 1960 US$). It is possible to conclude that Portugal, even after three hundred years of claimed bigotry and fanaticism, had an income of US$ 250, Holland of US$ 270 and England of US$ 370. The difference is not, obviously, smashing...

So, which are the real causes for the decline of the iberian space. We can sum up them in the following points:

1º) The financial exhaustion provoked by the ever increasing maintenance costs of the overseas colonial empires;

2º) The centralized political tradition of the iberian kingdoms and the permanent economical interventionism of the public authorities, suffocating the appearance of a strong private sector of businesses;

3º) The destruction of the jesuit order's schools net, which provided free education to young boys of all social classes and was replaced by... pure emptiness (a fatal blow to the portuguese population's level of literacy), in the second half of the 18th century, during the Marquis of Pombal's government (the Marquis was an enlighted despot ...);

4º) The political instability that deeply shaked Portugal and Spain in the first half of the 19th century, (greatly originated by anti-catholic forces), impeaching the sucessful and punctual launch of the industrial revolution.

Concluding, although the book now reviewed posseses serious points of interest and, partially, explains why some countries are richer than others, I profoundly disliked his reading; instead of Prof. David S. Landes' work, I would recommend Paul Kennedy's "Rise and Fall of the Great Powers", Michael Novak's "The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism", Amintore Fanfani's "Catholicism, Protestantism and Capitalism", Edward Peters' "Inquisition" and Guy Sorman's "The New Wealth of Nations".

David S. Landes has written an extraordinary economic history that will open your eyes about countries' economic flops and good fortune. He also covers what makes a country achieve - and keep - great economic success. The book will appeal not only to economic history buffs, but also to the average person who needs to know how to keep a company or a country from economic trouble. Not to mention, he offers lots of great cocktail party anecdotes to impress your friends. Landes builds on solid economic data, but his unusual factual nuggets and vivid commentary are what make the book such a pleasure to read. In an age where politicians seek to make sure America stays economically relevant amid huge trade friction, We believe this book is a must-read for not just the chief executive officer, but for the rank-and-file workers who want to make sure they will be winners, not losers, in international trade. Landes has cooked up a great feast of economic history. Come, draw up a chair to the table and partake of this rich bounty.

The Wealth & Poverty of Nations is David Landes attempt to answer the question of what has caused some countries to advance economically while others have been left behind and mired in poverty. While Dr. Landes makes a worthy effort the arguments that he advances ultimately come up short.

The central argument advanced in the book is that it is a country's culture (loosely defined) which is the determining factor in whether or not a country advances economically and scientifically. If Dr. Landes wanted to show that culture and economic development are intertwined he needn't have written this book - that fact should be obvious to anyone who is at all observant of the world around them. The real question, which is never addressed in the book, is which is the cart and which is the horse. Were what Landes considers to be the virtues of Northern European culture - openness to new ideas, industriousness, and scientific curiosity - really the driving force behind the Industrial Revolution or were they the result of economic changes that had been set in motion by other historical forces?

The economic history of the United States clearly shows that this book may indeed have the cart before the horse. The northern and southern United States shared the same language, religion, and culture. Yet during the 19th century the North industrialized to the point that is was the equal of any industrialized nation in the world while the South remained a backward agricultural region. If culture is the determining factor, why the difference? Again if everything is so dependent on culture why has Britain become such a laggard? Did the culture which presumably propelled Britain to its status as the most advanced nation in the world in the 18th and 19th centuries somehow mutate into a different type of culture which has now reduced Britain to an also ran? Clearly, Dr. Landes's thesis needs some work.

The book also suffers from several lapses in intellectual rigor that one simply wouldn't expect from someone of the author's stature. The correlation that Landes makes between Asian countries use of chopsticks and their successful microelectronics industries is bizarre to say the least. His statement in another part of the book that "In general, the best clue to a nation's growth and development potential is the status and role of women. This is the greatest handicap of Muslim Middle Eastern societies today" ignores Japan, where the status of women is not all that much better than in Muslim countries, not to mention what the status of women was in England or the United States during their eras of industrialization.

The reason I am not harsher on this book is Landes's willingness to mention what just about every other academic, IMF and World Bank advisor, politician, and pundit considers sacrilegious - that during their period of rapid development and industrialization all countries pursued protectionist policies. This includes England, Germany, France, the United States, and Korea to name only the more famous examples. Japan, as Landes points out, was prohibited by foreign intervention from instituting protective tariffs but more than compensated by developing non-tariff barriers to imports.

Landes gives much evidence to support the argument that protecting your own market is a necessary, although certainly not sufficient, condition for development and it is clear that he supports it. Unfortunately , for reasons of not being drawn and quartered by his colleagues in academia, he can never bring himself to state so explicitly. It is disappointing that in a book where he relishes taking on sacred cow after sacred cow he is unwilling to take on the biggest of them all in modern economic theory - free trade. However, he at least takes on the ridiculous arguments about comparative advantage. He cleverly, and accurately, points out present day Germans are better off due to their 19th Century ancestors not having followed the advise of economists to stick with their "comparative advantage" of growing wheat and trading it for British manufactures.

While I obviously do not agree with the central thesis of the book it is a thought-provoking look at a very important topic and readers of all backgrounds and points of view will gain new insights. For that reason this is a book which should be read.

The beauty of this book is that it makes you realize that that the forces which shaped the history of the world are taking place right now--you can apply Landes' theories to today's headlines. Landes takes the ET-looking-at-Earth approach--and it is convincing. An alien intelligence would see that a country called Great Britain started industrializing in the l800s and the rest of the world is catching up to this very day (note China). The other major theme is that freedom of thought and democracy is the prime motivator of invention and industry, and that state-controlled societies remain static. I live in Japan which is a combination of the two--and hence explains to a large degree its rapid development after World War 2 as well as its current economic malaise. The most controversial factor of Landes' equation is the variable of culture and values. The undisputable historical fact, however, is that some countries have been more aware of "being behind the times" than others. Lack of a national consciousness (Landes' phrase: "they knew who they were") with a corresponding awareness of the rest of the world keeps societies in the past. Only knowledge and the desire for change sets people moving. That is why the Internet is such as boon for the free market--and why countries such as Japan are striving to catch up with the world's leader in this current hot technolgy--the U.S. Ever since the Meiji Restoration, the Japanese have been a trend-conscious people; it's in their culture. And you can bet your Palm Pilots that when China adopts more liberal reforms (perhaps even the disbanding of the Communist State itself), it will be a world titan by the middle of the 21st century.

I am an economics major at the University of Chicago. I started this book on a reccomendation from an economist friend of mine, and while I was not impressed by his language in the first chapter, I can honestly say that I still seriously expected to find some penetrating economic analysis. What I found was a really bad case of somebody trying to do something he obviously wasn't trained to do. His main point is that culture, or more precisely, values, matter to economic development. This has long been of interest to anthropologists and sociologists and they have done a lot of good, sophisticated writing on the subject, which David Landes obviously hasn't read. The really sad thing about this is that, in addition to being much more subtle and clever, they make a lot of the same points (but without the vulgarity and racism). See, for example, Benedict Anderson's Imagined_Communities, which discusses the rise and role of nationalism.

He supports his arguments with a crude analysis of European and Japanese cultural and industrial developments. But as he says, the questions of why the West industrialized and why the rest of the world didn't are really one and the same. And he singularly fails to give an effective analysis of the other cultures. Here's an example: he says that the armies "Oriental despots" fought poorly because they had no reason to be loyal to a despotic government. He cites as evidence (if it can even be called that) just one case where British troops fought against an Indian ruler, whose troops mostly ran away. He never asks whether they did this in battles against other Indian rulers who didn't have the prestige or technical sophistication of the British. He even goes so far as to say that these "Oriental despotisms," which he does not differentiate, appointed officials by fiat and not by merit. I shouldn't need to mention the Chinese examination system. Even he does't think knowledge of Confucian classics counts as merit, he should have known that during the Tang dynasty the officials were selected by a practical exam rather than Confucian classics. But that's exactly the problem--he's trying to write a history of the world that compares European and non-European cultures starting from the assumption that since Europe invented almost everything, only Europe needs to be seriously researched (if you don't believe me, check the bibliography). And he finds (surprise) that only Europe has made significant contributions to the industrial revolution and that this was contributed to by its culture (was anything any society ever did not influenced by the culture?). The reasoning is highly circular. Anybody that disagrees with him is, he says, just writing feel-good history with no regard to the facts (the irony here is just unbearable). I would say that he should leave history to the historians and sociology to the sociologists, but most of these don't know economics well enough to write an economic history. What we really need is for more economists to throw away their ridiculous pretension that economics is the only "scientific" social science and start taking the other social sciences seriously. This one in particular clearly has a lot to learn from them.