This book manages to be wrong almost everywhere. I will show why it's wrong in it's main thesis and in some of the many factual claims it makes.
The main thesis of the author is the following:
1 - Before 1800 AD, all human societies were in a Malthusian equilibrium where there wasn't any scope for sustained economic growth. A Malthusian equilibrium is defined as a level of income where birth rates and mortality rates are equalized: if income was higher, mortality rates would be lower and population levels would increase, increasing the supply of labor relative to other factors, reducing income levels, if income was lower, mortality levels would increase, reducing population and therefore the supply of labor. Hence, societies would tend towards a constant level of income.
2 - Technological advances made before 1800 AD would only increase income temporarily: as mortality rates decreased, population would soon increase and lower incomes. There existed modest differences in living standards among human societies, caused by different regimes of mortality, which were the product of cultural factors: he claims that income levels were higher in UK than in Japan because in UK the rate of urbanization was higher and sanitary conditions lower, increasing mortality and raising Malthusian equilibrium incomes. Technology didn't cause these differences.
3 - He provides various examples of stagnation or even decline of living standards from pre-history to the end of the 18th century: he claims that hunter gatherers were more wealthy than most 18th century societies because they had to work fewer hours and had a more diversified diet. And using wage data, he shows that in Classical Athens, for example, had higher wages than anywhere in the late 18th century world, thus implying that there wasn't any growth in per capita incomes from 430 BC to 1780.
4 - He then claims that in the UK, special conditions arose that made the wealthy have much more children than the poor. The cultural traits of the wealth, of hard work and diligence, passed down the social ladder as the numerous sons of the wealthy took up the jobs of the childless poor and by 1800, most of the population of UK had assimilated these cultural traits. It's a Darwinian model of the "survival of the economically more adapted" that by 1800 had created a "master race" of British men that would unleash the industrial revolution, of exponentially increasing wealth, enabling mankind to escape from the Malthusian trap.
5 - Clark also claims that institutions in modern Western European countries are actually less conductive to economic growth than medieval Western European institutions. Citing things such as the high tax rates in modern European countries, which should have actually driven modern economies to collapse, according to conventional economic theory.
This thesis is wrong on several levels. Let's begin.
1 - The concept of Malthusian equilibrium is wrong because it assumes that mortality rates and incomes are perfectly inversely correlated. The fact is, however, mortality rates can be positively correlated with incomes: Increased income means a society with a higher degree of division of labor, higher degree of division of labor means a higher degree of contact between populations, which increases the transmission of infections diseases, which increases mortality. Hence, increased income can lead to increased mortality. Also, increased wealth also leads to a more cultured society, which tends to develop contraceptive methods and thus reduce birth rates. Therefore, the concept of malthusian equilibrium is flawed by conception: material wealth and the relationship between birth rates and mortality rates (i.e. population growth) is not a simple unidirectional effect of rising incomes that lead to population growth, no, that only works if we view human beings as simple bacteria and therefore it is plain wrong: Material wealth and demographic dynamics are complex concepts that can have a myriad relationships.
2 - Clark makes the argument that before 1800 technological advances didn't result into increased incomes based on his argument that many technological advances were made and income levels didn't rise. He, for example, claims that in the year 1300, technology was much better than in classical antiquity. First, he shows his ignorance of ancient history by implicitly assuming that "classical antiquity" had a single set of technologies during it's thousand years of duration, in fact, technology changed drastically from 750 BC to 50 AD, the rise of classical civilization and from 150 AD to 750 AD, technology regressed by a dramatic extent as well. His unit of comparison should be more precise in the first place. And also, to claim that technology in the year 1300 AD was better than in the year 100 AD in the West would be a bit strong claim (entirely incorrect in my honest opinion: technology in 100 AD was in fact superior in general than in the 13th century). He uses as examples of improvements things like the horse collar and the horse shoes, claiming that in antiquity they didn't protect the horse's hoof and that draft animals were strangulated by the lack of the horse collar. Obviously, he doesn't know the Roman hipposandal and the fact that nailed horseshoes are in fact know to the Romans and the idea that in antiquity they were unable to actually develop a efficient horse harness is a popular meme among historians that has got into their brains, while in fact it was already refuted in the 1980's by Raepsaet. Other examples that he points out of higher levels of technology in 1300 also don't make much sense: fashion items such as "buttons" are regarded as a massive technological advance, and in fact, in 1300 there wasn't a mechanical device in the entire world that was as complex as the Antikythera Mechanism, dated from 100 BC (mechanical clocks were developed during the course of the 14th century and didn't exist in 1300). In terms of transportation technology the fact is that Roman wagons with had suspension systems, banded wheels and pivoted front axles were similar to 19th century wagons in terms of complexity and design while Roman merchant ships were much larger than medieval ships (the largest Roman ships reached sizes of 6,000 - 7,000 tons and were as large as the largest ships in the world at the turn of the 19th century). In terms of sanitation, well, to be brief: Rome's water supply in 100 AD was several times greater than London's in 1850. I can continue with examples, but the fact remains: there is little indicating that in 1300 technology was more advanced in the west than at the time Pompeii was buried.
And also, living standards didn't stagnate between 100 and 1300, they decreased almost continuously from 100 to 750, then increased almost continuously in Europe, down to the present day. And in 100 they were better than in 1300, according to the evidence which we shall analyse. This is verified by archaeology: housing standards declined, as houses became simpler and smaller throughout the centuries, from the 1st century down to the 8th century. Archaeology is revealing that in fact, living standards varied a great deal across historical periods, due to processes of economic growth and economic decline (the second is still a concept that has not been assimilated by modern economists). The most extensively researched and excavated ancient civilization, Greece, has revealed though archaeology that living standards had indeed progressed continuously throughout the centuries: from 800 BC to 400 BC, the median size of house floor plans excavated by archaeologists increased from 400-500 square feet to 2,500 square feet, the quality of housing also improved greatly and the amount of stuff people had inside the houses increased by an order of magnitude. By the time of Aristotle, the typical Greeks enjoyed larger homes than typical Americans of 2012 (example? search for books on Olynthus and Priene), lived in well constructed cities equipped with entertainment facilities (theaters) and population density in Greece increased by an order of magnitude between 800 BC to 400 BC (according to archaeological field surveys), a greater increase in population density than in Western Europe over the last 800 years and in half of the time. So, we have: exponential increase in population and exponential increase in living standards, all occurring well before 1800 AD. The high wages of Athens in 430 AD, at 30 pounds of wheat a day, higher than 18th wages in any city and 5-6 times higher than 18th century Japanese wages, according to the book, were the product of 400 years of sustained economic progress, a snapshot of Hellenic civilization at it's zenith of economic prosperity. By the early middle ages, in the 7th century, when Greece was occupied by the Avars the Greeks were back living in huts. The high wages of bronze age Babylon were probably also the product of centuries of sustained economic growth in per capita incomes in Ancient Mesopotamia. Also, the archaeological evidence too indicates that living standards didn't stagnate in Greece before 800 BC: in 1200 BC, houses were 700-800 square feet in size, nearly twice as large as the houses in 800 BC. That's because in 1200 BC it was the height of Mycenaean civilization in Greece, which collapsed as Greece entered into a dark age which it would climb back from from 800 BC onwards. Also, Clark claims that standards of housing in Villas in Pompeii, accessible only to a small elite are now standard in American suburban housing, however, the fact is that the highly sophisticated houses in Pompeii with painted decoration and mosaics were not enjoyed by a minority: Hadrill has observed that 60% of the buildings excavated in Pompeii had decorated walls with paintings, while buildings without any paintings were usually workshops and commercial establishments. The average size of the houses in Pompeii and Herculaneum was 2,800 square feet, larger than the average size of the average American home of 2012, therefore his claim of "housing standards of a tiny elite" is plain wrong: the typical inhabitant of Pompeii enjoyed quite comfortable housing and not just the elite. Living standards apparently had great variation in human history: there were periods of growth and decline in living standards as civilizations rose and fell. The thesis of stagnation of living standards before 1800 is refuted.
Our present civilization attained much higher living standards than the economic zeniths of any other past civilization probably because it is simply much larger and more complex: enabling a much greater degree of division of labor and technological complexity. As technology is simply the product of human knowledge and a greater division of labor implies in a greater division of knowledge and hence in the aggregate knowledge used in human society. That's Hayek's concept of extended order: Thanks to the market process, each individual integrates his individual knowledge though the price system into the whole of society. More sophisticated societies consist of a greater degree of market integration between a greater number of individuals. The traditional societies based on agricultural subsistence were societies where each worker produced what he consumed, without a significant degree of division of labor, had limited potential for growth because each individual mind was isolated and thus there wasn't scope for an extended order and thus for the possibilities of the multiplication of knowledge available to society brought about by the division of labor. In London in the 18th century, there were 350 different occupations, a sign of a high degree of division of labor, the classicist Keith Hopkins has counted on stone inscriptions and literary sources at least 265 different occupations in 1st century Rome, also evidence of a high degree of division of labor. So pre-1800 AD societies were not all agricultural subsistence economies, though some were and these societies were indeed stagnated, not for Malthusian reasons, but due to the simple fact that without division of labor there isn't scope for economic growth. Something that Adam Smith perceived 230 years ago, but which our modern generation of economists has forgotten.
3 - Clark also claims that hunter gatherers had equal or better standards of living than any "agricultural society" (i.e. societies before the magical year of 1800 AD). He restricts his analysis to heights, life expectancy and work hours. Well, I think that the ultimate indicator of material standards of living is the material stuff that people have. And, in this aspect, the naked savages of hunter gatherer societies were remarkably poor: they lived in tiny 50-60 square feet huts made of sticks, without any actual furniture, without elaborate clothing, without many utensils, only the most rustic and crude set of implements. While in Pompeii, people lived in houses of 2,800 square feet, made of bricks, concrete, marble with plastered walls, decorated with paintings and mosaics, the houses had a high variety of furniture and sophisticated utensils (as one can easily check on the numerous books here on amazon about the town). Pompeii wasn't a special town in the 1st century Roman world, only one among the thousands of towns in the empire besides the fact that it was buried by a volcanic eruption. And yes, it is possible that people of 1st century Pompeii had lower life expectancies and were shorter than hunter gatherers, because of the high concentration of population and the high level of division of labor mean't that diseases were more easily transmitted and therefore the life expectancies were lowered, while children got more diseases during childhood which impaired their process of bone formation, lowering their adult heights, while consumption of bread in civilized societies crowded out the consumption of meat and other animal products, the products of hunting among savage cultures, also contributing to lower heights among the population. So, even before the 19th century there existed societies where the levels or material consumption per capita were dozens of times greater than among hunter gatherers (and note also that 13th century European villages also had much lower living standards than Pompeii). Adam Smith also remarked this fact when he compared living standards in Western Europe to the hunter gatherers cultures in 18th century Africa:
"Observe the accommodation of the most common artificer or day labourer in a civilized and thriving country, and you will perceive that the number of people, of whose industry a part, though but a small part, has been employed in procuring him this accommodation, exceeds all computation....I say, all these things, and consider what a variety of labour is employed about each of them, we shall be sensible that, without the assistance and cooperation of many thousands, the very meanest person in a civilized country could not be provided, even according to, what we very falsely imagine, the easy and simple manner in which he is commonly accommodated.
Compared, indeed, with the more extravagant luxury of the great, his accommodation must no doubt appear extremely simple and easy; and yet it may be true, perhaps, that the accommodation of an European prince does not always so much exceed that of an industrious and frugal peasant, as the accommodation of the latter exceeds that of many an African king, the absolute masters of the lives and liberties of ten thousand naked savages."
Wealth of Nations, pages 16 and 17 of the Penn State Eletronics Classics Series edition
Clark also reaches self contradiction with his statements of high living standards among hunter gatherers with his argument that one important piece of evidence that 14th century England was richer than modern Malawi in that English villages had more durable structures such as Churches than contemporary Malawi villages, well, it is an obvious fact that any agricultural society inhabits more durable structures than the stick-huts of hunter gatherers. Contradicting his claim that hunter gatherer cultures, which didn't produce durable structures, were equal or more affluent than any civilized society before the 19th century.
4 - Besides being a bit racist (British people "evolved" to produce the industrial revolution), its a fact that today most of the world has become industrialized (not in the strict sense of attaining first world income levels, but in the sense of becoming urbanized, market economies with incomes much higher than any 18th century society), without being descendants of British people. In fact, from 1775 to 1875, the period in which England undergo it's industrial revolution, many other countries also were profoundly transformed by industrialization, such as Belgium, France, Germany, Switzerland and the United States. I cannot see the industrial revolution as a British thing in any way, shape of form: the Netherlands in 1700 was already more urbanized and "industrialized" than Britain in 1820, and in the decades from the Napoleonic wars onwards factories driven by steam power multiplied in continental Europe and North America as well as in Britain. While today nearly everywhere in the world the effects of urbanization and the increase in division of labor, productivity and technological complexity are felt.
I think that the Industrial Revolution is best understood as a process of acceleration of economic growth caused fundamentally by cultural and intellectual changes brought by the enlightenment. There was economic growth before it but became much faster after it: Already from 1470 to 1780 the size of the European merchant fleets in terms of tonnage carrying capacity increased 17 times, a very significant change, however, from 1820 to 1910, a much smaller period, the world's merchant fleets increased in carrying capacity by 30 times. Technology greatly improved from 1470 to 1780, as well, but from 1820 to 1910, changes were much more radical.
5 - Finally, the last part. In the Middle Ages, institutions didn't protect private property better than they do now. Tax rates by central governments weren't low because the kings respected the properties of the peasants, but because centralized governments were not well organized in Medieval Europe: there wasn't a well defined distinction between Public and Private spheres and therefore, there wasn't a clear cut distinction between coercive transfers and voluntary exchanges. Civil society didn't exist in most of 13th century Europe. Private property wasn't well protected: it didn't really exist in it's modern sense. The people weren't citizens of countries, which legal systems that protected their lives and property, people were mostly reduced to serfdom or other forms of unfreedom. While murder rates in 13th century London were over an order magnitude higher than in contemporary Western Europe: showing the people in that time were more violent and respected much less the lives and property of other individuals. The high taxes of contemporary Europe reflect it's high level of economic development, as governments seek to maximize it's tax revenues and therefore it's high tax revenues are the product of a high level of taxable income (in traditional agricultural societies most output went from the hand to the mouth, without having the chance to be taxed at all!). Modern democratic governments, with their welfare states, actually demonstrate their respect for the individual lives and properties: they are servants of the people and not kings, which owned the people they governed, tax rates are high, but the 60-70% of the product that is not taxed is fully the property of free citizens, which enjoy nearly perfect security of this property from theft and arbitrary confiscation from the government or other social groups. The medieval peasant had an insecure life where his lord and/or king confiscated uncertain amounts of it's tiny surplus that didn't went to his mouth after the harvest. The degree of freedom enjoyed in the most heavily taxed welfare states such as Sweden today is higher than in any society before the 18th century.
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A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World Hardcover – August 13, 2007
by
Gregory Clark
(Author)
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Why are some parts of the world so rich and others so poor? Why did the Industrial Revolution--and the unprecedented economic growth that came with it--occur in eighteenth-century England, and not at some other time, or in some other place? Why didn't industrialization make the whole world rich--and why did it make large parts of the world even poorer? In A Farewell to Alms, Gregory Clark tackles these profound questions and suggests a new and provocative way in which culture--not exploitation, geography, or resources--explains the wealth, and the poverty, of nations.
Countering the prevailing theory that the Industrial Revolution was sparked by the sudden development of stable political, legal, and economic institutions in seventeenth-century Europe, Clark shows that such institutions existed long before industrialization. He argues instead that these institutions gradually led to deep cultural changes by encouraging people to abandon hunter-gatherer instincts-violence, impatience, and economy of effort-and adopt economic habits-hard work, rationality, and education.
The problem, Clark says, is that only societies that have long histories of settlement and security seem to develop the cultural characteristics and effective workforces that enable economic growth. For the many societies that have not enjoyed long periods of stability, industrialization has not been a blessing. Clark also dissects the notion, championed by Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs, and Steel, that natural endowments such as geography account for differences in the wealth of nations.
A brilliant and sobering challenge to the idea that poor societies can be economically developed through outside intervention, A Farewell to Alms may change the way global economic history is understood.
- Print length432 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPrinceton University Press
- Publication dateAugust 13, 2007
- Dimensions6 x 1 x 9.25 inches
- ISBN-100691121354
- ISBN-13978-0691121352
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"Winner of the 2008 Gold Book Medal in Finance/Investment/Economics, Independent Publisher Book Awards"
"Right or wrong, or perhaps somewhere in between, Clark's is about as stimulating an account of world economic history as one is likely to find. Let's hope that the human traits to which he attributes economic progress are acquired, not genetic, and that the countries that grow in population over the next 50 years turn out to be good at imparting them. Alternatively, we can simply hope he's wrong."---Benjamin M. Friedman, New York Times Book Review
"Clark's idea-rich book may just prove to be the next blockbuster in economics. He offers us a daring story of the economic foundations of good institutions and the climb out of recurring poverty. We may not have cracked the mystery of human progress, but A Farewell to Alms brings us closer than before."---Tyler Cowen, New York Times
"[C]lark is very good at piecing together figures from here and there, including those from isolated groups of hunter-gatherers alive today. He makes a plausible case for the basic pattern: for thousands of years before the Industrial Revolution, there was essentially no sustained improvement in mankind's general material standard of living, nor was there much variation from place to place around the world. The Industrial Revolution made all the difference."---Robert Solow, New York Review of Books
"A Farewell to Alms asks the right questions, and it is full of fascinating details, like the speed at which information traveled over two millennia (prior to the 19th century, about one mile per hour). Clark's combination of passion and erudition makes his account engaging. When a light bulb goes off in my head, the first thing I ask myself is 'Would this be interest if it were true?' Clark's thesis definitely meets that test."---Samuel Bowles, Science
"Mr. Clark...has produced a well written and thought-provoking thesis, refreshingly light on jargon and equations. It could well be the subject of debate for years to come." (The Economist)
"Gregory Clark's A Farewell to Alms is fully as absorbing, as memorable and as well written as [Jared] Diamond's remarkable bestseller. It deserves to be as widely read.... [A]ny book that is as bold, as fascinating, as conscientiously argued and as politically incorrect as this one demands to be read."---Clive Crook, Financial Times
"Obviously, we¹ve got a controversial argument here. But Clark makes a compelling case for the idea that the fruits of industrialization were open to all societies, but only a handful seized the moment."---William R. Wineke, The Wisconsin State Journal
"Gregory Clark's new book A Farewell to Alms is an investigation of both our nasty, brutish, and short past and our more prosperous present. Mr. Clark first makes the case that we owe our current prosperity to the gifts of the Industrial Revolution. He then attempts to explain why that revolution happened in 18th-century England."---Edward Glaeser, New York Sun
"Economic history often conjures images of musty tomes, bygone eras that no one knows about and in general, scholarship that is dry and difficult to relate to. Gregory Clark's new book A Farewell to Alms conveys a different image. Offering a sweep of history from the border between antiquity and the medieval age, the book is an attempt at tackling grand themes."---Siddharth Singh, LiveMint
"For a novel and somewhat dispiriting theory of economic divergence, read A Farewell to Alms, published this year, by Gregory Clark of the University of California at Davis. He doesn't accept the view, common among the utopians, that natural endowments like soil and water explain why rich nations are 50 times as prosperous as poor ones. How can differences in natural resources possibly explain Zimbabwe's misery or Singapore's wealth? Clark amasses an extraordinary collection of historical data to explain why the Industrial Revolution was born in western Europe, not Africa or India."---William Baldwin, Forbes
"Clark's ferociously systematic expounding of an alternative to the institutional explanation does...provide many delightful insights, large and small, along the way. Some of the observations in this very well-written book do make for nice dinner party anecdotes."---Harold James, The American Interest
"Comes now Gregory Clark, an economist who interestingly takes the side of culture. In an important new book, A Farewell to Alms Clark suggests that much of the world's remaining poverty is semi-permanent. Modern technology and management are widely available, but many societies can't take advantage because their values and social organization are antagonistic. Prescribing economically sensible policies (open markets, secure property rights, sound money) can't overcome this bedrock resistance."---Robert Samuelson, The Washington Post
"A Farewell to Alms is a brave new work, rich in both detailed facts and big ideas. Clark clears away much of the tangled brush of theories of long-term economic growth that have grown up in recent decades. This is the most ambitious and far-reaching book on long-term economic history to appear in many years, perhaps since Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel."---Jack A. Goldstone, World Economics
"Clark's book A Farewell to Alms is . . . Ambitious, staking out an entire vision of world history. . . . Clark's Malthusian model is forcefully argued."---Roger Gathman, Austin American-Statesman
"[T]he author's engaging style and (relatively) jargon-free descriptions of the economic principles in play before, during, and after the Industrial Revolution in England turn this rich and detailed account into more of a sprint than a slog. . . . Whatever your reaction to this decidedly un-PC take on economic aid, [A Farewell to Alms] serves as a useful explanation of how we got where we are today and a reminder that new approaches are needed to close the yawning gap between the world's richest and poorest societies."---Roberta Fusaro, Harvard Business Review
"Clark argues the English evolved biologically in ways that created prosperity. Before you dismiss the notion, read this brilliant tour of economic history." (MoneySense Magazine)
"Clark adds substantively to an understanding of perhaps the important questions of this--or any--era: what makes economies grow, and why have some not experienced any success at all?....Alms is provocative, authoritative, insightful, readable, well documented, and an inescapable detour for anyone wanting to tackle economic growth and development topics and enter into these conversations."---A. R. Sanderson, Choice
"Gregory Clark has written a fascinating book which is chock-full of insight and ideas. Clark paints on a big canvas and his deft handling of the puzzles and counterintuitive outcomes is delicious. 'No one,' he says, 'can claim to be truly intellectually alive without having understood and wrestled, at least a little, with these mysteries'. We are indebted to him for revealing more of them in such an electrifying fashion."---Ian R. Harper, The Melbourne Review
"[A Farewell to Alms] is one of the most fascinating, and the most disturbing, historical works I have read. It seems to suggest that the gross inequality of our world has less to do with the inherent unfairness of global capitalism and more with scarcely ineradicable cultural difference. . . . [T]his is economic history as you never read it before."---A.N. Wilson, The Daily Telegraph
"Why do some nations get rich while others stay poor? What are the conditions that allow an economy to take off and grow? These questions have puzzled economists for many years. But no explanation is more startling than the one proposed by Gregory Clark in his book A Farewell to Alms."---Ross Gittins, Sydney Morning Herald
"This is a fine book, bristling with interesting data and opinions, more extensive than this review can possibly convey. Readily accessible to non-fiction readers, this book should fire more debate about a historical episode of unfailing fascination."---Michael G. Sargent, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews
"This is . . . a remarkable book, with an unerring focus on the fundamentals of the Malthusian economy and the large-scale economic trends. It is a unique source of factual information, beautifully presented in almost 200 tables and figures, and will make an excellent textbook for college-level courses of history and economics."---Gerhard Meisenberg, Journal of Biosocial Science
"[P]erhaps there is no higher praise for an author than to say that I disagreed with the arguments but liked the book. It made me think in new ways about the course of economic history. I recommend the book to anyone with an interest in the economic history of the world."---Rick Szostak, New Global Studies
"I derived enormous stimulation from this book. At a superficial level, Clark offers a richly documented picture of England's economic history, put into perspective by comparisons with other parts of Europe and with the Far East, and sometimes even by references to amazing facts about ancient forager societies. . . . More fundamentally, the layman gets a good understanding here of what made for the Industrial Revolution and how its preconditions evolved in England over a period of centuries. Clark accuses economists of being undereducated about history. This will be somewhat remedied if they read his provocative book."---Wolfgang Kasper, Policy
"As a self-proclaimed exercise in 'big history' this work succeeds extraordinarily well: it is engaging and readable, and it renders abstruse economic models and empirical results accessible to nonspecialists."---Zorina Khan, Technology and Culture
"A Farewell to Alms is . . . worth scrutinizing. The book offers a distinct line of thought on evolutionary affairs. It is also valuable in historiographical terms as it recalls historical explanation forsaken due to shifting scholarly fashions."---Ian Morley, The History Teacher
"Gregory Clark has written a stimulating, provocative, witty, and ambitious book. It is accessible to the uninitiated and a pleasure to read. Clark's valuable insights are presented with an admirable forcefulness, as are his grievous errors. In short, this is a book very much worth reading for the sake of argument and debate."---Jan De Vries, Journal of Economic History
"Clark has provided a sensible and readable account of important frontier research in economic history."---Peter Howitt, Journal of Interdisciplinary History
"Gregory Clark has given us a very provocative work. It is economic history, but with strong implications for contemporary problems. His quantitative techniques for demonstrating such phenomena as the innumeracy of pre-industrial humanity and the evolution of the speed of information flows are clever."---Arnold Kling, Journal of Bioeconomics
"What caused the Industrial Revolution? Gregory Clark has a brilliant and fascinating explanation for this event which permanently changed the life of humankind after 100,000 years of stagnation."―George Akerlof, Nobel Laureate in Economics and Koshland Professor of Economics, University of California, Berkeley
"This is a very important book. Gregory Clark argues that the Industrial Revolution was the gradual but inevitable result of a kind of natural selection during the harsh struggle for existence in the pre-industrial era, in which economically successful families were also more reproductively successful. They transmitted to their descendants, culturally and perhaps genetically, such productive attitudes as foresight, thrift, and devotion to hard work. This audacious thesis, which dismisses rival explanations in terms of prior ideological, technological, or institutional revolutions, will be debated by historians for many years to come."―Paul Seabright, author of The Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life
"Challenging the prevailing wisdom that institutions explain why some societies become rich, Gregory Clark's "A Farewell to Alms" will appeal to a broad audience. I can think of nothing else like it."―Philip T. Hoffman, author of Growth in a Traditional Society
"You may not always agree with Gregory Clark, but he will capture your attention, make you think, and make you reconsider. He is a provocative and imaginative scholar and a true original. As an economic historian, he engages with economists in general; as an economist, he is parsimonious with high-tech algebra and unnecessarily complex models. Occam would approve."―Cormac Ó Gráda, author of Jewish Ireland in the Age of Joyce
"This should rapidly become a standard work on the history of economic development. It should start whole industries trying to test, refine, and refute its explanations. And Gregory Clark's views on the economic merits of imperialism and the fact that labor gained the most from industrialization will infuriate all the right people."―Eric L. Jones, author of Cultures Merging and The European Miracle
"While many books on the Industrial Revolution tend to focus narrowly either on the event itself, or on one explanation for it, Gregory Clark does neither. He takes an extremely long-run view, covering significant periods before and after the Industrial Revolution, without getting bogged down in long or detailed exposition. This is an extremely important contribution to the subject."―Clifford Bekar, Lewis and Clark College
"Right or wrong, or perhaps somewhere in between, Clark's is about as stimulating an account of world economic history as one is likely to find. Let's hope that the human traits to which he attributes economic progress are acquired, not genetic, and that the countries that grow in population over the next 50 years turn out to be good at imparting them. Alternatively, we can simply hope he's wrong."---Benjamin M. Friedman, New York Times Book Review
"Clark's idea-rich book may just prove to be the next blockbuster in economics. He offers us a daring story of the economic foundations of good institutions and the climb out of recurring poverty. We may not have cracked the mystery of human progress, but A Farewell to Alms brings us closer than before."---Tyler Cowen, New York Times
"[C]lark is very good at piecing together figures from here and there, including those from isolated groups of hunter-gatherers alive today. He makes a plausible case for the basic pattern: for thousands of years before the Industrial Revolution, there was essentially no sustained improvement in mankind's general material standard of living, nor was there much variation from place to place around the world. The Industrial Revolution made all the difference."---Robert Solow, New York Review of Books
"A Farewell to Alms asks the right questions, and it is full of fascinating details, like the speed at which information traveled over two millennia (prior to the 19th century, about one mile per hour). Clark's combination of passion and erudition makes his account engaging. When a light bulb goes off in my head, the first thing I ask myself is 'Would this be interest if it were true?' Clark's thesis definitely meets that test."---Samuel Bowles, Science
"Mr. Clark...has produced a well written and thought-provoking thesis, refreshingly light on jargon and equations. It could well be the subject of debate for years to come." (The Economist)
"Gregory Clark's A Farewell to Alms is fully as absorbing, as memorable and as well written as [Jared] Diamond's remarkable bestseller. It deserves to be as widely read.... [A]ny book that is as bold, as fascinating, as conscientiously argued and as politically incorrect as this one demands to be read."---Clive Crook, Financial Times
"Obviously, we¹ve got a controversial argument here. But Clark makes a compelling case for the idea that the fruits of industrialization were open to all societies, but only a handful seized the moment."---William R. Wineke, The Wisconsin State Journal
"Gregory Clark's new book A Farewell to Alms is an investigation of both our nasty, brutish, and short past and our more prosperous present. Mr. Clark first makes the case that we owe our current prosperity to the gifts of the Industrial Revolution. He then attempts to explain why that revolution happened in 18th-century England."---Edward Glaeser, New York Sun
"Economic history often conjures images of musty tomes, bygone eras that no one knows about and in general, scholarship that is dry and difficult to relate to. Gregory Clark's new book A Farewell to Alms conveys a different image. Offering a sweep of history from the border between antiquity and the medieval age, the book is an attempt at tackling grand themes."---Siddharth Singh, LiveMint
"For a novel and somewhat dispiriting theory of economic divergence, read A Farewell to Alms, published this year, by Gregory Clark of the University of California at Davis. He doesn't accept the view, common among the utopians, that natural endowments like soil and water explain why rich nations are 50 times as prosperous as poor ones. How can differences in natural resources possibly explain Zimbabwe's misery or Singapore's wealth? Clark amasses an extraordinary collection of historical data to explain why the Industrial Revolution was born in western Europe, not Africa or India."---William Baldwin, Forbes
"Clark's ferociously systematic expounding of an alternative to the institutional explanation does...provide many delightful insights, large and small, along the way. Some of the observations in this very well-written book do make for nice dinner party anecdotes."---Harold James, The American Interest
"Comes now Gregory Clark, an economist who interestingly takes the side of culture. In an important new book, A Farewell to Alms Clark suggests that much of the world's remaining poverty is semi-permanent. Modern technology and management are widely available, but many societies can't take advantage because their values and social organization are antagonistic. Prescribing economically sensible policies (open markets, secure property rights, sound money) can't overcome this bedrock resistance."---Robert Samuelson, The Washington Post
"A Farewell to Alms is a brave new work, rich in both detailed facts and big ideas. Clark clears away much of the tangled brush of theories of long-term economic growth that have grown up in recent decades. This is the most ambitious and far-reaching book on long-term economic history to appear in many years, perhaps since Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel."---Jack A. Goldstone, World Economics
"Clark's book A Farewell to Alms is . . . Ambitious, staking out an entire vision of world history. . . . Clark's Malthusian model is forcefully argued."---Roger Gathman, Austin American-Statesman
"[T]he author's engaging style and (relatively) jargon-free descriptions of the economic principles in play before, during, and after the Industrial Revolution in England turn this rich and detailed account into more of a sprint than a slog. . . . Whatever your reaction to this decidedly un-PC take on economic aid, [A Farewell to Alms] serves as a useful explanation of how we got where we are today and a reminder that new approaches are needed to close the yawning gap between the world's richest and poorest societies."---Roberta Fusaro, Harvard Business Review
"Clark argues the English evolved biologically in ways that created prosperity. Before you dismiss the notion, read this brilliant tour of economic history." (MoneySense Magazine)
"Clark adds substantively to an understanding of perhaps the important questions of this--or any--era: what makes economies grow, and why have some not experienced any success at all?....Alms is provocative, authoritative, insightful, readable, well documented, and an inescapable detour for anyone wanting to tackle economic growth and development topics and enter into these conversations."---A. R. Sanderson, Choice
"Gregory Clark has written a fascinating book which is chock-full of insight and ideas. Clark paints on a big canvas and his deft handling of the puzzles and counterintuitive outcomes is delicious. 'No one,' he says, 'can claim to be truly intellectually alive without having understood and wrestled, at least a little, with these mysteries'. We are indebted to him for revealing more of them in such an electrifying fashion."---Ian R. Harper, The Melbourne Review
"[A Farewell to Alms] is one of the most fascinating, and the most disturbing, historical works I have read. It seems to suggest that the gross inequality of our world has less to do with the inherent unfairness of global capitalism and more with scarcely ineradicable cultural difference. . . . [T]his is economic history as you never read it before."---A.N. Wilson, The Daily Telegraph
"Why do some nations get rich while others stay poor? What are the conditions that allow an economy to take off and grow? These questions have puzzled economists for many years. But no explanation is more startling than the one proposed by Gregory Clark in his book A Farewell to Alms."---Ross Gittins, Sydney Morning Herald
"This is a fine book, bristling with interesting data and opinions, more extensive than this review can possibly convey. Readily accessible to non-fiction readers, this book should fire more debate about a historical episode of unfailing fascination."---Michael G. Sargent, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews
"This is . . . a remarkable book, with an unerring focus on the fundamentals of the Malthusian economy and the large-scale economic trends. It is a unique source of factual information, beautifully presented in almost 200 tables and figures, and will make an excellent textbook for college-level courses of history and economics."---Gerhard Meisenberg, Journal of Biosocial Science
"[P]erhaps there is no higher praise for an author than to say that I disagreed with the arguments but liked the book. It made me think in new ways about the course of economic history. I recommend the book to anyone with an interest in the economic history of the world."---Rick Szostak, New Global Studies
"I derived enormous stimulation from this book. At a superficial level, Clark offers a richly documented picture of England's economic history, put into perspective by comparisons with other parts of Europe and with the Far East, and sometimes even by references to amazing facts about ancient forager societies. . . . More fundamentally, the layman gets a good understanding here of what made for the Industrial Revolution and how its preconditions evolved in England over a period of centuries. Clark accuses economists of being undereducated about history. This will be somewhat remedied if they read his provocative book."---Wolfgang Kasper, Policy
"As a self-proclaimed exercise in 'big history' this work succeeds extraordinarily well: it is engaging and readable, and it renders abstruse economic models and empirical results accessible to nonspecialists."---Zorina Khan, Technology and Culture
"A Farewell to Alms is . . . worth scrutinizing. The book offers a distinct line of thought on evolutionary affairs. It is also valuable in historiographical terms as it recalls historical explanation forsaken due to shifting scholarly fashions."---Ian Morley, The History Teacher
"Gregory Clark has written a stimulating, provocative, witty, and ambitious book. It is accessible to the uninitiated and a pleasure to read. Clark's valuable insights are presented with an admirable forcefulness, as are his grievous errors. In short, this is a book very much worth reading for the sake of argument and debate."---Jan De Vries, Journal of Economic History
"Clark has provided a sensible and readable account of important frontier research in economic history."---Peter Howitt, Journal of Interdisciplinary History
"Gregory Clark has given us a very provocative work. It is economic history, but with strong implications for contemporary problems. His quantitative techniques for demonstrating such phenomena as the innumeracy of pre-industrial humanity and the evolution of the speed of information flows are clever."---Arnold Kling, Journal of Bioeconomics
"What caused the Industrial Revolution? Gregory Clark has a brilliant and fascinating explanation for this event which permanently changed the life of humankind after 100,000 years of stagnation."―George Akerlof, Nobel Laureate in Economics and Koshland Professor of Economics, University of California, Berkeley
"This is a very important book. Gregory Clark argues that the Industrial Revolution was the gradual but inevitable result of a kind of natural selection during the harsh struggle for existence in the pre-industrial era, in which economically successful families were also more reproductively successful. They transmitted to their descendants, culturally and perhaps genetically, such productive attitudes as foresight, thrift, and devotion to hard work. This audacious thesis, which dismisses rival explanations in terms of prior ideological, technological, or institutional revolutions, will be debated by historians for many years to come."―Paul Seabright, author of The Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life
"Challenging the prevailing wisdom that institutions explain why some societies become rich, Gregory Clark's "A Farewell to Alms" will appeal to a broad audience. I can think of nothing else like it."―Philip T. Hoffman, author of Growth in a Traditional Society
"You may not always agree with Gregory Clark, but he will capture your attention, make you think, and make you reconsider. He is a provocative and imaginative scholar and a true original. As an economic historian, he engages with economists in general; as an economist, he is parsimonious with high-tech algebra and unnecessarily complex models. Occam would approve."―Cormac Ó Gráda, author of Jewish Ireland in the Age of Joyce
"This should rapidly become a standard work on the history of economic development. It should start whole industries trying to test, refine, and refute its explanations. And Gregory Clark's views on the economic merits of imperialism and the fact that labor gained the most from industrialization will infuriate all the right people."―Eric L. Jones, author of Cultures Merging and The European Miracle
"While many books on the Industrial Revolution tend to focus narrowly either on the event itself, or on one explanation for it, Gregory Clark does neither. He takes an extremely long-run view, covering significant periods before and after the Industrial Revolution, without getting bogged down in long or detailed exposition. This is an extremely important contribution to the subject."―Clifford Bekar, Lewis and Clark College
From the Inside Flap
"What caused the Industrial Revolution? Gregory Clark has a brilliant and fascinating explanation for this event which permanently changed the life of humankind after 100,000 years of stagnation."--George Akerlof, Nobel Laureate in Economics and Koshland Professor of Economics, University of California, Berkeley
"This is a very important book. Gregory Clark argues that the Industrial Revolution was the gradual but inevitable result of a kind of natural selection during the harsh struggle for existence in the pre-industrial era, in which economically successful families were also more reproductively successful. They transmitted to their descendants, culturally and perhaps genetically, such productive attitudes as foresight, thrift, and devotion to hard work. This audacious thesis, which dismisses rival explanations in terms of prior ideological, technological, or institutional revolutions, will be debated by historians for many years to come."--Paul Seabright, author of The Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life
"Challenging the prevailing wisdom that institutions explain why some societies become rich, Gregory Clark's "A Farewell to Alms" will appeal to a broad audience. I can think of nothing else like it."--Philip T. Hoffman, author of Growth in a Traditional Society
"You may not always agree with Gregory Clark, but he will capture your attention, make you think, and make you reconsider. He is a provocative and imaginative scholar and a true original. As an economic historian, he engages with economists in general; as an economist, he is parsimonious with high-tech algebra and unnecessarily complex models. Occam would approve."--Cormac Grda, author of Jewish Ireland in the Age of Joyce
"This should rapidly become a standard work on the history of economic development. It should start whole industries trying to test, refine, and refute its explanations. And Gregory Clark's views on the economic merits of imperialism and the fact that labor gained the most from industrialization will infuriate all the right people."--Eric L. Jones, author of Cultures Merging and The European Miracle
"While many books on the Industrial Revolution tend to focus narrowly either on the event itself, or on one explanation for it, Gregory Clark does neither. He takes an extremely long-run view, covering significant periods before and after the Industrial Revolution, without getting bogged down in long or detailed exposition. This is an extremely important contribution to the subject."--Clifford Bekar, Lewis and Clark College
From the Back Cover
"What caused the Industrial Revolution? Gregory Clark has a brilliant and fascinating explanation for this event which permanently changed the life of humankind after 100,000 years of stagnation."--George Akerlof, Nobel Laureate in Economics and Koshland Professor of Economics, University of California, Berkeley
"This is a very important book. Gregory Clark argues that the Industrial Revolution was the gradual but inevitable result of a kind of natural selection during the harsh struggle for existence in the pre-industrial era, in which economically successful families were also more reproductively successful. They transmitted to their descendants, culturally and perhaps genetically, such productive attitudes as foresight, thrift, and devotion to hard work. This audacious thesis, which dismisses rival explanations in terms of prior ideological, technological, or institutional revolutions, will be debated by historians for many years to come."--Paul Seabright, author ofThe Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life
"Challenging the prevailing wisdom that institutions explain why some societies become rich, Gregory Clark's "A Farewell to Alms" will appeal to a broad audience. I can think of nothing else like it."--Philip T. Hoffman, author ofGrowth in a Traditional Society
"You may not always agree with Gregory Clark, but he will capture your attention, make you think, and make you reconsider. He is a provocative and imaginative scholar and a true original. As an economic historian, he engages with economists in general; as an economist, he is parsimonious with high-tech algebra and unnecessarily complex models. Occam would approve."--Cormac Ó Gráda, author ofJewish Ireland in the Age of Joyce
"This should rapidly become a standard work on the history of economic development. It should start whole industries trying to test, refine, and refute its explanations. And Gregory Clark's views on the economic merits of imperialism and the fact that labor gained the most from industrialization will infuriate all the right people."--Eric L. Jones, author ofCultures Merging and The European Miracle
"While many books on the Industrial Revolution tend to focus narrowly either on the event itself, or on one explanation for it, Gregory Clark does neither. He takes an extremely long-run view, covering significant periods before and after the Industrial Revolution, without getting bogged down in long or detailed exposition. This is an extremely important contribution to the subject."--Clifford Bekar, Lewis and Clark College
About the Author
Gregory Clark is chair of the economics department at the University of California, Davis. He has written widely about economic history.
Product details
- Publisher : Princeton University Press; First Edition (August 13, 2007)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 432 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0691121354
- ISBN-13 : 978-0691121352
- Item Weight : 1.06 pounds
- Dimensions : 6 x 1 x 9.25 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #848,481 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,785 in Economic History (Books)
- #86,000 in History (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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Gregory Clark is Professor of Economics at the University of California Davis. His home page with background research on the topics of his books is http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/index.html
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Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 27, 2012
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 9, 2015
In A Farewell to Alms, Gregory Clark takes us on a fascinating journey, revealing the roots of the Industrial Revolution in Europe back to 1200AD. Then he documents just how the IR created modern affluence and why it was nurtured in Northern Europe and flourished in the uniquely fertile culture of 19thC. England. A most welcome element in his approach is his assertion that economic theory cannot explain why some nations rise and others stagnate or fall. Instead. he builds a strong case that economic advances have always come from superior "labor efficiencies," and those are primarily determined within any given population by an empowering combination of culture and genetics.
To understand his position one must recognize that Genetic differences do exist between people, but it is important to recognize that these are based on ancestry, not race. The visual differences we see tell us nothing about a person's fundamental qualities. This is because human variation is non-concordant--that is most traits are inherited independently, not based on race or ethnicity. Group racial characteristics are irrelevant, but the variations within every group are important. And when circumstances have concentrated above average capabilities in a supporting culture there has usually been above average results. As Benjamin M. Friedland explained in the NYT Book Review, "Let's hope that the human traits to which he attributes economic progress are acquired, not genetic, and that the countries that grow in population over the next 50 years turn out to be good at imparting them. Alternatively, we can simply hope he's wrong."
Although Clark concentrates on the impact of the IR from the early 1800's to present days, he explains how that European success was built on a gradual evolution from 1200 to 1800 that advanced in baby steps enabled by many causative factors. But, he concludes near the end of the book that "The West has no model of economic development to offer the still-poor countries. . no simple economic medicine that will guarantee growth. ." That statement, however, belies many of his repeated references to the primary contributing factors of England's success. In brief, he suggests that 1.) the people of a society are its Ultimate Resource (a la Julian Simon); 2.) that the existence of stable and supportive social customs and legal/financial institutions can create an environment in which those citizens are free to act (a la Hernando deSoto); and 3.) that the population's genetic/cultural heritage can further empower their productivity(a la James R. Flynn). But he explains how the first two, merely having people, and empowering legal and political institutions, is not enough--many nations have had that combination, but without a high proportion of people with drive and talent, the Western experience has proven hard to replicate. Modern machinery and a free economy is useless unless the culture and attitudes of the people make efficient use of those advantages. He cites examples of how this factor makes most aid to developing nations problematic, and renders any attempt to solve their problems beyond the expertise of today's economists.
Part of Clark's argument is that the Industrial Revolution was the gradual result of natural selection during the harsh struggle for existence in Medieval times. Before the widespread safety net became a part of Western democracies, economically successful families were also more reproductively successful. They passed on to their children a culture, and perhaps winning genes, that possessed such productive attitudes as thrift and devotion to hard work. This positive fertility effect he refers to as "downward mobility" because it expanded the Middle Class with its successful attitudes and aptitudes. This thesis, which dismisses rival explanations based on natural resources, luck, and good geography makes short shrift of Jared Diamond's and Kenneth Pomerantz' recent popular, politically correct, and totally unsatisfactory explanations for the Rise and Fall of Nations.
I would like to have had more exposition on how this same people-based explanation applies to some of history's most spectacular earlier success stories. In ancient Phoenicia, Venice, and Holland, as well as the original American colonies we have seen the success of wilderness outposts that were "started from scratch" by a voluntary migration of self-selecting individuals seeking freedom and opportunity. Such an economic force of a populace's attitude supporting hard work, private property, and self-reliance can be traced all the way back to the original Greek scientists and philosopher Hesiod around 800AD. The great poet's parents had migrated to a rocky barren land near Ascra, and probably lived on waste land, under pioneer conditions, similar to the rugged individualists who settled New England 2,400 years later! Victor Davis Hanson writes in The Other Greeks how the rise of this "successful independent class of agrarians explains the peculiar Greek approach to politics, war, and the economy, which would form the later core foundations of Western civilization itself." In those days we can safely assume that the survival of the fittest was in full operation. Because Hesiod and most later Greek states only granted full citizenship to the more successful citizens, it appears likely that a positive fertility factor expanded the number of people with the traits that lead to success, the same beneficent social force that Clark points to in explaining England's rapid success in the 19th C.
A great feature of Clark's book is that he uses the lessons of history to address today's problems: Based on that view, he believes that America faces a future burdened by persistent inequalities because the history of American immigration has created a society of wide socio-economic divisions of ability and status. Clark's studies of the history of surname social mobility (another of his books) suggests that we will experience a magnification of the existing class divisions in the U.S. He realistically, but pessimistically, indicates the need to consider how to mitigate the consequences of these forces. Government policies to promote social mobility can help only marginally. So, he posits, we must face the need to accommodate such persistent divergence of fortunes.
He argues that a low rate of social mobility is in itself not a social tragedy. It depends on what is causing the high correlation of status between parents and children--if driven by environmental deprivation, discrimination, or connections, then it would indeed be a disgrace. But he is quick to assert that there is considerable evidence that the biological inheritance of talent and drive is what underlies most of the correlation between the social status of parents and children. Under any social system, be it China or England, families of greater social competence will manage to achieve the higher social positions. This reminded me of the old theory that if we divided all the nation's wealth evenly to everyone, after 40 years roughly the same people would have most of it that had enjoyed it before its redistribution! He suggests we accept these social mobility facts, and seek to provide equal opportunity for everyone and limit the rewards that come from mere social status.
If we project Clark's line of thought, it sheds light also on the eventual decline of history's successful nations-- as caused by a gradually declining contribution from the more productive segment of their population as their portion of the population becomes smaller and becomes suppressed by a populist majority. For example. the recent dysgenic trend in Western democracies represents the exact opposite of the "downward mobility" Clark shows to have helped England's past success. Because we have advanced beyond the harsh reality of survival of the fittest, those individuals with the most positive "attitudes and inherited traits" could become a smaller and less influential group, which illustrates Benjamin Friedland's dire observation noted above.
This book explores a vast and interesting subject for those who have any intellectual curiosity about where did we come from and where are we going. It is written in simple language free of the usual economists' dismal and mind boggling mathematical abstractions. (I obviously enjoyed it, writing the longest review in history!) Clark is more a historian than an economist which is good because economics is not a science and yet most academics seem to believe it is and therefore claim knowledge comparable to the real "scientists" like Pythagorus, Newton and Einstein! Yet, here we find out why economists have not been able to even explain the rise and fall of nations!
To understand his position one must recognize that Genetic differences do exist between people, but it is important to recognize that these are based on ancestry, not race. The visual differences we see tell us nothing about a person's fundamental qualities. This is because human variation is non-concordant--that is most traits are inherited independently, not based on race or ethnicity. Group racial characteristics are irrelevant, but the variations within every group are important. And when circumstances have concentrated above average capabilities in a supporting culture there has usually been above average results. As Benjamin M. Friedland explained in the NYT Book Review, "Let's hope that the human traits to which he attributes economic progress are acquired, not genetic, and that the countries that grow in population over the next 50 years turn out to be good at imparting them. Alternatively, we can simply hope he's wrong."
Although Clark concentrates on the impact of the IR from the early 1800's to present days, he explains how that European success was built on a gradual evolution from 1200 to 1800 that advanced in baby steps enabled by many causative factors. But, he concludes near the end of the book that "The West has no model of economic development to offer the still-poor countries. . no simple economic medicine that will guarantee growth. ." That statement, however, belies many of his repeated references to the primary contributing factors of England's success. In brief, he suggests that 1.) the people of a society are its Ultimate Resource (a la Julian Simon); 2.) that the existence of stable and supportive social customs and legal/financial institutions can create an environment in which those citizens are free to act (a la Hernando deSoto); and 3.) that the population's genetic/cultural heritage can further empower their productivity(a la James R. Flynn). But he explains how the first two, merely having people, and empowering legal and political institutions, is not enough--many nations have had that combination, but without a high proportion of people with drive and talent, the Western experience has proven hard to replicate. Modern machinery and a free economy is useless unless the culture and attitudes of the people make efficient use of those advantages. He cites examples of how this factor makes most aid to developing nations problematic, and renders any attempt to solve their problems beyond the expertise of today's economists.
Part of Clark's argument is that the Industrial Revolution was the gradual result of natural selection during the harsh struggle for existence in Medieval times. Before the widespread safety net became a part of Western democracies, economically successful families were also more reproductively successful. They passed on to their children a culture, and perhaps winning genes, that possessed such productive attitudes as thrift and devotion to hard work. This positive fertility effect he refers to as "downward mobility" because it expanded the Middle Class with its successful attitudes and aptitudes. This thesis, which dismisses rival explanations based on natural resources, luck, and good geography makes short shrift of Jared Diamond's and Kenneth Pomerantz' recent popular, politically correct, and totally unsatisfactory explanations for the Rise and Fall of Nations.
I would like to have had more exposition on how this same people-based explanation applies to some of history's most spectacular earlier success stories. In ancient Phoenicia, Venice, and Holland, as well as the original American colonies we have seen the success of wilderness outposts that were "started from scratch" by a voluntary migration of self-selecting individuals seeking freedom and opportunity. Such an economic force of a populace's attitude supporting hard work, private property, and self-reliance can be traced all the way back to the original Greek scientists and philosopher Hesiod around 800AD. The great poet's parents had migrated to a rocky barren land near Ascra, and probably lived on waste land, under pioneer conditions, similar to the rugged individualists who settled New England 2,400 years later! Victor Davis Hanson writes in The Other Greeks how the rise of this "successful independent class of agrarians explains the peculiar Greek approach to politics, war, and the economy, which would form the later core foundations of Western civilization itself." In those days we can safely assume that the survival of the fittest was in full operation. Because Hesiod and most later Greek states only granted full citizenship to the more successful citizens, it appears likely that a positive fertility factor expanded the number of people with the traits that lead to success, the same beneficent social force that Clark points to in explaining England's rapid success in the 19th C.
A great feature of Clark's book is that he uses the lessons of history to address today's problems: Based on that view, he believes that America faces a future burdened by persistent inequalities because the history of American immigration has created a society of wide socio-economic divisions of ability and status. Clark's studies of the history of surname social mobility (another of his books) suggests that we will experience a magnification of the existing class divisions in the U.S. He realistically, but pessimistically, indicates the need to consider how to mitigate the consequences of these forces. Government policies to promote social mobility can help only marginally. So, he posits, we must face the need to accommodate such persistent divergence of fortunes.
He argues that a low rate of social mobility is in itself not a social tragedy. It depends on what is causing the high correlation of status between parents and children--if driven by environmental deprivation, discrimination, or connections, then it would indeed be a disgrace. But he is quick to assert that there is considerable evidence that the biological inheritance of talent and drive is what underlies most of the correlation between the social status of parents and children. Under any social system, be it China or England, families of greater social competence will manage to achieve the higher social positions. This reminded me of the old theory that if we divided all the nation's wealth evenly to everyone, after 40 years roughly the same people would have most of it that had enjoyed it before its redistribution! He suggests we accept these social mobility facts, and seek to provide equal opportunity for everyone and limit the rewards that come from mere social status.
If we project Clark's line of thought, it sheds light also on the eventual decline of history's successful nations-- as caused by a gradually declining contribution from the more productive segment of their population as their portion of the population becomes smaller and becomes suppressed by a populist majority. For example. the recent dysgenic trend in Western democracies represents the exact opposite of the "downward mobility" Clark shows to have helped England's past success. Because we have advanced beyond the harsh reality of survival of the fittest, those individuals with the most positive "attitudes and inherited traits" could become a smaller and less influential group, which illustrates Benjamin Friedland's dire observation noted above.
This book explores a vast and interesting subject for those who have any intellectual curiosity about where did we come from and where are we going. It is written in simple language free of the usual economists' dismal and mind boggling mathematical abstractions. (I obviously enjoyed it, writing the longest review in history!) Clark is more a historian than an economist which is good because economics is not a science and yet most academics seem to believe it is and therefore claim knowledge comparable to the real "scientists" like Pythagorus, Newton and Einstein! Yet, here we find out why economists have not been able to even explain the rise and fall of nations!
Top reviews from other countries
Smith Juliancharles
4.0 out of 5 stars
Makes you think
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 13, 2014
A good account of how humanity and the economy has got to the place it is now. It centers around the Industrial Revolution and the big differences between the Malthusian pre-revolutionary world and the post-revolutionary world in which we live. The author shows how the Industrial Revolution was not the sudden break that we like to think it is, but rather the result of the accumulation of ideas and, perhaps controversially, genes from previous generations. In the long-term, beyond the scope of our lives, success is all about the number of surviving children we have. It's uncomfortably Darwinian, and that's a good thing, it really makes you think. At the end, the author touches on the current situation in developed countries: what genes are we effectively passing on now? It would have been interesting to see the author speculate more about this.
I think the case for genetic determinism is a little over-stated in this book though. A more thorough examination of the situation in current developing countries would probably indicate that more weight should be given to the problems of institutional failure and kleptocratic power structures than the author allows.
I think the case for genetic determinism is a little over-stated in this book though. A more thorough examination of the situation in current developing countries would probably indicate that more weight should be given to the problems of institutional failure and kleptocratic power structures than the author allows.
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virgilio pellandini
3.0 out of 5 stars
A goldmine of data in a desert of ideas.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 30, 2020
an excellent collection of interesting and well researched data. Built into an argument that managed to be at the same time unclear and questionable.
One person found this helpful
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Cdol
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on April 26, 2022
Excellent and arrived on time!!
San Patch
3.0 out of 5 stars
The cultural and genetic arguments - again
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on July 27, 2011
Why did the industrial revolution happen in Britain? Why not in more populous advanced agrarian societies like India or China? Some economics - the institutionalists - have argued that Britain developed institutions (rule of law, property rights, representative democracy etc) that rewarded private enterprise. British entrepreneurs and inventors then took advantage of the benign social regime and, presto, they produced an industrial revolution. Other thinkers like Max Weber attributed British and North European economic success to the Protestant work ethic, which glorifies labour and the enjoyment of worldly goods (presumably, unlike the vapid, other-worldly post-Tridentine Catholicism that held sway in southern Europe). Yet, other thinkers like David Landes have credited factors like genes, culture, climate and race/ethnicity for Britain's economic development. None of these explanations is likely to be the smoking gun; there is, perhaps, some truth in most of the explanations. Mono-causal explanations of complex social phenomena can be naïve, at best, and irresponsible at worst. I was therefore surprised that in A Farewell to Alms, Professor Gregory Clark, a distinguished professor of economics history at University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), hung his intellectual coattails on the genetic and culture arguments.
RECORDS IN ENGLANDS REALLY IMPRESSIVE
The book is not without merit. I was impressed by the research that Professor Clark presented on economic conditions in pre-industrial Britain, an age he calls the Malthusian age. In this age, population was the main determinant of income per head. Economic productivity in this age was low; any rise in living standards led to a rise in population, which, in turn, led to starvation, disease and subsequent decline in population. Sounds familiar? Life back then must have been nasty, brutish and short.
Citing work from many authors (including his own), Clark shows conclusively that the richer a man was in pre-industrial Britain, the higher the number of surviving children he had: before 1800 (the generally-accepted date of the industrial revolution), the rich in Britain were outbreeding the rest of the population. Huh? Yes, the modern world in the rich have fewer children than the poor bucks this long-run trend. Furthermore, using data from parish records that stretch to 1400, Clark cleverly adduces the literacy rate in Britain using the percentage of plaintiffs and defendants who could sign their names. He demonstrates that rising literacy - a consequence of the Protestant Reformation - correlates with economic output. The volume of economic and social data from pre-industrial Britain is really impressive. It is testament to the relative stability that Britain enjoyed from 1200 to 1800. So far, so good.
AWAY WITH THE INSTITUTIONALISTS?
Professor Clark challenged the institutionalist argument that British society rewarded invention and, therefore, encouraged entrepreneurs like James Watt and Richard Arkwright to invent the steam engine and the cotton mill respectively. Clark showed that almost all notable British inventors of the eighteenth and nineteenth century did not reap massive rents from the productivity increases that their inventions afforded. Most of the surplus was enjoyed, instead, by consumers in the form of cheaper garments. This, according to Clark, suggests that inventors were not "in it for the money". Well, not quite.
Clark's analysis does not distinguish between expectations and outcomes. Perhaps most inventors did not become rich, but there is no telling whether they invested their energies in the hope of becoming rich. And they all had the example of Richard Arkwright who became fabulously wealthy (his estate was worth £0.5million at his death). We, however, have the benefit of hindsight. Expectations of future profit often exceed reality (see the Dotcom boom).
THE GENETIC AND CULTURAL ARGUMENTS - AGAIN
These are the most dubious arguments in the book. Clark argues that upper and middle-class men (the rich) produced more children than the poor. The children of the rich could not maintain the status of their fathers. Hence, they 'downgraded' in status and intermarried with lower classes. In the process, upper class children transferred their superior genes and values to the rest of the society. By 1800, therefore, Britain had become thoroughly bourgeois (hard-working, responsible, inclined to seek profit, loving family etc). Yet, Professor Clark does not give a shred of evidence support this hypothesis. Evidence aside, let's examine this argument. It assumes that: (1) the rich and the rest of society had different values; (2) that the values of the rich were superior to those of the rest of society - at least for wealth generation; (3) that 'downgraded' children of the rich maintained their superior values even as they downgraded in status; (4) The skills needed to prosper in a capitalist system are transferred genetically from parent to offspring. Clark's central thesis rests on these very questionable, eugenist assumptions; yet, he does not produce a single shred of evidence to support his claims.
Clark advances the cultural argument by analysing nineteenth century textile industry in detail. (Like any self-respecting MBA, I love industry analysis.) The textile industry was important in the industrial revolution because it underwent a near sixty-fold productivity increase in the course of the nineteenth century. Indeed, Clark argues convincingly that the textile industry generated most of the productivity growth of the British economy over the argument.
He compares the productivity of Indian and UK textile mills. Even though UK mill workers cost significantly more than their Indian counterparts, investors found the UK textile industry more attractive than India's: using the same inputs as the Indian workers, UK textile workers were considerably more productive than India's. The reason: Indian textile workers were lazier than the UK workers (evidence: high absenteeism). Indian workers seemed to take a more 'relaxed' approach to work than the UK workers. Hmmm.
This comparative analysis is facile. It completely neglects the external environment. Was management style in British mills significantly different from Indian mills? Was there a consistent reflective focus on productivity improvement in Indian mills as there was in UK mills? Clark extrapolates too readily from low productivity to worker attitudes (culture). His data sources here are problematic: He bases his analysis, in part, on (British) accounts of native Indian custom. How unbiased would British accounts of Indian Natives have been?
A Farewell to Alms is incomplete--perhaps necessarily so. I was impressed by the quality of data in England and by how Clark cleverly analysed the data to tell a story of inheritance. Yet, Clark advances a dubious genetic and cultural thesis for which he provided little evidence. This poorly-argued thesis detracts significantly from the quality of the book. The book deserves three stars.
RECORDS IN ENGLANDS REALLY IMPRESSIVE
The book is not without merit. I was impressed by the research that Professor Clark presented on economic conditions in pre-industrial Britain, an age he calls the Malthusian age. In this age, population was the main determinant of income per head. Economic productivity in this age was low; any rise in living standards led to a rise in population, which, in turn, led to starvation, disease and subsequent decline in population. Sounds familiar? Life back then must have been nasty, brutish and short.
Citing work from many authors (including his own), Clark shows conclusively that the richer a man was in pre-industrial Britain, the higher the number of surviving children he had: before 1800 (the generally-accepted date of the industrial revolution), the rich in Britain were outbreeding the rest of the population. Huh? Yes, the modern world in the rich have fewer children than the poor bucks this long-run trend. Furthermore, using data from parish records that stretch to 1400, Clark cleverly adduces the literacy rate in Britain using the percentage of plaintiffs and defendants who could sign their names. He demonstrates that rising literacy - a consequence of the Protestant Reformation - correlates with economic output. The volume of economic and social data from pre-industrial Britain is really impressive. It is testament to the relative stability that Britain enjoyed from 1200 to 1800. So far, so good.
AWAY WITH THE INSTITUTIONALISTS?
Professor Clark challenged the institutionalist argument that British society rewarded invention and, therefore, encouraged entrepreneurs like James Watt and Richard Arkwright to invent the steam engine and the cotton mill respectively. Clark showed that almost all notable British inventors of the eighteenth and nineteenth century did not reap massive rents from the productivity increases that their inventions afforded. Most of the surplus was enjoyed, instead, by consumers in the form of cheaper garments. This, according to Clark, suggests that inventors were not "in it for the money". Well, not quite.
Clark's analysis does not distinguish between expectations and outcomes. Perhaps most inventors did not become rich, but there is no telling whether they invested their energies in the hope of becoming rich. And they all had the example of Richard Arkwright who became fabulously wealthy (his estate was worth £0.5million at his death). We, however, have the benefit of hindsight. Expectations of future profit often exceed reality (see the Dotcom boom).
THE GENETIC AND CULTURAL ARGUMENTS - AGAIN
These are the most dubious arguments in the book. Clark argues that upper and middle-class men (the rich) produced more children than the poor. The children of the rich could not maintain the status of their fathers. Hence, they 'downgraded' in status and intermarried with lower classes. In the process, upper class children transferred their superior genes and values to the rest of the society. By 1800, therefore, Britain had become thoroughly bourgeois (hard-working, responsible, inclined to seek profit, loving family etc). Yet, Professor Clark does not give a shred of evidence support this hypothesis. Evidence aside, let's examine this argument. It assumes that: (1) the rich and the rest of society had different values; (2) that the values of the rich were superior to those of the rest of society - at least for wealth generation; (3) that 'downgraded' children of the rich maintained their superior values even as they downgraded in status; (4) The skills needed to prosper in a capitalist system are transferred genetically from parent to offspring. Clark's central thesis rests on these very questionable, eugenist assumptions; yet, he does not produce a single shred of evidence to support his claims.
Clark advances the cultural argument by analysing nineteenth century textile industry in detail. (Like any self-respecting MBA, I love industry analysis.) The textile industry was important in the industrial revolution because it underwent a near sixty-fold productivity increase in the course of the nineteenth century. Indeed, Clark argues convincingly that the textile industry generated most of the productivity growth of the British economy over the argument.
He compares the productivity of Indian and UK textile mills. Even though UK mill workers cost significantly more than their Indian counterparts, investors found the UK textile industry more attractive than India's: using the same inputs as the Indian workers, UK textile workers were considerably more productive than India's. The reason: Indian textile workers were lazier than the UK workers (evidence: high absenteeism). Indian workers seemed to take a more 'relaxed' approach to work than the UK workers. Hmmm.
This comparative analysis is facile. It completely neglects the external environment. Was management style in British mills significantly different from Indian mills? Was there a consistent reflective focus on productivity improvement in Indian mills as there was in UK mills? Clark extrapolates too readily from low productivity to worker attitudes (culture). His data sources here are problematic: He bases his analysis, in part, on (British) accounts of native Indian custom. How unbiased would British accounts of Indian Natives have been?
A Farewell to Alms is incomplete--perhaps necessarily so. I was impressed by the quality of data in England and by how Clark cleverly analysed the data to tell a story of inheritance. Yet, Clark advances a dubious genetic and cultural thesis for which he provided little evidence. This poorly-argued thesis detracts significantly from the quality of the book. The book deserves three stars.
17 people found this helpful
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P. Mcloughlin
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Alternative Take on Economics
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on November 19, 2013
A serious review of how we got to where we now are in the global economy. It shows that economics is truly a Black Art and that the more we know the more we don't know.
2 people found this helpful
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