Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 June 2021
New data on Dutch and British GDP/capita show that at no time prior to 1750, perhaps not before 1800, did the leading countries of northwestern Europe enjoy sustained strong growth in GDP/capita. Such growth in income per head as did occur was highly episodic, concentrated in a few decades and then followed by long periods of stagnation of income per head. Moreover, at no time before 1800 did the leading economies of northwestern Europe reach levels of income per capita much different from peak levels achieved hundreds of years earlier in the most developed regions of Italy and China. When the Industrial Revolution began in Britain, it was not preceded by patterns of pre-modern income growth that were in any way remarkable, neither by sustained prior growth in real incomes nor exceptional levels of income per head. The Great Divergence, seen as the onset of sustained increases in income per head despite strong population growth, and achievement of incomes beyond pre-modern peaks, was a late occurrence, arising only from 1800.
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7 Population of Holland from text below; England and France from M. Livi Bacci, A Concise History of World Population, 6th ed. (Hoboken, NJ, 2017), 69; China from von Glahn, China, 330.
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9 S. Broadberry, “Accounting for the Great Divergence,” LSE Economic History Working Papers No. 814/13 (London, 2013), 3.
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19 Broadberry, “Accounting,” Fouquet and Broadberry, “Seven centuries”.
20 The 1340s were used as the last decade for the early fourteenth century because the Black Death created a sharp discontinuity between the 1340s and 1350s. Throughout this paper, decadal levels and growth rates presented as “from Broadberry et al.” were calculated from their annual data (Appendix 5.3, 225–244), unless explicitly attributed to another specific table in Broadberry et al.
21 N. Crafts and T. Mills, “Six Centuries of British Economic Growth: A Time-Series Perspective,” European Review of Economic History 21 (2017): 142.
22 Broadberry et al., British Economic Growth, Table 10.02.
23 Ibid., Table 5.01.
24 Humphries and Weisdorf, “Unreal Wages,” Table A2.
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27 Nuvolari and Ricci “Growth in England,” following P. Malanima, “The Long Decline of a Leading Economy: GDP in Central and Northern Italy, 1300–1913,” European Review of Economic History 15 (2010): 169–219.
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30 R. C. Allen, “Economic Structure and Agricultural Productivity in Europe, 1300–1800,” European Review of Economic History 3 (2000): 1–25.; Allen, “English and Welsh Agriculture.”
31 Note: for Allen and Clark, as their output data is only for England and Wales, I derive per capita output from 1700 onwards using their total output and the population data on England and Wales (not Britain) from E. A. Wrigley, R. S. Davies, J. E. Oeppen, and R. S. Schofield, English Population History from Family Reconstitution, 1580–1837 (Cambridge, 1997), Table A9.1. For Clark, I use agricultural output with his assumption of a 250-day working year.
32 Broadberry et al., British Economic Growth, Table 3.07.
33 Ibid., pp. 86, 99.
34 Meat production from ibid., Tables 3.15 and 7.04; per capita values calculated using population totals from Wrigley et al., English Population History, Table A9.1.
35 Hannah Ritchie, “Which Countries East the Most Meat,” BBC News, February 4 (2019); Caixin, “Charts of the Day: China’s Growing Meat Consumption,” October 12 (2018).
36 Humphries and Weisdorf, “Unreal Wages,” Table A2.
37 P. Warde, Energy Consumption in England and Wales, 1560–2000 (Rome, 2007); E. A. Wrigley, Energy and the English Industrial Revolution (Cambridge, 2010).
38 M. Kelly and C. O’Grada, “Numerare Est Errare: Agricultural Output and Food Supply in England Before and During the Industrial Revolution,” Journal of Economic History 73 (2013): 1132–63.
39 Broadberry et al., British Economic Growth, 261.
40 Meredith and Oxley, “Food and Fodder”.
41 Ibid., 171.
42 Ibid., 212.
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44 N. Crafts and C. K. Harley, “Output Growth and the British Industrial Revolution: A Restatement of the Crafts-Harley View,” Economic History Review 45 (1992):703–30.
45 J. A. Goldstone, “The Demographic Revolution in England: A Reexamination,” Population Studies 49 (1986): 5–33.
46 Broadberry et al., British Economic Growth, 203, 211.
47 Craft and Mills, “Six Centuries,” 142.
48 Broadberry et al., British Economic Growth, 203.
49 These arguments are presented in the works cited in footnotes 9–14.
50 Decade averages calculated from the annual data provided in van Zanden and van Leeuwen, “Reconstruction”.
51 S. Broadberry, H. Guan and D. D. Li, “China, Europe and the Great Divergence: A Study in Historical National Accounting 980-1850,” Journal of Economic History 17 (2018): 47.
52 China GDP/cap data from Broadberry, Guan and Li, “China, Europe,” 46; Chinese population levels from von Glahn, China, 225, 330.
53 J. Ober, The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece (Princeton, NJ, 2015), 84–87; E. Lo Cascio and P. Malanima, “GDP in Pre-Modern Agrarian Economies (1-1820 AD): A Revision of the Estimates,” Rivista de Storia Economica 25 (2009): 400.
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55 Broadberry, Guan and Li, “Great Divergence” Tables 7 and 8, pp. 988–99.
56 U. Pfister, “The Timing and Pattern of Real Wage Divergence in Pre-Industrial Europe: Evidence from Germany, c. 1500–1850,” Economic History Review 70 (2017): 701–729, Figure 8.
57 Von Glahn, China, 300, 346.
58 Broadberry, Guan and Li, “Great Divergence,” 990.
59 Broadberry, Guan and Li, “Great Divergence”.
60 Meredith and Oxley, “Food and Fodder,” 191.
61 Shaw-Taylor and Wrigley, “Occupational Structure,” 84, 86.
