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How the West Grew Rich: The Economic Transformation Of The Industrial World
How did the West—Europe, Canada, and the United States—escape from immemorial poverty into sustained economic growth and material well-being when other societies remained trapped in an endless cycle of birth, hunger, hardship, and death? In this elegant synthesis of economic history, two scholars argue that it is the political pluralism and the flexibility of the West's institutions—not corporate organization and mass production technology—that explain its unparalleled wealth.
368 pages, Paperback
First published March 18, 1985
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612 people want to read
About the author
Nathan Rosenberg
42 books5 followersDr. Nathan Rosenberg was an economist who specialized in the history of technology.
Rosenberg received Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1955, and taught at Indiana University (1955–1957), the University of Pennsylvania (1957–1961), Purdue University (1961–1964), Harvard University (1967–1969), the University of Wisconsin (1969–1974), and then Stanford University until his retirement.
Rosenberg received Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1955, and taught at Indiana University (1955–1957), the University of Pennsylvania (1957–1961), Purdue University (1961–1964), Harvard University (1967–1969), the University of Wisconsin (1969–1974), and then Stanford University until his retirement.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
April 9, 2021
2021-04-09 I read this about 35 years ago as another of the books my uncle Chuck liked and gave me. It is generally a good book - partly fulfilling the title's claim.
I was not really as impressed as I would like to have been about what the authors thought were the key reasons for "How the West Grew Rich." No mention of Mises, Menger or Böhm-Bawerk or Rothbard at all. Only one minor footnote of a highly relevant book that Hayek edited on the Industrial Revolution. Lots on Adam Smith and Marx, of course.
The authors were way too limited in their understanding of the power of individual freedom, free markets and creativity and too heavy on their claims for "pluralism" as I remember.... but it has been a long time since I read this.
I was not really as impressed as I would like to have been about what the authors thought were the key reasons for "How the West Grew Rich." No mention of Mises, Menger or Böhm-Bawerk or Rothbard at all. Only one minor footnote of a highly relevant book that Hayek edited on the Industrial Revolution. Lots on Adam Smith and Marx, of course.
The authors were way too limited in their understanding of the power of individual freedom, free markets and creativity and too heavy on their claims for "pluralism" as I remember.... but it has been a long time since I read this.
Want to read
May 6, 2013"Well, there was a book...called How the West Grew Rich. There were not platoons of Chinese millionaires that came over in the Middle Ages to teach the westerners how to improve agriculture or to take care of their medical problems or to lend them money to set them up in business or anything of the sort. There has never been teams of black Africans running around the world civilizing and educating people and setting up orphanages and hospitals. Only the Christians have done that. And yet even the worst of our enemies abroad have never suffered all of the calumnies that have been propounded in this country by our own people."
~ Otto Scott
~ Otto Scott
September 3, 2021
How the West Grew Rich — The Economic Transformation of the Industrial World
Nathan Rosenberg & L. E. Birdzell, Jr. ©1986
353 pages
The back cover of my edition of this book includes praise by Donald N. McCloskey (representing the New York Times Book Review), long before Donald McCloskey became Deirdre McCloskey. I have already ordered Deirdre McCloskey’s book on pretty much the same subject. It is a subject that she calls “the great enrichment.”
It is thus that I delved into “How the West Grew Rich,” thinking that “the great enrichment” would be the subject of both of these books. Certain conditions were clearly put into place for the first time in history only a few hundred years ago, which have led to this “great enrichment,” the first time in thousands of years on earth that mankind’s standard of living rose above a subsistence level. I have long been in a state of wonder about why so many of today’s intellectual elites refuse to acknowledge the causes of the great enrichment.
THE MIDDLE AGES
Over the decades I’ve taken in a wide dose of impressions about life in the Middle Ages, some of it colored by Hollywood depictions. The most fundamental look shows primitive living conditions and a fair amount of barbarism, conditions akin to widespread slavery where people lacked fundamental freedoms — including the freedom to trade with one another; freedom to earn a living; even the freedom to marry for love. We have all heard life during this period described as “nasty, brutish and short” — this all BEFORE the West grew rich.
Prior to this book, my understanding was entirely superficial about how the old systems of oppression gradually gave way to the first inklings of the freedoms that would have to be in place before the West would actually explode with abundance.
We see described in Rosenberg and Birdzell’s book a Middle Ages consumed with oppression; but then we see pockets of escape from that oppression as elements of freedom are gradually introduced in the West.
It seems odd that today’s postmodernism would contend that the freedoms marking mankind’s escape from the Middle Ages must now be condemned as racist — as allegedly an attempt by white supremacists to consolidate unearned power to oppress others.
When postmodernism contends that property rights are just a device for consolidating power by white holders of property, that very contention ignores and overlooks the role of freedom in the monumental discovery of individual rights in the first place. Either freedom undermines the ability to oppress or it enables oppression; but it can’t be both. The book made pretty clear to me that adding freedoms to the social mix resulted in less oppression — even though that is a minority view in today’s academia.
There is much talk about developing the “institutions of capitalism” back in the days when the Middle Ages were ending; I found it curious to frame it this way when the very term, “capitalism,” wasn’t introduced until the mid-19th century, when it was deployed by Marx as term of opprobrium. But this book’s discussion was about the foundations of what would later become capitalism: trade; using money instead of barter; banking; enforceable contracts; specialization in merchandise distribution; rise of insurance markets; systematic and predictable taxation in place of capricious seizures.
There are so many intricately inter-related factors contributing to any culture’s vibrancy that it is no small achievement to conceptually isolate which factors are essential to a culture’s growth and which are just agreeable offshoots; which are basic to “how the West grew rich,” and which are just consequences of the growth. Rosenberg and Birdzell go “into the weeds” in their description of the factors: maritime technology leading to the full rigged ship; growth of science and technology; development of towns and cities; the idea of market prices not regulated by the guilds; and the creation of an entire merchant class that created a vast network of markets using bills of exchange — all lying in wait to support the new technology of the Industrial Revolution.
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
We have long suffered under the contention that the Industrial Revolution brought us the riches we enjoy today, rather than the reverse: that technology unleashed from guild control and other coercive regulation was the factor that ignited all measure of cultural growth, including the Industrial Revolution itself. Rosenberg & Birdzell labor at drawing out the details of these alternate views, as they assemble their view about how the West grew rich.
I found myself drawn in by the book’s description of how an entire commercial network had been built up long before the Industrial Revolution, whereas many future observers would try to contend that these commercial networks sprang up only because America’s Revolutionary spirit succeeded in removing the long-standing political coercions that were impeding growth.
However, it turns out that substantial infrastructure had evolved in the many decades prior to the American Revolution, infrastructure such as the development of an entire insurance industry aimed at facilitating maritime trade, allowing for large cargos of valuable commodities. By the time the Industrial Revolution was launched, the required institutions of private property had been well established.
What America seems to have done which is so remarkable is to have codified in law for the first time the moral rightness of a government whose essential purpose was to protect the individual’s right to earned property.
MERCANTILISM
It was instructive for me to get clarification not only that the system of “mercantilism” was firmly place before our modern forms of social organization evolved, but also that the essence of mercantilism was government enforced monopoly, trade barriers, subsidy, endless controls and tax confiscations.
I found the book’s use of the expression, “mercantile capitalism,” offensive — since the essence of capitalism is that it has no mercantile elements. (That expression is on par with today’s term, “crony capitalism,” which is similarly offensive — since the coercive elements required for cronyism to prevail are elements of capitalism’s opposite: statism.)
What we would come to think of as capitalism was defined by the total elimination of all these coercive impositions. Some regard it a sad fact that pure laissez-faire capitalism never materialized, but it is perhaps sadder still that in the current day we have embraced all of the features that once comprised the horrors of mercantilism; and yet, many continue to call it capitalism.
I found it amusing to read how “Literary England,” evaded the pre-existing poverty — which drove the poor to the factories as an alternative to starving. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, 95% of the population was working agriculture, on the farms: back-breaking work where children toiled from dawn to dusk; no schools for the children; widespread poverty; many early deaths. Charles Dickens makes it seem as if the factories caused the poverty: he demonizes the factories, completely overlooking the role factories played in bringing the poor out of poverty, ultimately.
“But if early factory work was oppressive, the alternative open to those who voted with their feet for factory work was worse.” (p 173)
THE CORPORATION
Rosenberg and Birdzell give us a wide ranging presentation on how the Corporation came about; but they never made it completely clear how the Corporation required the infrastructure of robust patent law to protect each inventor’s “intellectual property” as actual earned property.
I was astounded to find only one minor reference to “patent” in the index, despite the fact that underlying the Corporation’s ability to create enormous wealth was one critical piece of infrastructure: patent law protecting Intellectual Property. Why did Rosenberg and Birdzell give such short shrift to the role of this important feature of the social structure?!
Many of us have been led to believe that the growth of the West took place as reason overtook superstition and religion; as Constitutional freedoms replaced tyrannical despots; as enforcement of contracts was made part of the law; as science and technology burst on the scene.
What we have here is an extensive, detailed treatment of the birth and development of the American corporation. From all the complexity of all a corporation’s organizational arrangements, my most basic take-away is to see the corporation as a means of limiting the liability of the investors and owners to the amounts that they invested — such that a failed enterprise didn’t automatically translate into failed personal lives. In the process, birth was given to the mechanism where ownership shares could be traded in separate markets, markets that both governed and facilitated corporate growth.
KARL MARX AND MONOPOLY
Throughout this volume there is a repetitious thread of mentioning changes in the West as reported on by Karl Marx; and we get some commentary about the objectivity of the Marx perspectives.
The authors point out “Marx argues that all value is attributable to labor,” (p 296) but they don’t take it one step further to point out that the value is even more attributable to mental labor — to the intellectual effort behind every factory.
Then they talk about Marx’s contention that capitalism invariably results in monopolies, but they don’t differentiate between coercive, government-created monopolies as contrasted with mere market dominance as the result of efficiently producing values. It seems to me that the failure to differentiate between these two entirely different entities has resulted in deploying actions which have seriously undermined our economy’s productive machinery.
The other item of concern to me is that the authors do not appear to question the validity of the absurd “perfect competition” model as they talk about the considerations surrounding corporate monopolies.
I would have liked to hear more about the role of patent law; more about the mischaracterization of market dominance as monopolistic; and more about the value of intellectual brilliance that makes it even possible for brute physical labor to have any value at all.
It seems that the West continued to grow, in spite of its failure to differentiate market dominance from monopoly; in spite of its failure to properly recognize the basic origins of all the value being created; in spite of deploying ominous coercive roadblocks to sabotage market efficiencies.
* * * * * * * * *
In the concluding chapter we are treated to some broad strokes about the West’s astonishing 200 years of growth. I have long contended that grasping the dynamics at play involves what Rosenberg & Birdzell summarize as: “The minimum defining characteristic of government is a claim to a monopoly of the use of coercive force within some defined territory.” (p. 304) That would have been useful as context if it had been the opening of Chapter 1; but better late than never.
Here is a book published 35 years ago, but which acknowledges the crucial difference between “economic power” and “political power:” one functioning by free voluntary trade and the other by imposing coercive force on the parties. I have often been disappointed with tedious arguments that neglect to recognize this pivotal difference.
The authors address the decades-long narrative, first brought to us by Marx himself, that growth in the West depended upon oppressing the workers, the proletariat. Even today there are many led to belief that the West’s explosion of prosperity is because oppressed groups fell victim to white oppressors — never quite asking themselves why thousands of years of organized oppression hadn’t generated its own explosion of wealth. It’s pretty clear that the oppression of the feudal manors and guilds never sparked any remarkable formation of new wealth. It was because political power had always suppressed economic power.
It never quite gelled into the American consciousness that it was the political power behind coercive Southern slavery that put it at odds with the North’s surge when it embraced the infrastructure to allow free trade, and to allow the individual to prosper without the coercive hand of government holding him back. The coercive oppressions in the South aligned with what we would today designate as Third World.
* * * * * * * * *
I am tempted to overlook some of the complexities of “the great enrichment,” as I get lost in the scores of elements addressed in this book. But regardless of the complexities, it is clear that the flood gates of Western wealth production were opened as the result of deploying specific principles into the culture.
It is sad to witness today’s call to repeal many of these principles, akin to slowly killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.
Nathan Rosenberg & L. E. Birdzell, Jr. ©1986
353 pages
The back cover of my edition of this book includes praise by Donald N. McCloskey (representing the New York Times Book Review), long before Donald McCloskey became Deirdre McCloskey. I have already ordered Deirdre McCloskey’s book on pretty much the same subject. It is a subject that she calls “the great enrichment.”
It is thus that I delved into “How the West Grew Rich,” thinking that “the great enrichment” would be the subject of both of these books. Certain conditions were clearly put into place for the first time in history only a few hundred years ago, which have led to this “great enrichment,” the first time in thousands of years on earth that mankind’s standard of living rose above a subsistence level. I have long been in a state of wonder about why so many of today’s intellectual elites refuse to acknowledge the causes of the great enrichment.
THE MIDDLE AGES
Over the decades I’ve taken in a wide dose of impressions about life in the Middle Ages, some of it colored by Hollywood depictions. The most fundamental look shows primitive living conditions and a fair amount of barbarism, conditions akin to widespread slavery where people lacked fundamental freedoms — including the freedom to trade with one another; freedom to earn a living; even the freedom to marry for love. We have all heard life during this period described as “nasty, brutish and short” — this all BEFORE the West grew rich.
Prior to this book, my understanding was entirely superficial about how the old systems of oppression gradually gave way to the first inklings of the freedoms that would have to be in place before the West would actually explode with abundance.
We see described in Rosenberg and Birdzell’s book a Middle Ages consumed with oppression; but then we see pockets of escape from that oppression as elements of freedom are gradually introduced in the West.
It seems odd that today’s postmodernism would contend that the freedoms marking mankind’s escape from the Middle Ages must now be condemned as racist — as allegedly an attempt by white supremacists to consolidate unearned power to oppress others.
When postmodernism contends that property rights are just a device for consolidating power by white holders of property, that very contention ignores and overlooks the role of freedom in the monumental discovery of individual rights in the first place. Either freedom undermines the ability to oppress or it enables oppression; but it can’t be both. The book made pretty clear to me that adding freedoms to the social mix resulted in less oppression — even though that is a minority view in today’s academia.
There is much talk about developing the “institutions of capitalism” back in the days when the Middle Ages were ending; I found it curious to frame it this way when the very term, “capitalism,” wasn’t introduced until the mid-19th century, when it was deployed by Marx as term of opprobrium. But this book’s discussion was about the foundations of what would later become capitalism: trade; using money instead of barter; banking; enforceable contracts; specialization in merchandise distribution; rise of insurance markets; systematic and predictable taxation in place of capricious seizures.
There are so many intricately inter-related factors contributing to any culture’s vibrancy that it is no small achievement to conceptually isolate which factors are essential to a culture’s growth and which are just agreeable offshoots; which are basic to “how the West grew rich,” and which are just consequences of the growth. Rosenberg and Birdzell go “into the weeds” in their description of the factors: maritime technology leading to the full rigged ship; growth of science and technology; development of towns and cities; the idea of market prices not regulated by the guilds; and the creation of an entire merchant class that created a vast network of markets using bills of exchange — all lying in wait to support the new technology of the Industrial Revolution.
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
We have long suffered under the contention that the Industrial Revolution brought us the riches we enjoy today, rather than the reverse: that technology unleashed from guild control and other coercive regulation was the factor that ignited all measure of cultural growth, including the Industrial Revolution itself. Rosenberg & Birdzell labor at drawing out the details of these alternate views, as they assemble their view about how the West grew rich.
I found myself drawn in by the book’s description of how an entire commercial network had been built up long before the Industrial Revolution, whereas many future observers would try to contend that these commercial networks sprang up only because America’s Revolutionary spirit succeeded in removing the long-standing political coercions that were impeding growth.
However, it turns out that substantial infrastructure had evolved in the many decades prior to the American Revolution, infrastructure such as the development of an entire insurance industry aimed at facilitating maritime trade, allowing for large cargos of valuable commodities. By the time the Industrial Revolution was launched, the required institutions of private property had been well established.
What America seems to have done which is so remarkable is to have codified in law for the first time the moral rightness of a government whose essential purpose was to protect the individual’s right to earned property.
MERCANTILISM
It was instructive for me to get clarification not only that the system of “mercantilism” was firmly place before our modern forms of social organization evolved, but also that the essence of mercantilism was government enforced monopoly, trade barriers, subsidy, endless controls and tax confiscations.
I found the book’s use of the expression, “mercantile capitalism,” offensive — since the essence of capitalism is that it has no mercantile elements. (That expression is on par with today’s term, “crony capitalism,” which is similarly offensive — since the coercive elements required for cronyism to prevail are elements of capitalism’s opposite: statism.)
What we would come to think of as capitalism was defined by the total elimination of all these coercive impositions. Some regard it a sad fact that pure laissez-faire capitalism never materialized, but it is perhaps sadder still that in the current day we have embraced all of the features that once comprised the horrors of mercantilism; and yet, many continue to call it capitalism.
I found it amusing to read how “Literary England,” evaded the pre-existing poverty — which drove the poor to the factories as an alternative to starving. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, 95% of the population was working agriculture, on the farms: back-breaking work where children toiled from dawn to dusk; no schools for the children; widespread poverty; many early deaths. Charles Dickens makes it seem as if the factories caused the poverty: he demonizes the factories, completely overlooking the role factories played in bringing the poor out of poverty, ultimately.
“But if early factory work was oppressive, the alternative open to those who voted with their feet for factory work was worse.” (p 173)
THE CORPORATION
Rosenberg and Birdzell give us a wide ranging presentation on how the Corporation came about; but they never made it completely clear how the Corporation required the infrastructure of robust patent law to protect each inventor’s “intellectual property” as actual earned property.
I was astounded to find only one minor reference to “patent” in the index, despite the fact that underlying the Corporation’s ability to create enormous wealth was one critical piece of infrastructure: patent law protecting Intellectual Property. Why did Rosenberg and Birdzell give such short shrift to the role of this important feature of the social structure?!
Many of us have been led to believe that the growth of the West took place as reason overtook superstition and religion; as Constitutional freedoms replaced tyrannical despots; as enforcement of contracts was made part of the law; as science and technology burst on the scene.
What we have here is an extensive, detailed treatment of the birth and development of the American corporation. From all the complexity of all a corporation’s organizational arrangements, my most basic take-away is to see the corporation as a means of limiting the liability of the investors and owners to the amounts that they invested — such that a failed enterprise didn’t automatically translate into failed personal lives. In the process, birth was given to the mechanism where ownership shares could be traded in separate markets, markets that both governed and facilitated corporate growth.
KARL MARX AND MONOPOLY
Throughout this volume there is a repetitious thread of mentioning changes in the West as reported on by Karl Marx; and we get some commentary about the objectivity of the Marx perspectives.
The authors point out “Marx argues that all value is attributable to labor,” (p 296) but they don’t take it one step further to point out that the value is even more attributable to mental labor — to the intellectual effort behind every factory.
Then they talk about Marx’s contention that capitalism invariably results in monopolies, but they don’t differentiate between coercive, government-created monopolies as contrasted with mere market dominance as the result of efficiently producing values. It seems to me that the failure to differentiate between these two entirely different entities has resulted in deploying actions which have seriously undermined our economy’s productive machinery.
The other item of concern to me is that the authors do not appear to question the validity of the absurd “perfect competition” model as they talk about the considerations surrounding corporate monopolies.
I would have liked to hear more about the role of patent law; more about the mischaracterization of market dominance as monopolistic; and more about the value of intellectual brilliance that makes it even possible for brute physical labor to have any value at all.
It seems that the West continued to grow, in spite of its failure to differentiate market dominance from monopoly; in spite of its failure to properly recognize the basic origins of all the value being created; in spite of deploying ominous coercive roadblocks to sabotage market efficiencies.
* * * * * * * * *
In the concluding chapter we are treated to some broad strokes about the West’s astonishing 200 years of growth. I have long contended that grasping the dynamics at play involves what Rosenberg & Birdzell summarize as: “The minimum defining characteristic of government is a claim to a monopoly of the use of coercive force within some defined territory.” (p. 304) That would have been useful as context if it had been the opening of Chapter 1; but better late than never.
Here is a book published 35 years ago, but which acknowledges the crucial difference between “economic power” and “political power:” one functioning by free voluntary trade and the other by imposing coercive force on the parties. I have often been disappointed with tedious arguments that neglect to recognize this pivotal difference.
The authors address the decades-long narrative, first brought to us by Marx himself, that growth in the West depended upon oppressing the workers, the proletariat. Even today there are many led to belief that the West’s explosion of prosperity is because oppressed groups fell victim to white oppressors — never quite asking themselves why thousands of years of organized oppression hadn’t generated its own explosion of wealth. It’s pretty clear that the oppression of the feudal manors and guilds never sparked any remarkable formation of new wealth. It was because political power had always suppressed economic power.
It never quite gelled into the American consciousness that it was the political power behind coercive Southern slavery that put it at odds with the North’s surge when it embraced the infrastructure to allow free trade, and to allow the individual to prosper without the coercive hand of government holding him back. The coercive oppressions in the South aligned with what we would today designate as Third World.
* * * * * * * * *
I am tempted to overlook some of the complexities of “the great enrichment,” as I get lost in the scores of elements addressed in this book. But regardless of the complexities, it is clear that the flood gates of Western wealth production were opened as the result of deploying specific principles into the culture.
It is sad to witness today’s call to repeal many of these principles, akin to slowly killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.
December 23, 2021
Three, maybe three and a half stars - because this is, if not a book of two halves, then a book of two-thirds. The first two thirds are a really good exposition of how the West tore away from other more advanced empires in the 15th, 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, to reach the place of economic primacy it had achieved by the late 19th and 20th. There is a right-wing 'free markets are best' tone but you can still respect this book if those aren't your personal politics, just as you can still respect the works of Marxist historians if you don't share their politics. The explanation of how Medieval Society worked with its guild restrictions and shacking web of obligations on ordinary people is excellent and the explanation of how cracks in the authority of church and monarchs in Europe - cracks that didn't exist in other, singular, empires - allowed a merchant class to develop in post-medieval centuries is equally good. How this all laid the foundation for industrialization and the shift to urban living for most people in the 18th and 19th is also well set out. However, the last couple of chapters, which are about company structures etc in the 20th century, read like a dry business textbook and drag somewhat - I had to skim the text at times. But overall How the West Grew Rich does what its title claims, and sets out why we in the West have such a high standard of living today.
April 16, 2015
I am still trying to understand why we in the West invented modernity via the enlightenment and the industrial revolution, while the Asian and Islamic worlds languished. This book really did not help much. The discussion was too high level and theoretical to get at a satisfactory answer for me.
It clearly has to do with the culture of the West in regard to individual freedom and the rule of law. But why do we have that culture and the others don't?
This book is also dated, written 30 years ago before the collapse of the Soviet Union and the transformation of the Communist world to a kind of free market state capitalism, having learned the hard lesson that socialism, so great in theory, doesn't actually work.
It clearly has to do with the culture of the West in regard to individual freedom and the rule of law. But why do we have that culture and the others don't?
This book is also dated, written 30 years ago before the collapse of the Soviet Union and the transformation of the Communist world to a kind of free market state capitalism, having learned the hard lesson that socialism, so great in theory, doesn't actually work.
Read
March 8, 2011beautiful
June 13, 2025
Decent read, about what you’d get out of a developmental econ or econ history textbook focused on European history, colonialism, and industrialization
January 8, 2025
Where Women are in Chains, Men are not Free
This review is not an ideological diatribe. This review is only an offering of an additional answer to the question of how the West grew rich. Such a broad and sweeping question invites a plurality of answers and I make this contribution in addition to, not in place of, the answers offered by the authors.
Marx was certainly mistaken in his claim that the fundamental social forces that led to development of free market economic thinking were purely changes in technology and the material modes of production. Max Weber tells us that the rational modern economic thinking emerged in the West can be dated to a sequence of events that took place in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Protestant Reformation and the Enlightenment. But still, something is missing.
Surely the legal right of women to hold a dispose of property had something to do with the freeing up of land titles from kindred obligations and thus the promotion of free exchange. Dating back to the high Middle Ages, English women at least had the independent right to hold and freely dispose of real estate and chattels. Women also had a greater participation in public events than women elsewhere in the world or in the historical experience. This added opportunity for half the population to engage in independent exchange and must have had some level of causality in the development and promotion of free exchange as an organizing principle of economic and social organization and thus the creation of material wealth in the West. Why did women gain this level of autonomy in the West? This was a social and cultural change, not a mandated legal change. These social and cultural changes were made possible, in part by Christian doctrine and in part by Catholic Church self-interest. The Church changed many of the traditional and tribal customs with regard to marriage and inheritance for its own purposes based in its view of salvation at the Individual level of each worshiper that led to a more individualistic mindset that in turn resulted in the increased ownership of land the ability to dispose of land by women as individuals. Christian doctrine mandated the universal equality of all human beings under God which made it much easier to accept women as property owners. This redounded to the innumerable advantage of the West in the creation of wealth as the population of economic actors doubled. However, the Church was not advocating female empowerment. It was only looking for a way of wresting control over valuable land and resources from powerful noble families.
Thus, capitalism was not the cause, as Marx would have it, but the result of deeper social changes concerning relationships and customs. Ultimately, I believe Weber was more correct with his insight into the impact of religion on politics, economics and the creation of wealth and thus separation of the West from all the rest but with this twist, Christianity inadvertently free up the female population to participate in economic activity.
This review is not an ideological diatribe. This review is only an offering of an additional answer to the question of how the West grew rich. Such a broad and sweeping question invites a plurality of answers and I make this contribution in addition to, not in place of, the answers offered by the authors.
Marx was certainly mistaken in his claim that the fundamental social forces that led to development of free market economic thinking were purely changes in technology and the material modes of production. Max Weber tells us that the rational modern economic thinking emerged in the West can be dated to a sequence of events that took place in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Protestant Reformation and the Enlightenment. But still, something is missing.
Surely the legal right of women to hold a dispose of property had something to do with the freeing up of land titles from kindred obligations and thus the promotion of free exchange. Dating back to the high Middle Ages, English women at least had the independent right to hold and freely dispose of real estate and chattels. Women also had a greater participation in public events than women elsewhere in the world or in the historical experience. This added opportunity for half the population to engage in independent exchange and must have had some level of causality in the development and promotion of free exchange as an organizing principle of economic and social organization and thus the creation of material wealth in the West. Why did women gain this level of autonomy in the West? This was a social and cultural change, not a mandated legal change. These social and cultural changes were made possible, in part by Christian doctrine and in part by Catholic Church self-interest. The Church changed many of the traditional and tribal customs with regard to marriage and inheritance for its own purposes based in its view of salvation at the Individual level of each worshiper that led to a more individualistic mindset that in turn resulted in the increased ownership of land the ability to dispose of land by women as individuals. Christian doctrine mandated the universal equality of all human beings under God which made it much easier to accept women as property owners. This redounded to the innumerable advantage of the West in the creation of wealth as the population of economic actors doubled. However, the Church was not advocating female empowerment. It was only looking for a way of wresting control over valuable land and resources from powerful noble families.
Thus, capitalism was not the cause, as Marx would have it, but the result of deeper social changes concerning relationships and customs. Ultimately, I believe Weber was more correct with his insight into the impact of religion on politics, economics and the creation of wealth and thus separation of the West from all the rest but with this twist, Christianity inadvertently free up the female population to participate in economic activity.
October 21, 2007
Again, with the sort of "big picture" totality kick I've been on lately, this book purports to discuss why the West, and in particular late 19th and early 20th century England and United States, grew so incredibly wealthy. They start right out with an explanation of why some of the more vehement reactionary views (slaves, military oppression) are not right, and why some of the more traditionally held beliefs (technology, labor organizations) are only partly correct. They argue that it is most likely a combination of all the factors. However, they go on into greater detail explaining each stage in the history of the West's growth and how necessary each step was to ensure further growth.
The authors are, however, a bit excessively wordy, as to be expected from two old white economists writing in the US in the late eighties.
The authors are, however, a bit excessively wordy, as to be expected from two old white economists writing in the US in the late eighties.
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September 23, 2010How The West Grew Rich: The Economic Transformation Of The Industrial World by Nathan Rosenberg (1987)
April 4, 2017
16/20
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews