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The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor (Paperback)
by David S. Landes
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History, Non-fiction |
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| MSL Pointer Review:
Thought-provoking, controversial, and even politically disturbing, this book makes people think, debate, and search for the answer to the Big Question. |
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Author: David S. Landes
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Pub. in: May, 1999
ISBN: 0393318885
Pages: 658
Measurements: 9.3 x 6.0 x 1.2 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA00028
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- Awards & Credential -
The New York Times Bestseller |
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You and I are part of a fortunate minority. We are literate, we have access to phones and to the Internet, we are likely (save some unexpected disease or misfortune) to live to an old age. We are almost certainly belonging to what is known as 'The First World', or to small rich minorities within the rest of the world. Most people in this world do not have those privileges - we live in islands of fortune within an ocean of poverty. And professor Landes tries to understand why. He tries to find out what is special about Western civilization (and Japan) - why Japan and the West got rich while the rest of the world lagged behind, and most of it still does.
It is by the nature of such a book to be controversial, and Landes doesn't pull his punches; his approach is neoclassicist, although hardly a dogmatic one. He is rough on Postmodernists, Saidian Anti-Orientalists, French and Japanese protectionists, Spanish Roman Catholics, and many others. Among the reviews you'll read here, Landes irritates Catholics, third world enthusiasts, anti-Western intellectuals, extreme right wind Capitalists, anti-Japanese, and so on, and so on.
So, you've got controversy. But what is Landes actually saying? Well, in brief, Landes book focuses on three major reasons for Wealth/Poverty: Geography, Infrastructure, and Culture.
The discussion of Geography, early in the book, is at best half hearted. Some of the points seem valid - but you're always inclined to say 'On the other hand'. Are there really fewer diseases in Europe then in Africa? maybe, but transportation is easier. The black death annihilated a third of the European population in the 13th century. Does Heat makes labor harder and less efficient? I guess the builders of the Pyramids haven't heard Landes's thesis - or maybe hardships can be overcoming with whipping.
The best parts of the book deal with Infrastructure. In these, Landes has three main themes: Freedom, Capitalism and Science (Or, if you wish, Anarchy, Greed and Heresy).
Freedom allows people to do things. Landes portrayal of the centrally planned economies of ancient China, where the Emperor ruled everything, is powerful, and it seems to play a large role in the lack of initiative in China, despite the great achievements.
Capitalism, most noticeably in the form of Greed and Competition, drives people forward. Again, Landes comparison between the Chinese and the European Sea quests are enlightening. Europeans went in small ships, eager to outdo the competition and to come back making a fortune. The Chinese went with huge Ships, symbols of the empire rather than instruments of trade. They were unprofitable, victims of the ruler's whim, and, without a strong faction of interested merchants, had no chance of continuing throughout. Also interesting is that Europeans went looking for India and spices, while China was self-sufficient.
Science - Chinese science was much more sophisticated than European science back in the year 1,000. The Indians have invented the zero. But nowhere except in Europe did science work methodically, nowhere else was it progressive. Newton is famous of saying that he stood on the shoulder of giants - discoveries in China and the rest of the world were rarely followed up - gunpowder was discovered in China much before it was in Europe, but the Chinese never used it for weapons. In Europe, it became part of the war methods almost immediately. Landes discussions of clocks and glasses are particularly telling.
The Third Element - Culture - is the one with which I have the most trouble. Landes repeatedly attacks economists for discounting culture (for example in the last chapter, page 517 in my edition). He claims that they disregard it because it can't be quantified. Wrong. The reason Economists distrust culture is because it is such a 'one size fits all' argument. Japanese responds to the west was everything the Chinese should have done but didn't… Culture. Arab nations are stuck well behind everyone else, despite the great advantage they have in the shape of oil… Culture. Asians manage to pull themselves along, while most of the third worlders can't… Well, culture, again.
I'm not saying that Culture plays no part. Obviously it does. But it becomes an obstacle to understanding, and Landes can support it only with anecdotal evidence (a lovely and touching story of a Japanese woman), and unanswered question (Is Islam a cause for the suppression of women? maybe).
Despite this problem, this is a fascinating book. Yes, it is a little too pro-Western. The problem is really more one of emphasis than one of facts - in my view, Landes is pretty close the mark usually, but he much underestimates the responsibility of the West for African poverty. Something's are left relatively unexplained - the current fast rise of China, which might undertake the point Landes made about the vitality of freedom.
But ultimately, as Landes acknowledges, no one book can solve the question of poverty and wealth. The answer is necessarily multi-faceted. The Wealth and Poverty of Nations (neat name, also) is a well-written and intelligent treatment of the question. (From quoting Omer Belsky, Israel)
Target readers:
General readers
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David S. Landes, professor emeritus at Harvard University and author of Bankers and Pashas, The Unbound Prometheus, and Revolution in Time.
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From the Publisher:
The Wealth and Poverty of Nations is David S. Landes's acclaimed, best-selling exploration of one of the most contentious and hotly debated questions of our time: Why so some nations achieve economic success while others remain mired in poverty? The answer, as Landes definitively illustrates, is a complex interplay of cultural mores and historical circumstance. Rich with anecdotal evidence, piercing analysis, and a truly astonishing range of erudition, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations is one of the most audaciously ambitious works of history in decades.
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The one civilization that might have surpassed the European achievement was China. At least that is what the record seems to show. Witness the long list of Chinese inventions: the wheelbarrow, the stirrup, the rigid horse collar (to prevent choking), the compass, paper, printing, gunpowder, porcelain. And yet in matters of science and technology, China remains a mystery – and this in spite of a monumental effort by the late Joseph Needham (李约瑟 – MSL remarks) and others to collect the facts and clarify the issues. The specialists tell us, for example, that Chinese industry long anticipated Europeans: in textiles, where the Chinese had a water-driven machine for spinning hemp in the 12th century, some 500 years before the England of the Industrial Revolution knew water frames and mules; or in iron manufacture, where the Chinese early learned to use coal and coke in blast furnaces for smelting iron (or so we are told) and were turning out as many as 125,000 tons of pig iron by the later 11th century – a figure reached by Britain 700 years later.
The mystery lies in China's failure to realize its potential. One generally assumes that knowledge and know-how are cumulative; surely a superior technique, once known, will replace older methods. But Chinese industrial history offers examples of technological oblivion and regression. We saw that horology went backward. Similarly, the machine to spin hemp was never adapted to the manufacture of cotton, and cotton spinning was never mechanized. And coal/coke smelting was allowed to fall into disuse, along with the iron industry as a whole. Why?
- It would seem that none of the conventional explanations tells us in convincing fashion why technical progress was absent in the Chinese economy during a period that was, on the whole, one of prosperity and expansion. Almost every element usually regarded by historians as a major contributory cause to the industrial revolution in north-western Europe was also present in China. There had even been a revolution in the relations between social classes, at least in the countryside; but this had no important effect on the techniques of production… A steam engine would have been more difficult; but it should not have posed insuperable difficulties to a people who had been building double-acting piston flame-throwers in the Song dynasty. The crucial point is that nobody tried. In most fields, agriculture being the chief exception, Chinese technology stopped progressing well before the point at which a lack of scientific knowledge had become a serious obstacle.
Why indeed? Sinologists have put forward several partial explanations. The most persuasive are of a piece:
- The absence of a free market and institutionalized property rights. The Chinese state was always interfering with private enterprise – taking over lucrative activities, prohibiting others, manipulating prices, exacting bribes, curtailing private enrichment. A favorite target was maritime trade, which the Heavenly Kingdom saw as a diversion from imperial concerns, as a divisive force and source of income inequality, worse yet, as an invitation to exit. Matters reached a climax under the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), when the state attempted to prohibit all trade overseas. Such interdictions led to evasion and smuggling, and smuggling brought corruption (protection money), confiscations, violence, and punishment. Bad government strangled initiative, increased the cost of transactions, diverted talent from commerce and industry.
- The larger values of society. A leading sociological historian sees gender relations as a major obstacle: the quasi-confinement of women to the home made it impossible, for example, to exploit textile machinery profitably in a factory setting. Here China differed sharply from Europe or Japan, where women had free access to public space and were often expected to work outside the home to accumulate a dowry or contribute resources to the family.
- The Great sinologist Etienne Balazs would stress the larger context. He sees China's technology as part of a larger pattern of totalitarian control... His analysis is worth repeating:
- …if one understands by totalitarianism the complete hold of the State and its executive organs and functionaries over all the activities of social life, without exception, Chinese society was highly totalitarian… No private initiative, no expression of public life that can escape official control…. The ingenuity and inventiveness of the Chinese, which have given so much to mankind – silk, tea, porcelain, paper, printing, and more – would no doubt have enriched China further and probably brought it to the threshold of modern industry, had it not been for the stifling state control. It is the State that kills technological progress in China…
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Eric Hobsbawm (Los Angles Times) (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-25 00:00>
Powerful and lucid… There are fewer historians who would not be proud to the author of this book. |
Andrew Porter (New York Times Book Review) (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-25 00:00>
Readers cannot but be provoked and stimulated by this splendidly iconoclastic and refreshing book. |
David Walsh (The Boston Globe) (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-25 00:00>
[Landes] relates the economic history of the world since 1000 AD in 29 chapters that are shrewd, acerbic, and unfailingly entertaining. |
Allen Hundley (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-25 00:00>
As reviewers may note this is a controversial book. The continuing interest is due at least in part to its promotion by some political conservatives as an answer to books like Guns, Gems, and Steel by Jared Diamond. Indeed the very relevance of this book to contemporary policy-making is the fuel that maintains the flames of a healthy debate between those on the Left and Right. Landes' arguments are forceful and convincing as far as they go and his book is essential reading for every student of world history and economics. Whether his model takes us ultimately in the direction we as a civilization really want to follow is a more subtle and profound question.
First, let's refute some false charges against Landes. He is not a racist, or an apologist for capitalist exploitation, or an ethno-centrist. He fully acknowledges the influence that geography and natural resources have on a nation's development potential and his critique of European colonialism is devastating. He completely rejects the theory of comparative advantage and long sections of the book are devoted to describing the exploitation of women and children in the early industrial periods of England and Japan.
Landes is equally critical of forces that restrict or deny freedom of thought, showing clearly how they held back nations that should have played a more dominant role in world economics. In the case of European development the single most important villain was the Catholic Church but authoritarian and totalitarian regimes of all stripes come in for condemnation.
In a nutshell Landes argues that cultural values like honesty, thrift, initiative, respect for property rights, and openness to new ideas are the key determinants of whether nations succeed or fail economically. We've heard this argument before and Landes explicitly acknowledges his debt to Max Weber, the nineteenth century sociologist who popularized the idea of the `Protestant ethic' as a historical force.
China is a major test case for Landes. Despite an impressive lead in technology, from gunpowder to printing, during the early years of European expansion, China failed to take advantage of that lead and came under European domination. The problem was not a lack of technical ability on the part of the Chinese but the fact that the nation was controlled by an imperial court that had no interest in using practical knowledge. The people at the top had everything they needed and saw no reason to allow local entrepreneurs to develop a free market economy. Such an economy might create local power centers which could challenge central authority so all such efforts were quashed before they could begin.
The centralized totalitarian rule of Chairman Mao in the twentieth century can be viewed as just a modern manifestation of this continuing characteristic of Chinese civilization. When, after Mao's death, the communists changed course and decided that capitalism was not so bad after all, the result has been the fastest growing economy in the world, fueled by foreign investors who had enough confidence that they would see a return on their investment. All of which seems to prove Landes' argument that initiative, openness to new economic (but not political) ideas, etc. bring wealth to a society just about every time.
At least for some in the society. The problem for emerging economic giants like China and India is that only one in five, chiefly city dwellers, enjoy the fruits of their society's newfound prosperity. As to how to solve this problem of equitable distribution or the problem of workers who lose their jobs to cheaper labor markets overseas Landes admits he has no answers.
Thus, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations is a splendid analysis of world economic development up until the beginning of the 21st century but it does not address the really profound problems now emerging. In particular it says nothing about the coming revolution on the horizon brought about by genetic engineering, robotics, and nanotechnology. Nor does it address the equally important issue of global economic fragility due to extreme interdependence and complexity. For these the key books are The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph Tainter, arguably the most important book of the 20th century; Collapse: How Societies Choose to Succeed or Fail by Jared Diamond; and, if one is up to a darker but nonetheless carefully reasoned analysis, The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler.
Society is far more fragile than most Americans realize. This reviewer, having lived and worked in places like Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, El Salvador and many others, knows from first hand experience that the civilization we take for granted is a frightfully thin veneer. Once shattered it cannot be easily restored. Nor should we be lulled into the false belief that it could never happen here. We have only to look at our government's grossly incompetent response to a catastrophe affecting just a handful of states (Hurricane Katrina) to realize the impossibility of an effective response to a catastrophe national in scope.
Which is why The Wealth and Power of Nations and the others cited above are so important. Heaven forbid that an economic or natural catastrophe should thrust upon us global political and economic disintegration but an honest analysis must admit the possibility. Should that happen we may hope that the wisdom and insights contained in books like these will guide those who survive toward a new, wiser, more responsible, and more gentle civilization. |
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