Posted on 08/08/2007 8:24:42 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
Gregory Clark, an economic historian at the University of California, Davis, believes that the Industrial Revolution — the surge in economic growth that occurred first in England around 1800 — occurred because of a change in the nature of the human population. The change was one in which people gradually developed the strange new behaviors required to make a modern economy work. The middle-class values of nonviolence, literacy, long working hours and a willingness to save emerged only recently in human history, Dr. Clark argues. Because they grew more common in the centuries before 1800, whether by cultural transmission or evolutionary adaptation, the English population at last became productive enough to escape from poverty, followed quickly by other countries with the same long agrarian past... Dr. Clark said he set out to write his book 12 years ago on discovering that his undergraduates knew nothing about the history of Europe. His colleagues have been surprised by its conclusions but also interested in them, he said. "The actual data underlying this stuff is hard to dispute," Dr. Clark said. "When people see the logic, they say 'I don't necessarily believe it, but it's hard to dismiss.'"
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Archaeoblog had a lead about this.
A Farewell to Alms:
A Brief Economic History
of the World
by Gregory Clark
I remember when my fist Econ professor ask how I enjoyed my first Economic Science class I told him he hhad a alot of gall to call it a science.
The Birth of Plenty:
How the Prosperity of
the Modern World was Created
by William Bernstein
Well, it is the dismal science.
I thought wealthier nations had fewer children...
There’s a FReerider Ping in here somewhere.
Nations with a steady food surplus will generally wind up wealthier, both in terms of cash cash cash and culture. The only sustainable economy is one based on surplus.
bookmark
The full article also discusses a possible genetic basis for the behaviors, making this a possible genetic archaeology ping. ;’) Click the pic’ for the “pagewanted=all” printer friendly version.
This author needs to consider the political landscape, however. The rise of wealth among the general population is the result of freedom, not necessarily family.
Agrarian societies were primarily feudal societies with a very rigid social structure. As more towns and trades formed, and the more power was vested in the citizenry rather than the noble class, the more society prospered.
This author missed a big part of what was right under his nose.
This is nonsense. For starters, Malthus was wrong. Population collapses were far more likely to take place due to disease and/or war than because there were too many people for the food supply.
Secondly, it is entirely possible that rich people had more surviving children because it was the high number of family members all working together in the family business (or on the family farm) that made them rich in the first place.
And as for the change in murder rates, you can’t discuss that credibly without getting in to England’s “Bloody Code” that made almost any crime a hanging offense. THAT likely really did have an effect on the overall gene pool.
Kind of interesting that the Industrial Revolution happened in Britain began around the time of the Napoleonic Wars just like the Industrial Revolution in America happened around the time of our Civil War.
This isn’t going to sit well with the social-control crowd.
What will they tax to mutate genes back to the cave?
It’s been said that the lathe was the first self-replicating tool.
This is nonsense. For starters, Malthus was wrong.Of course Malthus was wrong, and has always been wrong. Malthusianism is the inciting idea behind ecoterrorism, animal rights, the global warming scams, carbon credits, colonialism, and every other claim that there's a pie of a limited size, and that the slices can only get just so thin before revolution and collapse.
bump
They’re going to take genes away from us for our own good.
:’) The US was already in the throes of the Industrial Revolution, not far behind the UK. What the Civil War did was hit the gas (to use a later metaphor). Many troops in the Civil War were moved by train over rail lines which already existed. The telegraph was already in existence. Here and there were advances in war technology and tactics. By 1868, the Monitor-style ironclad had been copied by (at least) Russia and Brazil (!). Worldwide, a great many new keels were laid as a consequence of the US Navy.
A similar transformation happened as a consequence of WWII — the US went from being a major power to being one of the two major powers, with nuclear weapons, and a military and technological R&D that had never before been seen. And the economy was not bad either. The process of urbanization has always been around, even in the US and the former colonial period. Movement off the farms and into factories began nationwide around the time of WWI. In 400 years we’ve gone from being practically 100 per cent agrarian to being maybe 2 per cent agrarian. It’s astonishing.
The rise of wealth among the general population is the result of freedom...I agree. And the Black Death helped lead to that.
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