Past growths: pre-modern and modern

Abstract

The article by Jack Goldstone, Dating the Great Divergence, has the merit of discussing both the wide panorama of recent global history and the conclusions stemming from specific northEuropean long-term series of GDP.1 The article’s main target is the deeply rooted idea that Modern Growth was the continuation of previous trends of GDP growth. Goldstone’s opinion is that the rise of the West, in the frame of global history, occurred only from the late-eighteenth century or the beginning of the Nineteenth, not earlier. At the time, a true divergence among World economies did not exist. Modern Growth is different from previous periods of expansion not merely in the degree but also in the nature. Pre-modern examples of growth were episodic and not sustained; they represented temporary ‘efflorescences’ rather than long upward rises.2 It is apparent that, in such an approach to growth, problems of definition are crucial. Since the modern rise is deemed to be different from past ‘efflorescences’ of sporadic growth, what is, according to Goldstone, the primary feature of “modern” in comparison with ‘pre-modern’? The definition of Modern Growth adopted by Goldstone is the classical one put forward in economics and historical research primarily by Simon Kuznets:3 it is characterised both by strong increases in population and production; growth in production is, however, higher than in population. The result is then a rise in per capita product or intensive4 growth. This rise is sustained for long periods of time and primarily derives from modern technological growth. This definition of Modern Growth, rapidly recalled by Goldstone in his present article, had been more widely discussed in his previous article on efflorescences and economic growth in World history.5 In the following, I will deal with the differences between modern and pre-modern growth and later with the concept of technological progress in relation to the rise of the West. I will focus primarily on Europe and the Mediterranean and will include extra-European macroareas at the end.