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My TweetsRecent & Popular Posts
- Critiques of Edward Baptist
- Critiques of The History Manifesto
- Did inequality cause the First World War?
- Did the "Invisible Blockade" against Allende work?
- Economic History Books
- Fascism was not left-wing!!!
- Greece from Post-war orthodoxy to "Democratic Peronism"
- Ideology & Human Development (on Cuba's social development)
- Labour repression & the Indo-Japanese divergence
- Nazi political economy
- Random Thoughts on Robert Allen's theory of the Industrial Revolution
- State Capacity & the Sino-Japanese Divergence
- Sven Beckert's Empire of Cotton: A Reductionist Summary
- The Bairoch conjecture & the "tariff-growth paradox" of the late 19th century
- The Napoleonic Blockade & the Infant Industry Argument
- Where do pro-social institutions come from?
Cotton / Slavery Posts
- Baptism by Blood Cotton (critique of Ed Baptist’s book on slavery)
- McCloskey: Cotton wasn't necessary to the Industrial Revolution
- Piketty & Slave Wealth
- Plant breeding drove cotton productivity gains in the US South
- The Baptist Question Redux: Emancipation & Cotton Productivity
- Was slavery necessary to the Industrial Revolution?
Criticisms of The History Manifesto
Language Posts
Blogroll
- A Fine Theorem (Kevin Bryan)
- Abandoned Footnotes (Xavier Marquez)
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- Andrew Batson
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- Anton Howes
- Ben Southwood
- Brad DeLong
- Bradley Hansen
- Branko Milanovic
- Building State Capability
- Cherokee Gothic
- Chinese Economic History
- Chris Blattman
- Cliodynamica (Peter Turchin)
- Crooked Timber
- Dan Allosso (envhist.net)
- Dani Rodrik
- Decompressing History ["Economic history from below the tropics"]
- Developing Economics
- Development Book Review
- Doug Campbell
- Economic Growth in History (Nuno Palma)
- Economic History Blog (Latin America)
- Enlightened Economics
- Erik Bengtsson
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- Growth Economics Blog (Dietz Vollrath)
- Historia contra Economía
- Imperial & Global Forum
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- Marc Bellemare
- Marginal Revolution
- Mark Harrison
- Mark Koyama
- Martin Ravallion
- Michael E Smith (archaeologist)
- Nada es gratis
- Nathan Lane
- NEP-HIS Blog
- Nintil (Artir)
- Nonso Obikili
- Organizations & Markets
- Papers & Hot Beverages
- Paul Romer
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- Replicated Typo
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- Russian History Blog
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- Steve Hsu
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- Why Nations Fail
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Author Archives: pseudoerasmus
Labour repression & the Indo-Japanese divergence
There used to be more research and debate on the negative effects of labour resistance on economic development, but that topic has been crowded out by the intense focus on inequality of recent years. There now prevails a quiet presumption … Continue reading
Labour relations & textiles: addenda
This post contains related topics and disjointed observations as addenda to “Labour repression & the Indo-Japanese divergence” in cotton textiles. (Lack of) Japanese industrial policy in cotton textiles, with a note on Sven Beckert Bargaining & capital-labour substitution in cotton … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged industrial relations, labour relations, Lancashire, New England textiles
2 Comments
Economic History Papers, Articles & Blogs
As a companion to my Economic History books page, which stresses economic history by region or country, I have created a new Economic History Papers page. It collects surveys, papers, and blogs which cover topics in global economic history and comparative historical development. But it’s … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
1 Comment
More frivolously assembled lists of books
Kind of sort of a follow-up to the previous book list.
Posted in books
10 Comments
The 25 most stimulating economic history books since 2000
Inspired by Vincent Geloso, here is a list of the 25 books in economic history published since 2000 which I have found most stimulating or provocative. Not the best, nor the most ‘correct’, nor the most balanced, but those things which influenced, stimulated, … Continue reading
The Calico Acts: Was British cotton made possible by infant industry protection from Indian competition?
Many “global historians” argue that the British cotton industry was the product of (unintentional) infant industry protection from Indian competition in the 18th century. The various Calico Acts created an import-substitution industry by banning Indian cloths and reserving the home market for British producers. This … Continue reading
The Napoleonic blockade & the infant industry argument: caveats, limitations, reservations
Some caveats and reservations about the Napoleonic blockade paper on the infant industry argument that’s making waves. My caveat: protection persisted for decades after the blockade and may have helped keep the French cotton industry backward relative to Britain.
Posted in cotton, cotton textiles, France, import substitution industrialization, industrial policy, Industrial Revolution, Infant industry argument, protectionism, trade & development
Tagged agglomeration, cotton, Infant industry argument, John Nye, Napoleonic blockade, Reka Juhasz, rent-seeking
16 Comments
The Bairoch hypothesis (or the “tariff-growth paradox” of the late 19th century)
{ Note: This post describes and summarises a literature on 19th century growth & trade. I do not necessarily endorse its findings. This post is intended as largely descriptive. } There is a vast cross-country literature which finds a positive correlation … Continue reading
Tariff Protection of British cotton 1774-1820s
British Tariff Protection after 1774: Competition, Innovation, & Misallocation, plus a note on Weaving This is an addendum to a post about the Calico Acts, which had prohibited within Britain the consumption of cotton cloths both foreign and domestic. But even after … Continue reading
Random thoughts on critiques of Allen’s theory of the Industrial Revolution
{ This post is mostly stringing together my scattered tweets over the past couple of weeks. I’ve had numerous discussions on this subject with Vincent Geloso, Judy Stephenson, Ben Schneider, Benjamin Guilbert, Anton Howes, and Mark Koyama. But yesterday Geloso … Continue reading
Sven Beckert’s Empire of Cotton: A Reductionist Summary
Historian Sven Beckert’s widely acclaimed book, Empire of Cotton: A New History of Global Capitalism, is a good agrarian, business, and labour history of a single commodity. But as economic history it’s not so good.
Posted in cotton, cotton textiles, Empire of Cotton, global history, historians of capitalism, Sven Beckert
Tagged cotton, deindustrialization, Economic Development, Empire of Cotton, global history, great divergence, historians of capitalism, Industrial Revolution, Rise of the West, Sven Beckert
39 Comments
Did inequality cause the First World War? Contra Hobson-Lenin-Milanovic
The “Hobson-Lenin Thesis”: Inequality, Imperialism, and the First World War In a small section in his new book, Branko Milanovic argues that the First World War was ultimately caused by income & wealth inequality within the belligerent countries, resurrecting ideas from John A. … Continue reading
Posted in Branko Milanovic, Foreign Investment, Inequality, the First Globalization, The First World War
Tagged and the first world war, Branko Milanovic, capital exports, colonialism, endogenous world war 1, Hobson, Hobson-Lenin Thesis, imperialism, inequality, Lenin, The Great War, underconsumption
19 Comments
Where do pro-social institutions come from?
AKA “Cooperation, cultural evolution & economic development”. Where do ‘good’ or pro-social institutions come from ? Why does the capacity for collective action and cooperative behaviour vary so much across the world today ? How do some populations transcend tribalism to form a civil society ? How have some … Continue reading
Posted in Behavioural economics, Cooperation, Cultural Evolution, Institutions, Political Economy, Social & Civic Capital, Social Evolution
Tagged Boyd & Richerson, collective action problem, cooperation, cultural evolution, cultural group selection, Joseph Henrich, market norms, Peter Turchin, social evolution, ultra-sociality
44 Comments
¿De donde vienen las instituciones prosociales?
[19 October 2015] Jesús Alfaro of the Autonomous University of Madrid has translated my previous post into Spanish: ¿De dónde vienen las instituciones prosociales?
Posted in Uncategorized
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“Experimenting with Social Norms” in Small-Scale Societies
Social norms, institutions, and economic development. (A companion post to “Where do pro-social institutions come from?”)
Posted in Cultural Evolution, Economic Anthropology, Economic Development, Institutions, Social Evolution
Tagged behavioral games, Dictator Game, Economic Experiments, Experimenting with Social Norms, Fairness and Punishment in Cross-cultural perspective, Foundations of Human Sociality, Jean Ensminger, Joseph Henrich, Third Party Punishment Game, Trust games, Ultimatum Game
9 Comments
Educational Romanticism & Economic Development
An elaboration on Ricardo Hausmann’s article “The Education Myth” arguing that education is an overrated tool of economic development. This post also responds to a criticism of Hausmann’s views which appeared at the Spanish group blog Politikon; and also discusses whether developing … Continue reading
Posted in economic growth, Education
Tagged achivement tests, PISA, Politikon, Ricardo Hausmann, school quality
14 Comments
Markets & Famine: Amartya Sen is not the last word !
Whether markets help cause or exacerbate famines is one of the great questions of political economy. Cormac Ó Gráda’s recent book Eating People is Wrong, and Other Essays on Famine, its Past, and its Future, along with his earlier volume, Famine: A Short … Continue reading
Posted in Economic History, Famines
Tagged Amartya Sen, Bengal famine of 1943, Cormac Ó Gráda, famines, Irish Potato Famine
14 Comments
Anachronism & Relevance in History: a comment on Steve Pincus
Anachronism and relevance are in tension. Historians (often) rail against the former and (often) pine for the latter. They can easily manage a bit of relevance by intervening in today’s political and economic debates and offering ‘lessons’ from the past — but at high risk of … Continue reading
Posted in Economic History
Tagged American Revolution, austerity, Grenville Chatham, Pitt, Seven Years' War, Steven Pincus
7 Comments
Did the “Invisible Blockade” against Allende’s Chile work?
Did an “invisible blockade” by the United States fatally undermine the Chilean economy under the presidency of Salvador Allende (1970-73)? Did it actually work? Short answer: No.
Posted in Chile, Political Economy
Tagged Allende, Bloqueo invisible, Chile, Invisible Blockade
14 Comments
Nazi political economy
My previous post about the political orientation of fascists got a response from Jonah Goldberg, the author of Liberal Fascism. This is my brief response to his.
Posted in fascism, Political Economy
Tagged capitalism, fascism, Jonah Goldberg, liberal fascism, Nazi Germany, socialism
62 Comments
Fascism was not left-wing !!!
John Holbo at Crooked Timber reprises a debate which raged 7 years ago when a book called Liberal Fascism was published. His take focuses on Germany but mine puts more weight on Italy. I think the issue is kind of obvious, but it’s … Continue reading
Posted in fascism, Political Economy
Tagged capitalism, fascism, Jonah Goldberg, liberal fascism, Mussolini, Nazi Germany, socialism
55 Comments
McCloskey: Cotton wasn’t crucial to the Industrial Revolution
I (mostly) copy-and-paste Deirdre McCloskey’s argument that cotton was not crucial to the Industrial Revolution in Britain. I also have a very brief rant about historians’ erasure of Robert Fogel from historiographic memory.
Chile’s First Globalisation: Inequality, Frontier Expansion, and Immigration
This is a translation-reblog of the post by historian Javier Rodríguez Weber, “Globalisation and Inequality, for a ‘sophisticated’ version of the neoclassical intepretation” (original: “Globalización y Desigualdad. Por una versión ‘sofisticada’ de la interpretación neoclásica”). It shows how Chile’s income … Continue reading
Posted in Chile, Economic History, Inequality
Tagged Chile, first globalization, inequality
3 Comments
Errata dentata: The History Manifesto Revisited
This post, a follow-up to my earlier posts “La longue purée” and “Jo Guldi’s Curiouser & Curiouser Footnotes“, examines the recent revisions made to The History Manifesto. Warning: the post may be tedious. For die-hards only.
Ian Morris’s calculations about the ancient Greek economy
Addenda to the previous blogpost “Economic growth in ancient Greece“. I argue that certain estimates made by Ian Morris under-compute the implied growth rates in the “per capita income” of the ancient Greeks. With a proper computation Morris’s estimates simply become … Continue reading
Posted in ancient economic history, Ancient Greece, Economic History
Tagged Ancient Greek economy, Ian Morris, Josiah Ober
18 Comments
Economic Growth in Ancient Greece
Was there “intensive growth” in Classical Greece and was there something special about its causes ? Was it due to “inclusive institutions” ? This post examines some claims of the “New Ancient History”.
Toponyms & Ethnonyms: a brief ramble
Rambling about toponyms and ethnonyms in various languages.
Posted in Languages
9 Comments
Greece from Postwar Orthodoxy to “Democratic Peronism”
The roots of the present Greek crisis lie in the political transformation of the country during the 1980s. (Disclaimer: Although this post is about Greek fiscal behaviour, I am not taking Germany’s side. Lenders to the profligate are just as culpable as the borrowers.)
Posted in Financial Crises, Greece, Political Economy
23 Comments
Economic History Link Dump 15-01-2015
A haphazard mass, a chaotic carnival, a Bikini Atoll, of links relating to economic history, political economy, and allied matters. I also have brief comments on some of the links.
Posted in Economic History, Links
11 Comments
State Capacity & the Sino-Japanese Divergence
Why China did not industrialise before Western Europe may be a tantalising and irresistible subject, but frankly it’s a parlour game. What remains underexplored, however, is the more tractable issue of why Japan managed, but China failed, to initiate an early transition to modern growth … Continue reading
Posted in China, East Asia, Economic History, Japan
Tagged China, divergence, industrialisation, Japan, state capacity
17 Comments
Jo Guldi’s Curiouser & Curiouser Footnotes
In The History Manifesto, historians Jo Guldi, the Hans Rothfels Assistant Professor of History at Brown, and David Armitage, the Lloyd C. Blankfein Professor of History and Chair of the History Department at Harvard, repeatedly misunderstand or misrepresent the research they disparagingly cite in … Continue reading
La longue purée
In The History Manifesto, two historians, Jo Guldi of Brown and David Armitage of Harvard, urge their peers to turn away from microhistory and go back to doing Big History in the longue durée tradition of Fernand Braudel. The book also doubles as a rant against the … Continue reading
Was slavery necessary for the Industrial Revolution ?
Did western industrialisation require American slave cotton ? What coal and sugar might tell us. (Short answer: It’s reasonable and plausible to argue slavery accelerated the industrial revolution, but not enabled it. It’s profoundly unreasonable to say the IR could not have happened … Continue reading
Edward Said on Bernard Lewis
Just quoting my favourite unintentionally hilarious passage from Said’s Orientalism.
Posted in History, Middle East & Islam
Tagged Bernard Lewis, critical theorists, Edward Said, Orientalism
14 Comments
A horse ! A horse ! My serfdom for a horse !
Part 2, England, of my critique of Nick Szabo’s view of industrialisation. This is continued from Part 1, “Chinese workers were cheaper than English horses“.
Posted in Economic History, great divergence, Industrial Revolution
Tagged great divergence, horses, Industrialization, Nick Szabo, transport
3 Comments
Conscientiousness & Technology
From the plastics industry, a very concrete, real-life example of how conscientiousness matters in the use of a medium-level technology and how high(er)-technology might help.
Posted in productivity, Technology
Tagged conscientiousness, O-ring theory, plastics, productivity, technology
4 Comments
Piketty & Slave Wealth
A quick note on Piketty, slave-wealth, and US capitalism.
Ye Olde Inæqualitee Shoppe
A quick note : Income inequality in pre-industrial societies was, in general, lower than in modern industrial societies, but traditional agrarian economies tended to be closer to their “maximum feasible inequality” than modern ones.
The emptiness of life will save us from mass unemployment
I don’t I have much to add to the debate about the dystopian robot future scenario envisioned by many people. But I do think the nightmare scenario is less mass unemployment than a kind of revamped neo-mediaevalism. I’m not predicting … Continue reading
Global Income Distribution in 20 Charts
The global distribution of income in 1970-2006 in 20 charts. Not much text. Posting the charts because I thought they were neat…
Baptism by Blood Cotton
The underlying claim in Edward Baptist’s “oral economic history” of slavery, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism, is that slave owners, through the scientific “calibration” of torture, intensified the work of slaves in order to increase labour productivity by … Continue reading
Plant breeding, not working slaves harder, drove cotton productivity gains in the US South
Summary : New cultivars of cotton led to an unprecedented rise in the productivity of US southern cotton in the 60 years before the American Civil War. The Economist magazine may have said some stupid things about the subject in its review of Edward Baptist’s book … Continue reading
“The Great War and Modern Memory”
An excerpt from Paul Fussell’s The Great War and Modern Memory.
Posted in History, Literary Criticism
Tagged Great War and Modern Memory, Paul Fussell, The First World War, The Great War
5 Comments
The “Anthropology” of Financial Crises
Germany experienced little increase in unemployment during the Great Recession, and has found “internal devaluation” relatively easy and pain-free, unlike most other countries. Why ? Some observations on the role of social capital in financial crises.
Der Todd des Euro
Part 1. The French anthropologist-demographer Emmanuel Todd, who is becoming increasingly fashionable in the Anglosphere, is also a scathing critic of the euro. I examine his “anthropological” views of Germany and the euro, which I also contrast with those of Michael Pettis.
Posted in Emmanuel Todd, Financial Crises, International Monetary Economics
Tagged current account, Emmanuel Todd, Euro, Eurozone, financial crisis, France, Germany, Pettis
12 Comments
ελαδιοξιδιολατολαχανοκαρυκευμα
A very brief history of Greek diglossia.
Posted in Ancient Greek, Languages
Tagged Ancient Greek, Demotic, Demotiki, Diglossia, Greek, Katharevousa
6 Comments
Azar Gat’s Nations
I saw Razib Khan‘s review of Azar Gat’s Nations : The Long History and Deep Roots of Political Ethnicity and Nationalism. Without intending to make it that long I posted a 1000-word comment there. Then I realised I could have posted it here.
Posted in Ethnicity, History, Political Development
Tagged Azar Gat, Ethnicity, Nation-State, Nationalism, Nations
7 Comments
Links 18 July 2014
I’m not intending to do “weekly links” or anything, but I wanted to highlight a blogpost by Victor Mair : what the Dungan language sounds like from snippets of the movie “Jesus” dubbed in Dungan. This is the language of Chinese Muslims who fled to … Continue reading
Posted in Links
6 Comments
שׂבולת שׂמית
Stream-of-consciousness thoughts about why we say “Semitic” even though the root is “Shem”. And, yes, I know the Hebrew letters in the title say “semitic sibboleth” and not “shemitic shibboleth”.
Posted in Ancient Greek, Biblical Hebrew, Languages
Tagged Bible, Greek, Hebrew, Masoretes, Semitic, Shem, Shibboleth
14 Comments
