Reversing Development
第8章の続きから第9章まで。
第8章 Not on Our Turf: Barriers to Development
Why the politically powerful in many nations opposed the Industrial Revolution
産業革命で導入可能になった技術を導入しなかった国について。アフリカや中国を中心に説明され、これまでに見てきた国と同様に、革新技術に対する支配層の恐れによって導入が拒まれ、言語さえもその対象になっていた国もありました。
Outside of the core of the Ottoman Empire in Turkey, printing lagged even further behind. In Egypt, for instance, the first printing press was set up only in 1798, by Frenchmen who were part of the abortive attempt by Napoleon Bonaparte to capture the country. Until well into the second half of the nineteenth century, book production in the Ottoman Empire was still primarily undertaken by scribes hand-copying existing books. In the early eighteenth century, there were reputed to be eighty thousand such scribes active in Istanbul. This opposition to the printing press had the obvious consequences for literacy, education, and economic success.
Absolutism and a lack of, or weak, political centralization are two different barriers to the spread of industry. But they are also connected; both are kept in place by fear of creative destruction and because the process of political centralization often creates a tendency toward absolutism.
...the economic success of England was based on rapid mercantile expansion. Though, compared with Spain and Portugal, England was a latecomer to Atlantic trade, she allowed for relatively broad-based participation in trading and colonial opportunities. What filled the Crown's coffers in Spain enriched the newly emerging merchant class in England. It was this merchant class that would form the basis of early England economic dynamism and become the bulwark of the anti-absolutist political coalition. In Spain these processes that led to economic progress and institutional change did not take place.
The small differences were in the strengths and nature of representative institutions; the critical juncture was the discovery of the Americas. The interaction of these sent Spain off on a very different institutional path from England.
The opposition to industry and steam railways stemmed from Francis's concern about the creative destruction that accompanied the development of a modern economy. His main priorities were ensuring the stability of the extractive institutions over which he ruled and protecting the advantages of the traditional elites who supported him. Not only was there little to gain from industrialization, which would undermine the feudal order by attracting labor from the countryside to the cities, but Francis also recognized the threat that major economic changes would pose to his political power. As a consequence, he blocked industry and economic progress, locking in economic backwardness, ...
...between 960 and 1279, China led the world in many technological innovations. The Chinise invented clocks, the compass, gunpowder, paper and paper money, porcelain, and blast furnaces to make cast iron before Europe did. They independently developed spinning wheels and waterpower at more or less the same time that these emerged at the other end of Eurasia. In consequence, in 1500 standards of living were probably at least as high in China as they were in Europe.
...the absolutist emperors of China opposed change, sought stability, and in essence feared creative destruction.
African societies may not have used wheels or plows, but they certainly knew about them. In the case of the Kingdom of Kongo,..., this was fundamentally due to the fact that the incentives for people to adopt these technologies.
The traditional account of the origin of writing in Mesopotamia is that it was developed by states in order to record information, control people, and levy taxes.
Part of the story is that the citizens resisted the use of writing because they feared that it would be used to control resources, such as valuable land, by allowing the state to claim ownership. They also feared that it would lead to more systematic taxation.
Various elites also opposed political centralization, for example, preferring oral to written interaction with citizens, because this allowed them maximum discretion.
...societies that had already taken steps toward inclusive political and economic institutions, such as the United States and Australia, and those where absolutism was more seriously challenged, such as France and Japan, took advantage of these new economic opportunities and started a process of rapid economic growth.
第9章 Reversing Development
How European colonialism impoverished large parts of the world.
植民地政策と、被植民地国のその後について。
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...this expansion sowed the seeds of underdevelopment in many diverse corners of the world by imposing, or further strengthening existing, extractive institutions. These either directly or indirectly destroyed nascent commercial and industrial activity throughout the globe or they perpetuated institutions that stopped industrialization. As a result, as industrialization was spreading in some parts of the world, places that were part of European colonial empires stood no chance of benefiting from these new technologies.
