This would be very interesting, if true. Imperial powers (including the USA and Japan) definitely did attempt to industrialize their allies and subject populations. Japan industrialized Manuchuria. The USA helped industrialize South Korea and Taiwan.
My personal theory is that the relative (in absolute terms) prosperity of Japan and USA is what gave them the excess capacity necessary to industrialize a foreign land.
His wider thesis is that worker productivity was higher in the UK due to cultural and genetic changes which had spread ‘middle-class values’ down through the population and led (in part) to the Industrial Revolution.
I have not read Gregory Clark. What kind of “genetic changes” and “middle-class values” does Gregory Clark write about?
I have not read Gregory Clark. What kind of “genetic changes” and “middle-class values” does Gregory Clark write about?
This is my memory of reading it years ago, and perhaps I’m wrong in details. That said, the book roughly argues:
England has very good records for wills, which tell you both 1) how rich someone was at death and 2) how many surviving children they had. Also, England had primogeniture, where the bulk of parental wealth passes to the oldest child, instead of being split (as is more common in China). So he’s able to figure out the relationship between wealth and fertility, and roughly finds that there’s significant downward social mobility in Britain over this time period, as richer people have more surviving children, and later children are more likely to become members of the lower social strata (the third son of a wealthy landholder themselves becoming a smallholder, as they don’t inherit any of the major estate, for example). As well, he has evidence that things like the death penalty for murder was pursued somewhat more effectively in Britain than other places, further having an effect on the distribution of ancestors.
The punchline is that the “nation of shopkeepers” quote (from Napoleon) is sort of genetically accurate, in that today’s farmers were more likely to be descended from people one social strata higher than farmers, and so on.
I think the weakest part of the book is his analysis of China; some commentary I’ve seen is that we should expect the situation in China to be even more this way than the situation in Britain.
This would be very interesting, if true. Imperial powers (including the USA and Japan) definitely did attempt to industrialize their allies and subject populations. Japan industrialized Manuchuria. The USA helped industrialize South Korea and Taiwan.
My personal theory is that the relative (in absolute terms) prosperity of Japan and USA is what gave them the excess capacity necessary to industrialize a foreign land.
I have not read Gregory Clark. What kind of “genetic changes” and “middle-class values” does Gregory Clark write about?
This is my memory of reading it years ago, and perhaps I’m wrong in details. That said, the book roughly argues:
England has very good records for wills, which tell you both 1) how rich someone was at death and 2) how many surviving children they had. Also, England had primogeniture, where the bulk of parental wealth passes to the oldest child, instead of being split (as is more common in China). So he’s able to figure out the relationship between wealth and fertility, and roughly finds that there’s significant downward social mobility in Britain over this time period, as richer people have more surviving children, and later children are more likely to become members of the lower social strata (the third son of a wealthy landholder themselves becoming a smallholder, as they don’t inherit any of the major estate, for example). As well, he has evidence that things like the death penalty for murder was pursued somewhat more effectively in Britain than other places, further having an effect on the distribution of ancestors.
The punchline is that the “nation of shopkeepers” quote (from Napoleon) is sort of genetically accurate, in that today’s farmers were more likely to be descended from people one social strata higher than farmers, and so on.
I think the weakest part of the book is his analysis of China; some commentary I’ve seen is that we should expect the situation in China to be even more this way than the situation in Britain.