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Power and Plenty: Trade, War, and the World Economy in the Second Millennium (Princeton Economic History of the Western World) |  | Authors: Ronald Findlay, Kevin H. O'Rourke
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Category: Book
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Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 54079
Media: Paperback
Pages: 624
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.9
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6 x 1.4
ISBN: 0691143277
Dewey Decimal Number: 330
EAN: 9780691143279
ASIN: 0691143277
Publication Date: August 10, 2009
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Product Description
International trade has shaped the modern world, yet until now no single book has been available for both economists and general readers that traces the history of the international economy from its earliest beginnings to the present day. Power and Plenty fills this gap, providing the first full account of world trade and development over the course of the last millennium. Ronald Findlay and Kevin O'Rourke examine the successive waves of globalization and "deglobalization" that have occurred during the past thousand years, looking closely at the technological and political causes behind these long-term trends. They show how the expansion and contraction of the world economy has been directly tied to the two-way interplay of trade and geopolitics, and how war and peace have been critical determinants of international trade over the very long run. The story they tell is sweeping in scope, one that links the emergence of the Western economies with economic and political developments throughout Eurasia centuries ago. Drawing extensively upon empirical evidence and informing their systematic analysis with insights from contemporary economic theory, Findlay and O'Rourke demonstrate the close interrelationships of trade and warfare, the mutual interdependence of the world's different regions, and the crucial role these factors have played in explaining modern economic growth. Power and Plenty is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the origins of today's international economy, the forces that continue to shape it, and the economic and political challenges confronting policymakers in the twenty-first century.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 10
 World Trade in the Second Millenium January 8, 2008
Izaak VanGaalen (San Francisco, CA USA)
29 out of 32 found this review helpful
According to Ricardo's theory of trade and comparative advantage, nations reach economic quilibrium through the reciprocity of supply and demand. He was assuming, of course, that all markets were free and all actors rational. This was the ideal rather than the real. Now, economists Ronald Findlay and Kevin O'Rourke advance a modified version of this thesis: trade, or the flow of supply and demand, must be understood within the context political and military equilibrium. It was John Kenneth Gailbraith who said that economics is a political contruct. The authors of this new book attempt to interpret the last 1,000 years of world history where trade flows were determined by "the barrel of a Maxim gun, the edge of a scimitar, or the ferocity of a nomadic horseman."
Many historians and economists have written world economic histories, but they have focused on only particular regions. For example, Eric Jones in The European Miracle: Environments, Economies and Geopolitics in the History of Europe and Asia saw history from a European perspective and, on the other side, Kenneth Pomeranz's The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy. was told from a more sinocentric point of view. The authors of this work give a more balanced account, treating all the regions equally. The authors believe that politics determines economics more than the other way around focus their attention first and foremost on global conflict and geopolitics.
The authors argue that there were three great world historical events that shaped the Second Millenium. The first being Pax Mongolica established by Genghis Khan and the nomads of Central Asia. This established by force the first common market stretching from Western Europe to the Sea of Japan. It resulted in a huge increase in population as well as an increase in economic output. It also brought with it microbes which caused the Black Death in Europe.
The second transformational event was the discovery of the New World along with further exploration of Africa and Asia. This was in many ways a consequence of the first event. The period from 1500 to 1650 was known as the Age of Mercantilism. The authors focus on political and military strategies adopted by Asians to counter European colonial and mercantile policies.
The third transformational event was the Industrial Revolution. Its importance to the last two centuries almost cannot be overemphasized. The technological world we live in today got its start in Northern England two hundred years ago. It marked the beginnig of the "great divergence" in wealth among nations. It had a direct influence on the Napoleonic Wars and World Wars I and II. It also lead to Pax Britannica and, after World War II, Pax Americana.
The authors describe the successive eras of world trade as they were determined by imperialism and global conflict. In each new era a different set of geopolitical relations is established, each time altering the currents of trade. The authors hope that some lessons can be learned from the violence and injustice of past conflicts as newly emerging powers such as China and India take the world stage today. There are presently centrifugal and centripetal forces at work: centripetal being the ever-integrating force of technological progress and centrifugal being anti-globalization backlash. This book can provide valuable information regarding these two forces.
Fine Overview and Synthesis; 4.5 Stars May 17, 2008
R. Albin (Ann Arbor, Michigan United States)
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
This well written book is a successful effort to summarize and synthesize a large secondary literature on the history of international trade over the last millenium. The authors adopt a chronological approach starting at 1000 CE and conclude with the recent re-emergence of the high degree of global trade in the last half century. The first chapter offers an overview and methodological discussion. Chapter 2, which stresses the economic importance and sophistication of the Islamic world and China, reconstructs the state of the Eurasian international economy. Chapter 3 describes the positive effects of the emergence of the Mongol Empire with its great facilitation of trans-Eurasian trade, followed by wholesale transformation of the Eurasian world by the consequent Black Death and its various sequealae. Chapter 4 describes the European voyages around Africa and the beginning of the integration of the Western Hemisphere into the Eurasian, now world economy. This is all very well done and the authors do a good job of summarizing the significant secondary literature on these topics with a nicely critical approach to the often fragmentary data. The emphasis, throughout, is on the interaction of economics and political history. Much of this, however, will be familiar to those with a good knowledge of history.
The authors really hit their stride and introduce a significant level of analysis with Chapter 5, which discusses European Mercantilism, and the succeeding chapters. The higher level of description and analysis is probably due to the availability of more complete data, particularly for European trade and economic performance. Chapter 6, on the Industrial Revolution, is a very thoughtful discussion of the literature on the origins of the Industrial Revolution in Britain, concluding with a sophisticated multifactorial description of the emergence of the first Industrial economy. The authors do a very nice job of stressing contingent features and the role of political and social history. The subsequent chapters, on the 19th century economy, the disatrous effects of the World Wars and the re-emergence of a high degree of global trade in the last half century, are excellent.
The quality of writing is quite good, the authors are careful to avoid using a lot of economics technical language, though a basic knowledge of economics is very helpful in reading this book, and the bibliography is comprehensive. Unlike many historians, and like many economists, the authors make good use of charts and graphs. It would have been helpful to have a few overview figures summarizing trade flows during the different periods discussed by the authors.
Comprehensive review suitable for the layperson June 14, 2008
dnk (Boston, MA United States)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I should note that although I do not have a background in economics, I might be the perfect layperson for this book as I do have a degree in history. I understand probably about as much economic theory as most semi-educated people, and hopefully a little more history. For the most part, I could follow along the economic arguments, although a few theoretical points required some review. However, there were quite a few parts where I was glad that I already knew which historic events they referred to, because sometimes they made a mention of it and then simply moved on. The most obvious was the second world war and the Holocaust, although it could be reasonably argued that most (semi-educated) people are pretty well-versed in the most basic facts of that conflict.
That would be my only complaint about this book, and as I said, one that didn't negatively affect my enjoyment of it. The book opens with a survey of where the major and minor geo-political players were at the beginning of the Second Millenium. Yes, we all know that the area roughly referred to as the Middle East made the rest of the world look like barbarians at the time (and yes, pun intended), but the authors still do a good job of impressing the reader with the vast scope of their economic activities. However, they also show that other areas, particularly East Asia but even Western Europe, were more sophisticated than they are usually given credit for. What is most valuable though is the explanation of the interactions all of the regions had with each other. Although the Middle East had the most far-reaching and complex and Europe the fewest, the total picture makes it clear that on balance the world at the beginning of the Second Millenium was much more connected than most people realize. One of the major themes of the story is not just the effect of political jockeying on trade but also the ebb and flow of the interconnections between the regions of the world.
The discussion on the effects of the Black Plague/Black Death was the one that felt the most appropriate for an economics textbook. This section was very dependent upon a number of graphs and seemed to use the most economic theory. I expected subsequent sections to be in the same vein, but the scope seemed to get bigger afterwards, for lack of a better word.
The importance of taxes and free trade- as well as the economic advantage that slavery provided to slave holders (a practice they repeatedly condemn)- were important themes in the book. However, the climax of the story as the authors see it is the Industrial Revolution, and this subject got the most ink out of any in the book. A "conspiracy" of politics, history, the clear need for certain innovations and, most importantly, the special relationship between England and the sparsely populated United States puts the center of the Industrial Revolution in Britain, but its presence and influence soon spread well beyond. The most important aspect of this economic phenomenon, and what makes it revolutionary, is that it enables its participants to break away from the Malthusian model that ties standard of living to population density. The subsequent, dramatic rise in the standard of living- and the expectation of such high standards- is probably what is most responsible for continued economic and political innovations.
As much as the Industrial Revolution raised the bar and showed what was possible, the First World War and the Interwar period show, perhaps, how fragile our systems were and how interconnected they were to politics and the peculiar balance of power that existed worldwide between 1815 and 1914. Although the United States and parts of Western Europe found ways to take advantage of the new political opportunities, the authors convincingly argue that the rest of the world did not truly recover until the end of the 20th century.
At the end of the book, the authors draw parallels to both the Germany before the First World War and Japan before the Second. The authors imply that at least some of their belligerence may have been justified by the repeated attempts by established players (Great Britain and the United States) to block their access to favorable trading conditions. The authors see an analogous potential in both China and India, who are seemingly suddenly viable participants on the verge not only matching the US' capacity but exceeding it, and countries with newer nuclear capability. We are left to ponder if we can learn from the lessons of history- and what that lesson might be.
Brilliant study of our economic history April 30, 2009
William Podmore (London United Kingdom)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Ronald Findlay, a professor of economics at Columbia University and Kevin O'Rourke, a professor of economics at Trinity College, Dublin, have written a fine history of world trade since 1000. They pick out three events as world-historical - the Black Death, the opening of the New World, and the Industrial Revolution.
They describe Genghis Khan's unification of most of the Eurasian landmass. Plague then killed between 25 million and 80 million people in Europe in 1348-51. But the resulting labour shortage made wages rise between 1350 and 1500. By contrast, population growth, as in the 13th century, reduced wages.
The age of mercantilism, based on British industry, American agriculture and African slaves, lasted from 1650 to 1780. Empires struggled for control of the New World's resources, land and trade. The Americas provided elastic supplies of land; Africa provided elastic supplies of cheap labour. Britain, atypically, industrialised with free trade, but our industrialisation did not depend on the slave trade: in 1770, its profits were only 0.54% of Britain's national income.
The 1792-1815 wars ended mercantilism. The authors call 1780-1914 the great specialisation, when the West European empires deindustrialised India and China and forced them to supply cheap raw materials and labour. World War One ended the liberal economic order of the late 19th-century.
The authors call World War One `an exogenous shock to the international economic system' and the Great Depression `a second major shock'. But both resulted from capitalism. They call 1914-39 the era of deglobalisation and note, "tariffs were positively associated with growth across countries in the interwar period."
1939-2000 saw reglobalisation. The authors claim that the median developing country failed to grow between 1980 and 1999 `despite the trend toward greater openness' - but that is only if you wrongly assume that openness brings growth.
As they admit, "Simple monocausal relations between openness and growth are not supported by the data ... Growth depends on a wide range of variables other than exposure to trade". To grow, countries need to boost investment in equipment, R&D and education, and to employ a larger portion of the population in industry.
Globalisation? The imparative of attitude chane of country leaders May 25, 2008
This book is like a six layer cake with as layers the periods 1000-1500, 1500 to 1650, 1650 to 1780, 1780 to 1814, 1914 to 1939, 1939 to 2007, and speculations about the future. Within each layer you find descriptions of what happened in seven regions that is Western Europe, Eastern Europe, North Africa with Southwest Asia, Central or Inner Asia, South Asia, and South East Asia. For each region you find wars, rulers, economic development including trade. And, especially important, the interaction and interdependence between regions
This is about as holistic, systematic and complex presentation you can ever hope to find. By the way the development of North and South America is included in Western Europe and Africa as it relates to other regions. The book is an outstanding example of a multidisciplinary approach combining the science of history with the science of economics. The book is written by an Irish and American professor. You can see from the choice of regions that it is not a European centric presentation. Asia dominated with many regions in year 1000 at the start and is moving to domination in 2007.
You will learn about many examples of interconnectedness you did not know about. For example the industrial revolution in the UK would never have happened as a consequence of only steam power and mechanisation in cotton spinning and weaving. It was dependent on a rapid increasing supply of low cost cotton that was produced to almost 100% by slave labour in the Americas, continuous land grabbing in the Americas, military control of the seas by the UK Navy to transport the cotton to the UK and transporting cotton cloth for export and an industrial policy of protection of the UK cotton industry from foreign competition in the UK. You will also find many examples of causes of unforeseeable change. Just as an example consider the rapid expansion of population and wealth during the Song dynasty in China. That was made possible by the introduction of a different type of rice from what is now Vietnam that allowed three harvests per year.
The book demonstrates conclusively that major changes in the fortunes of countries' history cannot be understood without economics and wars and the other way around. It is disappointing even frightening to see how personal greed and greed by nations has been the driving factor of most of the major changes Concern for the well-being of others as a driving force is almost totally absent.
That should be a lesson for the future. When the increasing interdependence between nations is combined with greed as the driving force, disaster is likely to occur. A disaster that can as yet can not be identified. Governments were never were able to predict disasters in time in the past. That means that it is imperative that country leaders have to change their mind - sets and consider the well-being of other countries next to their own. Anybody reading this book will become convinced of this is an absolute necessity.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 10
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