Good post. The general thrust of your argument seems convincing to me and aligns with what I’ve read elsewhere. However, I think you should have made some mention of the role the Black Death played in catalysing the little divergence.
As you write ‘In 1348 Holland's GDP per capita was $876. England's was $777. In less than 60 years time Holland's jumps to $1,245 and England's to 1090. The North Sea's revolutionary divergence started at this time.‘
If someone wasn’t aware that the Black Death occurred at this time then I think you run the risk of creating the impression that the rise in per capita incomes (in the 14th century) was primarily because of a proliferation of markets and the other factors you mention as opposed to a Malthusian shock. England’s population declined by roughly 30-40% (the figure was similar throughout the rest of Europe) and hence given the population dynamics of the pre-industrial world this lead to the rise in incomes. However, this rise was not unique to northwestern Europe and was seen in Italy too, for instance. What’s significant is that the cultural practices in northwestern Europe (marrying later, small nuclear families, interactions between old pagan belief and church) meant the population didn’t recover to its pre-Black Death level as quickly as it did in places such as Italy (where women tending to marry more commonly in their early-mid teens and extended families were conducive to a higher birth rate). The income gains that the Black Death caused thus endured much longer in northwestern Europe, and these gains were a key factor (along with a relaxation of feudal labour restrictions) in creating the conditions for markets to arise and develop. It was then markets (to grossly oversimplify) and the institutions they helped foster that made what would otherwise have been a temporary Malthusian boost into a permanent boost in incomes.
Anyhow, like I said you covered this second half well but I think emphasising the role of the Black Death in spurring the development of markets would have been useful context to include. Or maybe you dispute the importance of the Black Death? Would be interested to hear your thoughts.
I believe that the Black Death acted as a catalyst. It speeded up certain trends that were already ongoing. Consider southern Europe. The toll in human life was just as great there as it was in northwest Europe. In both cases, the Black Death was followed by a surge in economic growth, yet that growth was less sustainable in southern Europe. The conditions were less optimal for the market to emerge as the main organizing principle of social relations. Kinship remained important, and sociality remained more personal.
I don't agree that the rate of natural increase was higher for Italy than it was for England. The English had a very high rate of natural increase until the mid-19th century. In Italy, natural increase didn't reach high levels until the 19th century. A more critical factor was immigration of slave labor, which was absent in late medieval England but significant in late medieval Italy.
The labor shortage created by the Black Death is often cited as a cause for the great divergence, and it may well be. But any such explanation must contend with the fact that the Black Death was a Eurasian, and not merely a European, phenomenon. Why didn't the Black Death have a similar effect in China or the Islamic world?
The Black Death did not affect China to the same extent as it affected Europe or the Middle East. Some authors doubt whether China was affected at all. It's possible that the Chinese population was partially immunized by earlier variants of the plague bacillus.
In the case of the Islamic world (and also southern Europe), the demographic losses due to the Black Death, particularly among domestic servants and farm workers, were made up through an increase in the slave trade.
"The 1348 Black Death Plague killed at least twenty percent of Valencia’s population, and the effects were devastating: reduced reproduction, raised mortality, massive shifts in migration, intense growth in city population, and an altered structure of the family and the society. The urban household had to adopt new strategies to deal with the demographic collapse. Domestic
servants, slaves, and foreigners were incorporated into the household to meet needs, and the composition of households changed as internal migration, Mediterranean migration from North Africa and Eastern Europe, and labour migrations all accelerated. These migrations led to urban reform and to more complex households as many families began to offer lodging and provisions
to newcomers. Christian and Muslim slaves were brought into Valencia as households tried to meet the demographic need for more labour. Servant numbers also increased, and foreigners migrated to Valencia and began to integrate into the society. During a century of changes, there was one important constant: the attempt to maintain the centrality and significance of the household within the social organization and the economy. Masters and mistresses tried to retain responsibility for the everyday management of their households, and they aimed to keep the traditional hierarchical structures of authority in place over their staff, male and female slaves, and non-family members. However, the increase in the number of complex households in the
period brought new relationships between masters, slaves and servants, and more connections were forged with foreigners. All these changes challenged traditional patriarchal control within households. Therefore, migration, spurred by the Black Death Plague, had a significant effect on the household structure in late medieval Valencia. High rates of mortality caused by plague created a lack of domestic labourers and caused economic upheaval; masters needed to
incorporate extra-familial members into the household to complete essential household tasks. The influx of migrant workers and enslaved labourers altered the household’s traditional, kinbased structure and expanded the domestic economy, and these changes challenged the societal order."
I just discovered your Substack and have been enjoying reading it.
You might be interested in reading some of my Substack articles (and books) as our interests overlap.
I also agree that modern material progress started around the 13th Century, but I believe that it first occurred in the city/states of Northern Italy before moving up into the Lowlands and England.
I do not, however, believe that the cause of this was the Roman Catholic Church and demography. I believe that it was due to unique geographical and political conditions that enabled the emergence of Commercial societies. If the Roman Catholic Church was the cause, it would have been far more broad based geographically.
My general theory of history, which includes biology, but also geography, energy, technological innovation, cultural evolution, and society types is here:
I will read your posts. I believe that Western Christianity helped consolidate and promote certain aspects of mind and behavior. The acceleration of cognitive evolution from the late Middle Ages onward was probably driven by the demographic expansion of the middle class, specifically small "ma and pa" businesses that had to compete in elastic markets and which largely used their loins to create their workforce, i.e., their children and grandchildren. This was especially the case in the regions of Ulster, Lancashire, Yorkshire, Brittany, Flanders, Alsace, Westphalia, Saxony, the Zurich uplands, the Piedmont and Lombardy. This cognitive evolution then spread outward throughout most of Europe.
I don't like to invoke a single cause of cognitive evolution. There were different causes at different periods of history and prehistory.
Just to be clear, the dependent variable that I am concerned about explaining is per capita GDP, not cognition. I tend to think that changes in human cognition are more the result of these changes rather than the cause (i.e. more complex society drives selects for human cognition). Obviously, the causal direction goes both ways, though.
I am also very skeptical about monocausal theories. My attempt to balance one cause vs a long list of causes is the Five Keys to Progress:
And with regard to the Broadberry estimates, these too have serious problems. For one, we are pretty confident that workers wages in Europe (or at least England) grew between ~1350 and 1450 (mostly due to effects of Black Death) but then fell back to their 13/14th century level between 1450 and 1700. Since GDP per capita is really just wages plus return to land (later, capital) if Broadberry was right the period 1450 to 1700 would have to have had an insane explosion in land returns to make up for that fall in wages. That is not what happened.
Angus Madison’s dataset is peripheral to this question. I agree that many of his earlier estimates are debatable. The relevant dataset is Stephen Broadberry's.
The issue, here, is the market economy and its take-off in the countries around the North Sea, particularly England and Holland. Why did these countries begin to pull ahead around 1300?
This is what Broadberry calls “the European Little Divergence, or reversal of fortunes between the North Sea Area and Mediterranean Europe, as Britain and Holland began to catch up with Italy and Spain from 1348 – and then forged ahead from 1500 – led first by the Dutch Golden Age, and later by the British Industrial Revolution.”
You state that workers’ wages in England “fell back [after the Black Death] to their 13/14th century level between 1450 and 1700.” This decline was due to population growth. It was not due to a decline in the market economy, which grew considerably during this period. In fact, although workers’ wages declined, there was nonetheless growth in GDP per capita due to an increase in the number of women in the work force and to an overall increase in days worked per year:
“The Black Death of the mid-fourteenth century had quite different effects in different parts of Europe. The classic Malthusian response to such a mortality crisis is a rise in incomes for those lucky enough to survive because of an increase in the per capita endowment of land and capital for survivors.”
“However, as population recovers, it should lead to a corresponding decline in per capita incomes. This happened in Italy, but not in Britain or Holland, as a result of the high age of marriage of females (linked to labour market opportunities in pastoral agriculture) and people working more days per year (the industrious revolution).” (Broadberry, 2013)
Again, the issue is the expansion of the market economy, which can occur alongside wage stagnation. The two are not incompatible.
Female hypergamy is qualitatively different from male hypergamy. It usually involves women who use their youth and beauty to climb the social ladder. Male hypergamy usually involves men who use their intelligence, strength, and/or charisma to climb the social ladder.
Female hypergamy is more frequent in a society with a high polygyny rate. High-status males will marry not only with women of their social class but also with women of lower social classes. This is inevitable because the supply of women is finite. Polygyny increases the demand for women, so polygynous men will go after any women, as long as they are young and beautiful.
This is why highly polygynous societies (e.g., sub-Saharan Africa, Papua New Guinea) have less social stratification. After a few generations, everyone is descended from the same high-status men. It's good for social cohesion, but it's not so good for cognitive evolution, which cannot proceed as fast.
I agree that highly polygynous societies select for physical strength, as well as charisma and verbal bombast. These are the characteristics that enable polygynous men to compete against male rivals.
But there would be many single males in polygnynous society. Isnt that a social problem? You said social cohesion. But polygami means bigger family. I think this may cause kind of tribal war.
You're right. Highly polygynous societies resolve that problem by externalizing it. Young single males become warriors who are permitted to steal women from other communities. Polygyny thus incentivizes tribal war.
In a cross-cultural survey, White and Burton (1988, p. 882) concluded that “polygyny is associated with warfare for plunder and/or female captives.” Raided communities were disrupted not only by the loss of young women but also by the deaths of younger men and older women, who were less likely to be spared.
White, D.R., and Burton. M.L. (1988). Causes of polygyny: ecology, economy, kinship, and warfare. American Anthropologist, 90, 871-887. doi:10.1525/aa.1988.90.4.02a00060
There's actually fewer incels and celibate people in general in Sub-Saharan Africa than any other region in the world, strictly monogamous and less violent societies tend to produce more incels ironically, such as North East Asia.
There's actually fewer incels in Sub-Saharan Africa than any other region in the world, strictly monogamous societies tend to produce more incels ironically, especially East Asia.
"In 2018, 70 percent of women in Nigeria aged 15 to 49 years were married, while 25 percent of them never married. Data on the marital status of men show that women were more likely to marry. Indeed, the share of men who never married exceeded 40 percent as of 2018."
I agree that the polygyny rate has declined throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. This is partly due to the influence of Christianity (which refuses to recognize polygynous marriages), partly due to government legislation, and partly due to migration from the country to the city (where it is more difficult for a woman to raise children with minimal male assistance).
Yes, although he doesn't interpret the decline in terms of gene-culture coevolution. As he sees it, men are simply learning to become less predisposed to violence.
"In terms of GDP per capita growth, northwest Europe began to surpass the rest of the world during the fourteenth century."
This is not at all what robust research in Economic History says. The debate there is whether it was the 16th, 18th or 19th century.
The underlying problem with this claim - the fundamental falsity that is behind all the pieces linked - is reliance on Angus Maddison's "data". Like, literally. The methodology behind them is little more than AM sitting around asking himself "hmmm, what do i think this country's GDP is in 1000 AD? Hmm, I don't know, they look kind of technologically advanced to me, for their time, I'll give them x". Estimates of actual output income and wages from primary sources quickly showed his musings to be detached from reality. Even theoretically they don't make much sense (in a pretty industrial Malthusian world the level of technological sophistication is irrelevant for gdp per capita or a standard of living)
No reference to the loss of manpower and inability to develop of the eastern areas due to the constant yearly raiding by the caliphate. Look up the Nogoi raids for example. Basically the eastern Roman Empire , the Muscovites , Eastern Europe and other borderlines were subject to constant and complex raiding and conquest, and slave taking as a matter of course over this extended period. The crusades themselves were a reaction to this following requests by the Byzantine emperor after manzikert. Didn’t work and the popes lot sacked Constantinople in the 4th crusade. Protected by these eastern borderlands which had to invest in Defense constantly.(‘the frontier of Islam is always bloody’) the west beyond the hajnal line could profit and allow the north and south renaissance, printing press etc. ..
Then the discovery of the new world and long distance trade allowed the west to unburden itself from the middlemen of the caliphate …getting richer all along.
Amazing what you can do when you’re not getting constantly punched.
Frost, P. (2020). White Skin Privilege: Modern Myth, Forgotten Past. Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture, 4(2), 63-82. https://doi.org/10.26613/esic/4.2.190
Clearly, this continual slave-raiding had devastating effects, particularly on present-day Ukraine and parts of southern Russia. There was so much depopulation that much of eastern Ukraine would not be opened up for farming and settlement until about the same time as the Canadian prairies were.
But does this factor explain why eastern Europe lagged behind western Europe economically and demographically? I don't think so. Let me explain the reasons:
- The Tatar slave raiding occurred from the 15th century onward. By that time, the rise of Western Europe was well under way.
- Even during that time frame, it did not affect all of eastern Europe.
- The Eastern Roman Empire enjoyed a period of stability and prosperity from the 9th to the early 11th centuries. Yet this period did not see the rise of a true market economy. Familialism, slavery, and other pre-capitalistic structures continued to impede the expansion of the market principle beyond the actual marketplace.
- As in western Europe, the economic and demographic expansion of eastern Europe followed very closely the growth of the market economy. Unfortunately, this growth was dominated by German and Jewish merchants and had a less transformative effect on the larger society. The market economy was seen much more as a "foreign" concept.
Quite a lot to answer , and happy to rethink too..
Yarmuk followed a time when the empire was weak, after the plague of Justinian in 530 ish , a few years without summer followed by a cold period lasting a centry or so. Manpower and cereal crops were decimated , across Europe due to famine. The structure of the empire survived but barely. Egyptian and North African provinces lost. Morale was probably very low. Similar stuff at manzikert but really crap leadership there..the Emperor even go captured…and stabbed in the back by chancers in Constantinople jostling for position.
. The empire could only use mercenaries , but young jihadis with no fear of death and no salary requirement other than booty are pretty high morale - they have gods right on their side. ..similar problem with Afghanistan and Iraq in this era. The US has no answer to the Ansarallah /Houthis.
Not sure that eastern empire curtailed martial spirit though…. This is more a modern thing. They tended to settle hardier frontier ethnos in edge lands. RF emptied prisons into the meat grinder of UKR. Obviously lawful behaviour is needed for any large settlement , which will,always be attacked by random hard cases from the jungle outside.
Capitalism pretends to tender things…. I don’t know whether you ever worked in procurement. The mafia of Sicily do it in full view. The city of London has more opaque methods… still seems more efficient than pure incompetence from the state led sectors/command economy.
Mostly we see nepotism. I mean look at all those covid contracts ..
Pigs at the trough . But yes industrial complex societies can’t use gentleman architects for example, or master craftsmen…they needed a professional class for those factories…L but they will be drawn from the higher echelon and expensive architects education is just a way of getting a good list of ‘contacts’ with other people who can afford it. Wider catchment for bigger numbers.
Thanks for your answer. The nogoi slave raid zones of which you write were not the only borderlands with the caliphate as I’m sure you are aware. The Muslim (let’s not be distracted by tribal groups, tartars, Seljuks, Arabs etc , the common factor was expansionism , slave taking and ultimately conquest in accordance with the revelation of the prophet PBUH .The siege of Vienna was 1683….by that time allah had allowed the Muslims to absorb most of the Balkans. Albania was subject to forced conversion in particular since it was considered a stepping stone to invasion of Italy. Since the 1071 manzikert capitulation they had unstopped the cork of protection afforded the west by eastern Roman Empire. From Serb Kraijina to Corfu, and across Hungary and Wallachia …by 1500… Barbarossa (red beard ..a haji) was constantly raiding across the med and destroying any trade links to the lucrative east.
You ignore the economic powerhouse that was the Armenians all over the eastern areas and as far as kerala … they were as capitalist as Jews any day, but even they couldn’t trade their way out of the constant attacks and jizya taxes from all sides.
German and jewish traders benefited from the time lag between 636 at Yarmuk river, to the raising of the siege of Vienna and Lepanto & siege of Malta with constant success in between , the Muslim advances rolled over Andalusia and any development in Iberia was halted until their eviction 1000 years later….remaining a backwater for much longer. So let’s not concentrate wholly on the Tartars , and the underdevelopment of the current Russian areas. .. I think you should rethink a little. You can’t even get dressed in the morning if somebody is constantly punching you. Good luck imposing any rules at all on who can marry who in that scenario.
While the continuing existence of hajnal line development certainly explains advancement somewhat, it is the respite from Allahs blessed embrace allowing this to happen. Right now the demographic situation in Western Europe/ U.K. favours cousin marriage going forward, negating the hajnal line . Why might this be? Suggest a reason….
I'm willing to rethink, and more than just "a little." Will you do likewise? The rise of the market economy was not hindered by external attacks, at least not primarily. Nor was it hindered solely by internal violence and lawlessness. The main obstacle was a mindset that prioritized the family, the kin group, and other pre-capitalistic relations over the market economy.
If you wanted to get things done, you would go to another family member. You wouldn't put out a call for tenders and choose the lowest bid. That wasn't how people did things, not even the Armenians. They, too, would normally work with other family members.
It's sad that the Eastern Roman Empire became a punching bag. Unfortunately, this is what happens when the State imposes a monopoly on violence and removes violent males from the gene pool. You end up with a population that is no longer able or willing to defend itself.
Why do you think Heraclius lost the Battle of the Yarmuk? He had more soldiers and no real tactical disadvantage. But his forces were unwilling to press their advantage, and they fled once it became clear they had lost. They fled not only the local area but also all of Syria.
One might ask similar questions about the Battle of Manzikert. The Empire had become dangerously dependent on foreign mercenaries, many of whom were of Turkish origin. The desertion of these and other foreign mercenaries played a key role in the subsequent defeat.
I think that Europeans were ahead long before. Egypt and Sumer started first, then the Greeks and the Romans. The Romans were always more advanced than their Celestial counterparts.
If you're talking about GDP per capita, the Roman Empire might have been ahead of China. I really can't say. But the wealthiest Roman provinces were in the East, outside Europe. That was one of the reasons why the capital was moved to Constantinople. Moreover, there was a long period after the fourth century when Europe was definitely behind much of the world.
I'm not arguing that GDP is the best yardstick for measuring the success of a society. My argument is that northwest Europeans in the fourteenth century provided the market economy with the best conditions for sustained expansion. Those conditions were not things like slavery, colonialism, Protestantism, or the printing press. They were a particular mindset: individualism, a weak attachment to kinship, a strong tendency to think in terms of universal rules, and a greater reluctance to use violence as a means to settle disputes.
I believe J.D. Unwin also wrote in the 1930s about the weakening of endogamy by an influx of freed slave and other foreign women in Ancient Greece. this has an obvious parallel with the Democrats' open immigration schemes in Biden's America.
The "fall" of the Islamic world was relative. Much economic progress was made in the Ottoman Empire between the 16th and the 19th centuries, but the West was progressing much more. The main obstacle was that Muslims were able to create markets but not a true market economy. Kinship remained the main organizing principle of their societies. The market was secondary.
Consanguineous marriage gets a bad rap. Once you go beyond marriage with a third or fourth cousin, the genetic costs of outbreeding begin to outweigh those of inbreeding. If you marry your third cousin, you're actually optimizing the health of your future children.
Helgason, A., S. Pálsson, D.F. Guðbjartsson, þ. Kristjánsson, K. Stefánsson. (2008). An association between the kinship and fertility of human couples. Science 319(5864): 813-816.
Interesting, albeit I believe you overstate the difference between Eastern and Western Christianity - both enacted similar measures.
The difference, I believe, was the authority of the state in enforcing them. Whereas the Germanics quickly supplanted the Romans and took over, in the east the transition wasn't so clear cut - proper states emerged later, and Christianized even later. But the differences in the variants of Christianity was negligible at that time.
Both churches banned cousin marriages, but the Western Church went much farther in the 9th century when it extended the ban to sixth cousins. Later, in 1215, the range of prohibited marriages was scaled back from seven to four degrees (to a common ancestor). In the Eastern Church, the ban never extended farther than second cousins.
Nonetheless, I'm skeptical about the argument that the severity of the cousin marriage ban explains why Western Europeans have tended toward individualism and impersonal sociality. Yes, the latter behavioral traits are connected to the Western European pattern of high rates of late marriage, celibacy, and nuclear households. But that pattern was already in place in the 9th century, when the Western Church extended the range of forbidden cousin marriages. We're looking at a more profound behavioral phenomenon.
The strengthening of Western European states was also a factor -- not in favoring individualism and impersonal sociality (which were already prevalent) but in pacifying social relations. That began to happen from the eleventh century onward, and it was key to the expansion of the market economy.
The case with the Balkans - mainly due to plague. Turks stayed at their houses during disease outbreaks, Bulgarians and Greeks moved their villages to new locations. It's common knowledge in the Balkans.
By the way, the Byzantine church, and the Bulgarian one after 865 AD forbade cousin marriages. Strange no one knows this.
Reminds me of the case when some science people wondered why people North of the Black Sea used to live semi-nomadic lifestyle up until the Mongol invasion, and then Mongols /Tatars adopted it. Cattle can't graze there because the snow is too deep and people need to prepare hay for the winter. But scientists rarely know such stuff, as no one speaks with locals.
Anyway, my point is the whole theory is wrong as the East Churches did exactly the same - they forbade cousin marriages with stricter terms than the West did. And those were and are enforced, as anyone who knows few Greeks grannies or just any old lady from the Balkans would know.
First, the Eastern Church was much more limited in its ban on cousin marriages. It banned only marriages between first cousins or second cousins. Third Cousins could and can marry. In the ninth century, the Western Church redefined the concept of "seventh degree" and extended the ban to sixth cousins. This ban continued until the 13th century:
"In the 9th century, however, the church raised the number of prohibited degrees to seven and changed the method by which they were calculated. Instead of the former practice of counting up to the common ancestor and then down to the proposed spouse, the new law computed consanguinity by counting only back to the common ancestor.[76] [...]"
"In 1215, the Fourth Lateran Council reduced the number of prohibited degrees of consanguinity from seven back to four.[79][80] After 1215, the general rule was that while fourth cousins could marry without dispensation, the need for dispensations was reduced."
Second, like you, I don't believe that the cousin marriage ban explains the Western European pattern of late marriage, celibacy and nuclear households. Please reread what I wrote:
"In addition, when the Church formally banned cousin marriages in the ninth century, Western Europe already had high rates of late marriage, celibacy, and nuclear households. This has been shown at two locations in ninth-century France [...]"
"It seems more correct to say that Western Christianity promoted impersonal sociality because it had assimilated a pre-existing pattern of weak kinship, late marriage, individualism, and openness to non-kin."
So I'm not sure where we disagree. Could you enlighten me?
In other words, the success of northwestern Europe came about because of the rise of the "protestant work ethic". The same thing happened to Japan, Korea and China in the past 40-50 years. Universal education, free enterprise, thrift, hard work and minimal government interference in business.
Actually, northwest Europe began its economic takeoff before Protestantism. But I understand your point: Protestantism was shaped by the values of the people it spread amongst.
Minimal government is more a consequence, than a cause, of people having the appropriate mindset.
Sustained growth in GDP per capita happens when employers can no longer increase the supply of labor as they see fit, either through international migration or through migration from the countryside. That began to happen in England in the 19th century and in North America in the early 20th century. Workers found themselves in a buyers' market, and their living conditions dramatically improved.
That's not the same thing as sustained growth in GDP. That began much earlier. After five centuries of sustained economic growth, living conditions were not much better for the average English worker in the mid-19th century than they were in the mid-14th century. It's simply untrue that the business class will benefit society at large if they are given free rein to benefit themselves.
Good point! I was muddling GDP per capita with median wages. I'm sorry.
Tanner Greer shows a progressive rise in GDP per capita in England:
1348 - 777
1400 - 1,090
1500 - 1,114
1600 - 1,123
1700 - 1,563
1800 - 2,080
1850 - 2,997
Gregory Clark uses the term "income per person" (where "income" includes not only wages but also land rents and capital income). He argues that before the 1800s most of the increase in wealth went to the propertied classes:
"Thus it was possible that England, France or Italy in 1800 could have a higher income per person than the original foragers. But perversely only through their achievement of greater inequality than earlier societies. And the boost to incomes per person from inequality was limited. Land rents and capital income made up perhaps half of all income settled agrarian societies. The expropriation of all these incomes by an elite would double income per person compared to a state of complete inequality. " (p. 37)
Things changed during the 1800s, when median wages began to increase in real terms and when workers were able to escape from the "Malthusian trap." At least, that's the argument Greg Clark is making. I wish I could find a time series of English median wages to compare with English GDP per capita.
Good post. The general thrust of your argument seems convincing to me and aligns with what I’ve read elsewhere. However, I think you should have made some mention of the role the Black Death played in catalysing the little divergence.
As you write ‘In 1348 Holland's GDP per capita was $876. England's was $777. In less than 60 years time Holland's jumps to $1,245 and England's to 1090. The North Sea's revolutionary divergence started at this time.‘
If someone wasn’t aware that the Black Death occurred at this time then I think you run the risk of creating the impression that the rise in per capita incomes (in the 14th century) was primarily because of a proliferation of markets and the other factors you mention as opposed to a Malthusian shock. England’s population declined by roughly 30-40% (the figure was similar throughout the rest of Europe) and hence given the population dynamics of the pre-industrial world this lead to the rise in incomes. However, this rise was not unique to northwestern Europe and was seen in Italy too, for instance. What’s significant is that the cultural practices in northwestern Europe (marrying later, small nuclear families, interactions between old pagan belief and church) meant the population didn’t recover to its pre-Black Death level as quickly as it did in places such as Italy (where women tending to marry more commonly in their early-mid teens and extended families were conducive to a higher birth rate). The income gains that the Black Death caused thus endured much longer in northwestern Europe, and these gains were a key factor (along with a relaxation of feudal labour restrictions) in creating the conditions for markets to arise and develop. It was then markets (to grossly oversimplify) and the institutions they helped foster that made what would otherwise have been a temporary Malthusian boost into a permanent boost in incomes.
Anyhow, like I said you covered this second half well but I think emphasising the role of the Black Death in spurring the development of markets would have been useful context to include. Or maybe you dispute the importance of the Black Death? Would be interested to hear your thoughts.
I believe that the Black Death acted as a catalyst. It speeded up certain trends that were already ongoing. Consider southern Europe. The toll in human life was just as great there as it was in northwest Europe. In both cases, the Black Death was followed by a surge in economic growth, yet that growth was less sustainable in southern Europe. The conditions were less optimal for the market to emerge as the main organizing principle of social relations. Kinship remained important, and sociality remained more personal.
I don't agree that the rate of natural increase was higher for Italy than it was for England. The English had a very high rate of natural increase until the mid-19th century. In Italy, natural increase didn't reach high levels until the 19th century. A more critical factor was immigration of slave labor, which was absent in late medieval England but significant in late medieval Italy.
The labor shortage created by the Black Death is often cited as a cause for the great divergence, and it may well be. But any such explanation must contend with the fact that the Black Death was a Eurasian, and not merely a European, phenomenon. Why didn't the Black Death have a similar effect in China or the Islamic world?
The Black Death did not affect China to the same extent as it affected Europe or the Middle East. Some authors doubt whether China was affected at all. It's possible that the Chinese population was partially immunized by earlier variants of the plague bacillus.
In the case of the Islamic world (and also southern Europe), the demographic losses due to the Black Death, particularly among domestic servants and farm workers, were made up through an increase in the slave trade.
"The 1348 Black Death Plague killed at least twenty percent of Valencia’s population, and the effects were devastating: reduced reproduction, raised mortality, massive shifts in migration, intense growth in city population, and an altered structure of the family and the society. The urban household had to adopt new strategies to deal with the demographic collapse. Domestic
servants, slaves, and foreigners were incorporated into the household to meet needs, and the composition of households changed as internal migration, Mediterranean migration from North Africa and Eastern Europe, and labour migrations all accelerated. These migrations led to urban reform and to more complex households as many families began to offer lodging and provisions
to newcomers. Christian and Muslim slaves were brought into Valencia as households tried to meet the demographic need for more labour. Servant numbers also increased, and foreigners migrated to Valencia and began to integrate into the society. During a century of changes, there was one important constant: the attempt to maintain the centrality and significance of the household within the social organization and the economy. Masters and mistresses tried to retain responsibility for the everyday management of their households, and they aimed to keep the traditional hierarchical structures of authority in place over their staff, male and female slaves, and non-family members. However, the increase in the number of complex households in the
period brought new relationships between masters, slaves and servants, and more connections were forged with foreigners. All these changes challenged traditional patriarchal control within households. Therefore, migration, spurred by the Black Death Plague, had a significant effect on the household structure in late medieval Valencia. High rates of mortality caused by plague created a lack of domestic labourers and caused economic upheaval; masters needed to
incorporate extra-familial members into the household to complete essential household tasks. The influx of migrant workers and enslaved labourers altered the household’s traditional, kinbased structure and expanded the domestic economy, and these changes challenged the societal order."
https://qspace.library.queensu.ca/items/3a77552e-8746-4dcc-b525-f130c41142e8
Thank you, that was helpful.
I just discovered your Substack and have been enjoying reading it.
You might be interested in reading some of my Substack articles (and books) as our interests overlap.
I also agree that modern material progress started around the 13th Century, but I believe that it first occurred in the city/states of Northern Italy before moving up into the Lowlands and England.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/commercial-societies
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/how-and-why-commercial-societies
One of those societies, England then leveraged the benefits of Commercial society by creating the first Industrial society.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/another-way-at-looking-at-pre-industrial
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/was-the-industrial-revolution-inevitable
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/the-significance-of-the-industrial
I do not, however, believe that the cause of this was the Roman Catholic Church and demography. I believe that it was due to unique geographical and political conditions that enabled the emergence of Commercial societies. If the Roman Catholic Church was the cause, it would have been far more broad based geographically.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/the-geographical-preconditions-of
My general theory of history, which includes biology, but also geography, energy, technological innovation, cultural evolution, and society types is here:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/the-five-keys-to-progress
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/understanding-how-humans-create-progress
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/all-of-human-history-in-one-graphic
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-our-deep-history-explains-global
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/progress-is-an-evolutionary-process
I will read your posts. I believe that Western Christianity helped consolidate and promote certain aspects of mind and behavior. The acceleration of cognitive evolution from the late Middle Ages onward was probably driven by the demographic expansion of the middle class, specifically small "ma and pa" businesses that had to compete in elastic markets and which largely used their loins to create their workforce, i.e., their children and grandchildren. This was especially the case in the regions of Ulster, Lancashire, Yorkshire, Brittany, Flanders, Alsace, Westphalia, Saxony, the Zurich uplands, the Piedmont and Lombardy. This cognitive evolution then spread outward throughout most of Europe.
I don't like to invoke a single cause of cognitive evolution. There were different causes at different periods of history and prehistory.
Thanks for the reply.
Just to be clear, the dependent variable that I am concerned about explaining is per capita GDP, not cognition. I tend to think that changes in human cognition are more the result of these changes rather than the cause (i.e. more complex society drives selects for human cognition). Obviously, the causal direction goes both ways, though.
I am also very skeptical about monocausal theories. My attempt to balance one cause vs a long list of causes is the Five Keys to Progress:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/the-five-keys-to-progress
And with regard to the Broadberry estimates, these too have serious problems. For one, we are pretty confident that workers wages in Europe (or at least England) grew between ~1350 and 1450 (mostly due to effects of Black Death) but then fell back to their 13/14th century level between 1450 and 1700. Since GDP per capita is really just wages plus return to land (later, capital) if Broadberry was right the period 1450 to 1700 would have to have had an insane explosion in land returns to make up for that fall in wages. That is not what happened.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ehr.12528
Angus Madison’s dataset is peripheral to this question. I agree that many of his earlier estimates are debatable. The relevant dataset is Stephen Broadberry's.
The issue, here, is the market economy and its take-off in the countries around the North Sea, particularly England and Holland. Why did these countries begin to pull ahead around 1300?
This is what Broadberry calls “the European Little Divergence, or reversal of fortunes between the North Sea Area and Mediterranean Europe, as Britain and Holland began to catch up with Italy and Spain from 1348 – and then forged ahead from 1500 – led first by the Dutch Golden Age, and later by the British Industrial Revolution.”
You state that workers’ wages in England “fell back [after the Black Death] to their 13/14th century level between 1450 and 1700.” This decline was due to population growth. It was not due to a decline in the market economy, which grew considerably during this period. In fact, although workers’ wages declined, there was nonetheless growth in GDP per capita due to an increase in the number of women in the work force and to an overall increase in days worked per year:
“The Black Death of the mid-fourteenth century had quite different effects in different parts of Europe. The classic Malthusian response to such a mortality crisis is a rise in incomes for those lucky enough to survive because of an increase in the per capita endowment of land and capital for survivors.”
“However, as population recovers, it should lead to a corresponding decline in per capita incomes. This happened in Italy, but not in Britain or Holland, as a result of the high age of marriage of females (linked to labour market opportunities in pastoral agriculture) and people working more days per year (the industrious revolution).” (Broadberry, 2013)
Again, the issue is the expansion of the market economy, which can occur alongside wage stagnation. The two are not incompatible.
Broadberry, S. (2013). Accounting for the great divergence. VoxEU – CEPR https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/accounting-great-divergence
Excellent read to start the day. Thank you.
Wouldn't the effects of the decline in female hypergamy under polygamy be counterbalanced by those of male hypergamy?
Female hypergamy is qualitatively different from male hypergamy. It usually involves women who use their youth and beauty to climb the social ladder. Male hypergamy usually involves men who use their intelligence, strength, and/or charisma to climb the social ladder.
Female hypergamy is more frequent in a society with a high polygyny rate. High-status males will marry not only with women of their social class but also with women of lower social classes. This is inevitable because the supply of women is finite. Polygyny increases the demand for women, so polygynous men will go after any women, as long as they are young and beautiful.
But unions of lower status women with stronger and smarter men would enable those women to bear stronger children.
It does seem evident that monogamous societies, under the right conditions, do produce stronger children, but I'm not sure why. Viz. the Romans.
This is why highly polygynous societies (e.g., sub-Saharan Africa, Papua New Guinea) have less social stratification. After a few generations, everyone is descended from the same high-status men. It's good for social cohesion, but it's not so good for cognitive evolution, which cannot proceed as fast.
I agree that highly polygynous societies select for physical strength, as well as charisma and verbal bombast. These are the characteristics that enable polygynous men to compete against male rivals.
But there would be many single males in polygnynous society. Isnt that a social problem? You said social cohesion. But polygami means bigger family. I think this may cause kind of tribal war.
You're right. Highly polygynous societies resolve that problem by externalizing it. Young single males become warriors who are permitted to steal women from other communities. Polygyny thus incentivizes tribal war.
In a cross-cultural survey, White and Burton (1988, p. 882) concluded that “polygyny is associated with warfare for plunder and/or female captives.” Raided communities were disrupted not only by the loss of young women but also by the deaths of younger men and older women, who were less likely to be spared.
White, D.R., and Burton. M.L. (1988). Causes of polygyny: ecology, economy, kinship, and warfare. American Anthropologist, 90, 871-887. doi:10.1525/aa.1988.90.4.02a00060
There's actually fewer incels and celibate people in general in Sub-Saharan Africa than any other region in the world, strictly monogamous and less violent societies tend to produce more incels ironically, such as North East Asia.
There's actually fewer incels in Sub-Saharan Africa than any other region in the world, strictly monogamous societies tend to produce more incels ironically, especially East Asia.
I beg to differ:
"In 2018, 70 percent of women in Nigeria aged 15 to 49 years were married, while 25 percent of them never married. Data on the marital status of men show that women were more likely to marry. Indeed, the share of men who never married exceeded 40 percent as of 2018."
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1124491/marital-status-of-women-in-nigeria/#:~:text=In%202018%2C%2070%20percent%20of,40%20percent%20as%20of%202018.
I agree that the polygyny rate has declined throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. This is partly due to the influence of Christianity (which refuses to recognize polygynous marriages), partly due to government legislation, and partly due to migration from the country to the city (where it is more difficult for a woman to raise children with minimal male assistance).
I think Steven Pinker wrote about this also in his treatise on the decline of societal violence beginning in Elizabethan England.
Yes, although he doesn't interpret the decline in terms of gene-culture coevolution. As he sees it, men are simply learning to become less predisposed to violence.
"In terms of GDP per capita growth, northwest Europe began to surpass the rest of the world during the fourteenth century."
This is not at all what robust research in Economic History says. The debate there is whether it was the 16th, 18th or 19th century.
The underlying problem with this claim - the fundamental falsity that is behind all the pieces linked - is reliance on Angus Maddison's "data". Like, literally. The methodology behind them is little more than AM sitting around asking himself "hmmm, what do i think this country's GDP is in 1000 AD? Hmm, I don't know, they look kind of technologically advanced to me, for their time, I'll give them x". Estimates of actual output income and wages from primary sources quickly showed his musings to be detached from reality. Even theoretically they don't make much sense (in a pretty industrial Malthusian world the level of technological sophistication is irrelevant for gdp per capita or a standard of living)
No reference to the loss of manpower and inability to develop of the eastern areas due to the constant yearly raiding by the caliphate. Look up the Nogoi raids for example. Basically the eastern Roman Empire , the Muscovites , Eastern Europe and other borderlines were subject to constant and complex raiding and conquest, and slave taking as a matter of course over this extended period. The crusades themselves were a reaction to this following requests by the Byzantine emperor after manzikert. Didn’t work and the popes lot sacked Constantinople in the 4th crusade. Protected by these eastern borderlands which had to invest in Defense constantly.(‘the frontier of Islam is always bloody’) the west beyond the hajnal line could profit and allow the north and south renaissance, printing press etc. ..
Then the discovery of the new world and long distance trade allowed the west to unburden itself from the middlemen of the caliphate …getting richer all along.
Amazing what you can do when you’re not getting constantly punched.
Western Europe is now borderlands. Sad.
I've discussed the slave raiding by Crimean Tatars elsewhere (see:
https://evoandproud.blogspot.com/2013/09/from-slavs-to-slaves.html
https://evoandproud.blogspot.com/2013/09/from-slavs-to-slaves-part-ii.html
https://evoandproud.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-other-slave-trade.html
Frost, P. (2020). White Skin Privilege: Modern Myth, Forgotten Past. Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture, 4(2), 63-82. https://doi.org/10.26613/esic/4.2.190
Clearly, this continual slave-raiding had devastating effects, particularly on present-day Ukraine and parts of southern Russia. There was so much depopulation that much of eastern Ukraine would not be opened up for farming and settlement until about the same time as the Canadian prairies were.
But does this factor explain why eastern Europe lagged behind western Europe economically and demographically? I don't think so. Let me explain the reasons:
- The Tatar slave raiding occurred from the 15th century onward. By that time, the rise of Western Europe was well under way.
- Even during that time frame, it did not affect all of eastern Europe.
- The Eastern Roman Empire enjoyed a period of stability and prosperity from the 9th to the early 11th centuries. Yet this period did not see the rise of a true market economy. Familialism, slavery, and other pre-capitalistic structures continued to impede the expansion of the market principle beyond the actual marketplace.
- As in western Europe, the economic and demographic expansion of eastern Europe followed very closely the growth of the market economy. Unfortunately, this growth was dominated by German and Jewish merchants and had a less transformative effect on the larger society. The market economy was seen much more as a "foreign" concept.
Quite a lot to answer , and happy to rethink too..
Yarmuk followed a time when the empire was weak, after the plague of Justinian in 530 ish , a few years without summer followed by a cold period lasting a centry or so. Manpower and cereal crops were decimated , across Europe due to famine. The structure of the empire survived but barely. Egyptian and North African provinces lost. Morale was probably very low. Similar stuff at manzikert but really crap leadership there..the Emperor even go captured…and stabbed in the back by chancers in Constantinople jostling for position.
. The empire could only use mercenaries , but young jihadis with no fear of death and no salary requirement other than booty are pretty high morale - they have gods right on their side. ..similar problem with Afghanistan and Iraq in this era. The US has no answer to the Ansarallah /Houthis.
Not sure that eastern empire curtailed martial spirit though…. This is more a modern thing. They tended to settle hardier frontier ethnos in edge lands. RF emptied prisons into the meat grinder of UKR. Obviously lawful behaviour is needed for any large settlement , which will,always be attacked by random hard cases from the jungle outside.
Capitalism pretends to tender things…. I don’t know whether you ever worked in procurement. The mafia of Sicily do it in full view. The city of London has more opaque methods… still seems more efficient than pure incompetence from the state led sectors/command economy.
Mostly we see nepotism. I mean look at all those covid contracts ..
Pigs at the trough . But yes industrial complex societies can’t use gentleman architects for example, or master craftsmen…they needed a professional class for those factories…L but they will be drawn from the higher echelon and expensive architects education is just a way of getting a good list of ‘contacts’ with other people who can afford it. Wider catchment for bigger numbers.
Thanks for your answer. The nogoi slave raid zones of which you write were not the only borderlands with the caliphate as I’m sure you are aware. The Muslim (let’s not be distracted by tribal groups, tartars, Seljuks, Arabs etc , the common factor was expansionism , slave taking and ultimately conquest in accordance with the revelation of the prophet PBUH .The siege of Vienna was 1683….by that time allah had allowed the Muslims to absorb most of the Balkans. Albania was subject to forced conversion in particular since it was considered a stepping stone to invasion of Italy. Since the 1071 manzikert capitulation they had unstopped the cork of protection afforded the west by eastern Roman Empire. From Serb Kraijina to Corfu, and across Hungary and Wallachia …by 1500… Barbarossa (red beard ..a haji) was constantly raiding across the med and destroying any trade links to the lucrative east.
You ignore the economic powerhouse that was the Armenians all over the eastern areas and as far as kerala … they were as capitalist as Jews any day, but even they couldn’t trade their way out of the constant attacks and jizya taxes from all sides.
German and jewish traders benefited from the time lag between 636 at Yarmuk river, to the raising of the siege of Vienna and Lepanto & siege of Malta with constant success in between , the Muslim advances rolled over Andalusia and any development in Iberia was halted until their eviction 1000 years later….remaining a backwater for much longer. So let’s not concentrate wholly on the Tartars , and the underdevelopment of the current Russian areas. .. I think you should rethink a little. You can’t even get dressed in the morning if somebody is constantly punching you. Good luck imposing any rules at all on who can marry who in that scenario.
While the continuing existence of hajnal line development certainly explains advancement somewhat, it is the respite from Allahs blessed embrace allowing this to happen. Right now the demographic situation in Western Europe/ U.K. favours cousin marriage going forward, negating the hajnal line . Why might this be? Suggest a reason….
I'm willing to rethink, and more than just "a little." Will you do likewise? The rise of the market economy was not hindered by external attacks, at least not primarily. Nor was it hindered solely by internal violence and lawlessness. The main obstacle was a mindset that prioritized the family, the kin group, and other pre-capitalistic relations over the market economy.
If you wanted to get things done, you would go to another family member. You wouldn't put out a call for tenders and choose the lowest bid. That wasn't how people did things, not even the Armenians. They, too, would normally work with other family members.
It's sad that the Eastern Roman Empire became a punching bag. Unfortunately, this is what happens when the State imposes a monopoly on violence and removes violent males from the gene pool. You end up with a population that is no longer able or willing to defend itself.
Why do you think Heraclius lost the Battle of the Yarmuk? He had more soldiers and no real tactical disadvantage. But his forces were unwilling to press their advantage, and they fled once it became clear they had lost. They fled not only the local area but also all of Syria.
One might ask similar questions about the Battle of Manzikert. The Empire had become dangerously dependent on foreign mercenaries, many of whom were of Turkish origin. The desertion of these and other foreign mercenaries played a key role in the subsequent defeat.
I think that Europeans were ahead long before. Egypt and Sumer started first, then the Greeks and the Romans. The Romans were always more advanced than their Celestial counterparts.
If you're talking about GDP per capita, the Roman Empire might have been ahead of China. I really can't say. But the wealthiest Roman provinces were in the East, outside Europe. That was one of the reasons why the capital was moved to Constantinople. Moreover, there was a long period after the fourth century when Europe was definitely behind much of the world.
I'm not arguing that GDP is the best yardstick for measuring the success of a society. My argument is that northwest Europeans in the fourteenth century provided the market economy with the best conditions for sustained expansion. Those conditions were not things like slavery, colonialism, Protestantism, or the printing press. They were a particular mindset: individualism, a weak attachment to kinship, a strong tendency to think in terms of universal rules, and a greater reluctance to use violence as a means to settle disputes.
I believe J.D. Unwin also wrote in the 1930s about the weakening of endogamy by an influx of freed slave and other foreign women in Ancient Greece. this has an obvious parallel with the Democrats' open immigration schemes in Biden's America.
Are you referring to "Sex and Culture" (1934)?
Yes, unfortunately it's turning out to have predicted the West's downward spiral.
Hypotesis for fall of civilized Islamic World(mesopotamia/levant/egypt/Iran).
1-Consangeniuous marriage
2- Increased sub-saharan african mixture Cause may slave trade or migration.
3-Bedouin/Arab migration from south.
4-Mongol Invasion. They destroyed cities killed skilled/high IQ people.
The "fall" of the Islamic world was relative. Much economic progress was made in the Ottoman Empire between the 16th and the 19th centuries, but the West was progressing much more. The main obstacle was that Muslims were able to create markets but not a true market economy. Kinship remained the main organizing principle of their societies. The market was secondary.
Consanguineous marriage gets a bad rap. Once you go beyond marriage with a third or fourth cousin, the genetic costs of outbreeding begin to outweigh those of inbreeding. If you marry your third cousin, you're actually optimizing the health of your future children.
Helgason, A., S. Pálsson, D.F. Guðbjartsson, þ. Kristjánsson, K. Stefánsson. (2008). An association between the kinship and fertility of human couples. Science 319(5864): 813-816.
Interesting, albeit I believe you overstate the difference between Eastern and Western Christianity - both enacted similar measures.
The difference, I believe, was the authority of the state in enforcing them. Whereas the Germanics quickly supplanted the Romans and took over, in the east the transition wasn't so clear cut - proper states emerged later, and Christianized even later. But the differences in the variants of Christianity was negligible at that time.
Both churches banned cousin marriages, but the Western Church went much farther in the 9th century when it extended the ban to sixth cousins. Later, in 1215, the range of prohibited marriages was scaled back from seven to four degrees (to a common ancestor). In the Eastern Church, the ban never extended farther than second cousins.
Nonetheless, I'm skeptical about the argument that the severity of the cousin marriage ban explains why Western Europeans have tended toward individualism and impersonal sociality. Yes, the latter behavioral traits are connected to the Western European pattern of high rates of late marriage, celibacy, and nuclear households. But that pattern was already in place in the 9th century, when the Western Church extended the range of forbidden cousin marriages. We're looking at a more profound behavioral phenomenon.
The strengthening of Western European states was also a factor -- not in favoring individualism and impersonal sociality (which were already prevalent) but in pacifying social relations. That began to happen from the eleventh century onward, and it was key to the expansion of the market economy.
The case with the Balkans - mainly due to plague. Turks stayed at their houses during disease outbreaks, Bulgarians and Greeks moved their villages to new locations. It's common knowledge in the Balkans.
By the way, the Byzantine church, and the Bulgarian one after 865 AD forbade cousin marriages. Strange no one knows this.
Reminds me of the case when some science people wondered why people North of the Black Sea used to live semi-nomadic lifestyle up until the Mongol invasion, and then Mongols /Tatars adopted it. Cattle can't graze there because the snow is too deep and people need to prepare hay for the winter. But scientists rarely know such stuff, as no one speaks with locals.
Anyway, my point is the whole theory is wrong as the East Churches did exactly the same - they forbade cousin marriages with stricter terms than the West did. And those were and are enforced, as anyone who knows few Greeks grannies or just any old lady from the Balkans would know.
I'm sorry but you're wrong on two counts.
First, the Eastern Church was much more limited in its ban on cousin marriages. It banned only marriages between first cousins or second cousins. Third Cousins could and can marry. In the ninth century, the Western Church redefined the concept of "seventh degree" and extended the ban to sixth cousins. This ban continued until the 13th century:
"In the 9th century, however, the church raised the number of prohibited degrees to seven and changed the method by which they were calculated. Instead of the former practice of counting up to the common ancestor and then down to the proposed spouse, the new law computed consanguinity by counting only back to the common ancestor.[76] [...]"
"In 1215, the Fourth Lateran Council reduced the number of prohibited degrees of consanguinity from seven back to four.[79][80] After 1215, the general rule was that while fourth cousins could marry without dispensation, the need for dispensations was reduced."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_marriage#Catholic_Church_and_Europe
Second, like you, I don't believe that the cousin marriage ban explains the Western European pattern of late marriage, celibacy and nuclear households. Please reread what I wrote:
"In addition, when the Church formally banned cousin marriages in the ninth century, Western Europe already had high rates of late marriage, celibacy, and nuclear households. This has been shown at two locations in ninth-century France [...]"
"It seems more correct to say that Western Christianity promoted impersonal sociality because it had assimilated a pre-existing pattern of weak kinship, late marriage, individualism, and openness to non-kin."
So I'm not sure where we disagree. Could you enlighten me?
In other words, the success of northwestern Europe came about because of the rise of the "protestant work ethic". The same thing happened to Japan, Korea and China in the past 40-50 years. Universal education, free enterprise, thrift, hard work and minimal government interference in business.
Actually, northwest Europe began its economic takeoff before Protestantism. But I understand your point: Protestantism was shaped by the values of the people it spread amongst.
Minimal government is more a consequence, than a cause, of people having the appropriate mindset.
Doesn't Clark claim in The Farewell to Alms, that sustained GDP PC growth only startem in 19th century? Can we reconcile this?
Sustained growth in GDP per capita happens when employers can no longer increase the supply of labor as they see fit, either through international migration or through migration from the countryside. That began to happen in England in the 19th century and in North America in the early 20th century. Workers found themselves in a buyers' market, and their living conditions dramatically improved.
That's not the same thing as sustained growth in GDP. That began much earlier. After five centuries of sustained economic growth, living conditions were not much better for the average English worker in the mid-19th century than they were in the mid-14th century. It's simply untrue that the business class will benefit society at large if they are given free rein to benefit themselves.
That makes sense, but your text talks about GSP per capita, doesn't it?
Good point! I was muddling GDP per capita with median wages. I'm sorry.
Tanner Greer shows a progressive rise in GDP per capita in England:
1348 - 777
1400 - 1,090
1500 - 1,114
1600 - 1,123
1700 - 1,563
1800 - 2,080
1850 - 2,997
Gregory Clark uses the term "income per person" (where "income" includes not only wages but also land rents and capital income). He argues that before the 1800s most of the increase in wealth went to the propertied classes:
"Thus it was possible that England, France or Italy in 1800 could have a higher income per person than the original foragers. But perversely only through their achievement of greater inequality than earlier societies. And the boost to incomes per person from inequality was limited. Land rents and capital income made up perhaps half of all income settled agrarian societies. The expropriation of all these incomes by an elite would double income per person compared to a state of complete inequality. " (p. 37)
Things changed during the 1800s, when median wages began to increase in real terms and when workers were able to escape from the "Malthusian trap." At least, that's the argument Greg Clark is making. I wish I could find a time series of English median wages to compare with English GDP per capita.