Abstract
This chapter presents an overview of the current state of the art regarding the trends and causes of preindustrial economic growth in Western Europe between ca. 1270 and 1820. In doing so, the chapter introduces measures of living standards – i.e., real wages and per capita GDP. The Low Countries and England showed more or less stable real wages after the increase in wages in the fourteenth century following the Black Death, whereas real wages elsewhere in Europe declined in the long run. This “Little Divergence” between the North Sea area and the rest of the continent is also evident from estimates on per capita GDP. On the continent, per capita GDP stagnated or declined, whereas Holland and England showed a lot of progress – they were substantially richer in 1750 than in 1500. There were two key developments in this process. The first is the Black Death, which increased living standards in the countries bordering the North Sea regions due to well-functioning labor and capital markets. The second is the shift to premodern economic growth following the Black Death. The chapter summarizes the causes of the vast increases in living standards in the North Sea region between 1348 and 1820, including human capital formation and international trade.
References
A’Hearn B, Crayen D, Baten J (2009) Quantifying quantitative literacy: age heaping and the history of human capital. J Econ Hist 68(3):783–808
Acemoglu A, Robinson J (2012) Why nations fail? The origins of power, prosperity and poverty. Crown, New York
Acemoglu D, Robinson JA, Johnson S (2005) The rise of Europe: Atlantic trade, institutional change, and economic growth. Am Econ Rev 95(3):546–579
Akcomak IS, Webbink D, ter Weel B (2016) Why did the Netherlands develop so early? The legacy of the brethren of the common life. Econ J 126:821–860
Allen RC (2001) The great divergence in European wages and prices from the middle ages to the first world war. Explor Econ Hist 38(4):411–447
Allen RC (2003) Progress and poverty in early modern Europe. Econ Hist Rev LVI(3):403–443
Allen RC, Bassino JP, Ma D, Moll-Murata C, van Zanden JL (2011) Wages, prices, and living standards in China, 1738–1925: in comparison with Europe, Japan, and India. Econ Hist Rev 64:8–38
Alvarez-Nogal C, Prados de la Escosura L (2013) The rise and fall of Spain (1270–1850). Econ Hist Rev 66(1):1–37
Baten J, van Zanden JL (2008) Book production and the onset of modern economic growth. J Econ Growth 13(3):217–235
Becker G (1981) A Treatise on the Family. Harvard University Press. Cambridge, MA
Becker SO, Woessmann L (2009) Was weber wrong? A human capital theory of Protestant economic history. Q J Econ 124:531–596
Bolt J, van Zanden JL (2014) The Maddison project: collaborative research on historical national accounts. Econ Hist Rev 67(3):627–651
Borsch SJ (2005) The black death in Egypt and England. University of Texas Press, Austin
Bosker M, Buringh E, van Zanden JL (2013) From Baghdad to London: unraveling urban development in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, 800–1800. Rev Econ Stat 95(4):1418–1437
Brenner R (1989) Economic backwardness in Eastern Europe in light of developments in the west. In: Chirot D (ed) The origins of backwardness in Eastern Europe. University of California Press, Berkeley, pp 15–53
Broadberry SN, Campbell B, van Leeuwen B (2013) When did Britain industrialise? The sectoral distribution of the labour force and labour productivity in Britain, 1381–1851. Explor Econ Hist 50:16–27
Broadberry SN, Campbell B, Klein A, Overton M, van Leeuwen B (2015) British economic growth, 1270–1870. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK
Buyst E (2011) Towards estimates of long term growth in the Southern low countries, ca.1500–1846. Results presented at the Conference on Quantifying Long Run Economic Development, Venice, 22–24 March 2011
Carmichael SG, de Pleijt AM, van Zanden JL, de Moor T (2016) The European marriage pattern and its measurement. J Econ Hist 76(1):196–204
Clark C (1940) Conditions of economic progress. Macmillan and Co, London
Clark G (1996) The political foundations of modern economic growth: England, 1540–1800. J Interdiscip Hist 26:563–588
De Moor T, van Zanden JL (2010) Girl power: the European marriage pattern and labour markets in the North Sea region in the late medieval and early modern period. Econ Hist Rev 63(1):1–33
de Pleijt AM, van Zanden JL (2016) Accounting for the little divergence: what drove economic growth in preindustrial Europe, 1300–1800? Eur Rev Econ Hist 20(4):387–409
de Pleijt AM, van Zanden JL (2018) Two worlds of female labour: gender wage inequality in Western Europe, 1300–1800. EHES Working Papers in Economic History, no. 138
Dennison T, Ogilvie S (2014) Does the European marriage pattern explain economic growth? J Econ Hist 74(3):651–693
Dennison TK, Ogilvie S (2016) Institutions, demography, and economic growth. J Econ Hist 76(1):205–217
Dyer C (1989) Standards of living in the late middle ages; social change in England c. 1200–1520. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK
Epstein SR (1991) Cities, regions and the late medieval crisis: Sicily and Tuscany compared. Past Present 130(1):3–50
Epstein SR (2001) Freedom and growth: the rise of states and Markets in Europe 1300–1750. Routledge, London
Fouquet R, Broadberry SN (2015) Seven centuries of European economic growth and decline. J Econ Perspect 29(4):227–244
Galor O (2011) Unified growth theory. Princeton University Press, Princeton
Hatcher J (2011) Unreal wages: problems with long-run standards of living and the ‘golden age’ of the fifteenth century. Unpublished manuscript, presented at the annual meeting of the Economic History Society
Hoeppner Moran JA (1985) The growth of English schooling, 1340–1548: learning, literacy and laicization in Pre-Reformation York Diocese. Princeton University Press, Princeton
Hoffman PT, Norberg K (1994) Conclusion. In: Hoffman PT, Norberg K (eds) Fiscal crises, liberty, and representative government 1450–1789. Stanford University Press, Stanford, pp 299–310
Humphries J, Weisdorf JL (2015) The wages of women in England, 1260–1850. J Econ Hist 72(2):405–447
Krantz O (2017) Swedish GDP 1300–1560 a tentative estimate. Lund Papers in Economic History: General Issues, No. 152
Kuznets S (1966) Modern economic growth: rate, structure, and spread. Yale University Press, New Haven
Maddison A (2001) The world economy: a millennial perspective. OECD Publishing, Paris
Malanima P (2011) The long decline of a leading economy. GDP in North Italy 1300–1911. Eur Rev Econ Hist 15:169–219
Malinowski M, van Zanden JL (2017) Income and its distribution in preindustrial Poland. Cliometrica 11:1–30, (forthcoming)
Meisenzahl R, Mokyr J (2012) The rate and direction of invention in the British industrial revolution: incentives and institutions. In: Lerner J, Stern S (eds) The rate and direction of inventive activity revisited. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, pp 443–479
Mokyr J (2002) The gifts of Athena: historical origins of the knowledge economy. Princeton University Press, Princeton
Mokyr J (2005) Long-term economic growth and the history of technology. In: Handbook of economic growth, vol 1. Elsevier, Amsterdam, pp 1113–1180
Mokyr J (2009) The enlightened economy: an economic history of Britain, 1700–1850. Yale University Press, New Haven
North DC, Weingast B (1989) Constitutions and commitment: evolution of institutions governing public choice in seventeenth century England. J Econ Hist 49(4):803–832
Orme N (2006) Medieval schools: from Roman Britain to renaissance England. Yale University Press, New Haven
Pamuk S (2006) The black death and the origins of the ‘Great Divergence’ across Europe, 1300–1600. Eur Rev Econ Hist 11:289–317
Ridolfi L (2016) The French economy in the longue durée. A study on real wages, working days and economic performance from Louis IX to the Revolution (1250–1789). Dissertation IMT School for Advanced Studies, Lucca, available at http://e-theses.imtlucca.it/211/1/Ridolfi_phdthesis.pdf
Schön L, Krantz O (2015) The Swedish economy in the early modern period: constructing historical national accounts. Eur Rev Econ Hist 16:529–549
Stephens WB (1987) Education, literacy and society, 1830–70: the geography of diversity in provincial England. Manchester University Press, Manchester
Stephenson JZ (2018a) ‘Real’ wages? Contractors, workers, and pay in London building trades, 1650–1800. Econ Hist Rev 71(1):106–132
Stephenson JZ (2018b) Looking for work? Or looking for workers? Days and hours of work in London construction in the eighteenth century. University of Oxford Discussion Papers in Economic and Social History, no. 162
Van Bavel BJP (2006) Rural wage labour in the 16th-century low countries: an assessment of the importance and nature of wage labour in the countryside of Holland, Guelders and Flanders. Contin Chang 21:37–72
Van Bavel BJP, van Zanden JL (2004) The jump-start of the Holland economy during the late-medieval crisis, c. 1350 – c. 1500. Econ Hist Rev 57(3):503–532
Van Zanden JL (2009) The long road to the industrial revolution: the European economy in a global perspective, 1000–1800. Global economic history series, vol 1. Brill, Leiden
Van Zanden JL (2011) The Malthusian intermezzo: Women’s wages and human capital formation between the late middle ages and the demographic transition of the 19th century. Hist Fam 16:331–342
Van Zanden JL, Felice E (2017) Benchmarking the middle ages. XV century Tuscany in European perspective. CGEH Working Papers, No. 81
Van Zanden JL, van Leeuwen B (2012) Persistent but not consistent: the growth of national income in Holland, 1347–1807. Explor Econ Hist 49(2):119–130
Van Zanden JL, de Moor T, Zuijderduijn J (2012a) Small is beautiful. On the efficiency of credit markets in late Medieval Holland. Eur Rev Econ Hist 16:3–22
Van Zanden JL, Buringh E, Bosker M (2012b) The rise and decline of European parliaments, 1188–1789. Econ Hist Rev 65(3):835–861
Voigtländer N, Voth H-J (2013) How the west “Invented” fertility restriction. Am Econ Rev 103(6):2227–2264
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature
About this entry
Cite this entry
de Pleijt, A.M., van Zanden, J.L. (2019). Preindustrial Economic Growth, ca. 1270–1820. In: Diebolt, C., Haupert, M. (eds) Handbook of Cliometrics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40458-0_63-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40458-0_63-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-40458-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-40458-0
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Economics and FinanceReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences
Publish with us
Chapter history
-
Latest
Preindustrial Economic Growth: ca. 1270–1820- Published:
- 12 August 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40458-0_63-2
-
Original
Preindustrial Economic Growth, ca. 1270–1820- Published:
- 24 May 2019
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40458-0_63-1