The Historical Experience of the Basic Conditions of Economic Progress

The historical experience I propose to consider is primarily that of Western Europe (including England), the USA, Russia and Japan before 1914, i. e. the group of countries which there is some reason to believe experienced a marked acceleration in the trend of their output at some period in the preceding 100 or 150 years. I shall take it for granted, though it might well be debated, that the main stimulus to growth came from changes in industry, and that the advance in agriculture can most plausibly be regarded as a response to such changes. I know of no reason why industry should necessarily make the pace, and indeed Adam Smith thought that ‘the cultivation and improvement of the country … must necessarily be prior to the increase of the town’; but it seems in fact to have done so. This essay is therefore primarily an inquiry into the conditions which, in these areas, favoured industrialisation. It would be possible to shed light on this subject by considering the reasons for the absence of economic progress during most of human history over most of the world. But here I am concerned with the different question of why growth did occur in certain areas.