The Economic History Of The World (In A Graph)
Comparative shares of world GDP over the past 2,000 years, via The Atlantic.
This fascinating graph shows the relative shares of world GDP since Jesus. What’s interesting is that in the literal anno domini, India was the world’s economic superpower, followed by China (insomuch as those modern borders existed). Then gradually Europe rises and the colony of America blows up out of nowhere. The Atlantic has an interesting, multi-part analysis of this data, but I think they leave one thing out. They never discuss colonialism whereby the European went to India and China and took a lot of the wealth out.
This is a sorta good point by the Atlantic, but also, I think, wrong.
one way to read the graph, very broadly speaking, is that everything to the left of 1800 is an approximation of population distribution around the world and everything to the right of 1800 is a demonstration of productivity divergences around the world — the mastering of means of manufacturing, production and supply chains by steam, electricity, and ultimately software that concentrated, first in the West, and then spread to Japan, Russia, China, India, Brazil, and beyond. (The Economic History of the Last 2,000 Years in 1 Little Graph)
The argument here is that the Europeans were better at industrialization. However, in the Middle Ages this patently wasn’t true. In the middle ages Europeans were trying desperately to get to the Indies, even misnomerizing Native Americans in the process. Note that the Indians and Chinese weren’t trying to get to Europe. The Orient had all the technology and goods. The Chinese had better ships even, but crazy emperors that ran away from the sea. It was Indic and Chindic resources that powered Europe into the industrial revolution (among other things).
Admittedly India didn’t exist as we know it, and China was only barely more coherent. But they still had stuff and people, which the Europeans came and took/oppressed the shit out of. Not to mention South America, and Africa, and everywhere; that great vortex of commerce and crime that sucked a ton of wealth into the continent. Of all the continents, only America rebelled and was able to maintain some control over its land. That was suddha rebels, but they still split from Europe and had a whole bunch of native resources to take internally.
Another striking thing about the graph. Looks like things are regressing to the mean.
Posted on Sunday, June 24th, 2012 in China, History, India, Infographics.
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Why does America only begin in the 1700s? What about America under Native American rule?
Also it seems Italy has been the most consistent over the millenia.
For a good part of history growth was reflected in a rise in the population, don’t think there were dramatic changes in living standards.
The Europeans came East looking for the roots of trade. Previously the trade with the East had been a monopoly of the Arabs. Once they discovered that the good that were sold originated further East, they attempted to by pass the middleman. Europe’s wealth was built on free trade and the industrial revolution.
China was the most advanced nation in the 1400′s but this was followed by a mysterious decline. Jared Diamond’s highly readable book Gun’s Germs and Steel offers an excellent analysis .
http://www.amazon.com/Guns-Germs-Steel-Fates-Societies/dp/0393317552
Niall Ferguson’s Empire provides a concise, highly readable account of what, through a series of accidents and missteps eventually became the British Empire
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Empire-Britain-Made-Modern-World/dp/0141007540.
Thanks For the Informaion
@jackpoint, Europe was built on free trade? lol. The trade may have been free among the whites, but what’s free about colonizing other countries?
Here’s an example of the Europeans so called free trade.
“The introduction of opium into China was caused by Britain’s need to send something back to China other than silver in return for their highly consumed Chinese tea. Britain first tried exporting European clothes, but the Chinese preferred their own silk. With India and its poppy fields under Britain’s command, the logical option to fix the imbalance of trade was to start trading Opium. Because of its strong mass appeal and addictive nature, opium was an effective solution to the British trade problem. An instant consumer market for the drug was secured by the addiction of thousands of Chinese, and the flow of silver was reversed.”
W. Travis Hanes III and Frank Sanello, The Opium Wars (Naperville, Illinois: Sourcebooks, Inc, 2002), 20
I thought it was gold that the Chinese wanted, not silver? Apart from that (and I may be wrong about gold) the fact is correct. It was also wrong.
Much of the trade was in sugar and spices, later tea and other commodities.
NAAAAICE article !!!
One should be careful about drawing conclusions from a graph with a skewed x-axis and varying accounting measures for the y-axis. The Roman Empire seems to have been irrelevant!
Further, if you look at India’s drop from ~35% at 1700 to ~15% at 1900, there wasn’t a corresponding increase of 20% to the UK, even though the UK had many additional colonies.
In fact, this graph doesn’t support what would otherwise seem obvious and what Indi talks about here (colonisation extracting huge resources), rather it only convincingly shows the economic might of the USA and the eventual catch-up of China.
what happened to rome
Complete bullshit. How did they calculate the GDP during 1000 AD?? Absurd. If India was a Superpower, then how come few thousand British conquered it?? All rubbish.
There is a difference between being an “economic power” and a “military power.”
For example Britain has a GDP of 2.25 trillion while Russia has a GDP of 1.48 trillion but Russia would totally annihilate Britain in any war.
You are daydreaming. Everything is connected. You cannot be an economic power without being a military power. Because in order to protect your economic interests you need the military. You are also not good at comparing military of countries. Russians have outdated technology. Britain has more superior advanced weapons. Also 2.25 and 1.48, there is not much difference. Both are equal I would say. because the difference is only .77 trillion.
You can be an economic power without being a military power. “India” was one such entity, back then it was a conglomeration of small states (and sometimes empires). Japan is another such country which is an economic power but not a military power. Japan still doesn’t have a “real army.” [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Self-Defense_Forces ] . If you don’t agree with comparing Britain and Russia, why not compare Japan (GDP 5.46 trillion) with Russia (GDP 1.48 trillion)…again, Russia would totally annihilate Japan in a war.
Britain does not have “more superior advanced weapons” than Russia. The only reason the Brits are cocky is because they are the closest allies of the USA and have a “special relationship”; basically the USA is their big brother. Meanwhile, Russia stands alone and the world takes them seriously not because they are en economic power but because they are a military power.
Only after reading the original article do I get why Indian and China have big GDPs in those days.
// the regions with the biggest economies were basically just the regions with the biggest populations. //
But thing thing, if you divide the GDP by the population, the GDP per capita will still be very low for India and China in those days.
I don’t understand why these people put so much emphasis on GDP??? GDP per capita is what matters.
I’m sure both China and India had much smaller populations back in 1 AD when compared to today.