European cities remained at relatively high levels (in southern England, for
example, never dropping to basic subsistence levels) and then increased
steadily after the seventeenth century. Contrary to Clark’s assertion that there
was no improvement in the standard of living for 100,000 years before 1800,
Allen (2008) notes that historical data on height shows living standards in 1700
were higher than in forager or agricultural societies in the distant past. There is
also widespread evidence of an emerging mass market in Europe from the
seventeenth century onwards for imported manufactures such as Chinese
porcelain and Indian calicoes, for books, mirrors, crockery and watches.
We can conclude that incomes in Western Europe were not very high in
1750 but had been growing slowly over the previous centuries. This thesis is
supported by the careful statistical work of Angus Maddison, which shows that
per capita GDP in Western Europe increased by 0.29 per cent annually
between 1000 CE and 1500 CE and by 0.4 per cent between 1500 and 1820
(2007:81).
Comparative incomes in 1750
If Western European incomes were (if low) growing by 1750, when did the gap
between today’s developed and today’s developing countries start to emerge?
Did Western Europe already have a significant lead on the eve of the Industrial
Revolution around 1750? Those who argue the lead only emerged after this
time emphasize the revolutionary importance of industrialization in Western
Europe as the primary cause of current inequalities in world incomes. Those
who argue Europe already had a lead in 1750 emphasize the importance of
revolutions in European commerce, trade and science in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries or even earlier.
Bairoch (1993), arguing that there was not much difference in average
income levels between today’s developed and today’s developing countries
around 1750, finds that incomes in the richest regions of the world economy
(Western Europe and parts of India, pre-Colombian America, Africa and
China) were only around 40–60 per cent higher than in the rest. Pomeranz
(2000) offers more specific indirect evidence in support of this finding and
argues that consumption of everyday luxuries and life expectancy were little
different in England and China in 1750 and infers from this that incomes must
have been broadly equivalent, but there are both data and conceptual problems
with this evidence. Pomeranz (2008:138) argues that per capita output of cloth
in England and the Yangzi Delta (12.9 pounds) in 1800 translated into roughly
equal levels of consumption. Pomeranz here makes the assumption that all the
cotton produced in the delta was consumed there, even though elsewhere he
notes that much of the cloth was sold in the rest of China to pay for food crops.
A study by Maddison (1971) finds similar evidence for India but a more care-
ful consideration of it leads to a very different conclusion. He shows that
during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in India there was a thriving
luxury handicraft industry producing high-quality cotton textiles, silks,
150 Patterns and Determinants of Economic Growth