19. Frontiers
I
n 1700, product per head in Mexico was worth about 450 U.S.
1985 dollars; in the colonies that would become the United States,
product was somewhat larger, say $490; and in the booming sugar
colony of Barbados, the figure was substantially higher, $736. One
hundred years later, Mexico was still at $450, and the United States was
at $807. By 1989, the United States had drawn far ahead: GDP of
$3,500 for Mexico, $5350 for Barbados, $18,300 for the United
States.^1The Industrial Revolution came to a world still relatively empty—at
least by comparison with the population densities we know today.
Within this world, of course, concentrations varied, from the thicker
settlement of China, India, and parts of northwestern Europe, to the
wide spaces of central Asia, Australia, and the Americas. The reasons for
this variance were largely geographical and technological: populations
moved to and multiplied best in favorable climes, on fertile soils, using
techniques of cultivation that seized the natural potential. Political
considerations also played a role. In Europe, for example, the poten
tially rich Danubian plain of the early eighteenth century lay quite
open. Ending hundreds of years of misrule, the Ottomans had abruptly