Date: Thu, 5 Feb 1998 12:09:58 -0500
From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: M-I: AG Frank etc. again


james m blaut wrote:

>Carrol:
>
>Responding to your...
>
>"Planes gain speed going down a run-way, and prior to that "taxi" to the
>run-way. Now, was 1492 sort of a rocket or explosion, or was it to some
>extent embodied in existing European social conditions (of class struggle,
>of appropriation of the social surplus, of internal political conditions,
>etc)? And would the "discovery" of the "New World" (1) have happened under
>*any* set of social conditions and (2) made the same "difference" under any
>set of social conditions?"
>
>I take up this matter in my book. Briefly: Development in Europe in the
>15th century was mainly recovery fromn the plagues. There was hardly any
>technological or economic change during that century (contra Brenner).
>The Italian Renaissance was neither economic nor technological. Of course
>there was some developmental change in Euorpe during that time;/ my
>argument is that it was paralleled by comparable changes taking place in
>Asia and (I am almost certain) Africa. Class struggle and its effects was
>also going on across the hemisphere.

Angus Maddison, the guru of really long-term economic stats, estimates that
per capita income growth averaged 0.2% a year between 1500 and 1820 in
Western Europe, 0.1% in the rest of Europe and Latin America; and 0.0% in
Asia and Africa. Obviously the European number is higher, and even 0.2%
compounds mightily over the course of three centuries (to almost a 90%
increase), but still I think 0.2% is more like taxiing than takeoff. The
real growth takeoff didn't happen until around 1820 - and even then,
Western European growth average 0.62% a year between 1820 and 1850, with
Britain leading the way at 0.86%. Even those are not real dazzling numbers.
There's a lot I admire in your analysis, Jim, but aren't you just a touch
monocausal in your explanations of what happened in Europe?

Doug




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