The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, by David S. Landes, Little, Brown, 650pp, £20 in UK
This book - it might have been entitled "Adam Smith Partly Revisited" - comes bedazzled with commendations. To select only two: A.N. Wilson regards it as "one of the most important works of history to appear in my lifetime", for Norman Stone it is "a masterpiece". High praise indeed and maybe merited. Written by an economist who is also historian, it is a magisterial contribution to the story of economic development even if its scope is more limited than the superlatives might suggest.
The epigraph - Malthus writing to Ricardo - tells what it is about: ". . . the causes of the wealth and poverty of nations - the grand object of all enquiries in Political Economy". Adam Smith explained how nations became rich. David Landes asks "How and why did we get where we are? How did the rich countries get so rich? Why are the poor countries so poor? Why did Europe (`the West') take the lead in changing the world?"
The book aims "to do a world history". Landes's reading is immensely wide: there are over a hundred pages of notes and bibliography. His concern, however, is the European source of that history and his work is a product of tradition emanating from the lectures of Arnold Toynbee, published posthumously, at the end of the last century and introducing to academic studies the term "Industrial Revolution". On chance in technical progress and invention, Toynbee was inspired by Pasteur's conviction that "Chance favours only the mind which is prepared", a maxim in line with Landes's own thinking.
He dismisses out of hand the view that in "the large stream of world history, Europe is a late comer and free rider on the earlier achievements of others". "For the last thousand years," he asserts, "Europe (the West) has been the prime mover of development and modernity." China, in his view, might have surpassed European achievements, but for mysterious reasons failed to realise its potential and relapsed into technological oblivion.
"We live in a world," he writes, "of inequality and diversity. This world is divided roughly into three kinds of nations: those that spend lots of money to keep their weight down; those whose people eat to live; and those that don't know where the next meal is coming from." The difference in income per head between Switzerland and Mozambique, the richest and poorest, is 400 to one. He discusses the many and complex reasons for imbalances and argues they are not just the result of politics, religion, geography and technology. There are often small and apparently insignificant things: the invention of spectacles, he says, doubled the working life of skilled craftsmen, and the failure of China to adopt the clock arrested economic development.
He identifies causes of changes that have produced winners and losers. "If we learn anything from the history of economic development," he concludes, "it is that culture makes all the difference . . . witness the enterprise of expatriate minorities . . ."
He suggests that, with its particular work ethic, Japan, even without the English Industrial Revolution, could have become a great economic power. Japan, he reminds us, did not have Calvinism, but its business people adopted a similar work ethic. "The key lay in commitment to work rather than to wealth". The Zen monk Suzuki Shasa (1579-1655) saw greed as spiritual poison; but work was something else: "All preoccupations are Buddhist practice . . ." He quotes the term invented by Akira Hagami to suggest that an "industrious revolution" prepared the way for an industrial revolution.
Throughout his book, Landes displays the scholarship of a lifetime and much wisdom to use small detail skilfully to illuminate narrative in a style that is simple, clear and colloquial. His message is the obvious one that hard work, thrift, honesty, patience and tenacity all favour progress. One doubts, however, if this tells the whole story. Unlike Adam Smith, Landes is far from definite on the function of government, "as activist intervention can as easily make things worse as better". There are very many cursory references to peasants and none to bread or corn, but there is no sustained consideration of the role of the peasant.
Curiously, he has little to say about the population growth which must surely have been a cause and a consequence of the Industrial Revolution as well as a source today of problems in China and the Third World. These, however, may well be the subjects of his next survey. In the meantime, I recommend his latest book without reservation to readers generally and, in particular, to those economists who have yet to learn the futility of economic theorising, unsupported by solid foundations of economic history.
Patrick Lynch is Professor Emeritus of Political Economy at UCD