Historians and economists think differently. Historians tend to be self-effacing and tentative; economists are bold.
Let me illustrate this by a statement from a historian introducing a more scientific way of looking at the Black Death:”The new microbiology . . .opens up entirely new questions, ones we did not previously know we needed to ask.”[1]
Notice: . . . opens up entirely new questions . . . not answers.
The following statement is from two path-breaking economists. “This book explains that unique historical achievement, the rise of the Western World.”[2]
I used to think that the advent of factories marked the start of the Industrial Revolution. But there were factories operated by slaves in the West Indies a century before the Industrial Revolution began around 1750. Those factories were called plantations.
While the factory—“a building or set of buildings with facilities for manufacturing”—did typify the Industrial Revolution, such a construction had appeared a century earlier in Barbados in the West Indies. By the 1660s, English owners of sugar plantations had developed an “agro-industry,” fueled by slave labor.
The consumption of sugar skyrocketed in England in the seventeenth century, and the English in Barbados (and soon, Jamaica) took advantage of the demand. In his 1985 book Sweetness and Power, Sidney W. Mintz described a system he calls “the closest thing to industry that was typical of the seventeenth century”—Barbados sugar plantations.[1]
The plantations were not just agriculture; they involved a highly complex process that started with sugar cane planting and ended with at least partially refined sugar.Slaves planted and harvested the cane, extracted its juices, and boiled those juices into products of various levels of refinement, from molasses to sugar. A typical plantation had one or two extraction mills, a boiling house, a curing house, a distillery, and a warehouse.
“The heat and noise were overpowering, there was considerable danger involved, and time was of the essence throughout, from the moment when the cane was perfect for cutting until the semicrystalline product was poured into molds to drain and be dried,” Mintz wrote.[2]
From an 1840 Austrian book in the British Library online collection.
The United States is experiencing a period of low birth rates, primarily reflecting late marriages (aided by effective birth control techniques).[1] While low birth rates may harm the U.S. by holding back the number of productive workers, most historians of Europe have worried more about the Malthusian potential of overpopulation to outpace food production than about having too few people.
In fact, late marriages throughout much of European history prevented overpopulation.
Historians (and other social scientists) have compared family composition in northwestern Europe with families in other parts of the world, from southern Europe to China. Three academic papers, when combined, provide persuasive evidence that the family model of northwestern Europe not only prevented Malthusian excess but may have helped spark the Industrial Revolution.
Let me begin with John Hajnal’s 1982 article in Population and Development Review. Hajnal compared the age of marriage in preindustrial northwestern Europe (using figures from Denmark primarily, backed up by others), with those in India, China, and other parts of Europe. He found that late marriage—over age 26 for men, over age 23 for women—was the norm in northwestern Europe as early as the 1600s, while early marriage—before age 26 for men and before age 21 for women—was typical in the other areas studied.
Ah, France. The country most visited by tourists. The home of wine, perfumes, and fashion. The only major European country the United States has never fought against. The country that played a critical role in our war of independence and whose sacrifices here helped bankrupt it and thus ushered in the French Revolution.
France is our friend, yet Americans sometimes ridicule or disdain the French—they are a safe target since relatively few French people chose to immigrate here. In 1995 an episode of “The Simpsons” called the French “cheese-eating surrender monkeys,” and in 2009, only 62 percent of Americans had a favorable view of France, compared with 77 percent for Britain.
For historians, especially economic historians, France doesn’t fare too well, either. The Industrial Revolution, which occurred roughly between 1750 and 1850, started in England, not in France. Answering the question “why” sometimes means arguing that there was something “wrong” with France.
