Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

It was ideas and ideologies, not interests or institutions, which changed in Northwestern Europe, 1600–1848

  • Regular Article
  • Published:
Journal of Evolutionary Economics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The economic history on which recent economics has been based is erroneous, based on the Marx and Engels of 1848. What actually happened, 1517-1789, in northwestern Europe was the coming, as Schumpeter put it, of a busiess-0respecting civilization. Ideas mattered as much as, and often more than, material or institutional circumstances, such as property law or coal deposits or exploitation. The interest-only theories of Steven Cheung and Douglass North don’t work. We need a “humanomics,” whose killer app is a new and verified theory of how we became rich.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Acemoglu and Robinson 2012, p. 471.

  2. Toynbee 1884 (2nd ed.), p. 87.

  3. Goldstone 2002, Abstract.

  4. Clapham 1926, p. 74. Compare Pollard 1981, pp. 24–25; von Tunzelmann 1978; Kanevsky 1979.

  5. Musson 1978, pp. 8, 61, 167-168.

  6. Acemoglu and Robinson 2012, pp. 471–472.

  7. On open source: Allen 1983; Nuvolari 2004; Bessen and Nuvolari 2012 for a historical survey.

  8. Mokyr 2010, p. 1, the opening sentence of the book.

  9. Mokyr 2010, Chp. 2.

  10. On Freemasonry and the associated “radical enlightenment” (a concept that she, not Jonathan Israel, devised) see Margaret Jacob 1981. Bakunin declared in 1869 that during the eighteenth century “the bourgeoisie too had created an international association, a universal and formidable one, Freemasonry. It was the International of the bourgeoisie” (Bakunin 1869, First Letter).

  11. These are Pius: Quadragesimo Anno; John: Mater et Magistra and Pacem in Terris; Paul: Populorum Progressio and Octogesima adveniens; and John Paul: Laborem Exercens and Centesimus Annus. Michael Novak is my guide here, Novak 1984, Chps. 6–8.

  12. Bauer 2004, p. 107.

  13. Reinert 2011, pp. 202, 269.

  14. Suprinyak 2011.

  15. Schumpeter 1949, p. 349.

  16. Schumpeter 1949. p. 351.

  17. Tolstoy 1868–1869 (1933), p. 548.

  18. Tolstoy 1868–1869 (1933), Second Epilogue, p. 499.

  19. Tolstoy 1868–1869 1933), Second Epilogue, p. 491.

  20. Sellar and Yeatman 1931 (1932), Chapter XLIX, pp. 92–93.

  21. Goldstone 2009, p. 36.

  22. De Vries 1976, 2009; Kelly and Ó Gráda 2011, 2014.

  23. Goldstone 1991.

  24. McNeill 1976; Diamond 1997, Chp. 3.

  25. Easterlin 1995 (2004).

  26. Johansson 2010, p. 6..

  27. If you doubt it, see Chapter 38 in my Bourgeois Dignity.

  28. Mead 2007, p. 114.

  29. La guerre franco-française was first coined in 1950 in a book about Vichy France, but has been taken up to describe left vs. right from 1789 to the present (Williams 2014, p. 2).

  30. See the book of the economic historian of Spain, Regina Grafe (2012), which argues that Spain’s problem was the power of regions—not the sort of centralism that France has practiced from the sixteenth century to the present.

  31. Mill 1845 (1967), p. 370.

  32. North, Wallis, and Weingast 2009, pp. 192–193.

  33. North, Wallis, and Weingast 2009, p. 194.

  34. Acemoglu and Robinson 2006.

  35. Coase and Wang 2013b, pp. 32–35.

  36. Smith TMS, first page; Coase and Wang 2013b, p. 205.

  37. Coase and Wang 2013a, p. 10. And yet at one point in their book, 2014b, Coase and Wang praise Cheung and his eager American students North, Weingast, and Wallis (pp. 163–164).

References

  • Acemoglu D, Robinson JA (2006) Economic origins of dictatorship and democracy. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Acemoglu D, Robinson JA (2012) Why nations fail: the origins of power, prosperity, and poverty. Crown Business, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Allen R (1983) Collective Invention. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 4:1--24

  • Bakunin M (1869) To the comrades of the international workingmen’s association of Locle and Chaux-De-Fonds. Fourth Letter. Geneva. http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/1869/program-letters.htm

  • Bauer PT (2004) From subsistence to exchange and other essays. Princeton University Press, Princeton

    Google Scholar 

  • Bessen J, Nuvolari A (2012) Knowledge sharing among inventors: Some historical perspectives. In revolutionizing innovation: Users, communities and open innovation. Cambridge: MIT Press

  • Clapham JH (1926) An economic history of modern Britain: vol. 1 the early railway age, 1820-1850. Cambridge

  • Coase R, Wang N (2013a) “How China became capitalist.” Cato Policy Report 35(1):1, 8–10

  • Coase R, Wang N (2013b) How China became capitalist. Palgrave-Macmillan, Basingstoke

    Google Scholar 

  • de Vries J (1976) The economy of Europe in an age of crisis, 1600–1750. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • de Vries J (2009) The economic crisis of the seventeenth century after fifty years. Journal of interdisciplinary history 40:151--94

  • Diamond J (1997) Guns, germs, and steel: the fates of human societies. Random House, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Easterlin RA (1995) Industrial revolution and mortality revolution: two of a kind?”. J Evol Econ 5:393–408, reprinted in Easterlin 2004

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goldstone J (1991) Revolution and rebellion in the early modern world. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press

  • Goldstone JA (2002) Efflorescences and economic growth in world history: rethinking the “rise of the west” and the industrial revolution. J World Hist 13:323–389

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goldstone JA (2009) Why Europe? The rise of the west in world history, 1500–1850. McGraw-Hill, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Grafe R (2012) Distant tyranny: markets, power and backwardness in Spain, 1650–1800. Princeton University Press, Princeton

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Jacob M (1981) The radical enlightenment—pantheists, freemasons and republicans. London: Allen and Unwin. 2nd revised ed. Lafayette, Louisiana: Cornerstone

  • Johansson SR (2010) “Medics, monarchs and mortality, 1600–1800: origins of the knowledge-driven health transition in Europe,” University of Oxford, Discussion papers in Economic and Social History, no. 85

  • Kanefsky J (1979) Motive power in British industry and the accuracy of the 1870 factory returns. Econ Hist Rev 32:360–375

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kelly M, Gráda CÓ (2011) “The economic impact of the little ice age.” University College Dublin, UCD Centre for Economic Research working paper series, no. 14

  • Kelly M, Gráda CÓ (2014) “Change points and temporal dependence in reconstructions of annual temperatures: Did Europe experience a little ice age?” Annals of Applied Statistics 8:1372--1394

  • Mantoux, Paul. 1907 (1929). La Révolution industrielle au XVIIIe siècle. Essai sur les commencements de la grande industrie moderne en Angleterre. Paris: Société de librairie et d'édition. English translation: The Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth Century: An Outline of the Beginnings of the Modern Factory System in England tr. Marjorie Vernon.London: Jonathan Cape, 1929

  • McNeill WH (1976) Plagues and people. Anchor Doubleday, Garden City

    Google Scholar 

  • Mead WR (2007) God and gold: Britain, America, and the making of the modern world. Knopf, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Mill JS 1845 (1967) “The Claims of labour.” Edinburgh Review 81 (Apr.): 498–525. Pp. 363–390 in The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume IV–Essays on Economics and Society, Part I. Robson JM (ed) Toronto: University of Toronto Press, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. At Online Library of Liberty

  • Mokyr J (2010) The enlightened economy: Britain and the industrial revolution, 1700–1850. Yale University Press, New Haven

    Google Scholar 

  • Musson AE (1978) The growth of British industry. Holmes and Meier, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • North DC, Wallis JJ, Weingast BR (2009) Violence and social orders: a conceptual framework for interpreting recorded human history. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Novak M (1984) Catholic social thought and liberal institutions: freedom with justice. Harper and Row, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Nuvolari A (2004) Collective invention during the British industrial revolution: The case of the cornish pumping engine. Cambridge Journal of Economics 28:347--363

  • Pollard S (1981) Peaceful conquest: the industrialization of Europe, 1760-1970. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Reinert SA (2011) Translating empire: emulation and the origins of political economy. Harvard University Press, Cambridge

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Schumpeter JA (1912, 1926) (tr. 1934) The theory of economic development. Cambridge: Harvard University Press

  • Schumpeter JA (1949) Science and ideology. Am Econ Rev 39(2):346–359

    Google Scholar 

  • Sellar WC, Yeatman RJ 1931 (1932) 1066 and all that: a memorable history of England. (Bound with And Now All This.) New York: Blue Ribbon Books

  • Suprinyak CE (2011) “Trade, money, and the grievances of the commonwealth: economic debates in the English public sphere during the commercial crisis of the early 1620’s.” Universidade Federal

  • Tolstoy L 1868–1869 (1933) War and peace. Louise and Aylmer Maude, tr., 1922–23. The World’s Classics. Oxford University Press 1933

  • Toynbee A (1884) Lectures on the industrial revolution in England. Rivington’s, London

    Google Scholar 

  • von Tunzelmann GN (1978) Steam power and British industrialization to 1860. Clarendon, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Williams JE (2014) The Riom trial: Marhsal Petain’s attack on the third republic. MA Thesis, Department of History, University of Louisville, Kentucky. At http://digital.library.louisville.edu/utils/getfile/collection/etd/id/2959/filename/5756.pdf

Further reading

  • Goldstone J (1998) The problem of the ‘early modern’ world. J Econ Soc Hist Orient 41:249–284

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McCloskey DN (2010) Bourgeois dignity: why economics can’t explain the modern world. University of Chicago Press, Chicago

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Schumpeter JA 1942 (1950) Capitalism, socialism and democracy. 3rd. ed. New York: Harper and Row 1950

  • Smith A (1759, 1790) The Theory of Moral Sentiments [TMS]. Glasgow Edition. Raphael DD, Macfie AL (eds) Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1976, 1982

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departments of Economics, History, English, and Communication, University of Illinois at Chicago, UH 829 MC 228 601 S. Morgan, Chicago, IL, 60607-7104, USA

    Deirdre Nansen McCloskey

Authors
  1. Deirdre Nansen McCloskey
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Deirdre Nansen McCloskey.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

McCloskey, D.N. It was ideas and ideologies, not interests or institutions, which changed in Northwestern Europe, 1600–1848. J Evol Econ 25, 57–68 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00191-015-0392-x

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00191-015-0392-x

Keywords

Search

Navigation