From: Rakesh Bhandari (rakeshb@STANFORD.EDU)
Date: Thu Sep 18 2003 - 19:33:18 EDT
I share my attempt to figure out the propositions which are being advanced in the new transition debate between Joseph Inikori, Kenneth Pomeranz, Bin Wong, Jack Goldstone, Philip Huang, Christopher Isett, Robert Brenner, Ellen Wood and others. And then there is the book by LE Birdzell and Nathan Rosenberg: Why the West Grew Rich? 1. Agrarian capitalism (landlord-capitalist tenant relations, competitive leases and rents) in a pre industrial world is a sufficient condition for the emergence of industrial capitalism. 2. Agrarian capitalism was a necessary but not sufficient condition for emergence of the first industrial capitalist society: the emergence of the first industrial capitalist society required the development of agrarian capitalism--otherwise no possible way to find dispossessed workers for industry and no discretionary income for output of manufactories and later factories. 3. While agricultural productivity must rise in one or more of the following measures (output per agricultural worker, output per agricultural work hour, output per acre, output per capita) for industrial capitalism to find the prosperous home market on which it depends, agrarian capitalism is not necessary as a mode of production for the rise in agricultural productivity on which industrialization depends. 4. Agrarian capitalism is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for societies to achieve industrial capitalism once it has already been achieved by another society. 5. Agrarian capitalism is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for the emergence of the first industrial capitalist society; in fact agrarian capitalism did not provide English industry with workers, much food, markets or capital. Moreover, the putting out mfg tied to agrarian capitalism seems not to have issued into Industrial capitalism. English agrarian capitalism concentrated in the south of a regionally fragmented England proved to be not sufficient to engender the Industrial Revolution which took off in the north of England; nor did it play a necessary role in it. 6. Dynamic, cheap sea-based international trade unfettered by mercantilism was a necessary condition for emergence as the first industrial capitalist society. 7. Pre-industrial, agrarian capitalism or any other dynamic mode of production for the raising of agrarian labor productivity still would not have enabled the overcoming of the land constraint on which industrial take off anywhere in and within Eurasia was bound to founder; the abolishing of the land constraint required the good luck of the geographically well situated ecological bounties of coal deposits and New World land (as long as that did not fall to free holders but was used at first at least to meet European demands) . WOOD Ellen Wood seems to hold for all practical purposes proposition 1. Wood's argument regarding Holland may also have the implicit form of modus tollens. That is, since agrarian capitalism is necessary and sufficient for the emergence of industrial capitalism and Holland declined before developing industrial capitalism, its commercialized agriculture couldn't have been agrarian capitalist ( for if it had been, it would have generated the agricultural prosperity that would have engendered industrial capitalism). The argument is logically valid but the first premise seems false, and the conclusion that Holland's agriculture wasn't capitalist by the criteria of her theory seems false. BRENNER My impression is that Brenner himself is closer to 2, but I am not clear as to what the other necessary conditions are. INIKORI Inikori clearly argues that 5 is borne out by a disaggregated regional analysis of England's historical experience as the first industrial capitalist society. The implicit point of course is that dynamic international trade unfettered by mercantilist restriction proved to be a surer and more dynamic path to industrial capitalism than agrarian capitalism. Moreover, Inikori seems to be arguing 6 as a way of explaining the Dutch decline--the Dutch were too tied to the restricted and declining markets of 17th c. Europe and thus began to suffer decline. So my impression is that Inikori rejects 1. In support of 5, Inikori has also denied that American demand for British exports was mainly driven by imports of American goods by a world historical uniquely prosperous English agrarian capitalism: "The more recent research has shown that the American economies - with their abundant natural resources, much faster growing population and income - were far more dynamic than the English economy. What is more, a significant proportion of the American products imported into England was re-exported ( more than half of the tobacco from mainland British America was re-exported). Northeastern British America (where a large proportion of English manufactures were sold) exported very little to England. The region's incomes spent on those manufactures came from direct exports (including a large amount of services) to the rest of the Americas (including non-British America) and Europe. Certainly, some American products were consumed in the agrarian societies of southern England and that added to the market for those products. But the stagnation of the economies of East Anglia and the West Country in the 18th and early 19th century suggests that they did not contain the kind of dynamism that provided the engine of growth for the Atlantic economies during the period.This line of argument is much elaborated in my book. Actually, Bob Allen, Pat O'Brien and other authorities on English agriculture now think that the development of English agriculture in the 18th and 19th century owed more to the development of England's industry than the latter owed the former." Inikori argues, in short, that English agrarian capitalism was not the prime mover of the Industrial Revolution. POMERANZ I think Pomeranz would argue for 3 which is not to say of course that he thinks rising agricultural productivity is sufficient for the emergence of industrial capitalism. My impression is that Pomeranz thinks 3 is confirmed by Philip Hoffmann's study of the rising productivity of French peasants and France's later industrialization. Pomeranz also seems to think 5 is supported by Robert Allen's study of England's agrarian capitalism (Inikori may be drawing on Allen as well), and 4 is validated by industrialization on continental Europe. Pomeranz may however willing be to accept 2 while adding the other necessary condition of the abolishing of the land constraint that was in effect throughout Eurasia before the industrial revolution. But of course Pomeranz has argued for 7 partially on the grounds that Jiangnan achieved as high as labor productivity as England in the 18th century and did not industrialize (any small agricultural advantage England may have had was probably the result not of true productivity gains but of overwork and intensification which raised output per agricultural worker); Brenner and Isett reject 7 on the grounds that the astounding performance of English agriculture gives no reason for pessimism that English capitalism could not have overcome apparent land constraints or shortages of land through even higher productivity, through trade, through innovation. GOLDSTONE Goldstone may be arguing for 2 as well but would add the other necessary condition of a scientific revolution. Goldstone may reject 7 as well, in the end, given the possibilities of scientific advance to abolish land constraints. CONCLUSION Most surprising to me has been Inikori's and Pomeranz's recent statement of 5. If they can establish 5, it does seem to me that we will be left at present with a choice between or some combination of Inikori's and Pomeranz's and Goldstone's respective explanations for the Industrial Revolution/The Great Divergence. That would be true even--as Pomeranz has argued--if England had alone achieved a spectacularly productive agrarian capitalism the connection of the Industrial Revolution to which remains opaque. Yours, Rakesh
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