Journal of Global History最新文献

{"title":"Two concerns about the interpretation of the estimates of historical national accounts before 1850","authors":"J. L. van Zanden, J. Bolt","doi":"10.1017/S174002282000039X","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S174002282000039X","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract As contribution to the debate about the interpretation of the process of economic growth before the Industrial Revolution, we discuss two concerns about the currently available estimates of historical national accounts and the way in which these estimates should be interpreted. Firstly, we argue that estimates of the long-term trends of economic growth should make use of all information contained in time series of Gross Domestic Product (GDP henceforth), and therefore use standard regression analysis to establish those trends. Secondly, we point to the problem that the time series of historical GDP are based on very different estimation procedures, which probably affect the outcome in terms of the level of GDP per capita in the period before 1850. Both concerns imply that we do not entirely agree with Jack Goldstone’s views of pre-industrial growth. In particular, his conclusion that growth was cyclical before 1800 is inconsistent with the available GDP estimates, which point to sustained growth, albeit at a very low rate.","PeriodicalId":46192,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Global History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2021-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S174002282000039X","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44690378","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"JGH volume 16 issue 2 Cover and Back matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/s174002282100022x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s174002282100022x","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46192,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Global History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2021-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/s174002282100022x","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46234541","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Historical national accounting and dating the Great Divergence","authors":"S. Broadberry","doi":"10.1017/S1740022820000388","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1740022820000388","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract By offering a particular interpretation of the new evidence on historical national accounting, Goldstone argues for a return to the Pomeranz (2000) version of the Great Divergence, beginning only after 1800. However, he fails to distinguish between two very different patterns of pre-industrial growth: (1) alternating episodes of growing and shrinking without any long-term trend in per capita income and (2) episodes of growing interspersed by per capita incomes remaining on a plateau, so that per capita GDP trends upwards over the long run. The latter dynamic pattern occurred in Britain and Holland from the mid-fourteenth century, so that Northwest Europe first edged ahead of the Yangzi delta region of China in the eighteenth century.","PeriodicalId":46192,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Global History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2021-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S1740022820000388","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47004777","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Past growths: pre-modern and modern","authors":"P. Malanima","doi":"10.1017/S1740022820000418","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1740022820000418","url":null,"abstract":"The article by Jack Goldstone, Dating the Great Divergence, has the merit of discussing both the wide panorama of recent global history and the conclusions stemming from specific northEuropean long-term series of GDP.1 The article’s main target is the deeply rooted idea that Modern Growth was the continuation of previous trends of GDP growth. Goldstone’s opinion is that the rise of the West, in the frame of global history, occurred only from the late-eighteenth century or the beginning of the Nineteenth, not earlier. At the time, a true divergence among World economies did not exist. Modern Growth is different from previous periods of expansion not merely in the degree but also in the nature. Pre-modern examples of growth were episodic and not sustained; they represented temporary ‘efflorescences’ rather than long upward rises.2 It is apparent that, in such an approach to growth, problems of definition are crucial. Since the modern rise is deemed to be different from past ‘efflorescences’ of sporadic growth, what is, according to Goldstone, the primary feature of “modern” in comparison with ‘pre-modern’? The definition of Modern Growth adopted by Goldstone is the classical one put forward in economics and historical research primarily by Simon Kuznets:3 it is characterised both by strong increases in population and production; growth in production is, however, higher than in population. The result is then a rise in per capita product or intensive4 growth. This rise is sustained for long periods of time and primarily derives from modern technological growth. This definition of Modern Growth, rapidly recalled by Goldstone in his present article, had been more widely discussed in his previous article on efflorescences and economic growth in World history.5 In the following, I will deal with the differences between modern and pre-modern growth and later with the concept of technological progress in relation to the rise of the West. I will focus primarily on Europe and the Mediterranean and will include extra-European macroareas at the end.","PeriodicalId":46192,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Global History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2021-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S1740022820000418","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47398762","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Why understanding the timing of divergence matters","authors":"J. Goldstone","doi":"10.1017/S174002282000042X","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S174002282000042X","url":null,"abstract":"What is divergence and why does it matter? The question motivating all of us is to understand what led up to modern economic growth. Malanima is correct that I follow Kuznets and describe this as rapid and sustained growth in both population and output per head, but I would now add a third qualifier, to levels beyond the pre-industrial peak. All three qualifiers are necessary because history has many examples of sustained growth in population and output per head: as van Zanden and Bolt show in their comment, both Britain and Holland had positive trend growth in real GDP/capita all the way from the late Middle Ages to the eighteenth century. It seems clear that classical Greece and Rome each had at least three centuries of sustained growth in population and GDP/cap as well, and China likely did also before achieving the heights reached in the Northern Song.1 But all of these sustained growth episodes were very slow, as van Zanden and Bolt show in their regressions for Holland and England, where real income growth averaged not more than 0.2% per year. There were shorter periods of much more rapid growth, which I have labelled ‘efflorescences.’ In these cases, a combination of technical innovations in farming or transport or other production allows higher output that supports urbanisation and more extensive trade, which in turn leads to greater specialisation, greater monetary circulation and profits that feed further investment to boost productivity, in a virtuous cycle.2 In post-classical Europe, the High Middle Ages in the north, Renaissance Italy and Golden Age Holland are examples; outside Europe, the peaks of the Song and Qing dynasties in China, the early Baghdad Caliphate and perhaps the Mughal Empire under Akbar are likely others. But over time, population continues to grow, trade patterns change, climate shifts, administrative inefficiency, wars and diseases take their toll and after a century or less, rapid growth in GDP/cap comes to an end. Finally, past episodes of rapid and/or sustained growth, as beautifully shown by Broadberry’s Figure 5 above, showing GDP/cap in the leading regions of China and Europe, often approached but never reached beyond an apparent limit in GDP/cap of about $1800.3 Instead, from classical times up to 1750, as Malanima makes clear, GDP/cap fluctuated in a relatively narrow band under","PeriodicalId":46192,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Global History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2021-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43057951","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"JGH volume 16 issue 2 Cover and Front matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/s1740022821000218","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1740022821000218","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46192,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Global History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2021-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/s1740022821000218","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42335377","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A great convergence: The American frontier and the origins of Japanese migration to Brazil","authors":"S. Lu","doi":"10.1017/S1740022821000231","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1740022821000231","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article explains how the US westward expansion influenced and stimulated Japanese migration to Brazil. Emerging in the nineteenth century as expanding powers in East Asia and Latin America, respectively, both Meiji Japan and post-independence Brazil looked to the US westward expansion as a central reference for their own processes of settler colonialism. The convergence of Japan and Brazil in their imitation of US settler colonialism eventually brought the two sides together at the turn of the twentieth century to negotiate for the start of Japanese migration to Brazil. This article challenges the current understanding of Japanese migration to Brazil, conventionally regarded as a topic of Latin American ethnic studies, by placing it in the context of settler colonialism in both Japanese and Brazilian histories. The study also explores the shared experiences of East Asia and Latin America as they felt the global impact of the American westward expansion.","PeriodicalId":46192,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Global History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2021-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S1740022821000231","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41258921","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Dating the Great Divergence","authors":"J. Goldstone","doi":"10.1017/S1740022820000406","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1740022820000406","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract New data on Dutch and British GDP/capita show that at no time prior to 1750, perhaps not before 1800, did the leading countries of northwestern Europe enjoy sustained strong growth in GDP/capita. Such growth in income per head as did occur was highly episodic, concentrated in a few decades and then followed by long periods of stagnation of income per head. Moreover, at no time before 1800 did the leading economies of northwestern Europe reach levels of income per capita much different from peak levels achieved hundreds of years earlier in the most developed regions of Italy and China. When the Industrial Revolution began in Britain, it was not preceded by patterns of pre-modern income growth that were in any way remarkable, neither by sustained prior growth in real incomes nor exceptional levels of income per head. The Great Divergence, seen as the onset of sustained increases in income per head despite strong population growth, and achievement of incomes beyond pre-modern peaks, was a late occurrence, arising only from 1800.","PeriodicalId":46192,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Global History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2021-06-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S1740022820000406","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46712321","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Comments on time, space and method for the study of commodity frontiers and the transformation of the global countryside","authors":"Ruth Mostern","doi":"10.1017/S1740022820000443","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1740022820000443","url":null,"abstract":"[...]they offer a research agenda about the incorporation of land, labour and resources into the capitalist world economy. According to Raymond Williams’ classic work of Marxist literary theory, the ideological work that the concept of the countryside performs is simply to be a discursive counterpoint to the city. [...]I emphasise the urgency of centring the brutal history of conquest and the resistance of colonised peoples. [...]I explain how an approach focused on frontiers as locales on the geospatial earth would bring to life the digital research methods that the authors propound in their conclusion.","PeriodicalId":46192,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Global History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2021-06-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S1740022820000443","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41360330","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Commodity frontiers and global histories: the tasks ahead","authors":"S. Beckert, U. Bosma, Mindi Schneider, E. Vanhaute","doi":"10.1017/S1740022820000431","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1740022820000431","url":null,"abstract":"Given the alarming pace of climate change, global environmental destruction, and associated social dislocations and inequalities, a global history that also speaks to the present is more important now than ever. We started our article with a pointed argument that ‘[t]he history of the making of the modern world is a history of the expansion of commodity frontiers, a historical conundrum so spatially, socially, and structurally all-encompassing that it still awaits its persuasive analysis’. This deep historical perspective, we argued, is crucial to understanding how we arrived at our current socioecological predicament. What is more, we proposed that transdisciplinary research among historians and social, ecological, and computational scientists is essential to engage such questions. To that end, we have developed our research agenda around an analytical framework that lets us trace the long history and present of capitalism. We look at the countryside through the lens of the history of commodity frontiers, using commodity regimes as an analytical framework to make sense of the vast amount of data we hope to uncover. The commodity frontier – the empirical core of our investigations – is not simply a place. It is a relational concept that grasps the flows of materials and energy between nature and society, between different societies and within them. These flows connect regions of extraction with the sites of production that organize capitalist modernity on a world scale. The commodity frontier stands for an inductive historical approach that starts from the far edges of global expansion. It includes agents other than the global hegemonic powers, spaces other than the metropole and relations that encompass more than the economic. Indeed, as we emphasized in our paper, ‘[m]uch of the writing on the history of capitalism privileges the perspective from the city and industry to the detriment of processes in the household, agriculture, and the countryside where the vast majority of humanity has lived until very recently and where many of the revolutions of capitalism have taken place’. Urban merchants, state bureaucrats, soldiers and lawmakers, of course, helped produce these commodity frontiers as much as commodity frontiers co-created them – yet the distinguishing feature of our work is that it thinks of these processes from the fringes. We welcome Maxine Berg’s observation that ‘histories of natural resources and of the countryside and its peoples have not been sufficiently addressed by global historians’. This lacuna stands in contrast to a growing number of scholars from other disciplines who have come to see ‘commodity frontiers’ as a promising approach to historical processes. As Ronald Findlay and Kevin O’Rourke conclude, such an approach is both exciting and necessary to avoid mono-causal explanations of historical change. The research agenda we propose, as Ruth Mostern observes, attempts to bridge the gulf between the conceptual focus of soci","PeriodicalId":46192,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Global History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2021-06-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S1740022820000431","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43222699","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}