Should-Read: Robert Allen: Progress and Poverty in Early Modern Europe

Should-Read: Robert Allen (2004): Progress and Poverty in Early Modern Europe: “At the end of the middle ages, the urban, manufacturing core of Europe was on the Mediterranean with an important offshoot in Flanders…

…The Netherlands was thinly populated, and England was an agrarian periphery. By 1800, the situation was largely reversed. First, the Netherlands and, then, Britain emerged as commercial and manufacturing powerhouses with the largest urban economies in Europe. Italy and Spain slipped behind. Only present-day Belgium managed to remained near the leaders, perhaps because of proximity to the Netherlands. Explaining this reversal in fortunes has been a central problem of social science, and the literature includes many conflicting hypotheses. This paper attempts to give an integrated assessment of six….

The intercontinental trade boom was a key
development that propelled northwestern Europe forward…. Northwestern Europe’s ascent began in the century before the American and Asian trades become important…. Yhe commercial revolution began… [as] an intra-European reorganization in which northwestern Europeans out competed Mediterranean producers in woolen textiles…. Northwestern Europe’s success was based on a two step advance–the first within Europe, the second in America and Asia. This success, it might be noted, marked the first steps out of the Malthusian trap…