Jones, Eric, the European Miracle: Environment, Economies, and Geopolitics in the History

Jones, Eric, The European Miracle: Environment, Economies, and Geopolitics in the History of Europe and Asia, 3rd ed. (2003), 301p.

In this study, Jones sought to answer the question: "Why did modern states and economies develop first in the peripheral and late-coming culture of Europe?" Adam Smith, Friedrich Hegel, Karl Marx, Max Weber, Immanuel Wallerstein and many recent historians also asked this question but Jones’s book has the merit of being relatively short, well written and engaging. His study has become widely known in the debate of why Europe experienced the first industrial revolution and became so rich.First published in 1981, the third edition of 2003 includes a new preface and afterword. According to Joel Mokyr, “it seems to have attracted the mostattention and has been made into the whipping boy of those who have resentedwhat they viewed as historiographical triumphalism, eurocentricity, and evenracism.” Many historians believe that Jones overemphasized the differences in economic development between Europe and the more advanced non-European areas, especially in Asia. This question has been labeled the ‘divergence and convergence” debate. Studies show that around 1820 the richest countries had a wealth advantage of about 3:1 over poor countries, while by the 21st century, the ratio between the rich and poor was about 30:1. Why this happened remains unresolved, but what is generally agreed on is that something fundamental happened in Europe around and after 1800 that first produced a world of rich and poor countries, and since then many countries beyond Europe have joined the rich countries while the distance between the rich and poor has become greater.

Jones argues that the foundation of European success was laid between about 1400 and 1800 and must be seen in its combination of physical resources and the development of a market economy, as explained by Adam Smith and classical economics, and the interaction of these factors with geopolitics. The first section is a broad comparative discussion emphasizing agriculture and demography in the early period. He suggested that one of the key factors was that a relatively unique European pattern of nuclear families was able to keep population growth at level just below the maximum that could be supported by resources through restricting births with later marriages and by investing more capital in the skills and education of their children. Moreover, Europe was able to hold back more land for animal husbandry and woodland so that its consumption levels became higher than in Asia and this also allowed Europeans to overcome disasters more successfully. The next section is devoted to Europe. Here emphasizes three main factors: the long-term diffusion of Asian technology to Europe before 1400; European acquisition of relatively unpopulated land resources in the Americas and Oceana, which he calls ‘ghost acres’; and the successful role the European states played in promoting economic development. The latter was made possible by the existence of competing European states that promoted competition and innovation, as opposed to large central empires, While a good deal of this competition was wasted in war and violence, state competition also taught Europeans how to attract and keep entrepreneurial talent by protecting private property and enforcing contracts through civil law. He also explains the issues that inhibited economic development elsewhere, such as poor soil and disease in Africa, isolation from the rest of the World in the Americas, and how Asia used up its resources on its growing population. Finally, he has separate chapters on the Ottoman, Mughal, and Ming-Manchu empires and how each obstructed economic growth. His discussion of how China came within a “hairs breadth” of an industrial revolution in the fourteenth century but then turned to a project of internal colonization and expansion is especially interesting.

Some critics have found Jones’ broad and boldly stated generalizations unconvincing. R. B. Wong, for example, argued in his important 1997 study, China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience, that the dynamics of the Chinese and European economies were quite similar before 1800. Kenneth Pomeranz maintained, in his influential study, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and theMaking of the Modern World Economy (2000), that easily available coal in Britain, and its relative inaccessibility in China, provided Europe with a key resource that stimulated further economic innovation. More recently, historians, such as Robert Allen, have argued that it was primarily higher wages in Britain combined with cheap coal that made the first industrial revolution British. Others have accused Jones’ of being not only Eurocentric but also racist. One of the interesting aspect of the debate has been that much of the focus has been on the relative availability and access to physical resources, such as coal and land, while the issues of the intellectual and institutional milieus of the ‘West and the Rest’ have been less prominent than in earlier years. Joel Mokyr’s work emphasizes the importance of these factors through a reinterpretation of the intellectual context for Europe’s technological success in his Gifts of Athena: Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy (2002) and The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain 1700-1850 (2009). The ‘divergence and convergence’ debate remains very much alive and Jones’ contribution remains a good introduction to many of the key issues.