Why are some parts of the world so rich and others so poor? Why did the Industrial Revolution--and the unprecedented economic growth that came with it--occur in eighteenth-century England, and not at some other time, or in some other place? Why didn't industrialization make the whole world rich--and why did it make large parts of the world even poorer? In A Farewell to Alms, Gr...
Why are some parts of the world so rich and others so poor? Why did the Industrial Revolution--and the unprecedented economic growth that came with it--occur in eighteenth-century England, and not at some other time, or in some other place? Why didn't industrialization make the whole world rich--and why did it make large parts of the world even poorer? In A Farewell to Alms, Gregory Clark tackles these profound questions and suggests a new and provocative way in which culture--not exploitation, geography, or resources--explains the wealth, and the poverty, of nations.</p>
Countering the prevailing theory that the Industrial Revolution was sparked by the sudden development of stable political, legal, and economic institutions in seventeenth-century Europe, Clark shows that such institutions existed long before industrialization. He argues instead that these institutions gradually led to deep cultural changes by encouraging people to abandon hunter-gatherer instincts-violence, impatience, and economy of effort-and adopt economic habits-hard work, rationality, and education.</p>
The problem, Clark says, is that only societies that have long histories of settlement and security seem to develop the cultural characteristics and effective workforces that enable economic growth. For the many societies that have not enjoyed long periods of stability, industrialization has not been a blessing. Clark also dissects the notion, championed by Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs, and Steel, that natural endowments such as geography account for differences in the wealth of nations.</p>
A brilliant and sobering challenge to the idea that poor societies can be economically developed through outside intervention, A Farewell to Alms may change the way global economic history is understood.</p>
In contrast in England the majority of people, until quite close to 1800, lived in dwellings with beaten earth floors covered by rushes that were only infrequently renewed. Into these rushes went deposits of waste food, urine, and spit. Indeed the effluvium deposited on floors from ordinary household business was so rich that, when saltpeter men were empowered in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries to dig out the earth floors as rich sources of saltpeter (potassium nitrate), they allegedly dug up not just barn floors but also the floors of houses. (查看原文)
终于看完了格里高利.克拉克的《a Farewell to Alms:a Brief Economic History of the World》，来这里谈谈自己的看法。 看了一些评论，不少人在推荐这本书，这些人主要是专业的学者；不少人也在鄙视这本书，认为这本书没什么价值，就如我在豆瓣这里看到的。我要说的是，这本书...
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P217 “这一时期唯一可能解释婚龄下降且结婚频率较高的现象就是因难产而死是孕妇人数增加。” 原文“decline”是下降。 原文The only feature of this period that might explain earlier and more frequent marriage is the decline of maternal deaths from childbirth.
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白垩纪动物
无痕
中信出版社2009版
吴乐旻
理想国 | 广西师范大学出版社2020版
滔滔涛涛
理想国 | 广西师范大学出版社2020版
0 有用 naan 2008-12-08 10:02:01
dr.clark/UC Davis
1 有用 南飘雪 2019-02-22 02:31:10
have the honor to take the class of the author, who is a kind and excellent professor!
2 有用 RM Ngwini 2014-05-16 23:16:17
这本书比《Why Nations Fail》听起来有说服力多了——我果然是老racist。但是不用说，racism永远都听起来都有post hoc症。比如说想想中国和印度吧。书里面20世纪初的中国工人懒惰，生产率低下，和印度一模一样，可是一转眼就成为了世界工厂。100年的时间，对书中假设的进化而言，实在是太短了。
0 有用 茶叶酱 2010-11-26 22:50:52
物竞天择经济发展学
0 有用 彗星起源感覺 2014-11-02 10:06:23
最大的感觉是做经济史真是太难了。