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.
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.
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.
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.
