Global Economic Growth

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Global Economic Growth

• The Economy in the 18th Century

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Population Trends

• Population Growth
• Europe grew from 80 mil to 180 mil from 1500-1700
• China 350 mil and India 200 mil by 1700
• Pop rebounding in Americas
• Ottoman pop stagnated
• Pop growth concentrated people in cities and
  pushed them out into undeveloped lands

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Urbanization

• China, India, and Japan housed most cities
• Many over 100,000 in population
• Europe had fewer cities, but rapid growth
• London almost 1 mil by 1800
• Paris and Naples ½ mil
• Cities being built in the Americas
• Mexico City
• Lima, Peru
• Boston, Philadelphia, and New York

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Explanations for Pop. Growth

• End of food monocultures
• Improved transportation networks
• Plague survivors immunology!
• Improved Medicine

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18th Century Medicine

• Global exchange of medical knowledge
• New medicinal plants and drugs
• Opium, quinine, etc.
• Gradual recession of the humoral theory
• Diet and exercise became focus of medicine
• Scurvy treated with citrus fruit
• Anson expedition lost 1400 of 1900
• Smallpox inoculations
• No idea why it worked

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Poppy Field
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Chinese Economics in the 18th Century

• China still center of industrial activity
• Textiles silk
• Porcelain
• Paper
• Grain
• Majority of Chinese products for domestic
  consumption
• Foreign trade not important to Chinese, internal
  market
• China primarily closed to foreigners, only
  allowed to trade at select ports
• Favorable trade balance still existed in 1700s

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China cont.

• British bring opium to China from India (poppy
  plants)
• Monopolized by British East India Trading
  Company
• Finally a product that the Chinese want
• Trade gap begins to shrink
• Chinese gov. tries to ban opium, but demand is
  too high
• Opium trade grows exponentially over century
• Chinas huge population makes labor cheap
• Reason China fails to mechanize industry
• Europe does mechanize and eventually is able to
  outstrip Chinese production

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Collapse of Indian Industry

• Beginning of century an industry leader
• Different clans and castes specializing in
  certain products
• Particularly iron and textiles
• Mughal Empire begins to fall in 1700
• Afghan and Persian invaders sack Delhi
• Imperial treasury drained in 1739
• British East India Company begins buying up
  assets
• British silver stops flowing into India, replaced
  by local taxes
• British begin extracting resources and exploiting
  labor
• Slowly assume control of entire country

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Ottomans in the 18th Century

• Took on lackadaisical attitude toward trade
• Uninterested in competing with Europe
• Stagnant population growth
• Textile production falls as Europeans took over
  Ottoman techniques
• Europe begins to dominate shipping in the
  Atlantic Ocean

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The West in the 18th Century

• Beginnings of the Industrial Revolution
• Europes Scientific Revolution accustomed
  Europeans to reliance on unseen forces
• Steam
• Magnetism
• Electricity

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The Rise of Britain

• Relatively low pop. (9 mil) led to rush toward
  industrialization/mechanization
• Rich coal reserves fueled industrialization
• Steam power changed steel and textile industries
• Could drop production costs by 50
• Imperial control of Ireland supplied agricultural
  surplus to free up workers
• Profits of Triangle Trade invested in
  infrastructure
• British colonies provided captive markets
• End of subsistence ag. and consolidation of land
  freed more workers for industrial pursuits
• Similar movements take place in Japan and Europe
  later in the century

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18th Century in Perspective

• Globe caught in a positive feedback loop
• Growing population
• Growing demand
• Growing output
• Growing commerce