Here is the audio, video, and transcript. Here is a partial summary of the episode:
Tyler and Joel discuss European corporations versus Chinese nations, why the Catholic Church focused so much on cousin marriage, how persistent cultural practices are, why Chinese cities became so populous in Europe, why it took so long for Europe’s standard of living to surpass that of China, why perceived invaders continued to be swallowed up by the empire they gathered, India, India. in the story, why the Romans never made mirrors, why British soldiers stand two inches taller than the French, what fueled the sudden rise of German science in the 19th century, how Nobel’s win is disturbing, and much more.
Unlike most discussions, in this one I can quote almost any section of equal interest. Here is part one:
COWEN: Why did it take so long for the wealthiest parts of Western Europe to overtake China’s living standards? It says that it happened in 1700 or 1720, that is many centuries after this medieval division. If it spans so many centuries, is the medieval divide really a valid factor? Why is it such a slow process?
MOKYR: Yes, I think so. I think it is the main factor. I think the idea of looking at living standards, for one thing, I’m very skeptical about how living standards are actually measured. I know this is what Pomeranz and other people have, and Jack Goldstone and other people have argued that living standards in China were comparable to those in the West in the late 1750s. I’m not a hundred percent sure that’s true. Of course, for my money, what really defines the divide is that, technically, the gap between the two countries begins to show during the Renaissance, in terms of a lot of things that you see growing in Europe and stagnating in China.
Now, remember, of course, that part of Europe’s growth is because they borrowed ideas from China. Then the Industrial Revolution included, to a certain extent, the import centers from Europeans who tried to imitate the goods they were importing from China—not only from China, but also from India. Pottery is a good example. One of the things they really wanted in China was Chinaware. That is why it is called Chinaware. It took them a while to match China’s strength in the ceramic industry, but they did in the end. Then they stop importing these things to China. It is the same, let’s say, with cotton and other products that we get in Mpumalanga.
European standards of living, I think, have to be measured, in part, by the fact that when Europeans started their travels across the globe in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, they were able to bring a lot of new plants and new ways from other places that they simply took. You will soon see Europeans growing tobacco and potatoes and corn and other such things. They are agents of change in the world. Not only did they change their own food, they changed the Chinese food because the Europeans brought things from the New World like peanuts and sweet potatoes and the like. They changed Chinese food, but the Chinese themselves are not agents here.
They accept what the Europeans do to some extent, and they order others, but it is the Europeans who are in charge of the changes here. They are entrepreneurs. They are the people who bring change, Tyler. My idea is that it symbolizes the difference between the Europeans and the Chinese. Europeans are very aggressive. They look outside. Finally, what you see in the 1830s and 1840s, you see that the technological gap is huge, in some ways much bigger than the gap in living standards. Even in the 19th century, in terms of food, the Chinese could produce enough food. The rate of hunger in China is probably much worse than in Europe.
If you see what happened during the First Opium War, one British ship blows this whole kind of powerful empire to pieces, and the Chinese have to accept this humiliating silence, you can see how the technological gap has grown between the two. To me, that speaks louder than the values of life. Another thing I would like to point out is that, if you look at Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries, you can see that the ability to expand the set of useful knowledge, including science, grew very quickly. Whether or not there is a scientific revolution is a debate I want to get into.
Indeed, in 1700, Europe is on the verge of revolutionizing our understanding of how nature works. It’s not just Newton and Galileo. There is a whole body of work emerging. There is nothing like that in China. China is a highly developed society in many ways. Learning standards are high. They have a well-funded and well-organized education system, but they are not really keeping up with their forays into science and technology.
Someone actually went out and looked at many of Joseph Needham’s volumes on Chinese technology and science, or Science and Civilization [in China]as he called it, and he found something—which I think we all knew, but they put numbers on it—almost nothing that Needham identified as new after 1400. There is a complete stagnation there and some of the things they were able to do in earlier times, like the complicated clocks they built in the 11th century, disappeared. To me, that means more than how many calories of carbohydrates are consumed on average, if we ever calculate that correctly.
It’s interesting on the whole, and it’s self-admiring. I really enjoyed Joel’s latest book Two Roads to Prosperity: Cultures and Institutions in Europe and China, 1000-2000and Greif and Tabellini.
