The Second Noel Butlin Lecture: Labour‐intensive Industrialisation in Global History

Sugihara, Kaoru

doi:10.1111/j.1467-8446.2007.00208.x

Cited by 40 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Even though we can be sure that wheat and in particular meat were quite cheap there, the estimated cost of an Argentinean bundle series is highly tentative because price information for other commodities only starts in that year. 13 Asia, with its radically different starting point of low prices and low wages, could embark on a labour-intensive development path, a possibility that was not open to the Latin American economies; see Sugihara (2007). 14 For the 18th century, we have used the data of wages of construction workers by pointing to a wage level of 3 reales per day.…”

Section: Nominal Wagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Scholars have long looked at the Peruvian mita as the quintessential example of the use and abuse of indigenous forced labour for silver extraction. However, over half to 70% of the labour force in the mines in Peru and Mexico was free labour (Bakewell, 1984;Tandeter, 1993). In addition, the free and forced categories were not immutable.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This effect diminished in the second half of the 18th century probably associated with the sharp decline of the mining output. As a consequence, Potosi lost its prominent role in the Spanish American economy (Bakewell, 1984;Tandeter, 1993).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Between conquest and independence: Real wages and demographic change in Spanish America, 1530–1820

Abad

Davies

Zanden

2012

Explorations in Economic History

112

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On the basis of a newly constructed dataset, this paper presents long-term series of the price levels, nominal wages, and real wages in Spanish Latin America -more specifically in Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, Chile, and Argentina -between ca. 1530 and ca. 1820. It synthesizes the work of scholars who have collected and published data on individual cities and periods, and presents comparable indices of real wages and prices in the colonial period that give a reasonable guide to trends in the long run. We show that nominal wages and prices were on average much higher than in Western Europe or in Asia, a reflection of the low value of silver that must have had consequences for competitiveness of the Latin American economies. Labour scarcity was the second salient feature of Spanish Latin America and resulted in real wages much above subsistence and in some cases (Mexico, Bolivia, Argentina) comparable to levels in Northwestern Europe. For Mexico, this was caused by the dramatic decline of the population after the Conquest. For Bolivia, the driving force was the boom in silver mining in Potosi that created a huge demand for labour. In the case of Argentina, low population density was a pre-colonial feature. Perhaps due to a different pattern of depopulation, the real wages of other regions (Peru, Colombia and Chile) were much lower, and only increased above subsistence during the first half of the 18th century. These results are consistent with independent evidence on biological standards of living and with estimates of GDP per capita at the beginning of the 19th century.

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Section: Nominal Wagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Between conquest and independence: Real wages and demographic change in Spanish America, 1530–1820

Abad

Davies

Zanden

2012

Explorations in Economic History

112

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…4 However, the suggestion by Jerven (2012: 119-120) that measures of output should somehow avoid including the economic advantages from, say, the use of manure and ploughs in England because the tsetse fly made it impossible to hold livestock in Asante, is surely to confuse the explanation with what is to be explained. The endorsement by Jerven (2012, p. 120) of Sugihara's (2007) view that the "East" followed a different labour intensive path of development from the capital intensive path followed by the West, as a result of different endowments, is subject to the same assessment. It may well explain a lower level of per capita income in the East, but it does not make Eastern incomes the same as Western incomes.…”

Section: Criticisms Of Historical National Accountingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Economic Development in Africa and Europe: Reciprocal Comparisons

Broadberry¹,

Gardner

2015

RHE / JILAEH

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Recent advances in historical national accounting have allowed for global comparisons of GDP per capita across space and time. Critics have argued that GDP per capita fails to capture adequately the multi-dimensional nature of welfare, and have developed alternative measures such as the human development index. Whilst recognising that these wider indicators provide an appropriate way of assessing levels of welfare, we argue that GDP per capita remains a more appropriate measure for assessing development potential, focussing on production possibilities and the sustainability of consumption. Twentieth-century Africa and pre-industrial Europe are used to show how such data can guide reciprocal comparisons to provide insights into the process of development on both continents.

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“…irrelevant in explaining the excess manning of the low-wage countries" (Clark 1987, p. 156). For Clark, "labor intensive industrialization" is an illusion, although other scholars see it as the explanation of Asian success (Sugihara 2007).…”

Section: Who Gained From the Industrialmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Review of Gregory Clark'sA Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World

Allen

2008

Journal of Economic Literature

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A Farewell to Alms advances striking claims about the economic history of the world. These include (1) the preindustrial world was in a Malthusian preventive check equilibrium, (2) living standards were unchanging and above subsistence for the last 100,000 years, (3) bad institutions were not the cause of economic backwardness, (4) successful economic growth was due to the spread of “middle class” values from the elite to the rest of society for “biological” reasons, (5) workers were the big gainers in the British Industrial Revolution, and (6) the absence of middle class values, for biological reasons, explains why most of the world is poor. The empirical support for these claims is examined, and all are questionable.

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The Second Noel Butlin Lecture: Labour‐intensive Industrialisation in Global History

Cited by 40 publications

References 18 publications

Between conquest and independence: Real wages and demographic change in Spanish America, 1530–1820

Between conquest and independence: Real wages and demographic change in Spanish America, 1530–1820

Economic Development in Africa and Europe: Reciprocal Comparisons

A Review of Gregory Clark'sA Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World

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