A History of the Global Economy: 1500 to the Present

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Introduction
A history of the global economy – the ‘why’ and the ‘how’
Joerg Baten
For many years of our recent past, one’s country of birth predicted the income and welfare level of the majority of
the population: if you were born in a western European country or a country that was a previous European
settlement (such as the US), you would be relatively well off by global standards. If you were born in the developing
world, this would often not be the case. Many observers perceived this almost as a natural law. Even if that might
still hold on average, the rapid rise of income in China and other threshold economies over the last years cast doubt
on the persistence of development differences. This is even truer after the recent crisis in Europe and the US and
after the reappearance of territorial war in Europe.
To answer today’s questions, it is crucial to understand the economic history of the past: which countries
developed positively during the various periods of their history? This book of the history of the global economy will
trace the developments of many individual countries and their world regions. The ingredients of success (or failure)
will be the main focus. What was a good economic policy? Was there investment in education? Was there an
absence of war? Were there growth-promoting institutions?
In this volume, twenty-seven authors of various nationalities and intellectual traditions will present the welfare
development of the global economy and its components in a concise and accessible way. The authors will reflect on
the considerable increase in knowledge of global economic history and the history of world regions that has
occurred over previous years, both in the developed world as well as in countries with traditionally lower research
density in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and other world regions. A special focus of this volume will be on
developing countries that have received less attention in former world economic histories: was, for example, Africa
always a continent of relative poverty, or were there periods of economic growth in some of its regions? Why did
Asia fall behind in the early nineteenth and twentieth centuries?
This book will concentrate on the period from 1500 until today but with a slightly stronger focus on the recent
past. Ten world region chapters will present an economic history in a balanced way. The aim is to write a nonEurocentric history; hence, the chapters discuss world regions that have an approximately similar population size
currently. Each world region chapter will have circa 500 million inhabitants today.1
‘Interlinking’ chapters will
summarize some of the core debates and topics studied recently. These interlinking chapters will also take a global
perspective on some of the core indicators and growth determinants. In addition, a number of shorter ‘highlight’
articles will focus on particular topics in economic history that shed light on especially astonishing developments,
such as why Ethiopia was not colonized and the productivity of Second World War industry in Japan.
We decided to consider a set of core indicators in the world regions so that a comparative picture emerges.
Among these indicators will be estimates of national income. The political and institutional dimension will be

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