Introduction

This chapter is concerned with the estimation of real GDP per head. Today, the United Nations, World Bank and several other international organisations publish estimates of GDP per head for most of the world’s economies, ranking them in wealth and identifying the most advanced and least developed among them. The difference between the richest and poorest nations is now of the order of two-hundred-fold, whereas until the industrial revolution transformed productivity levels it was rarely more than fivefold. Modern economic growth can be fast and a dozen countries currently have reported growth rates of GDP per head in the range 10–20 per cent; it can also be negative and a dozen others, mostly already poor, have shrinking economies and declining GDP per head. Whereas there are plenty of historical precedents for such negative growth, there are none for such rapid growth, since the highest performing pre-modern economies rarely if ever achieved positive growth rates in excess of 2 or 3 per cent a year and were doing exceptionally well to maintain growth of 0.5 per cent or more for any sustained period of time. In fact, historically it is often presumed that in most countries for long periods there was next to no economic growth at all. This was because economic expansion was always liable to set in train and eventually be outpaced by population growth.

It was the tension between economic and biological reproduction that preoccupied T. R. Malthus, David Ricardo and other classical economists whose pessimistic musings on the potential for unlimited expansion led economics to be dubbed the ‘dismal science’. In their day, self-sustaining modern economic growth with its capacity to stay ahead of fast population growth had barely arrived. Its conception was unplanned, gestation long and successful delivery never assured, although ultimately transformative in its consequences. Among European economies, Italy and Flanders showed early promise of achieving a breakthrough but failed to deliver, Holland then overtook both but proved unable to maintain its momentum, and it was left to late-developer Britain to become the first to make the full transition to industrial revolution, closely followed by several of its most immediate European neighbours. Tracing the origins, charting the course and explaining when, how and why Britain became the world’s first industrial nation have been key subjects of historical enquiry ever since.