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Classicism and Modern Growth: The Shadow of the Sages
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2024
Abstract
This paper examines how the worship of ancient wisdom affects economic progress in historical China, where the learned class embraced classical wisdom for millennia but encountered the shock of Western industrial influence in the mid-nineteenth century. Using the number of sage temples to measure the strength of classical worship in 269 prefectures, I find that classical worship discouraged intellectuals from appreciating modern learning and thus inhibited industrialization between 1858 and 1927. By contrast, industrialization grew faster in regions less constrained by classicism. This finding implies the importance of cultural entrepreneurship, or the lack thereof, in shaping modern economic growth.
“The humor of blaming the present, and admiring the past, is strongly rooted in human nature, and has an influence even on persons endued with the profoundest judgment and most extensive learning.”
—David Hume (1754, p. 464).
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- © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Economic History Association
Footnotes
I thank the editor, Bishnupriya Gupta, two anonymous referees, Ying Bai, Henry Chen, Ting Chen, James Fenske, Erik Hornung, Ruixue Jia, James Kung, Jin Li, Gedeon Lim, Linxiang Ma, Joel Mokyr, Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, Jared Rubin, Michael Song, Yang You, Noam Yuchtman, and seminar participants at Caltech, CUHK, ESSEC, HKBU, HKIHSS, HKU, Warwick, ASREC Europe Conference, AusClio 2022, and Northwestern University New Economic History of China Conference for helpful comments and suggestions. I also thank Xing Wei for sharing the data on contemporary industrial firms and patents, Qingxu Yang for sharing the data on contemporary high-tech firms, and Yicheng Chen, Mukun Ge, Xinhao Li, and Wanda Wang for their research assistance, and the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (Grant No.: AoE/B-704/22-R) for financial support.
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