I've read a few of these accounts (and agree one centred on Africa is a useful addition). The one thing they all gloss over is that agriculture lowered individual human well-being for several thousand years, in that agricultural populations are worse nourished, have more diseases and their lives more uncertain and less free. The archaeological record is very clear on this point. The advantages accrue at the group level (more people, more organised - and those endemic diseases come in handy when the neighbours do not have them).
Yes that’s certainly true - I am a big fan of the Dawn of Everything so need no convincing on that front! Prehistory was a relatively small component of this book, however, so I did not think it was worth mentioning…
Fair point, but it derails the narrative of progress ("we took up farming and life got worse for almost everyone for 6000 years, albeit with some nice monuments, but then things got better for a century or so ...")
Engaging review of book I had not previously encountered. Tooze is referenced here, and I think he is likely the author we are looking for to overcome the trilemma (long duree perspective, centering Africa as more than afterthought, and detecting 800 lb gorilla of climate change). I recall finding a dusty book in the stacks at uni in one of those moments between solving differential equations for econ degree, A History of Inequality in South Africa (1652-2002), originally published in media res in 1991. The South Africa case is interesting in that it is an extreme case that applies everywhere, except perhaps the handful of countries eg New Zealand+Northern Europe which are securely within the Narrow Corridor. While usually not outright exclusion of 90%+ of population, barriers to education in more subtle and not so subtle (de facto Apartheid) are in my view the essential factor that contribute to traps in development.
Yesterday on Twitter, I told Karthik Sankaran in reference to Atif Mian's post on Bangladesh that education is often the glaring omission in development columns. Superb economists who have an accurate read of all macroeconomic barriers have heads in sky without making occasional visits to those factors which are readily apparent if simply take time to observe on the ground. Those on highest rungs sometimes need to make the trip to first rung, that of observation, a point made in recent book, Look (and also the book's subject, Wittgenstein, making trip from Cambridge to rural Austrian kindergarten) . An exception to this blind spot is the American Affairs piece from two years ago, The Long Slow Death of Global Development.
Thank you, Angus, for this thoughtful review. It is rare that a reviewer makes you want to write another book!
I've read a few of these accounts (and agree one centred on Africa is a useful addition). The one thing they all gloss over is that agriculture lowered individual human well-being for several thousand years, in that agricultural populations are worse nourished, have more diseases and their lives more uncertain and less free. The archaeological record is very clear on this point. The advantages accrue at the group level (more people, more organised - and those endemic diseases come in handy when the neighbours do not have them).
Yes that’s certainly true - I am a big fan of the Dawn of Everything so need no convincing on that front! Prehistory was a relatively small component of this book, however, so I did not think it was worth mentioning…
Fair point, but it derails the narrative of progress ("we took up farming and life got worse for almost everyone for 6000 years, albeit with some nice monuments, but then things got better for a century or so ...")
Engaging review of book I had not previously encountered. Tooze is referenced here, and I think he is likely the author we are looking for to overcome the trilemma (long duree perspective, centering Africa as more than afterthought, and detecting 800 lb gorilla of climate change). I recall finding a dusty book in the stacks at uni in one of those moments between solving differential equations for econ degree, A History of Inequality in South Africa (1652-2002), originally published in media res in 1991. The South Africa case is interesting in that it is an extreme case that applies everywhere, except perhaps the handful of countries eg New Zealand+Northern Europe which are securely within the Narrow Corridor. While usually not outright exclusion of 90%+ of population, barriers to education in more subtle and not so subtle (de facto Apartheid) are in my view the essential factor that contribute to traps in development.
Yesterday on Twitter, I told Karthik Sankaran in reference to Atif Mian's post on Bangladesh that education is often the glaring omission in development columns. Superb economists who have an accurate read of all macroeconomic barriers have heads in sky without making occasional visits to those factors which are readily apparent if simply take time to observe on the ground. Those on highest rungs sometimes need to make the trip to first rung, that of observation, a point made in recent book, Look (and also the book's subject, Wittgenstein, making trip from Cambridge to rural Austrian kindergarten) . An exception to this blind spot is the American Affairs piece from two years ago, The Long Slow Death of Global Development.
I should try to dig up the review I hand wrote on the South Africa book, but should probably acknowledge lost in a dusty bin somewhere....