scholarly journals A Three-Decade 'Kuhnian' History of the Antebellum Puzzle: Explaining the Shrinking of the US Population at the Onset of Modern Economic Growth

Author(s):  
John Komlos
1964 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 377-381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sydney Crawcour

The fact that England, the home of the Industrial Revolution and modern economic growth, was also a leading shipping and trading nation, at one time prompted the notion that flourishing overseas trade and modern economic growth are somehow related. There are, of course, plenty of examples in European history of once flourishing trading nations which failed to industrialize. Spain, Portugal, the Hanseatic ports, and the Italian trading cities never became centres of industry. Moreover, such comparatively industrialized areas as Czechoslovakia and Prussia were not leading trading centres.


Author(s):  
Lee A. Craig

Since the late 18th century the long-run trend in economic growth—conventionally measured by real gross domestic product, income, and wages—has been positive in the United States and throughout Europe. However, in the 19th century, many Western countries, including the United States, experienced stagnation and even cyclical downturns in the biological standard of living—as measured by, for example, the expectation of life and adult stature—thus creating the “antebellum puzzle,” so named because the downturn began in the decades before the US Civil War. This puzzle suggests that industrialization and modern economic growth were accompanied by an increase in inequality and a decrease in the consumption of net nutrients.


Capitalisms ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 128-151
Author(s):  
David Washbrook

The concept of capitalism has always been subject to multiple meanings. The definition adopted in The Cambridge History of Capitalism is particularly broad. It makes ‘capitalism’ difficult to distinguish from sustained economic growth and/or progress towards modern economic growth. It also obscures the relationship of labour to capital and promotes the national economy as the natural arena in which discrete histories of capitalism should be written. However, in the case of India, there are other angles to consider. If labour were given a central role in the definition of ‘capitalism’, a very different set of issues becomes apparent. Moreover, if capitalism were understood, from the first, as a transnational set of forces, India’s supposed marginality in its genesis becomes illusory. India played a key strategic role in the evolution of the global capitalist system enmeshed in the British Empire. This essay explores these other sides of capitalism’s history in India.


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