A Farewell to Alms
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World is a 2007 book about economic history by Gregory Clark. It is published by Princeton University Press.
The book's title is a pun on Ernest Hemingway's novel, A Farewell to Arms.
Content
The book discusses the divide between rich and poor nations that came about as a result of the Industrial Revolution in terms of the evolution of particular behaviours that Clark claims first occurred in Britain. Prior to 1790, Clark asserts that man faced a Malthusian trap: new technology enabled greater productivity and more food, but was quickly gobbled up by higher populations.
In Britain, however, as disease continually killed off poorer members of society, their positions in society were taken over by the sons of the wealthy. In that way, according to Clark, less violent, more literate and more hard-working behaviour - middle-class values - were spread culturally and biologically throughout the population. This process of "downward social mobility" eventually enabled Britain to attain a rate of productivity that allowed it to break out of the Malthusian trap. Clark sees this process, continuing today, as the major factor why some countries are poor and others are rich.
