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| A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World (Princeton Economic History of the Western World) | 
| Author: Gregory Clark
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  36 reviews
Sales Rank: 4474
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 440
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.3
ISBN: 0691121354
Dewey Decimal Number: 330.9
EAN: 9780691121352
ASIN: 0691121354
Publication Date: July 24, 2007
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| Customer Reviews:
 Fabulous September 8, 2007
5 out of 10 found this review helpful
If you are really interested in the Industrial Revolution, here is a book that will put to rest most of your questions, and leave holes for new research. A beautifully constructed argument. Clark calls the "take-off" the "great divergence." He puts the divergence down, in the end...to differences in the quality of labor. HOWEVER, he doesn't know exactly what these differences are. Evidence for his thesis: an analysis of the weaving trade, India and Britain. There is much more , though, before he gets to this point. A super enjoyable book, extremely readable,Clark does not let equations interfere with the threads of logic he unwinds--they are all put in an appendix. Read it.
A.Wilder
 Survival of the Richest August 26, 2007
117 out of 126 found this review helpful
The perennial question asked by economic historians is why some countries grow excedingly rich and others remain miserably poor. It is a question that writers of "big history" have asked: notably Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations (Bantam Classics), David S Landes in The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor, and Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. These works rely heavily on theory beyond the mere retelling of certain facts and events. It is in this tradition that Gregory Clark, economic historian at the University of California at Davis, presents the economic history of the the world. The underlying theory that informs his version is that social and possibly biological evolution explains economic growth. The specter of social darwinism haunts his imagination.
For Clark the critical stage of social evolution is when a society is able to emerge from the Malthusian trap of poverty. It is at this point where they diverge from the pack and actually experience social progress and economic growth.
Regarding the Malthusian trap, Clark argues that the well-being of the average person around 1800 was no better than the average hunter-gatherer 10,000 years earlier. According to Malthus' "Essay on the Principle of Population," with every technological advance that increases the efficiency of production, there is a corresponding increase in population, thus neutralizing any gains made in production. In short, there are just more mouths to feed. The principle being that the population only grows as fast as the food supply.
That was the case until the Industrial Revolution. After 1800, something happened in England that caused production to outpace population growth. It was the first time in history that a society actually escaped from the Malthusian trap. For the first time incomes and consumption per capita began to rise. To find out why this occurred, Clark undertook a study of wills in England going back hundreds of years. He discovered that the rich had twice as many offspring as the poor, thus they outpopulated the poor. The rich brought with them certain skills and behaviors such as literacy, numeracy, work discipline, deferral of gratification, etc., that eventually permeated the rest of society in a downwardly mobile fashion. This is truely an original hypothesis. It was this evolutinary shift, according to Clark, that triggered the Industrial Revolution and set England apart from other countries
Why did England take off and others did not? Why the Great Divergence? The phrase is taken from Kenneth Pomeranz's book The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy. which deals with the same subject. Clark asks why the gap between rich and poor countries went from 4:1 in 1800 to 50:1 today. His answer is that in countries such as China and Japan the rich did not produce enough offspring to spread their productive behaviors downward through the rest of the population. East Asian and other economies were not able to push their agarian economies out of the Malthusian trap.
The title of this book is a pun on the title of a Hemingway novel, suggesting that alms or aid to the poor will do them no good. Clark is in the camp of those who believe that a change in behavior or, in this case, an advancement in the evolutionary process will allow poor countries to emerge from poverty. The implications of this are very controversial, to say the least, and still very inconclusive. Nevertheless, it is an interesting explanation of economic history that will be debated for years to come.
Argument good, but takes it too far August 22, 2007
6 out of 13 found this review helpful
This is an interesting discussion of one of the factors of the industrial revolution and well worth a read. Like many books of this genre, it fails when it tries to make the case for being the only or pre-eminent factor. His attempts to dismiss other factors such as social and political developments are weak. What underlies the attempt to find a single factor seems to be the attempt to find a single solution to the problems of the bottom billion (yes, also the name of a book well worth a read). Unless China's one-child policy proves the only reason behind China's success, development is far more complicated and, unfortunately, not easily reproduced.
Though provoking, certainly, but correlation is not always causation. August 21, 2007
5 out of 7 found this review helpful
Everything that everyone has said and well worth the read. My only caveat: this text has a bit more technical material than some others, and the graphs and accompanying commentary may put off some readers. This work is akin to Guns, Germs, etc., but it is not as "easy" a read. You need to work at it.
Original, Fascinating, Thought Provoking August 10, 2007
44 out of 49 found this review helpful
This book is absolutely amazing, on a par with Diamond's Guns Germs and Steel.
The industrial revolution allowed England to escape what has been called the Malthusian Trap--a condition common to every pre-industrial society. In the Malthusian Trap, any recognizeable gain in wealth by a society would result in a slight increase in population. As the population would rise, however, living standards would go down, and the death rate would go up. For this reason, population growth remained at a glacial pace of 0.005% for thousands of years. Then the industrial revolution happened. For the first time, population and prospertiy could increase in lockstep, trending ever upwards over long periods of time.
By why did this happen in some places and not in others? Despite its many benefits, why has it proven to be so difficult to export the industrial model to other areas of the world? These are but a few of the questions that Clark addresses in his original and thought provoking book.
What I have taken away from this book is that a lot of good will and human effort has been wasted by not taking in to account the significant differences that exist between people and cultures. We falsely assume that the fruits of industrialization are so obviously desirable that other peoples should do whatever they have to do to make the necessary adaptations to reap its rewards. But we are largely ignorant of why this can't so easily be done. The industrial revolution came to be within the context of a certain unique culture, and it makes sense that it could not be easily duplicated among other people with different values and ways of life.
In attempting to explain the differences in wealth between one population and the next, Clark's approach is cultural. But here's the key: these cultural differences were shaped by selective pressures experienced by some peoples and not others. The conditions which gave rise to the industrialization of England were not present among other populations and are not even to this day. That is why it has proven to be be so difficult to duplicate elsewhere. His arguments in support of this thesis are clear, persuasive, original and rigorous. This book is a must read for anyone interested in understanding the monumental importantance of economic and cultural differences between cultures. The questions he raises adds a new dimension to ones perspective. I predict that at some point, when discussing solutions to the poverty which billions still confront, you will not be able to post a good argument without also being familiar with his.
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