How important would you say the opening of three new (recently depopulated) continents were to the breakthrough in prosperity?
It seems we had four overlapping breakthroughs in agricultural productivity:
1) major improvements in productivity as illustrated by this and your last post.
2) the opening to Western Europeans of an order of magnitude more acreage, currently not being farmed in the Americas, Australia and various large islands
3) the introduction of new and substantially more productive crops (potatoes and corn) to Europe
4) the substitution of forest wood with coal (and eventually the replacement of pastureland for horses with oil for cars)
I believe that #2 did not create progress, but it did play a critical role in spreading progress, particularly to North America. This fundamentally shifted the relative balance of military power between free societies and unfree societies. This was critical to the outcome of the wars of the 20th Century (upcoming post)
I am less sure of the impact of #3. It definitely diversified the staple crops and increased nutrition. It also had a big impact on local cuisine.
My guess is that the history of progress would have been much the same without corn or potatos, but the New World would have been far less developed in 1500. Without those two crops, I doubt that agriculture could have been widespread in Mesoamerica and the Andes.
I would suggest that the opening of three new continents was probably essential to progress. Every prior era ran into hard Malthusian constraints. Minor improvements in productivity for the prior ten thousand years were quickly offset by corresponding increases in population with no net long term benefit per capita. After 1500 we got wave after wave of significant Malthusian "relaxers".
First we had centuries of open range expansion into some of the most productive land imaginable. Not only did the population have virtually unlimited open room for new farms, the very act of colonizing it made a significant reduction in population growth in the Europe they left.
Then the reverse introduction of potatoes and other crops doubled nutrition per acre for some of those left behind.
Add to that the benefit of higher agricultural productivity due to crop rotation and superior crops strains, then add the benefits of improved transportation and trade networks allowing specialization of crops to be grown in more productive places. Then deforestation was partly solved when wood was replaced with coal, then the livestock grain land to feed horses was replaced with coal, then iron tools and machinery and mechanized transportation, and so on.
We have what was always previously a vicious circle being replaced with a virtuous one.
For progress to emerge, humanity needed an extensive reprieve from the Malthusian curse. The new world, with an order of magnitude more land than available in Europe, gave us 400 years of lateral expansion. It also created new places for new colonies and states to emerge, thus allowing exit options for the old and new social experimentation for the immigrants. This was a one time opportunity which we managed to capitalize on.
I agree with all that, I just don't believe that potatoes, corn, and the New World was essential for progress to occur anywhere. I can see Northwest Europe inventing progress without those factors.
But this would have made progress far more disruptable by major wars on the European Continent. If progress were restricted to Northwest Europe, WW1, WW2, and the Cold war might have extinguished progress forever. Maybe also the Napoleonic wars.
A populous, prosperous, free, and militarily powerful USA was essential for winning those conflicts and ensuring that progress would keep spreading afterwards.
I agree with the US post, but have doubts about Europe's ability to sustain enough progress to have an IR and advance to human prosperity without the new landscapes of the new world. Obviously we are just arguing a hypothetical, but I think absent the discovery of the the Americas that:
1) Populations in Europe would have quickly caught up to higher agricultural productivity. This would force them to plow less productive fields, and force city dwellers back to the fields. It would further reduce the relative bargaining power of farmers and serfs and promote their further exploitation by landowners and the elite.
2) Without the formation of thousands of new offshoot colonies and cities and states, that the existing European states would have atrophied and continued to promote rent seeking and exploitation just like every other era since the dawn of agriculture. The new world created countless new laboratories for social experimentation, labs that fed back to the old world, but also competition for resources and people and social standing. In other words, the new world was also essential for organizational health and dynamism.
3) The discovery of the new world also shifted the cognitive world from respecting tradition and authority, to respecting empirical discovery, novelty and learning. (See David Wooten on the discovery of the scientific method). This wasn’t essential for igniting the IR, but it probably was for sustaining it.
The discovery/colonization of the new world and the Industrial Revolution were two of the most important events in all history. I would suggest that the fact that one followed the other and did so among the same players isn’t a coincidence.
Spain, Portugal, and to a lesser extent France played the dominant roles in exploration and colonization in the New World, but they were late to experience the Industrial Revolution. Nor do I think that they could have without England.
The reason is that England was a Commercial society, while Spain, Portugal, and France were Agrarian societies. They operated on fundamentally different principles.
I will go into more detail in a subsequent article, but I believe that Agrarian societies cannot transform into Industrial societies unless some other Commercial nation (in this case UK) goes through the Industrial Revolution. Then afterwards it is possible, but only after a delay.
I don’t think I disagree with your comment, but I need to clarify that necessary isn’t the same as sufficient. The overarching point is that Malthusian pressures (and elite exploitation) were always a huge headwind to progress. For almost half a millennium, they got eased a lot, compared to other eras for a handful of interacting reasons explored above. This was really helpful. It doesn’t guarantee an IR, but it helped ease the way to the prize, and one country grabbed the brass ring (the UK) followed quickly by several others who went on to improve on the template.
The new world didn’t just offer an easing of the Malthusian Curse, it also set off a historically unprecedented number of new colonies and states creating a plethora of new model variants on human social coordination. It also offered more bargaining power to farmers and workers as there were now 500 years of exit options.
300 years later we have new types of governance, new methods of science, better technology, steam power and mechanized production and travel, and the beginning of noticeable improvements in per capita GDP. In short we started getting substantially bigger and better organized complex adaptive problem solving societies.
Fossil fuels gave humanity huge amounts of controllable and scalable energy. This is far beyond the extra farm acreage that the New World represents. And it can be fed back into the agricultural system with nitrogen fertilizers, tractors, and other technologies.
If fossil fuels did not exist on planet Earth (which is a plausible counter-factual) then you are likely correct. The UK might have been able to sustain its Industrial Revolution by importing wood, but I think this practice had serious geographical constraints. And I seriously doubt that such a world could sustain industrializations in other nations.,
Fantastic article. Food is energy, we need energy to maintain homeostasis. As you points us, to innovate, first one has to survive.
The key distinction between the agricultural revolution and the industrial revolution was the unlocking of fossil fuels, energy that could power our machines and augment human/animal physical capabilities.
What I find interesting is that both were "energy" revolutions, even we do not call them that.
Yes, what many people do not realize is that before the Industrial Revolution. Agriculture required food as an input as well as an output. Farmers have to eat and so do their domesticated animals. It is only when agricultural methods are productive enough to create a substantial food surplus year-round that progress can occur.
Otherwise, you are just trapped in a Malthusian feedback loop.
It was only the agriculture of Commercial societies that we were able to break out. Only then was the Industrial Revolution possible.
Modern nutritionist have no idea what they are talking about. That basic diet of Meat Eggs Dairy products Vegetables and Fruit is all the body needs. Its obvious. Its what humans ate given the opportunity.
Now we have Nutritionusts and growing Chronic disease
How important would you say the opening of three new (recently depopulated) continents were to the breakthrough in prosperity?
It seems we had four overlapping breakthroughs in agricultural productivity:
1) major improvements in productivity as illustrated by this and your last post.
2) the opening to Western Europeans of an order of magnitude more acreage, currently not being farmed in the Americas, Australia and various large islands
3) the introduction of new and substantially more productive crops (potatoes and corn) to Europe
4) the substitution of forest wood with coal (and eventually the replacement of pastureland for horses with oil for cars)
Big questions.
I am going to be dealing with some of them in upcoming posts. All four of these were important developments, but here are my general thoughts:
I believe #1 and #4 were essential preconditions to progress. That is why they are on my Five Keys to Progress
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/the-five-keys-to-progress
I believe that #2 did not create progress, but it did play a critical role in spreading progress, particularly to North America. This fundamentally shifted the relative balance of military power between free societies and unfree societies. This was critical to the outcome of the wars of the 20th Century (upcoming post)
I am less sure of the impact of #3. It definitely diversified the staple crops and increased nutrition. It also had a big impact on local cuisine.
My guess is that the history of progress would have been much the same without corn or potatos, but the New World would have been far less developed in 1500. Without those two crops, I doubt that agriculture could have been widespread in Mesoamerica and the Andes.
I would suggest that the opening of three new continents was probably essential to progress. Every prior era ran into hard Malthusian constraints. Minor improvements in productivity for the prior ten thousand years were quickly offset by corresponding increases in population with no net long term benefit per capita. After 1500 we got wave after wave of significant Malthusian "relaxers".
First we had centuries of open range expansion into some of the most productive land imaginable. Not only did the population have virtually unlimited open room for new farms, the very act of colonizing it made a significant reduction in population growth in the Europe they left.
Then the reverse introduction of potatoes and other crops doubled nutrition per acre for some of those left behind.
Add to that the benefit of higher agricultural productivity due to crop rotation and superior crops strains, then add the benefits of improved transportation and trade networks allowing specialization of crops to be grown in more productive places. Then deforestation was partly solved when wood was replaced with coal, then the livestock grain land to feed horses was replaced with coal, then iron tools and machinery and mechanized transportation, and so on.
We have what was always previously a vicious circle being replaced with a virtuous one.
For progress to emerge, humanity needed an extensive reprieve from the Malthusian curse. The new world, with an order of magnitude more land than available in Europe, gave us 400 years of lateral expansion. It also created new places for new colonies and states to emerge, thus allowing exit options for the old and new social experimentation for the immigrants. This was a one time opportunity which we managed to capitalize on.
Thoughts?
I agree with all that, I just don't believe that potatoes, corn, and the New World was essential for progress to occur anywhere. I can see Northwest Europe inventing progress without those factors.
But this would have made progress far more disruptable by major wars on the European Continent. If progress were restricted to Northwest Europe, WW1, WW2, and the Cold war might have extinguished progress forever. Maybe also the Napoleonic wars.
A populous, prosperous, free, and militarily powerful USA was essential for winning those conflicts and ensuring that progress would keep spreading afterwards.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/the-united-states-is-indispensable
I agree with the US post, but have doubts about Europe's ability to sustain enough progress to have an IR and advance to human prosperity without the new landscapes of the new world. Obviously we are just arguing a hypothetical, but I think absent the discovery of the the Americas that:
1) Populations in Europe would have quickly caught up to higher agricultural productivity. This would force them to plow less productive fields, and force city dwellers back to the fields. It would further reduce the relative bargaining power of farmers and serfs and promote their further exploitation by landowners and the elite.
2) Without the formation of thousands of new offshoot colonies and cities and states, that the existing European states would have atrophied and continued to promote rent seeking and exploitation just like every other era since the dawn of agriculture. The new world created countless new laboratories for social experimentation, labs that fed back to the old world, but also competition for resources and people and social standing. In other words, the new world was also essential for organizational health and dynamism.
3) The discovery of the new world also shifted the cognitive world from respecting tradition and authority, to respecting empirical discovery, novelty and learning. (See David Wooten on the discovery of the scientific method). This wasn’t essential for igniting the IR, but it probably was for sustaining it.
The discovery/colonization of the new world and the Industrial Revolution were two of the most important events in all history. I would suggest that the fact that one followed the other and did so among the same players isn’t a coincidence.
I do not agree with your last point.
Spain, Portugal, and to a lesser extent France played the dominant roles in exploration and colonization in the New World, but they were late to experience the Industrial Revolution. Nor do I think that they could have without England.
The reason is that England was a Commercial society, while Spain, Portugal, and France were Agrarian societies. They operated on fundamentally different principles.
I will go into more detail in a subsequent article, but I believe that Agrarian societies cannot transform into Industrial societies unless some other Commercial nation (in this case UK) goes through the Industrial Revolution. Then afterwards it is possible, but only after a delay.
See the top right of this graphic:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/all-of-human-history-in-one-graphic
Also see how Agrarian societies stifled innovation:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/how-agrarian-societies-stifled-innovation
I don’t think I disagree with your comment, but I need to clarify that necessary isn’t the same as sufficient. The overarching point is that Malthusian pressures (and elite exploitation) were always a huge headwind to progress. For almost half a millennium, they got eased a lot, compared to other eras for a handful of interacting reasons explored above. This was really helpful. It doesn’t guarantee an IR, but it helped ease the way to the prize, and one country grabbed the brass ring (the UK) followed quickly by several others who went on to improve on the template.
The new world didn’t just offer an easing of the Malthusian Curse, it also set off a historically unprecedented number of new colonies and states creating a plethora of new model variants on human social coordination. It also offered more bargaining power to farmers and workers as there were now 500 years of exit options.
300 years later we have new types of governance, new methods of science, better technology, steam power and mechanized production and travel, and the beginning of noticeable improvements in per capita GDP. In short we started getting substantially bigger and better organized complex adaptive problem solving societies.
All of the above are valid points, but you miss the critical factor of widespread use of fossil fuels (the fifth Key to Progress)
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/rapidly-phasing-out-fossil-fuels
Fossil fuels gave humanity huge amounts of controllable and scalable energy. This is far beyond the extra farm acreage that the New World represents. And it can be fed back into the agricultural system with nitrogen fertilizers, tractors, and other technologies.
If fossil fuels did not exist on planet Earth (which is a plausible counter-factual) then you are likely correct. The UK might have been able to sustain its Industrial Revolution by importing wood, but I think this practice had serious geographical constraints. And I seriously doubt that such a world could sustain industrializations in other nations.,
I agree that fossil fuels were ALSO essential (note they were a major component of my first two comments above).
Fantastic article. Food is energy, we need energy to maintain homeostasis. As you points us, to innovate, first one has to survive.
The key distinction between the agricultural revolution and the industrial revolution was the unlocking of fossil fuels, energy that could power our machines and augment human/animal physical capabilities.
What I find interesting is that both were "energy" revolutions, even we do not call them that.
Yes, food is a type of energy and a type that is particularly important to animals (humans and otherwise).
You cannot understand Progress without focusing on Food and Energy.
Very true as they both relied on finding a higher energy return on energy invested.
Yes, what many people do not realize is that before the Industrial Revolution. Agriculture required food as an input as well as an output. Farmers have to eat and so do their domesticated animals. It is only when agricultural methods are productive enough to create a substantial food surplus year-round that progress can occur.
Otherwise, you are just trapped in a Malthusian feedback loop.
It was only the agriculture of Commercial societies that we were able to break out. Only then was the Industrial Revolution possible.
Great History
Modern nutritionist have no idea what they are talking about. That basic diet of Meat Eggs Dairy products Vegetables and Fruit is all the body needs. Its obvious. Its what humans ate given the opportunity.
Now we have Nutritionusts and growing Chronic disease