Jones, Eric, The European Miracle: Environment, Economies, and Geopolitics in the
History of Europe and Asia, 3rd ed. (2003), 301p.
In this study, Jones sought to answer the question: "Why did modern states and
economies develop first in the peripheral and late-coming culture of Europe?" Adam
Smith, Friedrich Hegel, Karl Marx, Max Weber, Immanuel Wallerstein and many recent
historians also asked this question but Jones’s book has the merit of being relatively
short, well written and engaging. His study has become widely known in the debate of
why Europe experienced the first industrial revolution and became so rich. First
published in 1981, the third edition of 2003 includes a new preface and afterword.
According to Joel Mokyr, “it seems to have attracted the most attention and has been
made into the whipping boy of those who have resented what they viewed as
historiographical triumphalism, eurocentricity, and even racism.” Many historians believe
that Jones overemphasized the differences in economic development between Europe and
the more advanced non-European areas, especially in Asia. This question has been
labeled the ‘divergence and convergence” debate. Studies show that around 1820 the
richest countries had a wealth advantage of about 3:1 over poor countries, while by the
21st century, the ratio between the rich and poor was about 30:1. Why this happened
remains unresolved, but what is generally agreed on is that something fundamental
happened in Europe around and after 1800 that first produced a world of rich and poor
countries, and since then many countries beyond Europe have joined the rich countries
while the distance between the rich and poor has become greater.
Jones argues that the foundation of European success was laid between about
1400 and 1800 and must be seen in its combination of physical resources and the
development of a market economy, as explained by Adam Smith and classical
economics, and the interaction of these factors with geopolitics. The first section is a
broad comparative discussion emphasizing agriculture and demography in the early
period. He suggested that one of the key factors was that a relatively unique European
pattern of nuclear families was able to keep population growth at level just below the
maximum that could be supported by resources through restricting births with later
marriages and by investing more capital in the skills and education of their children.
Moreover, Europe was able to hold back more land for animal husbandry and woodland
so that its consumption levels became higher than in Asia and this also allowed
Europeans to overcome disasters more successfully. The next section is devoted to
Europe. Here emphasizes three main factors: the long-term diffusion of Asian technology
to Europe before 1400; European acquisition of relatively unpopulated land resources in
the Americas and Oceana, which he calls ‘ghost acres’; and the successful role the
European states played in promoting economic development. The latter was made
possible by the existence of competing European states that promoted competition and
innovation, as opposed to large central empires, While a good deal of this competition
was wasted in war and violence, state competition also taught Europeans how to attract
and keep entrepreneurial talent by protecting private property and enforcing contracts
through civil law. He also explains the issues that inhibited economic development
elsewhere, such as poor soil and disease in Africa, isolation from the rest of the World in
the Americas, and how Asia used up its resources on its growing population. Finally, he
has separate chapters on the Ottoman, Mughal, and Ming-Manchu empires and how each
obstructed economic growth. His discussion of how China came within a “hairs breadth”
of an industrial revolution in the fourteenth century but then turned to a project of internal
colonization and expansion is especially interesting.
Some critics have found Jones’ broad and boldly stated generalizations
unconvincing. R. B. Wong, for example, argued in his important 1997 study, China
Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience, that the
dynamics of the Chinese and European economies were quite similar before 1800.
Kenneth Pomeranz maintained, in his influential study, The Great Divergence: China,
Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (2000), that easily available coal
in Britain, and its relative inaccessibility in China, provided Europe with a key resource
that stimulated further economic innovation. More recently, historians, such as Robert
Allen, have argued that it was primarily higher wages in Britain combined with cheap
coal that made the first industrial revolution British. Others have accused Jones’ of being
not only Eurocentric but also racist. One of the interesting aspect of the debate has been
that much of the focus has been on the relative availability and access to physical
resources, such as coal and land, while the issues of the intellectual and institutional
milieus of the ‘West and the Rest’ have been less prominent than in earlier years. Joel
Mokyr’s work emphasizes the importance of these factors through a reinterpretation of
the intellectual context for Europe’s technological success in his Gifts of Athena:
Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy (2002) and The Enlightened Economy: An
Economic History of Britain 1700-1850 (2009). The ‘divergence and convergence’
debate remains very much alive and Jones’ contribution remains a good introduction to
many of the key issues.