Atlas of Material Life : Northwestern Europe and East Asia, 15th to 19th Century.

FRONTCOVER -- TABLE OF CONTENTS -- A BRIEF INTRODUCTION -- GEOGRAPHY AND DEMOGRAPHY -- Sizes -- Physical geography -- Weather and climate -- The tyranny of distance -- The variability and unpredictability of life in the pre-industrial world -- Population and population density -- Life expectancy, health and disease -- Violence -- ENERGY -- Human labour power -- The labour power of animals -- Firewood -- Peat -- Coal -- Gunpowder -- Watermills -- Windmills -- Water and wind and their role in transport -- RESOURCES -- Land -- Animals -- Animal manure and night soil -- Wood -- Metals: iron and bullion -- Frontiers and ghost acreages -- AGRICULTURE -- The agricultural labour force, the share of agriculture in GDP and urbanisation -- The importance of food in budgets -- Agricultural productivity -- Agricultural systems: China's rice economy -- Agricultural systems: Great Britain's wheat economy -- What about Japan? -- EXCHANGES -- Migration -- Intercontinental migration -- Slave trades and the importance of other forms of 'coerced migration'. -- The demographic impact of European overseas migration -- Chinese and Japanese overseas emigrations -- The Columbian Exchange: flora, fauna and diseases -- Flows and stocks of bullion -- Monetary systems -- Technologies and relative scarcities -- Intercontinental commodity trade -- A modern world-system? -- A sinocentric alternative to Eurocentrism? -- Intercontinental trade as an almost entirely European affair -- STAGNATION AND GROWTH -- The tension between population and resources -- Positive checks -- Preventive checks: The (Western) European marriage pattern and East Asian alternatives -- Sustainability in Tokugawa Japan -- A world without growth? -- Malthusian constraints? -- Efflorescences.

Modern economic growth before the Industrial Revolution? The case of Song China, 976-1279 as compared to developments under the Ming and Qing -- Modern economic growth before the Industrial Revolution? The case of the Dutch Republic during its Golden Age -- Sprouts of pre-modern growth? -- GDP, wages and incomes -- Inequality, poverty and famine -- Consumption -- SOURCES OF GROWTH? CHANGES IN PRODUCTION AND TRANSPORT -- Increased production and productivity in agriculture -- Industrious revolutions -- Increased investment and (micro-)innovations -- Improved human capital -- A better measure of reality -- Improved transport -- Transport over land -- Transport over water -- Shipping on the open seas -- SOURCES OF GROWTH? MARKETS AND STATES -- Specialisation and market extension -- Global market integration -- A rise of capitalism? -- A decline of the commons? -- A decline of the guilds? -- A rise of free labour? -- Capitalists, capitalism and the state -- State formation, state capacity and empire -- State formation and state capacity -- Military strength -- Empire building versus imperial disintegration -- THE GREAT DIVERGENCE -- The emergence of a new economic regime -- New energy and new technology -- Railways and steam shipping -- The wider impact of the new economic regime -- Great Divergence and fossil-fuel ghost acreage -- Exchanges -- Migration during the Great Divergence -- Great Divergence, import ghost acreage and Great Specialisation -- Different trajectories, change and continuity -- Investment and Great Divergence -- The case of Great Britain -- Did the Dutch Republic, Qing China or Tokugawa Japan have sufficient financial resources to industrialise? -- REVIEW AND REFLECTION -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- BACKCOVER.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2024. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.