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| The Revolution Explained
"Industrious" Revolution
Synthesizing much of the gradual story of European development, Jan De Vries has embedded the Industrial Revolution in a larger "industrious revolution," a concept which among other things, helps dissolve a paradox. The grain-buying power of European day wages held very sharply between about 1430 and 1550, and it didn't return to 1430 levels until 1840 or later, depending on the place.
This could have occurred because people spent more hours per year working for the market, earning cash to pay for new possessions, as well as for stable amounts of their increasingly expensive bread. People probably had less leisure time, though there are complications here with how one defines leisure. They certainly spent less time making goods for their own households.
They specialized more, and they bought other goods. They began to buy bread that other people baked, candles that other people make, so on and so forth, and so many of their purchases "saved time," in modern parlance on domestic, chores.
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Street market and shops in London, early eighteenth century.
Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University |
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The Chinese story I'd argue, is surprisingly similar. The rice-buying power of a day's wages mostly fell, though with some interruptions, after about 1100. But nutrition did not seem to have worsened, nor to be inferior to that in Europe. Meanwhile, grain-deflated earnings in textile work and agriculture in Yangzi delta matched up well against England.
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Wealthy Chinese watching a performance in a teahouse. John Thomson, photographer, mid-nineteenth-century.
Columbia University Libraries |
Chinese life expectancies were comparable to England's, and so above those for most of the continent, until almost 1800. And since Chinese birth rates, contrary to mythology, appear to have been no higher than those of European between 1550 and 1850, and while population grew faster, this suggests that Chinese death rates were no higher, either.
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Tea became a popular social beverage in Europe.
Mary Evans Picture Library |
And for a long time, China also kept pace with Europe in nonessential kinds of consumption. Reconstructing some measurements of consumption, China circa 1750 stacks up reasonably well against Europe, and the Yangzi delta reasonably well against England. This is the case for two non-grain foods we can make reasonably good guesses about: tea and sugar. The Chinese edge in tea consumption is perhaps not surprising. Where does the stuff come from after all? The Chinese parity, or in fact better-than-parity in sugar consumption circa 1750, is quite surprising, though, and in cloth—probably the second biggest item of expenditure—we see a similar pattern circa 1750. China as a whole seems comparable to Europe, and the Yangzi Delta to England.
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Emperors and Reign Periods (PDF)
