Late Victorian and Early Twentieth Century Economic Forward-Leaps and Collapses – How a Select Small Population of Nations Escaped Their Destinies for Better or for Worse

     Recent scholarship by Salvatore Babones and James Mahoney provides strong evidence that the relative ranking of nations in terms of economic development and standards of living remain relatively fixed over long periods of time. Nations that were rich in 1600 tend to be still rich in 1800 and 2010. The same holds for nations that were poor. The advantages that pertained to rich nations in the era of the Reformation have reproduced themselves up through the present day despite changes in modes of production and dominant technologies. There are a handful of exceptions , but they are just that – exceptions.

     That said – these exceptions are of fundamental analytical importance, because they identify the key to what was essential to obtaining or maintaining core status in the various eras of capitalism. This paper identifies nations that had disproportionately high or disproportionately low economic growth from 1870-1950 – disproportionate given their level of development in 1870. Autocorrelation levels are high – and only a small set of nations show non-trivial differences in ranking from their 1870 position. Most of these tend to be nations that do NOT receive a lot of attention in traditional “grand macrosociological” histories of the evolution of the world system. England, France, Germany and Japan – traditional centerpieces of historical comparative sociological discussions make no appearance. Venezuela, Switzerland, Finland, Egypt and India all have stories to tell.

     What seem to be the common themes? The rise of petroleum was extremely important. Not all petro-nations were able to make use of their resource – but those who did saw dramatic forward leaps. Debt crises were devastating. Some nations never recovered from the international debt crisis of the 1870s. The additional roles of arbitrage, war and colonial administration are considered.