Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor - The Wealth and Poverty of Nations

The author attempts to cover the effects of culture and religion on economic develop from roughly medieval times to the near present, and in most respects does an excellent job. If you have ever wondered by Switzerland prospers while the comparable sized and resource rich Ghana fails, or why China was the leading nation on earth in 1,000 AD and an impoverished mess in 1900, this book will provide good insight.

The author is a little weak in some areas of economics and to fill in the gaps I would recommend reading Hernando de Soto's "The Mystery of Capital" (ISBN 046501615) and Tom Bethell "The Noblest Triumph" (ISBN0312210833), plus perhaps Rosenberg & Birdzell's "How The West Grew Rich" (ISBN 0465031099). Taken together, one can became about as well informed as possible on the subject.

One caveat, as with any book attempting to cover a long sweep of history, it gets to be a bit tedious and repetitious at times. This is not casual reading.

The more we study about history and economics, the better we can then analyze our current life and political/economic situation. This is not just Democrat versus Republican, but also in matters such as Food & Drug Administration, Environmental Protection Agency, and the effects of powerful lobbies on our elected leaders and judges. Are any of these listed and yet others good or bad? Are they doing short term good but long term damage? On the other hand, are the indeed doing long term good? Books like these give you better insight and ability to analyze. This book is for learning, not for mere entertainment. (I hope nobody is opposed to learning!)

Thanks to David Landes for helping me better understand the forces at play that shaped the world I know today. This is a timely (and possibly, timeless) work--time will tell! I found this book very refreshing and enlightening. I found his quest for truth encouraging. Moreover, I did not find it too detailed or rambling. It just takes more than a few words to say some things. And, I might add, his fine, conversational writing style makes the subject (and length of the book) less intimidating. By the way, there is no academically holy style, whatever we've been told. (Frankly, I had to struggle with that for the first hundred pages) Finally, this is an area that I have studied from many other perspectives over the past 35 years. The book explains that fragmentation and carried my thinking (sometimes kicking and screaming) to a better place.

This book purports to answer one of the most fundamental questions of all: Why have some nations achieved relative wealth and others relative poverty? The answer Landes provides one with is rigorous and well agrued. In a nut-shell this book sees economic growth occuring as a consequence of: 1.)some new technology; 2.)one area thus spurting ahead; 3.)then catchup by the laggards resulting in 4.) long-run convergence.
It is refreshing that the author provides room for luck in his method of analysis (no silly 'dialectic' here); for example the Dutch betting on Indonesia and spices (used, incidently, mainly as a perservative) while Great Britain and France chanced India and textiles. The latter ending up as the more profitable. With the benefit of hindsight it could seem that the outcome of the example was in some way determined (some malign capitalist ploy? ). But, I am sure that at the time, for the players, it certainly did not seem like that! (For a clear and concise destruction of determinism in historiography see Karl Popper's "The Poverty of Historicism").
There is no doubt that many reviewers dislike this magnificent book.
Reality can be a bitter pill to swallow. But this is Landes's topic: HOW THINGS ARE. Now, I know that due to the cancer that is political correctness (a creed that breeds amoral, intolerent bigots by the lorry-load), many are uneasy with the truth: That the West IS dominant, that capitalism HAS triumphed, that Imperalism spread much that was good, that much of the latter was concerned with profit (and there is nothing wrong with this - "God, Gold and Glory" to quote Landes) and that socialism HAS failed (completely).
Like it or not this is simply the honest-to-God truth.
Amen.

I enjoyed the book, even when I disagreed with Landes. I was, however, disappointed - apart from some interesting anecdotes here and there, I learned little that I did not know already (and I am neither an economics, nor a history major).
The project Landes took on is ambitious; he wants to explain - and without too many numbers, please! - why some countries are so rich, and some so poor. He does a decent job in explaining Europe/USA, and a reasonable job in explaining the poverty of sub-Saharan Africa. But his style is to talk about issues from 100,000 feet above sea-level. If you are interested in economics (even only an amateur one), or are a policy-maker, this approach, and the book, are utterly useless. East Asia and Japan are addresses, but in disappointingly shallow fashion. Latin America merits a similar fate. China's past gets mentioned; its present is either not mentioned at all, or completely glossed over. India gets passing mention.
The book's historical sections are splendid; his language, even in criticism, is graceful. But the book has an air of having been hurried towards the latter portions, and all-too-leisurely in the initial, historical sections.
There's also a theme running through the book that will jar the optimists. It is this: culture is destiny. Maybe you can do an end-run around Ricardo by creating your own comparative advantages using protections; maybe you can dodge Adam Smith too, by constructive involvement of the state in industry, but you can not dodge who you are, nor can you easily change that state of affairs. Disturbing thought.

Landes provides a very interesting look at the history of nations and how their economies developed. The book goes back hundreds of years in explaining current matters that we almost forget to question. (Why is India so poor? and Europe so rich?) The answers are not simple so the book occasionally gets too complicated. In the end though the book is entertaining, enlightening and even an investment of your time. Also, too be read - Guns, Germs and Steel. A great prologue to this which will bring yet another layer to the debate.

Landes takes on a difficult task. His perspective is conceptual, which is not intelligible (or visible) to the relational Left. His theme that conceptuality facilitates wealth production, and that there are cultural components (and perhaps genetic components as well) to such conceptuality is of course an anethma to politically correct indoctrinates. And in predictable moral inversion, such idealogy-codependents attack him using the ideology club. It is interesting to note that Landes is not a conservative politically and does not discuss politics. His prose is very good, a dry subject was made interesting to me. It is more history than economics but that is the one thing that can save economics from the dismal stereotype. Those who view the world through ideas and concepts will enjoy the book. Those who are insecure in such a world will hold it in contempt as you see from the reviews. Ideas and concepts in general are a threat to relationships these people need to secure their sanity. They hate all the David Landes' of the world.

The Wealth & Poverty of Nations is David Landes attempt to answer the question of what has caused some countries to advance economically while others have been left behind and mired in poverty. While Dr. Landes makes a worthy effort the arguments that he advances ultimately come up short.
The central argument advanced in the book is that it is a country's culture (loosely defined) which is the determining factor in whether or not a country advances economically and scientifically. If Dr. Landes wanted to show that culture and economic development are intertwined he needn't have written this book - that fact should be obvious to anyone who is at all observant of the world around them. The real question, which is never addressed in the book, is which is the cart and which is the horse. Were what Landes considers to be the virtues of Northern European culture - openness to new ideas, industriousness, and scientific curiosity - really the driving force behind the Industrial Revolution or were they the result of economic changes that had been set in motion by other historical forces?
The economic history of the United States clearly shows that this book may indeed have the cart before the horse. The northern and southern United States shared the same language, religion, and culture. Yet during the 19th century the North industrialized to the point that is was the equal of any industrialized nation in the world while the South remained a backward agricultural region. If culture is the determining factor, why the difference? Again if everything is so dependent on culture why has Britain become such a laggard? Did the culture which presumably propelled Britain to its status as the most advanced nation in the world in the 18th and 19th centuries somehow mutate into a different type of culture which has now reduced Britain to an also ran? Clearly, Dr. Landes's thesis needs some work.
The book also suffers from several lapses in intellectual rigor that one simply wouldn't expect from someone of the author's stature. The correlation that Landes makes between Asian countries use of chopsticks and their successful microelectronics industries is bizarre to say the least. His statement in another part of the book that "In general, the best clue to a nation's growth and development potential is the status and role of women. This is the greatest handicap of Muslim Middle Eastern societies today" ignores Japan, where the status of women is not all that much better than in Muslim countries, not to mention what the status of women was in England or the United States during their eras of industrialization.
The reason I am not harsher on this book is Landes's willingness to mention what just about every other academic, IMF and World Bank advisor, politician, and pundit considers sacrilegious - that during their period of rapid development and industrialization all countries pursued protectionist policies. This includes England, Germany, France, the United States, and Korea to name only the more famous examples. Japan, as Landes points out, was prohibited by foreign intervention from instituting protective tariffs but more than compensated by developing non-tariff barriers to imports.
Landes gives much evidence to support the argument that protecting your own market is a necessary, although certainly not sufficient, condition for development and it is clear that he supports it. Unfortunately , for reasons of not being drawn and quartered by his colleagues in academia, he can never bring himself to state so explicitly. It is disappointing that in a book where he relishes taking on sacred cow after sacred cow he is unwilling to take on the biggest of them all in modern economic theory - free trade. However, he at least takes on the ridiculous arguments about comparative advantage. He cleverly, and accurately, points out present day Germans are better off due to their 19th Century ancestors not having followed the advise of economists to stick with their "comparative advantage" of growing wheat and trading it for British manufactures.
While I obviously do not agree with the central thesis of the book it is a thought-provoking look at a very important topic and readers of all backgrounds and points of view will gain new insights. For that reason this is a book which should be read.

I have only praise for this volume. Firstly narrative: It read like a thriller; hard to put down. Secondly content: the scope is vast with fine detail in addition to excellent references for further reading. Landes has combined real world knowledge with scholarly research to produce a tome that is immensely readable and rewarding. It is hard not to recommend his work to others. The book is written without regard for unnecessary political correctness; fearless. He clearly addresses aspects of recent history that is usually mired in vagueness and doublespeak. Wisdom and humour shine throughout. It reads like the author was able to magically place himself in various regions at different time periods, observing the proceedings and the back stabbing politics that normally accompany these historical events. And best of all, do look forward to the trivia candy strewn along in the book. For example, while making a point on the relevance of the State, he informs us that in Ottoman Turkey firefighting in the hands of private enterprise would respond efficiently when the alarm sounded. They competed with one another and negotiated with the house owner on the spot. As the negotiation proceeded, the fire burned higher and the stakes diminished. In light of the rewarding experience in reading this book, I am prepared to overlook his statement on the advantage Asians have in fine electronic assembly due to the inherent skill learnt by wielding a pair of chopsticks!

I enjoyed this book, it gives snapshots of various civilizations around the globe. It confirmed history that I have already studied, and inspires new research into understanding the wealth of nations. The authors prose is untraditional but compelling. His mixing of language of the countries within context of the disscussion adds flavor to the reading.

While the book presents some facts that may have influenced the wealth of nations at certain times, everything changes with time: nowadays we see the affluence of new powers in Asia (e.g. China) while many European countries face recession. Landes over-concentrates his theory on religion missing more important points. As example, if you compare countries with catholic majorities, you see a vast difference in social and economic outcomes - just compare France against Portugal, Chile against Venezuela and so on. Prosperity comes as a result of hard work, strong judicial systems, freedom to start companies, etc. On the other hand, technological advances came more through Enlightenment than through Reformation: religious prejudice was not restrained to "Catholic" as we nowadays observe in some protestant Creationists who believe that Earth has 10000 years. Also, Darwin had a hard time to convince religious people about his theory of evolution. Countries who still merge religion with the State have a tendency to curb creativity and restrain progress and John Locke was right when he said that religion was a personal matter and not a matter for a State. In summary, the logic of the book may not apply to our world today and does not address the issue of economic differences in countries with same religion - in this sense, the Economist does a much better job when it points out the defficiencies in different countries and preaches freedom and rationalism as a way to progress.

This book is a commentary, and however amusing it may be to some, it is not "good history".
Landes brutally manipulates his citations throughout to support his views, which are so eurocentric and narrow minded that they are frequently insulting to anyone of intelligence. Scholors aware of relevent facts so obviously ignored will be frustrated, and those without this level of knowledge will be frightfully misinformed.
Don't let the number of citations fool you; this is not reliable information despite the author's Harvard credentials. In an effort to sell another book, he bulldozes over the truth and fertilizes his garden of bunk to feed his sensationalized thesis.

History analysis will always require knowledge, basic fairness and certain degree of logic, to properly dig into all the conflicting sources.
Mr Landes may well have the very first of all these basic points, so as some fairness to his account of history, if just for a few parts of his long book.
On the third one, we can only wonder how can he possibly assume as certain, facts based on such thin historical support, to say the least. The whole book seems filled with an amaizingly unsupported conclusions, varnished with a coat of historic references.
Regretably, !84 pages! of bibliography does not necessary add to some historic logic.
Is not that WASP thinking is wrong. It's the need to force conclusions, 500 pages filled with them, which may well be.

Whilst Landes may strive to convince us of what the keys to economic wealth and growth are; we must remember that he is a historian and The Wealth and Poverty of Nations is history. Culture, economic geography, social conditions, and other impediments to economics are increasingly irrelevant in a new millienium of hypercompetition, globalisation and cyberspace-driven economics.Read Landes about the past but he is no tour guide for the future. The rules that govern the past do not govern the future. It is a new ball game from here on.

This book is a commentary, and however amusing it may be to some, it is not "good history".
Landes brutally manipulates his citations throughout to support his views, which are so eurocentric and narrow minded that they are frequently insulting to anyone of intelligence. Scholors aware of relevent facts so obviously ignored will be frustrated, and those without this level of knowledge will be frightfully misinformed.
Don't let the number of citations fool you; this is not reliable information despite the author's Harvard credentials. In an effort to sell another book, he bulldozes over the truth and fertilizes his garden of bunk to feed his sensationalized thesis.

History analysis will always require knowledge, basic fairness and certain degree of logic, to properly dig into all the conflicting sources.
Mr Landes may well have the very first of all these basic points, so as some fairness to his account of history, if just for a few parts of his long book.
On the third one, we can only wonder how can he possibly assume as certain, facts based on such thin historical support, to say the least. The whole book seems filled with an amaizingly unsupported conclusions, varnished with a coat of historic references.
Regretably, !84 pages! of bibliography does not necessary add to some historic logic.
Is not that WASP thinking is wrong. It's the need to force conclusions, 500 pages filled with them, which may well be.

Whilst Landes may strive to convince us of what the keys to economic wealth and growth are; we must remember that he is a historian and The Wealth and Poverty of Nations is history. Culture, economic geography, social conditions, and other impediments to economics are increasingly irrelevant in a new millienium of hypercompetition, globalisation and cyberspace-driven economics.Read Landes about the past but he is no tour guide for the future. The rules that govern the past do not govern the future. It is a new ball game from here on.

Adam Smith, a Scots Protestant from Kirkcaldy*, beat a German Jew, Karl Marx, in the world's heavyweight ideological championships.

Goodbye Communism, which we all loved when we were young and naive, and welcome back Capitalism - for good or bad.

That's the bedrock approach of this book and, as a proud Scotsman, I basically go along with it.

We should not be surprised, as Scots are hard-headed realists who know that the only way you will find an earthly paradise (real or mental) is through your own efforts, often helped by a wee dram of whisky, rather than ideology.

Landes' title is based on Smith's "Wealth of Nations". Unfortunately, it has the kind of irritating sub-title that American publishers love as though they have discovered the meaning of life: "Why Some are So Rich and Some are So Poor."

Landes is one of those economist/historians who charges through the centuries and across continents in such a suspiciously fast way that I wonder whether he actually has all this knowledge at hand or if he has just set a course and got his assistants to do the spade work and come up with the raw data he uses.

Having said all that, this is an entertaining book in which Landes stands up for capitalism and western ideas and presents the world's winners and losers as he sees them. He lightens the theme by giving lots of personal references and, at times, is quite acerbically amusing.

It is not a particularly easy read and I spent almost a year getting to the end as I found it more digestible in little bites than as a whole.

Even if you don't agree with the author's views, it is worth reading and is a good counterblast to David Harvey's unconvincing apologia for Marxism "The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism."

* A wee town across the Firth of Forth from Edinburgh for those who are not in the know and where I once lived.

This book is interesting but very disappointing/misleading at the same time, and even annoying sometimes. In some way, the author was too ambitions and eventually did not deliver.

What is interesting:
the question that the book tried to answer is fascinating,
the stories of rise and fall of various empires are also interesting

What is disappointing:
the book is really incoherent, the analysis are shallow and not convincing,
many facts are questionable, which clouds the main theme of the book

What is annoying:
I don't mind reading a book which is not politically correct, but the author went too far
in suggesting that the American Indians deserved their fate because of their human sacrifice, that
the rise of Taiwan and Korea was due to the fact that they were once colonized by the Japaneses,

As the store readers may note this is a controversial book, generating more than 140 reviews since it was first published in 1998. The continuing interest is due at least in part to its promotion by some political conservatives as an answer to books like Guns, Gems, and Steel by Jared Diamond. Indeed the very relevance of this book to contemporary policy-making is the fuel that maintains the flames of a healthy debate between those on the Left and Right. Landes' arguments are forceful and convincing as far as they go and his book is essential reading for every student of world history and economics. Whether his model takes us ultimately in the direction we as a civilization really want to follow is a more subtle and profound question.

First, let's refute some false charges against Landes. He is not a racist, or an apologist for capitalist exploitation, or an ethno-centrist. He fully acknowledges the influence that geography and natural resources have on a nation's development potential and his critique of European colonialism is devastating. He completely rejects the theory of comparative advantage and long sections of the book are devoted to describing the exploitation of women and children in the early industrial periods of England and Japan.

Landes is equally critical of forces that restrict or deny freedom of thought, showing clearly how they held back nations that should have played a more dominant role in world economics. In the case of European development the single most important villain was the Catholic Church but authoritarian and totalitarian regimes of all stripes come in for condemnation.

In a nutshell Landes argues that cultural values like honesty, thrift, initiative, respect for property rights, and openness to new ideas are the key determinants of whether nations succeed or fail economically. We've heard this argument before and Landes explicitly acknowledges his debt to Max Weber, the nineteenth century sociologist who popularized the idea of the `Protestant ethic' as a historical force.

China is a major test case for Landes. Despite an impressive lead in technology, from gunpowder to printing, during the early years of European expansion, China failed to take advantage of that lead and came under European domination. The problem was not a lack of technical ability on the part of the Chinese but the fact that the nation was controlled by an imperial court that had no interest in using practical knowledge. The people at the top had everything they needed and saw no reason to allow local entrepreneurs to develop a free market economy. Such an economy might create local power centers which could challenge central authority so all such efforts were quashed before they could begin.

The centralized totalitarian rule of Chairman Mao in the twentieth century can be viewed as just a modern manifestation of this continuing characteristic of Chinese civilization. When, after Mao's death, the communists changed course and decided that capitalism was not so bad after all, the result has been the fastest growing economy in the world, fueled by foreign investors who had enough confidence that they would see a return on their investment. All of which seems to prove Landes' argument that initiative, openness to new economic (but not political) ideas, etc. bring wealth to a society just about every time.

At least for some in the society. The problem for emerging economic giants like China and India is that only one in five, chiefly city dwellers, enjoy the fruits of their society's newfound prosperity. As to how to solve this problem of equitable distribution or the problem of workers who lose their jobs to cheaper labor markets overseas Landes admits he has no answers.

Thus, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations is a splendid analysis of world economic development up until the beginning of the 21st century but it does not address the really profound problems now emerging. In particular it says nothing about the coming revolution on the horizon brought about by genetic engineering, robotics, and nanotechnology. Nor does it address the equally important issue of global economic fragility due to extreme interdependence and complexity. For these the key books are The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph Tainter, arguably the most important book of the 20th century; Collapse: How Societies Choose to Succeed or Fail by Jared Diamond; and, if one is up to a darker but nonetheless carefully reasoned analysis, The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler.

Society is far more fragile than most Americans realize. This reviewer, having lived and worked in places like Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, El Salvador and many others, knows from first hand experience that the civilization we take for granted is a frightfully thin veneer. Once shattered it cannot be easily restored. Nor should we be lulled into the false belief that it could never happen here. We have only to look at our government's grossly incompetent response to a catastrophe affecting just a handful of states (Hurricane Katrina) to realize the impossibility of an effective response to a catastrophe national in scope.

Which is why The Wealth and Power of Nations and the others cited above are so important. Heaven forbid that an economic or natural catastrophe should thrust upon us global political and economic disintegration but an honest analysis must admit the possibility. Should that happen we may hope that the wisdom and insights contained in books like these will guide those who survive toward a new, wiser, more responsible, and more gentle civilization.

Here is an interesting book about the history of "economic development". If you have never read a book about European Exceptionalism and Eurocentricity, here is a book for you. The book is a long history of European "success" and "the rest" "failure". It is about how something intrinsic about European culture permitted Europe to advance further than the rest. "Culture makes all the difference," Landes says. And the culture that makes all the difference is the Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture. Basically, the book is about a revival or Max Weber's Protestant ethic. Yet, this protestant ethic is also applied to places such as Japan whose "development" experience has nothing to do do with Protestantism. What I like is that when he gets to Africa, the culture centered argument is dropped. For him, the cause African underdevelopment include the distortions of colonialism as well as (in the beginning of the book, the curse of the environment. Of course he talks a little bit about the African lack of good governance, which can imply some kind of political culture that protestantism can create.

Although I refute Landes' argument about the causes of development and underdevelopment, I found the writer to be an interesting storyteller. It seems like he know how to talk. It is that kind of book that can put you to sleep feeling like you've read something new about something that you already knew. If you don't know anything else, and especially if you're of European origin, it can make you think that there is something special about you that the rest of humanity does not and can't even have.

The book should be read, but with caution. An interesting companion to this book should be Andre Gunder Frank's Reorient or at least James M Blaut's article "Environmentalism and Eurocentrism". With these two works, the book can be an interesting and an easy read. I recommend this book if it is read with the recommended companions.

I thoroughly enjoyed Professor Landes' attempt at explaining a vast and difficult subject. Agreed, he at times strayed from explanation into storytelling, but they were all enlightening, well-told stories. His point of view is well-supported and refreshing in it's open dismissal of politically popular opinions as such. Don't be fooled into thinking that this is a work of hardboiled, statistically-sound scholarship, though; his conclusions are anything but incontrivertible. Nevertheless, as a survey of the vast body of knowledge Dr. Landes is privy to after his years of study, it is a wonderful statement of his personal conclusions on a problem that absorbs all of mankind, whether they realize it or not.

This book provides an OK overview of the divergent economic histories of Europe, Asia, the Americas, and Africa. The author basically argues that Europe (and now the US) has triumphed in economic competition primarily because of superior culture, economic policies, and institutions. As a pretty conservative believer in the need for free markets and other spurs to innovation and effort, I can support that. However, the author constantly overgeneralizes and presents his own ill-informed prejudices as substantiated analysis. The real kicker is this: he claims the recent success of Taiwanese and Korean firms in high-tech manufacturing is due to manual dexterity gained from years of eating with chopsticks.
For a much more worthwhile (if intellectually challenging) book on this subject, read Michael Porter's "Competitive Advantage of Nations." After reading that book, you will feel like you really learned something profound.

I found Landes' opinion to be just that--his opinion. An interesting opinion, although it seemed to be backed up more by anecdotal evidence than hard data. But then there's not a lot of hard data on the subject he's dealing with: namely, why did Western European nations (and their progeny, the USA and Canada) come to rule the world while other cultures that began with great promise ended up backwaters?

Landes' answer is a comforting one to lots of First World people: our culture has just always been geared more toward success, we have the traits of successful people, so we succeeded. Is it true? Well, I guess it depends on who you are. If you take a look around the globe, perhaps with Jared Diamond as your tour guide, it does seem that way. That's Landes' view and he's pretty persuasive about it; and even if you disagree, the examples he cites are interesting in themselves. But against this it has to be considered that some areas of the planet have been blessed with abundant resources, favorable climates, and helpful geographies that made it easier to create more involved societies as opposed to subsistence cultures.

My only problem with the book is: what is with the avalanche of footnotes? Every few sentences, just as you get in sync with the argument Landes is putting forth...there's another asterisk or dagger jolting your eye down the page to some digression that makes you forget what you were reading in the first place. It's sort of manic and disorienting, to the point where I just finally stopped even looking at the footnotes. It would have been much better to have made them endnotes; then they wouldn't be so distracting, and could be read all at once by those so inclined. Publisher, for the love of God move the notes when you put out the next edition!

Some reviewers have suggested that this book is provocative, and worth reading. I would agree with the first part only. However, the provocation and discomfort it causes have little to do with facts and figures which could challenge one's economic prejudices, and much to do with Mr. Landes' scatterbrained approach to history and economics, and his overbearing arrogance in (often ridiculous) commentary. It should be clear that an economic history book this is not. At best, Mr. Landes has told a few interesting anecdotes on the history of technology (navigations and clockworks are particularly well covered.) If there is a unifying principle to this book, it is that british (and american, by extension) cultural superiority were predestined to lead to greater economic growth and wealth. How these traits (individual freedoms, property rights, technological openness) developed, and to what extent they came in response, to changes in the economies and political systems, we are left to wonder. However, the low point of the book is Mr. Landes's omnipresent commentary. He never misses a chance to try to score points with like-minded conservatives. However, his arguments are weak, and his rhetoric is pompous. I can only describe it as Lilliputean, in its arrogance and idiocy. You could actually guess this by looking at the title of this book, which tries to borrow from Adam Smith's classic. E. Hobsbawm have commented that "... There are few historians who would not be proud to be the author of this book". I think Mr. Hobsbawm packed his commentary, which appears in the back cover of "The Wealth and Poverty of Nations", with rather more irony than the Editors who cited it could suspect.

Like many Americans, my knowledge of history is not what it should be. I'm interested in history and how it has shaped the world we live in, and that's why I bought this book.
Hats off to David Landes for his diligent and thorough research and his deep knowledge of the subject about which he writes.
This book is not light reading; indeed, at times it was somewhat difficult for me, not being of the "ivory tower" set, but it is worth getting through.
Landes does an excellent job of analyzing how such factors as climate, religious beliefs, form of government, and cultural and institutional barriers affected the prosperity or lack thereof of many different nations.
I admire the fact he's not afraid to belittle some of the absurd revisionist history being taught in our universities nowadays. He may not be a conservative, but he's not afraid to gore the sacred cow of political correctness.
No doubt, my time and money were well-spent with this book because it contains so much valuable information and I can save it as a reference book.
A decade ago, I read "The Closing of the American Mind" (Norman Bloom?) Landes' book was similar to that in that some of it was a bit heavy, but its substantive content made it worth the while.

If, as Landes says, tolerance was what made the West great, then his book shows we are reaching the end.
Yes, the West may have possessed -- and seized -- some of the assets that led to its triumph. But there's an even more important question than why the West dominates today's global economy: Is that economy (which is wasteful in resources, natural and human) sustainable? If not, we may have more to learn from other cultures than Landes recognizes.
Contrary to Landes, multiculturalism is not totalitarian "political correctness" (red-baiting pun on Parti Communiste); it's an urgent attempt to learn, for those with keen eyes and ears not just loud voices.

"The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why some are so rich and some are so poor" is a reflective, interesting, and a well-written book. The author possesses an amazing knowledge, both historical and geographical. While he is an academic and therefore at times goes into unnecessary detail or support of his arguments, he serves us the occasional entertaining anecdote, which makes this book both readable and funny.
To explain why the economic development in the world (from about 1500 to the present) has happened at different paces and with different degrees of success is not an easy task to undertake. To do so successfully is even harder.
Landes strongly advocates the point of view that cultural values, such as technology, thriftiness, work ethic, and women, are the primary factors of economic success or failure. I truly enjoyed reading the authors observations on the various cultures and their economic successes and failures (a little minus here is Landes tendency to lean on the cultural stereotype just a few too many times). I now have a better understanding for the importance of cultural values in the economic area. Why the UK fell behind the rest of Europe, or why China by deliberately choosing to isolate the country, lost their economical/technological jump-start on Europe. I also have a greater awareness of the effects of religion; that there can be little doubt that the religious-based repression/bias towards women will continue to slow the economic development and success of the societies in which this still occur.
There is an abundance of interesting and useful information in this book, and I did learn a lot of new facts from this book. Nevertheless, I am not sure that I am left with a better understanding of the key factors that drive economic success. I can't help feeling that I worked my way through the five hundred pages waiting for the "little extra" - that never came. So even if Landis handles the facts and analysis very well, I still miss is the one, grand theory that explains it all.
Bottom line, "The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why some are so rich and some are so poor" is a superb historical overview, but it doesn't quite deliver what it promises - the one theory that wraps up everything, and offers some insights to the question that we all ask ourselves: "Why some are so rich and some are so poor".

Landes is the man, and this book pretty much sums it up. His primary thesis, that when humans are given the freedom to be innovative and pursue their own interest, is familiar from Adam Smith, but Landes does it better, it's a convincing argument. Culture is the determining factor in the success and failure of nations, not chance, not geography, not even resources, and Landes makes it obvious, it seems.

Mr. Landes started this job already with a definited purpose: to make poor people accept the fact that they are poorer because they are dummier. Since the beginning of the book, Landes tries to demonstrate his "theories" about the white civilization superiority above the rest. In other words, North is better than SOuth. The book is full of prejudice, hidden meanings, pro-liberalism. One step more and we could have listened the American anthem playing on it.

Prof. Landes has written an audacious and racy work that gives the lie to much of what is currently voguish in the highly sensitive area of the connection between culture and economic development. I expect this provocative thesis will not be bested for quite some time. And the man really can write - this book is a pleasure to read! Prof. L is probably the most articulate "dismal scientist" since JK Galbraith. Do yourself a favour: if you are to read one book this year, make it this one.

A great book. Full of facts and stories about human history and how it has affected our abilities to generate economic success. Some argue this book glorifies "Western triumphalism" - nonesense.
Well written, funny at times. Gives one a much better understanding of the state of the modern world and the possibilities that lie ahead. Gives some possible reasons why some are poor and others not.
A book worth reading.

Landes gives himself away here as never before as a rampant apologist for the devastation of Western colonialism and neo-liberal imperialism. A work which in an intellectually sane society would be laughed out of the marketplace is in the US reviewed with sober reverence. The book conveniently ignores the preponderance of historical data explaining why third world populations are in their modern-day predicaments. Landes, from his lofty Cambridge peak, affects to bemoan the poor brown people's inability to grow up and become civilized, ignoring the shining example of freedom, technological inititative and courageous, entrepreneurial daring of the West. A rather cursory look at the history of Bengal's deindustrialization under the British would quickly rip apart Landes' paper-thin argument, thus this and many other such topics are studiously avoided. Blaming the victims for circumstances imposed by oppressor states is an old sport, one in which Landes excels with exceptional vigor. For those interested in the mind-set of the modern American intellectual class, however, such a book will prove most instructive, though it should also elicit sympathy from anyone who regrets the sight of a mind trapped in the petrifying morass of vulgar ideology.

I am an economics major at the University of Chicago. I started this book on a reccomendation from an economist friend of mine, and while I was not impressed by his language in the first chapter, I can honestly say that I still seriously expected to find some penetrating economic analysis. What I found was a really bad case of somebody trying to do something he obviously wasn't trained to do. His main point is that culture, or more precisely, values, matter to economic development. This has long been of interest to anthropologists and sociologists and they have done a lot of good, sophisticated writing on the subject, which David Landes obviously hasn't read. The really sad thing about this is that, in addition to being much more subtle and clever, they make a lot of the same points (but without the vulgarity and racism). See, for example, Benedict Anderson's Imagined_Communities, which discusses the rise and role of nationalism.
He supports his arguments with a crude analysis of European and Japanese cultural and industrial developments. But as he says, the questions of why the West industrialized and why the rest of the world didn't are really one and the same. And he singularly fails to give an effective analysis of the other cultures. Here's an example: he says that the armies "Oriental despots" fought poorly because they had no reason to be loyal to a despotic government. He cites as evidence (if it can even be called that) just one case where British troops fought against an Indian ruler, whose troops mostly ran away. He never asks whether they did this in battles against other Indian rulers who didn't have the prestige or technical sophistication of the British. He even goes so far as to say that these "Oriental despotisms," which he does not differentiate, appointed officials by fiat and not by merit. I shouldn't need to mention the Chinese examination system. Even he does't think knowledge of Confucian classics counts as merit, he should have known that during the Tang dynasty the officials were selected by a practical exam rather than Confucian classics. But that's exactly the problem--he's trying to write a history of the world that compares European and non-European cultures starting from the assumption that since Europe invented almost everything, only Europe needs to be seriously researched (if you don't believe me, check the bibliography). And he finds (surprise) that only Europe has made significant contributions to the industrial revolution and that this was contributed to by its culture (was anything any society ever did not influenced by the culture?). The reasoning is highly circular. Anybody that disagrees with him is, he says, just writing feel-good history with no regard to the facts (the irony here is just unbearable). I would say that he should leave history to the historians and sociology to the sociologists, but most of these don't know economics well enough to write an economic history. What we really need is for more economists to throw away their ridiculous pretension that economics is the only "scientific" social science and start taking the other social sciences seriously. This one in particular clearly has a lot to learn from them.

The problems with Mr. Landes' book are many.
First, he absurd cultural and religious determinism accomplishes little more than stoking the fires of already rampant antipathy. What little historical merit this book might contain is swamped by the Landes' insipid and hackneyed tropes of Calvinist value supremacy. Anyone seeking to read the basis for the next in a long and infamous line of Western self-concratulatory texts should pick up Weber, "Protestant Ethic."
Second, Landes' whitewashing of European and American military and economic imperialism allows him to pity LDCs for their cultural inadequacy alone. Forutantely, he offers the salvation of the neo-liberal economic paradigm and of Christian values (as if either of these would prevent IMF austerity measures or the landing of the 81st airborne).
Why read the whole book, when you can manufacture the idea from your weekly sermon?

This book is fascinating in places, but repetitive and trite in others.
Frankly while more quantitative and traditional in its approach, it pales in comparison to the sweeping and much more engaging treatment of essentially the same subject in Jared Diamond's brilliant Guns, Germs and Steel.

Landes takes some old ideas and tries to make them look innovative. He spends some time discussing geography and how that may have played a role in development, but dismisses it too quickly, I guess because it doesn't support his overall claim. The idea that what makes Western nations so great is because of our "cultures" has been around since Rostow's 1960 The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto. Rostow put forward a theory popularly known today in the social sciences as "modernization theory," which contends that developing countries lack capital, a stable government, and, most importantly, a Western mentality that stresses the need for savings, investment, innovation, education, high achievement, and self-control in having children. If they ONLY had these things, by golly, they could advance just like Western nations have. This argument, however, has essentially been debunked by other scholars over the past four decades by detailing the colonization that these countries have endured by more developed nations over a period of about 500 years. If you want to read a better book about rich nations and poor nations, read "Guns, Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond. It won the Pulitzer Prize recently, and brilliantly demonstrates the importance of geography and an interplay between culture and geography, which Landes might have discovered if he hadn't been so busy trying to dismiss geography up front.

The book claims that Western economies did not benefit from the colonies they occupied and milked dry. The premise of the book is a thinly disguised defense of imperialism, racism and even slavery. It practically blames peoples of colonized countries for hostility, almost ingratitude, towards the colonialists. It is as if it is looking for a theoretical basis to whitewash history and absolve Western colonialism. What the book does, instead, is prove that supremacist ideologies and imperialist policies are alive and well. In his earlier book, Bankers and Pasha, Landes justifies the atrocities and theft committed by British colonialism in Egypt. It is the same approach he adopts in this book.

Your read, and read, and read, and you wonder: what is the conclusion of the writer? I don't know. What is his "great" theory to explain the tittle of the book? I don't know. Yes, it was great research for a accomplished historian, but nothing more than that. It superficial, full of prejudice (like..."North is better, that's why people move to it . It is true, but why? The question is not answered!)

Wow. Landes writes this book in a convincing manner, as if it were a tour de force. Unfortunately, there is little force behind his understanding of the non-European world.
"Why are some countries so rich, and some so poor?" This is the question the book attempts to answer. Landes has some good points to make. Early discussions of geography, and his insistance that different cultures produce different economies are well-received.
I see two major areas in which this book falls on its face. Firstly, for the most part, he treats each nation as if it were an individual entity, acting in concert, moving towards a perdetermined goal, and accumulating wealth in concert. In this aspect, his analysis of any pluralistic country, like those countries in South and North America, fails. Also, his analysis of today's world fails, in that national boundries and soveirgnty hold less power than international monied interests. The nation-state as an entity is becoming antiquated.
Secondly, and more importantly, his analysis fails because of his almost total lack of understanding of the non-European world, and the way in which non-European economies have developed. Examples abound. He claims that the religion of Islam keeps the Middle Eastern countries poor, yet praises the economies of other Islamic countries like Indonesia without discussing the effect Islam has there. He credits the "Japanese Protestant work ehtic" (how insulting can he get?) with creating the conditions for a strong Japanese economy. A look at history will quickly debunk this claim. The Japanese were able to create a large economy largely because of their great devotion to their leaders.
I read the whole book, expecting some education after the first chapter. I was dissappointed, but more than that, I was afraid that people would read this book and think that the answer for non-industrialized nations is to be more like "us", whoever "we" might be. This thinking is little different in principle or end-product from the Spanish and Portuguese missionaries and inquisitions of the 15th, 16th, 17th centuries. This book has more potential to miseducate than to educate.
If you are looking for a book which will explain how the world got to be the way it is, I would suggest checking out Immanuel Wallerstein. Important books that discuss the world as it is now are William Greider's "One World, Ready or Not", John Grey's "False Dawn".

It is an excellent book, with a complete analysis of world economics. Landes links economics to history, human behavior and geography, to explain why the world and the nations are today what they are.

I found the title of this book quite misleading as the narrative fails to answer that very question. There is no clear thesis and argumentation and the book is rather a long series of individual stories in praise of the achievements of Western culture or heartbreaking accounts of the misery elsewhere (the Japanese wife!).

My two stars are for the fact that I still found some of the stories well researched and interesting seen by themselves.

Chief problems with Mr. Landes' oeuvre are not its' amazing dishonesty, lack of basic erudition or blatant racism (although he's got a good deal of racism that amply compensates for other deficiencies, such as the lack of sound historic knowledge). Main problem with this book is the terrible fact that it actually became (very) successful. It sells well. That is a real pity, because the Wealth and Poverty is an imposter-sort of book. It pretends to be what it is clearly not. Like being a good history book.
The Wealth and Poverty of Nations is an ideological propaganda piece. Like other works of this genre, it carries main ideological concept (dogma, belief, albeit an irrational one) and "supporting material". Because it is virtually impossible to prove this kind of ideological belief from scientific standpoint, beliefs are beliefs, and facts and figures are lacking, then other methods are applied. [...]

The book goes on for chapters upon chapters proving its thesis with anecdotes. The classic idiom, "which came first the chicken or the egg," applies. Every thing he wrote has an alternative hypothesis. The predisposition for hard work, open-mindedness, and a commitment to democracy are products of societies with economic freedom and rule of law. These "cultural traits" result organically in any society that rewards hard work. A society that is able to reward hard work will grow economically. Most societies throughout history did not reward hard work because they preferred to exploit it. A simple example of this, in Ethiopia it is not possible to 'own' land it can only be leased, while in "Post-industrial" nations one can own credit-default swaps. Ethiopians have less incentive to invest, less collateral for loans, and feel less secure in their livelihood. Mr Landes would say that Ethiopians do not work hard, are not open-minded, and are not committed to democracy. While in fact the average Ethiopian is a rational player in a society were elites prevent the implementation of rule of law, basic property rights, or economic freedom. One last example is the "Arab Spring," which began when man lit himself on fire because, he could not afford the bribe required to obtain a street vendor permit.

Even the most sophisticated economists tend to have a myopic sense of history. In this clearly-written and well-researched volume, David Landes provides a compelling perspective on how and why nations have prospered or struggled.
Read this and you will gain a larger persective on today's economic and social conditions.

The topic of economic disparity attracts more heat than light, with authors often doing less to offer insight than to saddle up hobby-horses reflecting the politics of the day. Landes steers clear of all this, possibly stepping on a few toes in his no-nonsense assertion that material wellbeing is the definitive indicator of social success; and that democratic capitalism on the American model is the benchmark of success by these standards. His mandarin style combines with a robust cast of mind to rebut explicitly (and to my mind tellingly) such tempting notions as global exploitation (our country is poor because yours is rich), or cultural equivalence (our ways are just as good as yours in our own way, could you but recognise it). This is all to the good, as is the general thrust of Landes' book, that we should look to culture for an explanation of the defining feature of the modern world: the technical and economic triumph in the modern era of Western Europe over such apparently promising rivals as China. Such an account points to an explanation (if not necessarily to policy prescriptions) for such troublesome matters as the greater success of East Asian than South Asian catch-up, or the disappointments of the Middle East, post-colonial Latin America and Africa.
Less satisfactory are a few side-swipes early on in the book at "geographical" explanations, where Landes rather lets himself down in his attempt to undermine them with the news that Harvard disbanded its geography school fifty years ago. This is no doubt true but irrelevant to the merit of the arguments. In the event, Landes need not be so sniffy, in that his arguments address the last 5-700 years, whereas the geographers (if I have properly understood the matter) look to the last 40,000. In effect, there is no contradiction, indeed a synthesis seems compelling. See "Guns, Germs and Steel", Jared Diamond, W W Norton, 1997.

I was offended by the author (I am not European). The book is full of eurocentric condescension. He refers to "the rich countries" as "we". What is that about?!

He attempts to justify French "policies" in Algeria during their conquest just because French drained their swamps?! How can this action justify the genocide where one third of Algerian poulation was exterminated?! Or was this book not meant to be read by non-europeans!? How can one not find this book offensive?

He keeps throwing at you contradicting statements; many of the statements lack references and for some of his controversial statements they are clearly needed.

It also seems to me the book was not proofread by editorial team; resembles aimless ramblings on a private blog.

I was tricked by the title.

Look for other unbiased titles, please. That's what I am doing.

Yes,this is exactly what Landes opined in his book.I'm sure lots of comfort women from Taiwan,and Korea would beg to differ;not to mention the hundreds and thousands of Landes' fellow white European POWs who were supervised by these consiencious,hard working little yellow fellows whom Landes greatly admired.This one example goes to show the kind of absurd idea ,crazed notion put up by a senile white bigoted 'scholar'(from HARVARD to boot) in this so call historical survey. I am lucky because I only read a copy from library . I pity those of you who have to pay from your wallet to get one.

I found this book full of prejudice, full of value judgements,and only slightly scientific. I would only like to put out this question,was Spain responsible of the poverty of all South Europe, Center- and South-America ? Fortunely there are much more historians who go beyond this limited book.

This book is a horrible and pretentious work of historical fiction. Poor Mr. Landes, as an Ivy league history professor, has vested so much of his life teaching and perpetuating Euro-centric history. I am sure it now infuriates him that real scholarship has destroyed this neo-colonial view of the world. This book proves that he will go to any lengths now to justify this Victorian perception of history. He really needs to lift his own veil of ignorance and racism and admit that those cute little Asians ( whose little fingers make them so adapt to work with small parts)did have one or two great ideas.

Without reading the reviews, I bought Landes' book expecting to receive good education on the subject of wealth and poverty of nations. However, as early as the Introduction one begins to suspect inherent prejudice by the author, a situation which is quickly confirmed within the first pages of chapter one.

There is a plethora of blatantly false hypothesis here, such as the notion that climate is a major contributory factor to wealth and poverty, with of course, the European temperate climate being more conducive to success than the tropics. The entire swath between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn he condemns as poverty belt due to heat from the sun (page 7). On page 8 Landes states "Sub-Saharan Africa threatens all who live or go there". Such ignorant statement is nonsensical if not dishonest, and immediately belies his deep-seated prejudice and willful intention to misinform his readers. Archeology proves that human beings have lived on the African continent for millions of years. Landes conveniently ignores the anthropology of species' adaptability to environments most suited to their survivability. In other words, while Landes himself may not be suited to live in Sub-Saharan Africa due to his natural physiology and birth in the northern hemisphere, as a Harvard professor he should know that native Africans are anthropologically well-adapted to thrive in Africa. Leaving aside man-made factors such as political instability, only the most banal of persons would believe that Sub-Saharan Africa is naturally a threatening place to live purely by virtue of its geography.

Landes also suggests that people in tropical Asia, Africa and South America harbor "not one parasite but several, hence are too sick to work..." (page 8). He attributes this to the warm waters of Asia and Africa, that he says harbors water-borne bacteria. He names a disease called "snail fever", and contends that this disease "is particularly widespread in tropical Africa, but afflicts the whole of that continent, plus semi-tropical areas in Asia and, in a related form, South America". Such blatant falsehood is breath-taking and difficult to comprehend as the work of a scholar. I am a native of tropical West Africa, was born there, grew up there, attended college there, worked there, but I have never heard of snail fever or encountered victims of it, in cities or rural areas. Its existence, if any, is certainly not in epidemic proportions as suggested by Landes. If snail fever is warm water-borne as this author claims, how then could it afflict an entire continent that experiences diverse climatic conditions, including winter in the south and thousands of square miles of desert in the north? Landes seems unaware of his own contradictions.

Author appears to relish the use of disparaging terms to describe non-western regions. "Third World" and "Fourth World" are vestiges of and reminiscent of the colonial era. The fact that Landes fails to distinguish between nations in Africa brings to question his supposed scholarship in international affairs. While non-experts commonly make the mistake of regarding Africa as a homogenous entity, scholars know that there is a great divergence in culture and standards even within African nations. Nigeria is vastly different from Kenya, South Africa, and Egypt. These differences automatically render false Landes' statement such as "... Africa's shortfall in food supply afflict, not the food buyers in the cities, but the small farmers..." (page 500). The 1990's famine in Ethiopia (East Africa) was never felt in Ghana (West Africa).

Disease
Landes portrays developing nations as disease ridden, a natural habitat for all types of germs, viruses and parasites known to mankind. In one particularly brazen re-write of history, Landes states that the tseste fly killed off livestock and cattle in Africa such that these animals were no longer available for transportation. "The solution was found in slavery" (page 9). Thus in one casual paragraph, Landes informs us of the origins of trans-Atlantic slavery, the most horrible passage in human history.

The book rightly addresses corruption and mismanagement in developing countries. These are perhaps the most important causes of poverty. Most other symptoms are merely an expression of these two factors in one form or another. However, Landes fails to address the complicity of Western nations in encouraging corrupt leaders to stash away in Europe and America, money stolen from developing nations. Such wealth hidden in Western banks assist tremendously in developing the West, in the form of availability of funds for business development and real estate loans. A Nigerian state governor was recently exposed for investing $350m in an American refinery - money stolen from his impoverished people, but used to create jobs and build infrastructure elsewhere. The single best thing that the West can do for developing nations therefore is to return all stolen wealth to their owner nations and prevent future re-occurrence.

It is impossible to offer a critique of 650 pages of controversial material with brevity. Suffice it to say that David Landes' presentation is a huge disappointment at best; in reality it is a massive exercise in prejudice and bigotry. As a person from a developing country, it is particularly difficult to read this book, knowing that every page offers a false representation of our region. The only reason to go through the painful process of reading would be for the purpose academic research into scholastic racism. The larger problem however is that many innocent people seeking genuine knowledge will erroneously believe Professor Landes' treatise as bona-fide scholarship.

This book deserves not a space on any bookshelf; it will be thrown into a waste paper recycle bin.

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David Landes is a versed storyteller. His "history" can only be compare with Homer's Odyssey. His book, "The Wealth and Poverty of Nations" belongs to the mythology section.

In a nutshell, David Landes fanciful argument about "the superiority of the West" is based on the unique culture of some European regions. In particuar, those devoted to Protestantism and Calvinism (why would that be...?). Nevermind that Venice and Genoa were 100% catholic, as were Cristobal Colón and Vasco de Gama... Religion or culture in general are the universal answers some historians can refer to when they don't have compelling arguments to explain their view on world history. Likewise the Church has always used "God" to explain why the earth was flat and it rained down and not "up". From Landes' perspective, nothing else matters but culture and religion. Certainly, his most painful task has been to hide plenty of evidence that shows Europe, including "Great" Britain, as a rather marginal and backward region until well into the 18th century.

Follow Faruk Ekmekci's advise below: "ReOrient" and "The Great Divergence". Then, if you like fables, read "The Wealth and Poverty of Nations".

We have all seen the results of self-destructive culture on friends who fall in to the 'drug scene', or perhaps family members who become lost in a cult. What happens when destructive or backward cultures operate at a larger scale, at the scale of nations? The Wealth and Poverty of Nations examines in historical context this thesis in a brilliant fashion. I have just re-read it after many years and find it very current in a world where we hear Europeans today talk of a balanced budget as an 'austerity budget'!! Culture matters and cultures can and do change over time.

It seems that Landes' idea of scholarship is forming a theory first and THEN find all the evidence/stories that support that theory and ignore the rest. So, medieval Europe was actually a crucible of ideas, compared to the rest of the world, because of the invention of the eyeglasses and the clock. And due to utilizing animal power, Europe didn't need as many people and hence had lower population density. This may be true, except Landes hasn't given out any evidence. One can easily counter argue that it had less people because of its lower productivity could support less people. This is true of many of the other assertions in the book.

Bottom line: biased writer with shoddy scholarship. If you want a good euro-centric read, I recommend The Rise of the West instead. McNeill at least is knowledgeable and insightful within his area of expertise.

Though I enjoyed Landes' humour sometimes, this book is by no means an honest endeavour to answer the question posed by the title. The work is mostly rhetoric. Though I agree with some of his conclusions but his arguments are almost always fellacious. This is my first history reading and I have almost no background on the subject. Still after few chapters it became clear that the book does not meet the criteria of an academic writing. It is a shame for Harvard that Landes carries its credentials!

I was very disapointed with this book, simply because it is little more then a European Supremacy history handbook.

It would not be so bad except the author continously downplays other cultures and peoples, while exagerating and emphasising White and Europeans achievements.

However i must say, the biggest failure of this book is to TELL US WHY SOME NATIONS ARE RICH AND OTHERS ARE POOR! He takes us down a long and boring narrative account of history for the past 400 years or so (All from a European perspective, focusing almost exclusively on European culture and achievements) while FAILING to even address the initial question!

If your a member of a White Supremacist group be sure to read this! It will help boost your superiority complex. For the rest of us... give this one a miss.

I feel the author has "wasted" a excellent title for a book (which caught my attention in the first place) and there are other less-biased persons who could have done a much better job.

After reading Frank's Reorient and Pomeranz's The Great Divergence, David Landes' arguments in The Wealth and Poverty of Nations leaves one with a sense of obsolescence. Almost all of Landes' assertions are the Eurocentric clichés that have been discarded by Frank, Pomeranz and some other contemporary scholars with sound data, logic, and argumentation. As such, except for its speculations on intra-European discrepancies, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations is more ideology than science. At best, it is a good Devil's Advocate for those who want to sharpen their contrary positions.
The central conviction of Landes is that "for the last thousand years," the Europeans have been "the prime mover of development and modernity" (p. xxi). The Europeans were healthier, had better diet, and thus lived longer (pp. 20-21). They were also less oppressed and repressed by their rulers than their Asian counterparts were (p. 27). Consequently, in the long run, "Europeans" won over others in global competition (p. 20). And "this was the reality," (p. 28).
Or this was the myth! None of Landes' assertions have any historical support whatsoever. First of all, there were no significant differences between Europe, China, and Japan in terms of average standards of living in early middle ages. Average life expectancy as well as calorie intake was at comparable levels in all three countries until the 19th century (Pomeranz, p. 44-6). Not only the health of the Chinese was comparable to that of the European, but the knowledge of the former about maternal and infant health was superior to that of the latter as well (ibid, p. 46). Talk of an overall "European" victory over others is also problematic for another reason. As Pomeranz's analysis of consumption trends in Europe suggests, there was no "European" miracle in early modern ages. If anything, it was a British, and to lesser extent Dutch, revolution and not a European one until 1850 (Pomeranz, p. 119).
Landes' adoption of the notorious hydraulic thesis, the argument that the management of water in Asia promoted imperial authority and hence "Oriental despotism", makes his approach even less attractive. Pomeranz shows that differences in terms of labor and land markets in Europe and China in 16th through 18th centuries were insignificant and did not always favor Europe. Indeed, overall China was closer to market economy than was most of Europe, including most of "western" Europe. Much of Western Europe's farmland was harder to buy and sell than that of China. In Yangzi Valley, for example, close to half of land was rented (Pomeranz, pp. 72-3). This was also similar in labor market. Labor was not less free in China than in Europe (ibid, pp. 80-1). Thus, as Pomeranz concludes, Europe's factor markets for land and labor "seem no closer to Smithian ideas of freedom and efficiency than do those of China, and perhaps a good deal less so," (p. 107). Water might have made the life in Asia more central/authoritarian than it would be without its central place, but this water-effect was not so big to make the political and economic life in China significantly less free than life in Europe.
Therefore, Landes' assertion that the probability of European global dominance in 1500 A.D. was "close to one" (p. 29) is simply a European conviction with no empirical base. To start with, since Abu-Lughod (1991) we know that Europe was only a minor player in the thirteen- and fourteen-century world-system who "imported" most of its technology and luxury. Second, using comparisons of the effects of the influx of New World silver in the 16th century and average production per head in the 18th century, Frank also concluded that "Asians must have been significantly more productive than Europeans" in 16th through 18th centuries (Frank, p. 173). Finally, Pomeranz demonstrated that Europe was not exceptionally different from China or Japan in terms of production, market regulation, or the consumption of luxury goods. Thus, it would be a risky gamble for a sixteen-century European to bet on a European hegemony three centuries later.
Culture and the Problem of Variance:
Culturally speaking, neither the Confucian nor the Islamic world experienced a significant transformation until the 20th century. As such associating the culture of these nations with the periodical rise and fall of these nations in the global arena causes logical problems. Islamic or Confucian culture cannot be the fundamental cause of the later "fall" of Islamic and Confucian nations, because these cultures were also present when these nations enjoyed prosperity and superiority in middle and early modern ages. Simply put, a constant independent variable cannot be the cause of a varying dependent variable.
Culture can be an explanatory factor for developments in Europe, however. Some European nations experienced a religious transformation in the 15th and 16th centuries. The economic and political break of these countries from their past can therefore be associated with this cultural transformation. What should be noted, however, is that this cultural transformation did not necessarily put the Europeans over non-Europeans; it simply made them on a par with others by eliminating some of the barriers that halted their economic and political development. Therefore, elimination of cultural barriers in Europe cannot be the fundamental cause of the later divergence between Europe and Asia, because the major Asian nations did not have such barriers to begin with. Indeed Landes' assertion that the Chinese were "reluctant improvers and bad learners" (p. 336) simply attests to the existence of higher levels of economic and technological standards in China. The Chinese were reluctant improvers because they felt themselves sufficiently prosperous, and they were.
Into the Dustbin of History?

If a book is to be assessed according to its overall quality and originality, then given the obsolescence of the majority of assertions in Landes' book, I see little harm in ripping 90 percent of The Wealth and Poverty of Nations and throwing those pages into the dustbin of history. The rest 10 percent includes Landes' speculations on intra-European discrepancies and how they differentiated the later fates of European nations. It is only this section where Landes' arguments stand firmer against empirics and achieve higher persuasiveness.
Landes puts forward two reasons why the Spanish and the Portuguese could not maintain their hegemony in the 16th century afterwards: abundance of silver and Catholicism. Spain became poor, "because it had too much money," (p. 173). With so much silver at their disposal, the Spaniards had little incentives to invest their money in productive ways. Catholicism combined with the still-present reconquista spirit also induced the Iberian people to spend relatively more of their money on castles, churches, and holy wars, than on technology or trade. As to Britain, Landes argues that a combination of technological and cultural factors facilitated Britain's lead in the industrial revolution. On the one side, by the early 18th century Britain was ahead of other European countries in textiles, iron, and energy, which constituted the core elements of upcoming revolution (p. 213). On the other side, Britain was more liberal towards the non-Britons and this caused an influx of skilled minorities who were not welcomed in other European territories (p. 223).
A combination of Landes' arguments on intra-European differences and Frank and Pomeranz's emphasis on external factors might weaken the rigidity of the internal/external dichotomy. External factors which Frank and Pomeranz emphasize could explain the divergence between Europe and Asia which were comparable in technological and economic standards until the 19th century. Cultural and other internal factors which Landes underscores could help explain why certain countries within Europe rose earlier and fared better than others.
A Final Note on Colonialism:

Landes belittles the gains that accrued to the Europeans from colonialism and slave labor. He argues that the colonizers did not always get what they expected and the colonized did not necessarily lose in every occasion (pp. 434-5). To me, a short observation of the almost-perfect fit between the colonizer/colonized and developed/underdeveloped dichotomies at the global level will suffice to refute Landes' arguments on colonialism. Capitalist world-economy needed colonialism (or more broadly control over foreign lands) and slavery (or more broadly cheap labor) to survive. To understand that, we need to revisit the dynamics of capitalist economic development.
Any capitalist economic development has to overcome two impediments: capital accumulation and market creation. The former is needed to start up a development project; the latter is required to sustain and further it. Yet within the boundaries of a national economy, simultaneous achievement of the two becomes a dilemma. On the one side, capital accumulation within a national economy results in increased inequalities and thus deprives the country of a viable domestic market. On the other side, attempts to create a viable national market through egalitarian policies eventually lead to capital shortages and financial crisis. Colonialism and slavery played a key role in the contemporary developed countries' overcoming this dilemma. On the one hand, Western states created resources to accumulate capital by means of unequal trade with, exploitation of labor of, and profit extraction from the foreign lands; on the other hand, control over foreign people provided the Europeans the markets to sell their agricultural and industrial products (Knox and Agnew 1998, 59-61). Thus, Western development was made possible thorough "externalization" of the negative consequences of capital accumulation and market creation. This "external" link to development has not been unique to the Western case, though. Japan's colonial rule on East Asia as well as South Korea and Taiwan's privileged access to the American market played a key role in these countries' achieving global competitiveness through cheap labor/resources and/or scale economies. "Endogenous" growth is at best an historical rarity, at worst a neoclassical myth.
The absence or existence of an "external link" has also been a crucial determiner of social and political developments in developed countries. A comparison of the Japanese and German cases with the Russian and Chinese cases, all of which were late-industrializing countries, might be illuminating. In the Russian and Chinese cases, the exigencies of a capitalist economic development without external exploitation necessitated the `exploitation' of internal actors - in particular the peasants- and thus exacerbated the dissatisfaction of the lower strata with the governing body. In Russia, for example, the peasantry was made to pay the "bill of modernization" through "forced exports, monopoly prices, and repressive taxation," (Skocpol 1979, p. 92). Thus, the `external dissatisfaction' of Russia and China as to their position in the global political economy was supplemented with the `internal dissatisfaction' of the Russian and Chinese people, which eventually paved the way to social revolutions. By contrast, in the Japanese and German cases, the availability of `external exploitation' rendered possible the avoidance of dependence on foreign borrowing and the achievement of the maintenance of a relative `internal satisfaction' through some welfare policies (that was also the case for other West European countries). And this relative `internal satisfaction' of German and Japanese people played an important role in the failure of social revolutions in those countries, although their `external dissatisfaction' eventually resulted in the adoption of non-democratic forms of governments in Germany and Japan. As such, not only the economic development but also the democratic systems of Western countries owe a lot to colonialism and slavery. The modern world would be unrecognizably different if it were not for colonialism.

References:
Abu-Lughod Janet (1988). Before European Hegemony: The World-System A.D. 1250-1350. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Frank, Andre Gunder (1998). ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Hansis, Randal (1997). The Latin Americans: Understanding Their Legacy. New York: Mc Graw Hill.

Knox, Paul, and John Agnew (1998). The Geography of the World Economy. 3rd ed. New York: Oxford University Press.

Pomeranz, Kenneth (2000). The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Skocpol, Theda (1979). States and Social Revolutions. New York: Cambridge Press.

Waldner, David (1999). State Building and Late Development. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.