Power and Plenty.

• Author: Dalton, John T.
• Position: Book review

Power and Plenty

By Ronald Findlay and Kevin H. O'Rourke.

Princeton, N J: Princeton University Press, 2007. Pp. 624. $39.50.

Ronald Findlay and Kevin H. O'Rourke's Power and Plenty: Trade, War, and the Worm Economy in the Second Millennium relies primarily on secondary historical, political, and economic literature to construct a sweeping historical survey of how the interplay of economic and political forces shaped the international economy over the last 1000 years. Managing 1000 years of history in international trade and development is a daunting task, and some stage preparation is necessary before the book's main drama can unfold. After dividing the world into seven regions based on a mix of geographical, political, and cultural features, the book provides a brief overview of the institutional and historical evolution of each of the regions up to the year 1000 (Chapter 1) and then describes the economic links connecting the seven regions up to the year 1000 (Chapter 2). These two chapters set the stage for the book's chronological recounting of the evolution of the international economy: the dominance of the Pax Mongolica during the period 1000-1500; the Age of Discovery followed by the Age of Mercantilism; trade and the industrial revolution; world trade, 1780-1914, deepening and broadening in all corners of the globe during the Great Specialization; the collapse of the international economy under the stress of depression and war; and the eventual recovery of the international economy to its present state (Chapters 3-9). Readers should not be intimidated by this playbill. The authors do an excellent job of organization throughout the entirety of the book, providing the reader with outlines and discussing why certain choices are made, such as the division of the world into seven regions.

Of course, Findlay and O'Rourke's book is not the first attempt at writing world economic history on a grand scale. Pomeranz (2001), Cameron and Neal (2002), and Jones (2003) are three examples among many. Yet none of these studies have quite the same focus as Power and Plenty, and, as a result, the book fulfills an important need in the literature. Cameron and Neal (2002), for instance, focus on all regions of the world and a longer time span of history but do not stress the interactions between world regions. Pomeranz (2001) and Jones (2003) come closer to the mark in emphasizing the interactions between regions but have been criticized for being...