Why the Great Enrichment Started in the West.

• Author: Lemieux, Pierre
• Position: BRIEFLY NOTED

The term "Great Enrichment" is not a simple metaphor. According to Nobel-laureate economic historian Douglass North: "The process of sustained economic growth that historians believe began between 1750 and 1830 radically altered the manner and standard of living of Western men and women.... The Western world achieved a standard of living which had no counterpart in the past."

Why did the Industrial Revolution and the Great Enrichment start in the West and not elsewhere, like Asia? At least among economists and economic historians, the generally accepted explanation is that only Western countries developed the social, political, and economic institutions, including private property rights, favorable to individual liberty and prosperity. The 18th century Enlightenment was an important "cultural" ingredient. In economic historian Deirdre McCloskey's perspective, Western ideas allowed ordinary people to escape poverty and form a bourgeois middle class.

In a more elitist view than is usual in the classical liberal tradition, Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega noted that technological development in the West was accompanied by theoretical developments that made continuing progress possible. Ortega wrote:

China reached a high degree of technique without in the least suspecting the existence of physics. It is only modern European technique that has a scientific basis, from which it derives its special character, its possibility of limitless progress. China has arguably been the best representative of Eastern culture over more than two millennia. Many believe that, around the 13th century, Chinese technology was more advanced than its Western counterpart. Technologies and products such as silk, gun powder, the magnetic compass, papermaking, movable type, and porcelain were first invented in China, However, because the institutional and cultural factors mentioned above were lacking, innovations could not launch a cumulative movement of economic progress allowing the common people to escape poverty.

Capitalism and enrichment/ Anybody reading literature and testimonies from before the 19th century cannot but be impressed by the dire poverty of most people in most countries in that era. Some historians believe that the average standard of living started increasing slowly in the 16 th century, but it was only in a few places (such as the Low Countries, comprised of modern-day Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg) that a relatively prosperous middle class of...