Progress in History

28 Historically Speaking May/June 2006 England and was there readopted from America; but was still "often characterized as an Americanism." 4 William Godwin, An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, 2 vols. (London, 1793), 2: 87172 . Economic and Social History ofBritain, 17001850 (Oxford University Press, 1995), 1-8. 6 Boyd Hilton, The Age ofAtonement: The Influence ofEvangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1 785-1865 (Clarendon Press, 1988), 66-67. daily Francis Fukuyama, The End ofHistory and the Last Man (Free Press, 1992). 8 Edward Gibbon, The History ofthe Decline and Fall ofthe Roman Empire, 6 vols. (London, 17761788 ), l:ch. 3. 5 M. J. Daunton, Progress and Poverty: An 7 For a notable modern example of this, see espeProgress in History Robert E. Lucas, Jr. • f course there is progress in history. Why so many people talk and write as though there were something difficult about this question is simply beyond me. Do they believe that to admit the obvious— that people as a whole are getting better off over time—will make us indifferent to the problems that still exist or blind us to environmental and other potential threats? I would imagine the opposite: the progress we see for so many millions makes it ever harder to claim that no progress is possible on the problems that remain. What we need to do about progress as historians and social scientists is not to deny its existence but describe it, accurately and in detail; try to understand its character and its sources; and learn how to make the most of it. One useful way to measure progress is to count people. Human population has been growing for as long as we have evidence, and this growth has accelerated dramatically in the postwar, postcolonial era. The 19th century began with fewer that 1 billion people and the 20th ended with more than 6 billion. Since 1950 the average world population growth rate has been around 2% per year. This unprecedented explosion is illustrated dramatically in Figure 1, taken from Robert Fogel's 1999 presidential address to the American Economic Association. It is clear from Figure 1 that population growth has literally turned a corner in the modern era. Is that a dark cloud on the horizon ? This question merits a closer look. Figure 2, taken from my Lectures on Economic Growth, zooms in on the years since 1000 A.D. In my picture the population "corner" is 6000 5000 4000 Population (millions) 3000 2000 1000 ^y¿* i#P°V ???° ^°1¿f* JV" **"? /«*?>** fl* ft4- -9000 -6000 -4000 -5000 not so sharp—I used a log scale— but it is certainly visible, sometime in the 17th or 18th century. On the same figure I also plotted total world production—real GDP. Estimating production is a more complex task than estimating populations, but there is no serious disagreement among specialists on the approximate accuracy of the series I have plotted . The production curve parallels the population curve over the years up to about 1800, reflecting the near constancy of living standards over these centuries (as in all earlier ones, I believe). Early in the 19th century the production curve turns a corner, too, and begins to grow at a much faster rate than population does. For the first time in history, the living standards of ordinary working people began to undergo sustained growth. Far from increasing poverty, the accelerating population growth ofthe last two centuries has been accompanied by ever improving material conditions. In the last half of the 20th century, growth in per capita GDP in the world as a whole reached the levels enjoyed by the leaders ofthe Industrial Revolution. The main Genome Project Man on Moon High-Speed Computers War on Malaria Invention of Airplane Discovery ofNew World., ^ Black Plague.,'; 0\#° PeakofRome}S &?$~ ,f) PeakofGreece¿* .o* V>· Jl Time (years) PCs Nuclear Energy Discovery of DNA Penicillin Invention of Automobile Invention of Telephone Electrification Germ Theory Beginning of Railroads Invention ofWatt Engine Beginning of Industrial Revolution Beginning of 2nd Agricultural Revolution Figure 1: The growth of the world population and some major events in the history of technology. feature of the postcolonial era has been, and continues to be, diffusion oftechnology...