Page 102 - Berkshire Encyclopedia Of World History Vol I - Abraham to Coal

tfw-42 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

A modern Chinese market in Beijing
combines the traditional market with
many modern features.

societies. From the Scottish economist Adam Smith
onward economists have argued that a close link exists
between innovation and commercial activity. Smith
argued that large markets allow increased specializa-
tion, which encourages more precise and productive
labor. Equally important, entrepreneurs buying and sell-
ing in competitive markets faced competition of a kind
that landlords and governments of the agrarian era could
usually avoid.To survive, entrepreneurs had to undercut
causes of the modern revolution or, indeed, on the gen- their rivals by selling and producing goods at lower
eral causes of innovation in human history. However, prices. To do that meant trading and producing with
widespread agreement exists on some of the more impor- maximum efficiency, which usually meant finding and
tant contributing factors. introducing the most up-to-date technology. As com-
mercial exchanges spread, so did the number of wage
Accumulated Changes workers: people who took their own labor to market.
of the Agrarian Era Because they competed with others to find work, wage
First, the modern revolution clearly built on the accu- workers also had to worry about the cheapness and pro-
mulated changes of the agrarian era. Slow growth during ductivity of their labor.
several millennia had led to incremental technological For these reasons the slow commercialization of
improvements in agriculture and water management, in economies that occurred throughout the agrarian era
warfare, in mining, in metalwork, and in transportation probably raised productivity by stimulating innovation.
and communications. Improvements in transportation As the wealth, influence, and number of entrepreneurs
and communications—such as the development of more and wage earners increased, the societies in which they
maneuverable ships or the ability to print with movable lived became more open and receptive to innovation.
type—were particularly important because they increased
the scale of exchanges and ensured that new technolo- Development of a Single
gies, goods, and ideas circulated more freely. Methods of Global Network
organizing large numbers of humans for warfare or tax Third, the linking of world zones into a single global net-
collection also improved during the agrarian era. In ways work from the sixteenth century provided a sharp stimu-
that are not yet entirely clear, these slow technological lus to commercial growth and technological innovation.
and organizational changes, together with a steady ex- In just a century or so the scale on which goods and ideas
pansion in the size and scale of global markets, created could be exchanged almost doubled, and a huge variety
the springboard for the much faster changes of the mod- of new goods and ideas entered into global circulation.
ern era. During the final centuries of the agrarian era the Maize, sugar, silver, coffee, cotton, tobacco, potatoes, and
pace of change was already increasing. International the productive and commercial expertise that went with
GDP grew almost sixfold between 1000 and 1820, these commodities were no longer confined to particular
whereas hardly any growth had occurred at all during the regions but instead were available throughout the world.
previous millennium. Even the trade in people was internationalized. Before the
sixteenth century the most active slave traders operated in
Rise of Commercial Societies the Islamic world, and most of their slaves came from
Second, most historians would agree that the modern Slavic or Turkic peoples to their north. From the sixteenth
revolution is connected with the rise of more commercial century European slavers began to capture or buy African