This book seeks to provide an overview of the modern world economy since 1870, dealing with the material in such a way as to give due weight to chronology, regional balance, and coverage of the main topics. It forms part of a two-volume publication, with the first volume taking the story from 1700 to 1870. Volume II begins in 1870 because by then modern economic growth had emerged in Britain and already spread to much of the rest of western Europe and the British offshoots in the New World (the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand), and was poised to begin in Asia, following the institutional reforms in Japan associated with the Meiji Restoration of 1868. There was thus a great potential during the period after 1870 for closing the gap in living standards that had opened up between the West and the rest of the world. Although many more countries embarked on the process of sustained modern economic growth between 1870 and 2001, the gap nevertheless continued to grow during the long twentieth century, as catching up proved elusive (Maddison 2005: 11). By 2001, the world was nearly seven times richer than it had been in 1870, but the gains were unevenly distributed, with the West growing by a factor of nearly 12, while the rest of the world grew by a factor of less than 6.

This book tells the story of the beginnings of modern economic growth, or the sustained increase of per capita incomes together with population growth, surely one of the most important developments in world history. Part I on regional developments documents how modern economic growth first emerged in eighteenth-century Britain, and follows its spread to other parts of the world. Its origins can be traced back to earlier developments in north-west Europe, which began to break free from the Malthusian cycle of alternating periods of positive and negative growth after the arrival of the Black Death in the mid-fourteenth century. Europe thus experienced a Little Divergence as the rest of the continent continued to experience periods of shrinking as well as growing. Within Asia, there was also regional variation, with China and India experiencing negative growth during the eighteenth century while Tokugawa Japan caught up with China and then forged ahead, creating an Asian Little Divergence.

The British Industrial Revolution marked the beginning of modern economic growth. This breakthrough built upon earlier episodes of GDP per head growth with the economy remaining on a plateau between these episodes. Growth was accompanied by structural change, with the declining share of agriculture matched by the rise of services as well as industry. As a result, Britain improved its position relative to the rest of Europe (the Little Divergence) and also improved its position relative to the leading Asian economies (the Great Divergence). The chapter examines the proximate sources behind economic growth in Britain during 1700–1870, including investment, growth in the number of workers, and accumulation of human capital. Together, these factors accounted for about two-thirds of the increase in output growth, leaving the other third to be explained by total factor productivity growth. However, the ultimate sources of Britain’s growth lay deeper in geography and institutions. The chapter also examines the effects of the Industrial Revolution on living standards and the impact of trade and empire.