Why did the industrial revolution take place in eighteenth-century Britain and not elsewhere in Europe or Asia? In this convincing new account Robert Allen argues that the British industrial revolution was a successful response to the global economy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He shows that in Britain wages were high and capital and energy cheap in comparison to other countries in Europe and Asia. As a result, the breakthrough technologies of the industrial revolution - the steam engine, the cotton mill, and the substitution of coal for wood in metal production - were uniquely profitable to invent and use in Britain. The high wage economy of pre-industrial Britain also fostered industrial development since more people could afford schooling and apprenticeships. It was only when British engineers made these new technologies more cost-effective during the nineteenth century that the industrial revolution would spread around the world.

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The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective

There has been a growing debate in recent decades about the range and substance of urban theory. The debate has been marked by many different claims about the nature of cities, including declarations that the urban is an incoherent concept, that urban society is nothing less than modern society as a whole, that the urban scale can no longer be separated from the global scale, and that urban theory hitherto has been deeply vitiated by its almost exclusive concentration on the cities of the global North. This article offers some points of clarification of claims like these. All cities can be understood in terms of a theoretical framework that combines two main processes, namely, the dynamics of agglomeration/polarization, and the unfolding of an associated nexus of locations, land uses and human interactions. This same framework can be used to identify many different varieties of cities, and to distinguish intrinsically urban phenomena from the rest of social reality. The discussion thus identifies the common dimensions of all cities without, on the one hand, exaggerating the scope of urban theory, or on the other hand, asserting that every individual city is an irreducible special case.

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The Nature of Cities: The Scope and Limits of Urban Theory

In this, the first comprehensive one-volume survey of the economies of classical antiquity, twenty-eight chapters summarise the current state of scholarship in their specialised fields and sketch new directions for research. The approach taken is both thematic, with chapters on the underlying determinants of economic performance, and chronological, with coverage of the whole of the Greek and Roman worlds extending from the Aegean Bronze Age to Late Antiquity. The contributors move beyond the substantivist-formalist debates that dominated twentieth-century scholarship and display a new interest in economic growth in antiquity. New methods for measuring economic development are explored, often combining textual and archaeological data that have previously been treated separately. Fully accessible to non-specialist, the volume represents a major advance in our understanding of the economic expansion that made the civilisation of the classical Mediterranean world possible.

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The Cambridge economic history of the Greco-Roman world

Soil health, along with water supply, is the most valuable resource for humans, as human life depends on the soil’s generosity. Soil degradation, therefore, poses a threat to food security, as it reduces yield, forces farmers to use more inputs, and may eventually lead to soil abandonment. Unfortunately, the importance of preserving soil health appears to be overlooked by policy makers. In this paper, I first briefly introduce the present situation concerning agricultural production, natural resources, soil degradation, land use and the challenge ahead, to show how these issues are strictly interwoven. Then, I define soil degradation and present a review of its typologies and estimates at a global level. I discuss the importance of preserving soil capital, and its relationship to human civilization and food security. Trends concerning the availability of arable agricultural land, different scenarios, and their limitations, are analyzed and discussed. The possible relation between an increase in a country’s GNP, population and future availability of arable land is also analyzed, using the World Bank’s database. I argue that because of the many sources of uncertainty in the data, and the high risks at stake, a precautionary approach should be adopted when drawing scenarios. The paper ends with a discussion on the key role of preserving soil organic matter, and the need to adopt more sustainable agricultural practices. I also argue that both our relation with nature and natural resources and our lifestyle need to be reconsidered.

Soil Degradation, Land Scarcity and Food Security: Reviewing a Complex Challenge

Introduction Part I: 1. Who stole what? Time and space 2. Antiquity: no markets, but did they invent politics, freedom and the alphabet? 3. Feudalism: transition to capitalism or the collapse of Europe and the domination of Asia 4. Asiatic despots, in Turkey and elsewhere? Part II: 5. Science and civilization in Renaissance Europe 6. The theft of 'civilization': Elias and Absolutist Europe 7. The theft of 'capitalism': Braudel and global comparison Part III: 8. The theft of institutions, towns and universities 9. The appropriation of values: humanism, democracy and individualism 10. Stolen love: European claims to the emotions 11. Last words Bibliography.

The Theft of History

1. Did Rome Ever Fall? PART ONE: THE FALL OF ROME 2. The Horrors of War 3. The Road to Defeat 4. Living Under the New Masters PART TWO: THE END OF A CIVILIZATION 5. The Disappearance of Comfort 6. Why the Demise of Comfort? 7. The Death of a Civilization? 8. All for the Best in the Best of All Possible Worlds? Appendix: From Potsherds to People Chronology Notes Bibliography

Bryan Ward-Perkins

Papers

The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization

Specialized production and exchange

Why did the Anglo-Saxons not become more British?

Land, labour and settlement

Syria, Palestine and Mesopotamia