lecture 3 economy and the great divergence Flashcards
What is urban economy?
The production, distribution, exchange and consumption of goods and service within the urban society
What are important links between urbanization and the economy?
- Cities have important functions
- Urban economy attracts people
- Urban economies drives of economic developments and wealth
- Urban growth results from urban economic growth and vice versa
What are the two means of obtaining power in early cities?
- Appropriation of agricultural surpluses
- Long distance trade
What are the three important theories on societal collaps?
- Environmental conditions
- Moral decay and outside attacks
- Social theory: elite competition
What important changes are there in urbanization?
- Rise of industrial capitalism
- Improvement of living standards in industrialized areas
- Huge population growth from the end of the 18th century
When does urban growth stop according to Davis S curve?
- Sustaining population
- Developed countires will shift to suburbanization and peripheral development
Why do we have to focus on Europe and China in the great divergence?
- They are equally advanced economies
- Parallel growth in commerce, population and agricultural productivity
Economic power: agricultural surplus
- Wealth of early cities provided by surplus of farmers
- Taxation by urban rules
- Forced labor
- Cities provide services in exchange (ex, protection, administration, religious services)
Economic power: long-distance trade
- Rulers in cities aimed at increasing prestige → accumulation of prestige goods
- Long-distance trade: import of raw materials and luxury products (artisans producing)
What is the result of early urban economies fragility?
Most early urban economies collapsed
Early urban economies fragile
- Dependence on extraction of rural resouces
- Coercion could lead to resistance
- Prestige economy: problems with legitimacy
Link between urbanization and big cities and sustained growth not clear (1300-1800)
- Differences between regions
- Ability to attract surplus from agriculture differs per city
What is a producer city?
The productions and exchange of goods and commercial service with the city’s hinterland and other cities
What is a consumer city?
A centre of government and military protection and occupation which supplies service in return for taxes, land rent and non-market transitions
Who’s theory were the producer and consumer city?
Max Weber
What did Max Weber argue?
He argued that cultural factors were to cause the divergence. He argued religious was a driven force of economic growth
Latin America until 1800:
- Large capital cities
- Coercion-oriented
- Centralized system of control: colonial empires
North America until 1800:
- Late urbanization and less sizeable cities
- Market-oriented
- Decentralized system of control
Japan and China until 1800:
Mixed systems
- High level of urbanization
- Centralized system of control
Consumer and producer cities (coercion and market-oriented)
Middle east 800-1800
- The first big cities
- Highest level of urbanization around 900
- String centralized system of control
- Capital cities dominant
Europe 800-1800
- Large cities and urbanization only after ca. 900
- Low urbanization level before 800, developing after 900
- Fragmented political system
- capital cities, but in some regions they become market-oriented
Western europe 800-1800
Differences within Europe
- Decentralized coercion VS decentrialized market-orientation
Conclusion of Van Bavel et al. that leads to less sustainable economic growth - Centralization of power
- Centralization of power in few cities
- Weak local institutions
What are the results of industrialization?
Level urbanization western europe and north america surpasses the rest of the world
What did Kingsley Davis (1965) say?
- Urbanization is caused by rural-urban migration
- Industrialization linked to the growth of cities
- S-curve of urbanization
