It’s a myth that the invention of the horse collar caused great change:
The Medieval Horse Harness: Revolution or Evolution? A Case Study in Technological Change [PDF]
by Paul J. Gans
As always, history is a LOT more complicated than that.
How are you figuring in food (and other materials) obtained by gathering, fishing, and hunting?
Purchasing Power Parity (PPP). Using the basket of goods approach is the only way to rationally approach this question (at least, for a message board discussion), and now the question becomes “what is the value of a current basket of goods to provide a diet of ~2,000 calories for neolithic man”.
See, in today’s world, he would just buy it, and that number is counted in GDP figures, right? So it makes comparative sense to include the GDP-equivalent of the value of goods even hunter-gatherers and subsistence farmer gathered to consume themselves, even if that basket didn’t make it into the greater economy. So if the PPP-equivalent of feeding yourself as a hunter-gatherer for a day is, say, $6… that’s still $2,190 in GDP production every year, regardless of the fact that you consumed all $2,190.
Doesn’t that present a problem if being compared to current GDP figures? because it was my understanding that those usually only take into account goods and services that are paid for in monetary form.
True, but the category “goods not produced for sale in the marketplace” was, by default, the vast majority of human production until somewhere between 1300AD and 1950AD. My argument is that GDP estimates which do not take into account this basic, fundamental economic change are inherently flawed and understate the true value of what humanity produced. Today we can safely ignore the “not produced for sale” category because the amount of “goods not produced for sale in the marketplace” is negligible. But in earlier times, it was the vast majority of our work and effort precisely because scarcity and the lack of societal organization, technology, networks (road, communications, financial, more), etc made it so.
Also… why does it make sense to account for food production in today’s GDP calculations but ignore it in ancient GDP calculations, just because the food wasn’t sold? It was still produced! It took effort, investment, time, seed, knowledge, even if you were a 452BCE farmer in the Danube valley. There were economic inputs going into food production… but no economic value coming out? I’m kinda :dubious: about that proposition.
In telling the vast majority of humanity that their efforts to feed themselves had no economic value, they would likely counter that it had economic value to them, and they are right in that.
Ah. I think I’m actually agreeing with you, then.
Though I’m not so sure about that part. Work done producing goods and especially services “not produced for sale in the marketplace” is often neglected in economic discussions, yes; but I don’t think it’s actually negligible. The amount of work done in keeping households running in ways ranging from clearing up after meals to taking care of children and taking care of ill and/or aged friends and relatives must be huge. And there are still quite a few people on the planet, if not so many posting on this board, who raise part of their own food and collect part of their own fuel.
Oh, I get that. But then the question starts becoming “what are problems with current GDP measurements”, which is outside the scope of this thread.
Regardless, my point is simple: The assumptions we make to determine modern GDP do not work in a world where most people work to keep themselves alive, with little trade or money. But they are working, they are producing…if not cash, than calories… and if we want to measure the worth of what they’re producing we have to go beyond current beliefs about what constitutes GDP… assumptions which exist, imho, to make the researchers life easier.
There was something of an agricultural revolution around 1000 AD with several advancements being adopted at roughly the same time:
[ul]
[li]Heavy plow- let previously unfarmable land be farmed effectively.[/li][li]Horse collar- let animals pull heavier loads, like the moldboard plow.[/li][li]Horseshoes- allowed the hooves to be protected. [/li][li]Crop rotation (2 field in 8th century, 3 in 11th) - allowed for higher yields.[/li][/ul]
These ushered in an agricultural revolution that probably accounts for the uptick in GDP rate seen in the 9th/10th century on the video.
There are major problems with the idea that these changes were sudden, or took place at a particular point of time around 1000 AD.
Horseshoes - a horseshoe complete with nails was found in the tomb of the Frankish King Childeric I in the 5th century AD. Horseshoes are mentioned in literature from the early 900s. There were various designs and improvements over a period of centuries.
Horse collars - didn’t have that much effect, for the simple reason that horses were not commonly used in agriculture.
Oxen were cheaper to buy and far cheaper to feed. Only relatively wealthy farmers could afford horses in the first place. Horses also tended to be much smaller than modern horses. Horses only replaced oxen in agriculture gradually over a period of centuries. Also, the horse collar wasn’t a sudden perfected innovation. There are various designs that were improved over time, and were slowly adopted in different parts of Europe. Other factors, like the development of the whippletree for harnessing several horses, also incrementally improved the relative value of horses over oxen.
Heavy plough - from the wiki, “the carruca may have been employed by some Slavs by AD 568. It was present in Italy’s Po Valley by 643 and—judging from the terminology in the Lex Alemannorum—in southwestern Germany by 720. The carruca may have been introduced to the British Isles by the Viking invasions of England in the late 9th century.”
Three-field system - replaced the two-field system gradually in the late medieval period, well after 1000 AD.
All these factors certainly improved agricultural yields, but the idea that the changes happened suddenly, and at at about 1000 AD (a convenient round number) is simply not true.
Subsistence farming is not excluded from the current GDP of countries where it’s non negligible. It’s hard to estimate though. Likewise respected figures for long past or ancient GDP’s would obviously be nonsense if they excluded that. It doesn’t seem plausible that nobody prior to this thread has ever thought of that. 
But of course it means the very old GDP’s are even harder to estimate.
But there are countries now with GDP PPP per capita in only the $100’s. Maybe I’m missing something in posts which seemed to say that number had to be at least a few $k? I don’t think so.
Maddison’s numbers, especially far back, have been subject to criticism by later researchers, though obviously not coming up with ‘the’ number which is impossible. But not AFAIK as being massively too low, nor making the most basic possible mistake of estimating long ago GDP’s as having been only the surplus that was traded and omitting the basic subsistence production which was what most people spent most of their time producing until relatively recently in history.
But back to OP question, Maddison calculated Western Europe at <10% of world GDP ca 1000 but around 18% by 1500 so indicative of faster growth. However the low starting point means Europe alone could not have generated a big spike in world GDP growth in that period, and several of the explanations proposed seem to focus on that region. As others mentioned, the % for Europe could be even lower if you think the population of the America’s, particularly, prior to persistent European exploration was much larger than traditionally estimated.
Another problem is calculating GDP in modern US dollars. There is no easy, straightforward, agreed, or really meaningful way to convert prices even from the US a century ago into modern dollars - let alone from other cultures thousands of years ago, and subsistence cultures without money.
Here is a long, clear, non-technical, and interesting discussion about this:
Who said they were sudden? I’m well aware that they happened over a span of hundreds of years.
Most likely some combination of those things reached critical mass at some point roughly around 1000 AD, and increased agricultural productivity enough that it would show up as a higher rate of GDP increase on that analysis that the OP linked.
Look at it this way- at the time, pretty much EVERYTHING was agriculturally based. There was an uptick in the rate of GDP increase starting at roughly 1000 AD. There was also a revolution in agricultural technology and techniques centered at about the same time.
Seems a bit of a stretch to me to think that the two are coincidental and unrelated.
Actually, what you said was, “There was something of an agricultural revolution around 1000 AD with several advancements being adopted at roughly the same time”. That is not the case, they were not adopted at roughly the same time.
Secondly, if you had bothered to read the earlier discussion, you would have seen that there’s general agreement that those figures are bullshit, anyway. So we don’t need to make any assumptions in order to explain them.
People have a tendency to look towards technology as the explainer of growth, but in this case that wasn’t it.
Prior to 1000, capital formation by peasants and laborers was pretty much impossible. The centers of power were the Crown and the Church. People were poor for the same reason they are still poor in various places around the world - because the masses have no way of coordinating economic activity, benefiting from that coordination, and building capital to grow businesses.
Trade ca 1000 AD was limited on land and expensive, and you couldn’t build massive wealth because it would be expropriated by the crown or the church. Trade was dangerous because of road bandits. Any accumulation of wealth was at risk of expropriation.
That all started to change around 1000. Guilds sprung up to give some power to the workers, trade associations started to form, etc. The Magna Carta gave rights to individuals and a basic legal framework that allowed them to profit from commerce. The Hanseatic league of cities managed to convince the powers in charge that allowing those cities to have financial and trade semi-autonomy was a good thing, and the league also began protecting trade routes on land, which lowered the cost of trade substantially.
All of this led to the rise of a merchant class of considerable economic and political power - the first time people could become rich and powerful by selling things to others instead of killing or enslaving them.
Lots of other factors came into play as the millennium went on, but I think 1000AD is as good a point as any to mark the beginnings of rudimentary market economies and the recognition of individual right to own property. It took a long time to formalize these things starting in 1254, but the change had already been going on for a long time by then.
Sam isn’t wrong. Keys to prosperity included a higher volume of trade (aided by safer roads), human rights like life and property (aided by a stronger legal framework), and the entrepreneurship these keys allowed. Safe roads, perhaps patrolled by King’s soldiers, were especially important: in the feudal eras associated with weak Kings peasants were often tied to the land less by their bond of serfdom than by the fact that travel led to robbery, rape or murder.
These keys resulted from a strong central governments. The Roman Empire was prosperous because of its political strength; it failed when that strength failed, when central strength was replaced with kleptocracies. At the height of Rome, and especially in the Dark Ages which followed, it was Imperial China, with its strong governments, that led the world in prosperity and invention. Similarly, the strong political cohesion of an Islamic Caliphate led to its Golden Age.
The waves of prosperity and decline during Europe’s Middle Ages follow closely the waves of competition between strong central authorities and feudalism. In some cases the strong central authority was the Catholic Church. Universities were important to the 12th-century Renaissance; the University of Paris achieved its autonomy and success because it operated under the Church’s authority.
The Wiki article linked above hints at the connection between strong central government and the rise of prosperity and a middle class. The article makes an interesting claim about the Mongol conquest:
As a final example, Sam mentions the Hanseatic League which began with the rising strength of the city of Lübeck. That rise coincided with the power of Henry the Lion, the powerful Duke of Saxony who gave Lübeck its charter, and the even greater power of Henry’s famous cousin, Emperor Frederick Barbarossa.
Of course my post here emphasizes only part of a complex story. However we often see a claim at SDMB that strong governments inhibit enterprise and prosperity. The opposite is the case.
Some of what you’re saying is in the right direction, but it also seems that you haven’t read much medieval history, aside from pop-history.
You mention the crown and the church, but not the magnates, even though they were often more powerful than either the crown or the church.
You mention guilds, but not cities, although the rights of cities and commerce of cities were far more important.
You are making broad generalisations, but there was vast diversity across Europe. You can’t talk about, say, the Venetian Republic or the Byzantine Empire in the same breath as, say, medieval Scotland. Laws, culture, social organisation, trade, were very different in Normandy and Provence, in Lombardy and Sicily. You can’t lump medieval Portugal and medieval Denmark together in the same category. Not to mention variations over time.
Even if you only look at England from Anglo-Saxon times to the Late Medieval period, and consider property rights, individual wealth, legal rights, taxation, trade and commerce, it’s an enormously complex, huge and varied subject.