Landes' Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Key Arguments Reviewed

Overview of Landes' Central Thesis

In The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor, David S. Landes analyzes the distribution of wealth through a sweeping study of world economics. Landes argues that the key to the current inequality between the rich and poor nations of the world stems directly from the Industrial Revolution, in which some countries made the leap to industrialization and became extremely wealthy, while other countries failed to adapt and remained poor.

Landes concludes that the achievements of Western nations are rooted in culture, rather than merely in technology. Therefore, he believes these achievements could have taken place nowhere else, because technology itself is simply a product of culture. The values that produced scientific and industrial progress also produced the entire culture of modernity. Because of these values, Landes argues, Western civilization provided better for its people than any other civilization in history.

The West grew with more wealth, more comfort, better health and nutrition, more enlightenment, and greater liberty for the overwhelming majority of its people than any other nation or civilization. The rest of the world did not embark on the modernist revolution, according to Landes, until taught or dominated by the West.

Culture, Technology, and Western Industrialization

Landes' approach to debating the topic of the wealth and poverty of nations is both interesting and convincing. He studies the history of economic development over the last several centuries to identify patterns in the development of the world's economy. He shows how European society encouraged technological and organizational innovations, which eventually allowed Europe to surpass and dominate the rest of the world.

Landes believes that we cannot assume all nations benefit from technology equally, as countries do not begin with the same advantages and disadvantages. It may be possible that a nation with substantial economic tools at its disposal will not need the same degree of technological advancement to succeed that a less fortunate nation requires simply to survive.

The paper endorses Landes' approach to showing how the West's economic success is largely attributable to technology — including the ability to use, adapt, and invent new technologies — as well as to the encouragement of literacy and learning, and the relative openness and flexibility of political systems and social institutions. Landes notes that Western innovations that spurred growth were sometimes simple things, such as eyeglasses, yet they nonetheless helped the West advance steadily over time.

Landes uses history to illustrate his point. The Spanish and Portuguese, he argues, allowed temptation to govern their societies and fell behind as a result. The Dutch, by contrast, were honest and focused, and became wealthy — as did the British and Americans, who eventually became the world's leading economic powers.

Critiques of Landes' Historical Approach

However, in taking a primarily historical approach, Landes fails to adequately explain why some countries were able to industrialize and others were not. He largely overlooks structural factors such as climate and natural resources. Instead, he focuses mainly on the reasons he believes some nations were more successful than others, arguing that the ability to sustain an industrial revolution depends on specific cultural and technical traits.

If these cultural traits do not exist, Landes contends, industrialization cannot be sustained. He contrasts the traits of successfully industrialized nations — including work ethic, thrift, honesty, patience, and tenacity — with those of non-industrial countries, arguing that unless these values are internalized broadly, the gap between rich and poor nations will continue to widen.

Landes also points out that China was the most scientifically advanced civilization in the earlier part of the millennium. However, he fails to offer a convincing explanation for why China lost its edge — a significant omission given how central the question of China's trajectory is to any theory of global economic divergence. He acknowledges that poor nations' chances are worsened when governments are corrupt, identifying a common "combination of mismanagement, profligacy, corruption and bad government" that produces a situation in which "the clocks go backward as well as forward." Yet he does not explain how corrupt governments come into being or why they persist in some countries and not others.

Landes writes that Third World societies must be holding back industrial development, given that the Third World is relatively underdeveloped compared with Europe and America. However, he does not go into sufficient detail about the cultural and geographical disadvantages that have shaped these regions.