Urbanization, Citizenship, and Economic Growth in the Long Run

Maarten Prak argues that urban citizen associations remained vigorous in the West from the Middle Ages through the Industrial Revolution, and that their support for commercial activity helped bring about that Revolution. That is half correct. During the two thousand years from 300 BC to 1750 AD, numerous societies had similar peaks of urbanization, commercial activity, and per capita income (often approaching, but never exceeding, a "peak pre-industrial income" level of roughly $1,900 in 1990 international dollars.) Vigorous urban societies produced repeated episodes of comparably high incomes, not ever-escalating levels of GDP/capita. What produced the breakthrough of the Industrial Revolution was a particular manifestation of urban citizenship that occurred only in Great Britain - the victory of Parliament over royal authority creating exceptional religious and intellectual freedom and institutionalized pluralism. This was not common to urbanized, commercial societies except in rare periods; only in Britain did urban associations and culture blend with scientific culture, producing a broad surge of scientific and technical activity that overcame the prior limits on organic societies.