Kevin Hjortshøj O'Rourke and Jeffrey Gale Williamson have edited and written the introduction to a fascinating volume on the spread of modern manufacturing in what they refer to as the “periphery,” which they define after 1871 as everywhere besides northwest Europe and the United States. The different chapters of the book tackle countries that we would now consider to be advanced industrial states, such as Japan and Italy, as well as regions of the world that we still consider to be comparatively poor and developing, such as sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. In the process, the contributors to the various chapters in this volume are entering the ongoing and fierce debate about the impact of globalization on global inequality.
Did the maturation of the Industrial Revolution and onset of the nineteenth-century globalization spur divergence in national incomes between the core of northwest Europe, North America, and the rest of the world? Has the second globalization, beginning in the 1970s, fostered convergence between the industrial core and the rising parts of Asia? Or, conversely, has deglobalization fostered the greatest progress towards global equality, as experienced by the generally high growth rates around the world during the three decades after World War II? The reasons for convergence and divergence in national income between regions of the world, the causes of economic growth, and even the processes of structural transformation that led to industrialization are massive questions that have divided social scientists and historians for decades. Recognizing the methodological and conceptual challenges in any attempt to answer these questions, O'Rourke and Williamson propose an innovative solution, narrowing the scope of their concern to the study of the spread of modern manufacturing rather than industrialization. Therefore, the volume is concerned with the “development of a particular sector of the economy, rather than with patterns of structural change” of the economy in general (p. 2). O'Rourke and Williamson go on to note that “the development of a modern manufacturing sector is essential for industrialization, but the reverse is not true: a poor country could see its modern manufacturing sector grow rapidly without this leading to structural change” (p. 3).
This approach justifies the editors’ decision to eschew cross-country regressions in favor of country and regional case studies of the growth of the manufacturing sector. They produce two explanations for why some regions and countries have been able to expand their modern manufacturing sector while others have not. The first observation is the impact of factor endowments. The particular characteristics of a country or region determined the success of failure of similar strategies. The second observation is that manufacturing is not a single process, but rather three separate activities, which respond in divergent ways to exogenous shocks, even within the same country. O'Rourke and Williamson break down the activities that preoccupy the manufacturing sector into three different types: the processing of commodities, the production of tradable goods, and the production of nontradable goods for the domestic market.
The book's focus on the particularities of the manufacturing sector allows the contributors to reinvigorate the classic economic history question—essentially, why are some societies relatively rich and others poor?—by introducing the companion fields of business history and the history of technology. In the process, the question is reformulated: Why did particular manufacturing processes take off in certain locations rather than others, and why did those processes impact (or not) structural transformation in particular locations?
This approach leads to a series of novel insights in the case study sections. The inclusion of a chapter on Africa, which is often neglected in economic histories of the twentieth century, is an important sign of the global ambitions of this timely volume. The writers of the Africa case study—distinguished economic historians including Gareth Austin, Ewout Frankema, and Morten Jerven—begin by positing a paradox. African economies have enjoyed surprisingly high levels of aggregate economic growth since 1995, but to date African countries have shown very little success in copying the Asian countries’ developmental strategy of promoting the “export of labor-intensive manufacturing produce” (p. 345).
This approach is able to produce a number of very concrete payoffs. For instance, building on the best current work in African economic history, the authors of the chapter on Africa reject the tiresome concept that African economies have failed to grow, instead introducing the concept of recurrent or “interrupted industrial growth” (p. 346). This leads them to posit that the growth of the African manufacturing sector is not only occurring later than the growth of manufacturing in other regions of the world, but fundamentally different. Broadly surveying trends across the continent, while focusing on three countries (Congo, South Africa, and Nigeria), the authors posit that African economies emerged from colonialism in the middle decades of the twentieth century with a comparative advantage in “land-extensive production” (p. 347). In this context, while numerous African economies have witnessed the development of advanced manufacturing sectors frequently targeted toward the export of commodities, but also in the production of manufactured goods for domestic consumption, no African economies outside of a few outliers such as Mauritius have been capable of developing manufacturing sectors able to compete in the export of tradable manufactured goods. A number of reasons are given for this problem, including small domestic markets, fierce international competition, and the lack of developmental states capable of changing their societies’ comparative advantage. Yet, in the end, the outstanding variable is relatively high labor costs when compared with those of other poor societies. This conclusion raises an interesting question that the authors of the Africa chapter largely leave unexplored, the high cost of the international slave trade.
The decision of the editors to focus on case studies allows this volume to be full of exciting and unexpected insights. It will provide a very useful and timely read for any scholar of economic history or development studies wishing to broaden their temporal and geographic reach.
