The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor

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The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor

3.82 of 5 stars 3.82 · rating details · 936 ratings · 67 reviews

The Wealth and Poverty of Nations is David S. Landes's acclaimed, best-selling exploration of one of the most contentious and hotly debated questions of our time: Why do some nations achieve economic success while others remain mired in poverty? The answer, as Landes definitively illustrates, is a complex interplay of cultural mores and historical circumstance. Rich with a...more

Paperback, 688 pages

Published May 17th 1999 by W. W. Norton & Company (first published March 1st 1998)

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Jun 24, 2007 Jeff rated it 4 of 5 stars

David Landes is trying to answer a similar question to that posed by Jared Diamond: Why are some countries so rich and other countries so poor? Landes comes to a much more complex answer than Diamond, and because of that I find his explanations somewhat more plausible. Landes concludes that prosperity is the result of a complicated interplay between culture, policital instituitions, and geography. Even if you disagree with any of his final explanations, I can promise that you will learn a great...more

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Jul 17, 2012 Anke rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: classic, historic, philosophy, economics

David S. Landes tells the long, fascinating story of wealth and power throughout the world: the creation of wealth, the paths of winners and losers, the rise and fall of nations.

He studies history as a process, attempting to understand how the world's cultures lead to - or retard - economic and military success and material achievement.

Countries of the West, Landes asserts, prospered early through the interplay of a vital, open society focused on work and knowledge, which led to increased produ...more

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Jun 09, 2011 Adil rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 11th-grade-advisory

The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor
by David S. Landes
672 pages
The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor is a book written on the history and progression of economics. This book covers six centuries long of economic analysis for dozens of countries. This book is excruciating in the amount of information you have to process in your head. I never knew the history of economics could be so stressful on the mind. There are so many d...more The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor
by David S. Landes
672 pages
The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor is a book written on the history and progression of economics. This book covers six centuries long of economic analysis for dozens of countries. This book is excruciating in the amount of information you have to process in your head. I never knew the history of economics could be so stressful on the mind. There are so many different variables a person has to take in account when talking about the wealth or poverty of a nation. The environment, not just the geography but the environment created by a society, and negative factors such as natural disasters are some of the reasons why there is a huge gap between rich and poorer nations.
Landes does a good job of explaining why the West is so much better off than the rest of the world. His belief is that because the West focused more on science and math and less on religon post-renaissance several European nations were able to come out of the woodwork and emerge as world powers. These countries were more open to change and either created superior technology or were able to get their hands on new technology like the compass or astrolabe from a distant place. These Western nations constantly competed among each each other, constantly adapting to the changing world scene, and building up wealthy economies in the process. Eventually these wealthier nations were prepared enough to exploit other poorer nations who were unable to keep up and establish a system of mercantilism where the mother country gains all the raw materials. As a result of this economic system the richer nations kept getting richer while the poorer nations were stripped of natural resources and built up a dependence on these wealthier nations. Another way a nation got wealthier was conquering new land and enslaving its people to work in colonies as seen in the Americas. It's the same cycle over and over with the wealthy nation always profiting.
Landes talks of so many different ways the gap between rich and poor nations widened but I just don't have the time or room to explain all these methods. This book is an encyclopedia of terms, places, and events. This book is very compact. Anyway the basic format of this book is comparing and contrasting wealthy and poor nations of different time periods and explaining reasons for each nation's outcome. A question is asked, then investigated, and finally answered with a conclusion. I recommend this book to anyone interested in economics and is able to process more than half a millennium of history,
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Mar 15, 2010 pinaceae No rated it 5 of 5 stars

Read this book in one stint during a stay at the sea. It appealed to me on a very fundamental, nerdy level as it went deep into historic details, uprooting information that was new to me. The reader spends equal time in the main text as in the footnotes - while being challenged and entertained.

'Guns, Germs and Steel' by Jared Diamond tries to explain history by looking at environmental factors and resulting positive feedback loops. Landes agrees basically that environmental factors contribute, b...more

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Apr 25, 2012 Anurag Agrawal rated it 2 of 5 stars

Nice and easy encyclopaedic information of world wide economic history and that is the reason for two stars but when it comes to hang everything together in terms of causality everything is bigoted, ofcourse from western perspective. This is not exception but usually the norm of this genre where people tend to give too much importance to current moment, since when the book was written West was considered advanced plus an exception was made for Japan in terms of corelating Japanese work ethic wit...more

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Feb 03, 2011 Benjamin rated it 4 of 5 stars

A great book that takes a broad look at the successful and unsuccessful countries/regions of the world over the last 700 years or so. While this was not a difficult read, it was not a really engaging read either, it is simply loaded with just too much information to be a real page-turner. However, one learns a lot. The book suffered a little bit I think from very poor editing, there were many mistakes that a simple spell check would have caught, sometimes I had to re-read a simple sentence (you...more

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Jul 04, 2012 Kyle rated it 2 of 5 stars

500 years of economic history in 500 pages. My favourite chapter is 'For Love of Gain', about the Dutch "colonial adventure."

"Over the years, the men in the fields made like monarchs and the burghers back home wrung their hands. How could the directors make the decisions? It generally took two to three years to instructions to go form Amsterdam to the Indies and for replied to come back. By that time, done was done. The history of overseas empire, and not only for Holland, is largely a story of...more

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Jul 31, 2007 Captain added it

Perhaps the finest book of its type I have ever encountered. A huge education to any reader and hugely readable.

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Jan 21, 2013 Alain rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: society

I was disappointed by this book. It relies a lot on anecdotical evidence and fails to reach any conclusion. After closing, I could not tell what is the main points developed by the author, the reasons why some countries are rich and others poor.
Even if sources are well documented, I also had the impression that facts have been selected to confirm the views of the author. The views developed a number of historical events seemed very partial to me.
As far as style is concerned, the book is easy a...more

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Nov 04, 2012 Erin rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: academic-study

I took me 8 years to read this book. That's right, 8 years. I picked it up in 2004 because it was at the top of the suggested reading list for the foreign service exam. Since then, I have been plodding through it, sometimes starting over and re-reading.

So, it must have sucked to have gone through that long undertaking, right? And I mean, would a book on world economics and political systems that came out in 1999 even be relevant anymore? Plus, I bet it was boring as hell.

Au contraire to all of...more

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Apr 17, 2013 Ken-ichi rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: learning, history, economics

Culture plays a significant role in the success or failure of civilizations. Interesting thesis, right? One that might not seem so objectionable until you state it in concrete historical terms: Western civilizations have dominated the world for the last 200 years largely because of their culture. Culture is personal, so people take things like this personally: you're saying Europeans are intrinsically superior to other people? Eurocentrist! Bigot! Racist!

David Landes has been called a Eurocentri...more

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Jul 18, 2011 Nick rated it 4 of 5 stars

Yowzers. I've been reading this behemoth for my non-fiction book, The Blind Giant. It's dauntingly enormous and it's about history, money, and society, so it's probably not your August beach book. On the other hand, if you're shipwrecked, you could probably build a shelter out of it as long as you know enough industrial origami. Have we established its bigness? Okay.

It is also elegantly written and hugely interesting. I was slightly in awe of it and a bit frightened by it, but actually, dipping...more

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Sep 18, 2012 Lisa (Harmonybites) rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Everyone

Shelves: political, non-fiction, history

Despite the title, this isn't a book about why, say Botswana is doing so much better than Zimbabwe these days due to such and such a policy or Germany versus Greece or practical advice on how the poor countries can turn things around and the rich countries help them. It's more descriptive than prescriptive. Rather it's a world economic history that deals with forces centuries, even millennium old. I appreciated that Landes wasn't afraid to be controversial; he takes dead aim at all forms of poli...more Despite the title, this isn't a book about why, say Botswana is doing so much better than Zimbabwe these days due to such and such a policy or Germany versus Greece or practical advice on how the poor countries can turn things around and the rich countries help them. It's more descriptive than prescriptive. Rather it's a world economic history that deals with forces centuries, even millennium old. I appreciated that Landes wasn't afraid to be controversial; he takes dead aim at all forms of political correctness, multiculturalist cant, and such theories as those found in Said's Orientalism. Looking at other reviews, some complain Landes is too Eurocentric. Given the theme of the book, the wealth and poverty of nations, I can't blame him much. It's like that old joke about robbing banks--you go where the money is. Mind you, he seems to me to be not just Eurocentric but Anglocentric--although again, it does tie into his theory given Britain was arguably ground zero for the Industrial Revolution. And that is definitely at the center of his answer to the question posed in his subtitle concerning nations: why some are so rich and some so poor.

The book did leave me with questions. Landes begins with an analysis of geography. On the North/South axis, Landes believes the difference between tropical and temperate regions are crucial. But if that's so, why didn't North America develop a technologically sophisticated culture before contact with the West? Why then would the most impressive indigenous civilizations in the Americas rise out of jungles, such as the Mayans and the Incas? It's not a question asked in the book, which doesn't deal with the Americas until the era of exploration and colonization. Though to give Landes his due, Eurocentric doesn't mean triumphalist or apologist. If for whatever reason, you're ignorant of the atrocities committed by Europeans in the Americas or of the savagery of the Atlantic Slave Trade, Landes will certainly provide an education. (Especially when it comes to the Spanish Conquistadors. Landes is not kind to Catholicism or Islam, which he sees as stultifying upholders of dogma.) When Landes comes to examine the East/West axis, he sees as crucial the differences in property rights and development of markets. I'd be the last person to dismiss such factors out of hand, yet Landes' thesis as to the definitive factor that gave rise to the differences did raise both eyebrows:

Europe's great good fortune lay in the fall of Rome and the weakness and division that ensued. (So much for the lamentations of generations of classicists and Latin teachers.) The Roman dream of unity, authority, and order (the pax Romana) remained, indeed has persisted to the present.... [yet] fragmentation was the strongest brake on wilful, oppressive behavior. Political rivalry and the right of exit made all the difference.

Really? Because I do find it hard to believe the fall of Rome wasn't a tragedy for the West. Ancient Rome at its height is estimated to have had a population of one million. After its fall, no city, in Europe at least, would hit that threshold until London in 1811. Trade, literacy, urbanization all collapsed in the former Western Empire and arguably wouldn't fully recover for nearly a millennium. I do get Landes' point that authoritarian empires could do much to cripple technological and economic progress, but that still seemed a rather breathtaking claim. It is key to his theory however. Because if for Landes the key to the wealth of nations is the Industrial Revolution, the key to the Industrial Revolution is a culture of scientific inquiry and invention spurred on by a rivalry between nations, allowed room to breathe by a fragmented authority and fostered by a strong work ethic. (He sees this fragmented authority and work ethic as crucial in the rise of an industrial Japan as well.) In the end, geography isn't destiny, for according to Landes it's "not resources" that made the difference between nations but what "lay inside--culture, values, initiative." (And a constant related thread--the importance to growth and development of the "status and role of women" and the rights of minorities--Jews in history often being the canary in the coal mine.)

This work is erudite, entertaining, thought-provoking and written with style. (The kind of book that stretches vocabularies so have a dictionary handy.) The author is apparently an American, but he has a dry, at times acid, often deadpan humor I associate with the British. It's also hard not to respect a book that garners praise, as seen in the blurbs, from such celebrated yet ideologically diverse economists as John Kenneth Galbraith and Robert Solow. Landes himself, for all that he stresses the importance of property rights, is far from free market--he made frequent stabs, if not arguments, at free traders. I saw one reviewer that claimed this book was taught as an example of flawed historiography. Maybe so, but it's not evident to me. I appreciated that Landes often related the various controversies in the field, and there are extensive notes and bibliography. It seemed sound and told a great story. So many of the connections Landes made are fascinating; the breath of the technological and social details he presented and global scope he took in was impressive. It's a book well worth reading and thinking about.(less)

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May 25, 2008 Rex rated it 3 of 5 stars

The last chapter of this book--"How did we get here? Where are we going?"--should be required reading for everyone. It succinctly outlines the complexity of our economic situation. I finished the book with an increased awareness of the importance of cultivating a culture of optimism, hard work, and entrepreneurship.

The rest of the book was interesting but I felt it was written to impress colleagues rather than to convey the salient history behind the wealth and poverty of nations. Landes would...more

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Aug 19, 2012 Anna added it

Shelves: economy, history, lostinterest

If you worry about mistakes you've done in life, don't be because these guys in this book have done that, big time! Either they prove the proverb 'learning by mistake' or just going 'dumber with mistakes'.

For example, when the Portuguese that hold thight into their Christianity, forced Jews scientist to be baptized, grounded astronomers like Galileo for stepping 'above divine;, limiting and cencoring imported science book. They realize that the pursuit of Christian uniformity was stupid and swa...more

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Nov 24, 2012 Miguel rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

In this book, Landes answers a similar question asked by Diamond in "Guns, Germs and Steel." Instead of focusing on geography and farming, however, Landes focuses on culture, politics, social structure and religion. How do these things contribute to human success? The "net net": peoples that are educated, eyes-open optimists that challenge current dogmas (for new ideas) and work for the love of earning (not accumulation) ... these are the qualities that lead to the wealth of nations.

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Sep 17, 2012 Pieter rated it 5 of 5 stars

Harvard professor met een enorme kennis inzake economische geschiedenis. Het beste dat ik hieromtrent al gelezen heb. Houdt naast klimatologische elementen ook rekening met cultuur, godsdienst, een factor geluk. Voorspelde bijvoorbeeld dat Zuid-Oost-Azië de crisis van eind jaren 90 zou te boven komen. Heb dit boek al aan vele mensen aangeraden en bij deze aan iedereen ook dit verslag leest. Ook in het Nederlands te verkrijgen als "Arm en rijk".

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Sep 21, 2012 Tom rated it 4 of 5 stars

Landis has a similar philosophy to Jared diamond's guns germs and steel though his approach and writing style is a different. He does quote a number of varying sources some of which is ambiguous to me to determine the point he's trying to drive home. Otherwise it's a good read and helps frame a better understanding of his historical and cultural theories and how they relate to how the world is today from a socioeconomic perspective.

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Jul 29, 2011 Khalid rated it 2 of 5 stars

Landes strongly advocates the point of view, along with geography and politics, that cultural values, such as technology, thriftiness, work ethic, and the role of women, are the primary factors of economic success or failure. Although the work contains geographic and historical information, I believe that the book is exceedingly Eurocentric.

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Oct 19, 2012 Colin Priest rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: smart-stuff

One of the most eye opening books that I have ever read. Just a warning though, It is dinner party poison, I have personally found myself having to defend some of the central ideas of this book against rabidly high levels of vitriol but it still seems as spot on to me as the first time I read it. A contrarians dream.

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Feb 27, 2012 Graziella rated it 4 of 5 stars

With the exception of a few chapters too technical for my taste, this book is a pretty fascinating read - hardly a page goes by without some light blub going off in my head. With the exception of a few sweeping lu-lu statements, plausiblities abound. His posited theories offer one set of explanations for the relative success/wealth of nations through the ages and do make help sense of seemingly unrelated, random issues and results. He highlights the history and topography encased in the DNA of a...more

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Mar 22, 2013 Luis Colon rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

Excellent. As a non-specialist, I found this work opened up a new world of thinking for me. My perceptions/opinions of wealth, geo-politics, and history expanded. Best of all the book, while solidly grounded in research, remained readable and exciting. Non-fiction does not have to be dry and academic.

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Jan 13, 2013 Clare Graaf rated it 5 of 5 stars

If you want to understand why some nations are rich and others are poor- read this book! This isn't a Christian book, but it should make us Christians think more deeply about events in history that have shaped our world in ways we've probably never thought of. I read this book about every four or five years.

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May 22, 2009 Simone Shi is currently reading it

It has been very interesting so far. Prof. Landes gives an historical perspective on economic development. Why some nations are poor, some nations are rich. However, the world is changing everyday, maybe 20 years from now, the so called rich countries are no longer as dominant as they are now.

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Dec 26, 2012 Abhishek rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: my-ebooks

great read for some one trying to get their historical chronology in order. However the narrative has an unusually west centric undertone, more so European. This is a good read if you want to move beyond the environmental factors central to Jared Diamond's.

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Jun 11, 2012 Darryl rated it 4 of 5 stars

I liked the comment, but the writing style was a little odd, with missing verbs and distracting asides.

Main thesis is that culture is the main determinant of the success of a society, rather than its resources, geography, etc....

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Aug 05, 2011 Daniel Mason-D'croz rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is a good book on economic history and development. Landes looks at the importance of cultural characteristics and how they explain different countries varying economic success. At times it recalls Jared Diamond's economic and technological evolutionary ideas as well as Hungtington's Clash of Civilizations. Overall the book is very thorough trying to explain complex issues, and provides a good grounding in economic history. Nevertheless, it is not a quick read. It took me a long time (with...more

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May 04, 2007 Aaron Crossen rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: economics

Landes tries to weave together geography, culture and politics to figure out how the West 'won,' but the resulting latticework is not as tight as it could be, despite the author's incredible erudition. The main problem? He just tries to do too much. Geography is not destiny for every country; nor are cultural mores or political restraints at all consistent in human history, although all three play roles in determining a nation's fate. Landes can't seem to get away from homogenizing thousands of...more

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Nov 07, 2011 Jan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Genuinely enjoyable and entertaining (more historians should use the phrase 'pissing in the wind' in their conclusions)...but a bit too much of a free market disciple to get five stars.

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Aug 14, 2009 Milele rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-i-own-and-have, recommendations

This is still an excellent book. Among other things, it made me realize that however much I have picked up about history, I'm missing big important pieces.

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About David S. Landes

David S. Landes (born 1924) is a professor emeritus of economics at Harvard University and retired professor of history at George Washington University. He is the author of Revolution in Time, The Unbound Prometheus, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, and Dynasties. Such works have received both praise for detailed retelling of economic history, as well as scorn on charges of blatant Eurocentrism,...more

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Books by David S. Landes

Dynasties: Fortunes and Misfortunes of the World's Great Family Businesses

Revolution in Time: Clocks and the Making of the Modern World

The Invention of Enterprise: Entrepreneurship from Ancient Mesopotamia to Modern Times

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