The Rational Optimist (P.S.)

by Matt Ridley

Although a small percentage of the European population in the Middle Ages would have even encountered silk and sugar, let alone regularly, and a tiny proportion of Europe’s GDP came from such trade, none the less it is undeniable that Europe’s reawakening was boosted by contact with the productivity of China, India, Arabia and Byzantium through Italian trade. Regions that participated in Asian trade grew richer than the regions that did not: by 1500 Italy’s GDP per capita was 60 per cent higher than the European average. But historians often put too much emphasis on exotic trade with the Orient. As late as 1600, European trade with Asia, dominated because of transport costs of luxuries such as spices, was only half the value of the inter-regional European trade in cattle alone. Europe could trade with Asia because it traded so much with itself, not vice versa.