Prof Lipsey

That European prosperity and technology rapidly outpaced China after about
1800 is surely correct.  But I am delighted to see you take a stand against
‘Chinese mentality’ type explanations of that matter.   As historians we
will inevitably tend to reverse engineer our evidence, but to do so merely
by invoking mentality seems to just too associated with intellectual
slovenliness, and worse.

If I understand your position correctly, then you associate factory
production rather closely with modern Europe in general and Fordism in
particular.  This I do not accept.  Wang Anshih did not get five billion
coins a year made in kitchen ovens, nor were the 90 million bricks in the
Jetavana stupa made in anyone’s back yard.  Factory production within a
Fordist economic environment however is perhaps more of a modern European
phenomenon – but surely we must then ask what the roots of that Fordist
economic environment were?  It is at this point I think we find an important
influence that China had on Europe.

Berkeley (The Querist) is surely correct to point to high Chinese
productivity in 1737 – I do not think it excessively sarcastic to suggest
that the only thing England was mass producing at that time was stately
homes.  And the obvious key fundamental element in Berkeley’s proto-Fordism,
got from a Chinese model, is the realisation that you have to bite the
bullet and actually pay your workers, rather than truck them.

In 1682 William Petty thought 12 copper coins per household was an adequate
money supply for the English working classes.  When Wang Anshih took power
in China around 1060, there were already maybe six thousand copper coins per
household in circulation, but he saw this a greatly inadequate and increased
production by at least an extra 100 coins per household per annum.

One final point – coinage does not seem to be on your list of General
Purpose Technologies.  Am curious to understand why it was excluded, if so.

Regards

Rob Tye, York UK