Two centuries of economic superpowers

In the case of Spain and Portugal they stripped the gdp of colonies like Brazil and south america from their data and recalculated based on their modern day country borders even though trade with these colonies was a huge component of global trade in 1820.
By 1820 Venezuala, Paraguay, Argentina, Chile and Columbia has already achieved independence from Spain. Mexico went in 1821; Ecuador, Paraguay and Peru in 1822; finally Peru in 1825. After that the only Spanish possessions in the new world were Puerto Rico and Cuba. So, at the point where this chart starts, the Spanish empire is already disintegrating, a process that is completed within a very few years.

The Brazilian story is a little bit more complicated, but basically similar. During the Napoleonic wars the Portuguese monarch and court moved to Brazil, and Brazil effectively became the centre of the Portuguese empire. Reflecting this status, in 1815 Brazil was elevated from a colony to a separate kingdom, parallel with the kingdom of Portugal. Brazil at this time already had a larger economy than Portugal (though that was not a high bar to cross; Portugal was very poor).

The Portuguese weren't very happy about this subordinate economic and political status. in 1820 there was a successful Liberal revolution in Portugal. The revolutionary govenment demanded that King João VI return to Lisbon. He did, but he left his son Pedro to govern Brazil as regent. This effectively made the two kindoms independent of one another. In 1822 the government Lisbon then demanded that Pedro also should return,; he refused, instead declaring the independence of the Empire of Brazil. There folllows a war of independence in which the Brazilians, aided by the British, are successful. Portugal recognises the independene of the Brazilian empire in 1825.

So, again, at the time this chart starts the Portuguese empire in the New World is in the process of disintegrating, and this is complete within a few years. (Portugal still has an empire; Angola, Mozambique, Goa, East Timor, etc . But, shorn of Brazil, it's a shadow of its former self.)

But this whole business of treating the empires of European countries as a single economy is a bit iffy anyway. They tended not to be a single integrated economy in the way that the economies of the colonising countries were. Empires were about political control, and the economic thrust of imperialism was generally not integration, but exploitation — acquiring ownership of assets in the colonies; extracting tax revenues from the colonies. The British governed India, but there was a separate Indian government, subordinate to but distinct from the British government, which set economic policy and made economic decisions for India. The decisions, of course, were made in Britain's interest, but Britain's interest generally did not lie in economic integration. "Imperial free trade" was a political slogan for some but it was never a policy, much less a reality; it would have threatened the wages and lving standards of British workers, since wages in India and elsewhere were much, much lower. Hence there were substantial economic barriers between the UK and its colonies and, frequently, between different British colonies. (For most of the nineteenth and early twentieth century the UK did more trade with Argentina than it did with India.) The different British possessions tended to have separate currencies, and colonial industries which might compete with industry in the UK were supressed (which is what happened to the Indian shipbuilding industry that Purple mentioned, and to its thriving textile industry).

In short, in economic terms empires were pretty much the opposite of what the EU is today. But the chart treats both the nineteenth century empires and the EU as a single economy. You can justify it on the basis of common political control of the diverse economies with an empire but, still, it's a bit misleading.
 
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But this whole business of treating the empires of European countries as a single economy is a bit iffy anyway. They tended not to be a single integrated economy in the way that the economies of the colonising countries were. Empires were about political control,
But they are not treating them as single entities thats my point they are actually pretending they never existed which is revisionism except for russian empire and soviet union why were they also not stripped down and revised?
In 1800 spain still had a 13% share of actual global gdp (including the colonies in south america yes) and yes the spanish and portuguese were about to disintegrate over the next century but in 1820 brazil was still part of portugal and mexico still part of spain yet that is all deleted from this data and graph. At the same time China was an agrarian economy and largely absent from global economy except for tea, silk and ceramics. The qing dynasty was isolated and china had already been in decline for centuries. Yet in these statistics it was ascribed a huge gdp figure simply because of the size of its population and that is a false assumption. The academics that decided this are simply wrong .Its gdp figures should only have been based on the goods it was selling and buying on the global markets.

Im well aware of the histories of spain and portugal and their loss of all their colonial conquests in 19th century, thats a seperate issue. However to simply wipe out their global trade in the early 19th century and pretend they never existed in a table about the "change in global superpowers over last 2 centuries" is false and not dealing in reality. Whether we like it or not they were superpowers in serious decline at beginning of 19th century when China was not a superpower at all .
 
But, remember, the table isn't measuring (or pretending to measure) global trade, but global production. Not much of global production was traded internnationally, so there is only a weak correlation between how much a country produced and how much it traded. In 1820 China represented more than a third of the world's population; and it really can be properly regarded as an integrated economy, with a single currency and a large internal trade. Population-wise, the Spanish empire was less than a tenth of the size, even counting the population of territories in rebellion over which Spain had already lost effective control. Treating the Spanish empire as a single economy, and adding it to the table, would result in a very thin line indeed; it wouldn't dramatically change the picture painted.
 
Notwithstanding the argument about PPP vs GDP/GNP this is a very interesting thread, quite thought provoking. Thanks to @patfert1 for starting it and to @Purple for their intriguing inputs.
 
In 1800 spain still had a 13% share of actual global gdp (including the colonies in south america yes) and yes the spanish and portuguese were about to disintegrate over the next century but in 1820 brazil was still part of portugal and mexico still part of spain yet that is all deleted from this data and graph. At the same time China was an agrarian economy and largely absent from global economy except for tea, silk and ceramics. The qing dynasty was isolated and china had already been in decline for centuries. Yet in these statistics it was ascribed a huge gdp figure simply because of the size of its population and that is a false assumption. The academics that decided this are simply wrong .Its gdp figures should only have been based on the goods it was selling and buying on the global markets.
In 1820 less than 7% of US GDP was generated by exports and over 80% of its GDP was generated by agriculture.. Basically global trade was tiny by today’s standards and almost everyone was agrarian.
 
In 1820 less than 7% of US GDP was generated by exports and over 80% of its GDP was generated by agriculture.
yes i think well over 80% of US economy was based on agricultural commodities but 90% of its exports were also agricultural commodities, therefore the US economy in 1820 was based on producing agricultural commodities for export mainly to Europe and that is where its huge wealth started from . I don't where you get 7% of US economy was based on exports in 1820 that's not true, that would suggest it was like China with a huge internal population that was eating everything it consumed and we know that is not true. In fact the driving force for US independance like the brazilian and Argentine independance movements was seeing all that wealth generated in those colonies being sent back to Europe. Therefore alot of wealth and economic activity was being directed back to Europe (unfairly and unjustifiably and unequitably yes) even in 1820 that was still significant but has been deleted or eliminated from these graphs and tables . My problem with that is that it is revisionism and trying to rewrite history like you want it to have been rather than how it really was based on modern day sensitivities.
 
I don't where you get 7% of US economy was based on exports in 1820 that's not true, t
Why would you think it's not true?

Here's a link to an NBER paper addressing this exact question. The figure you want is on page 8. It's actually 6.3%, not 7%.

over 80% of US economy was based on agricultural commodities but 90% of its exports were also agricultural commodities,
"90% of its exports were agricultural commodities" does not mean that they exported 90% of their agricultural commodies. In fact they exported about 4% of their agricultural produce. (About 15% was traded nationally; fully 80% of US agricultural produce was consumed on the farm that produced it, or in the immediate locality. Remember, this stuff is perishable, and we are before the age of either railways or steamships )
 
"90% of its exports were agricultural commodities" does not mean that they exported 90% of their agricultural commodies. In fact they exported about 4% of their agricultural produce. (About 15% was traded nationally; fully 80% of US agricultural produce was consumed on the farm that produced it, or in the immediate locality. Remember, this stuff is perishable, and we are before the age of either railways or steamships )
yes i was wrong on that, i had assumed that the US was already a major exporter of agricultural commodities in 1820 but i had forgot that the US was not the large country it is today it had only acquired the huge territory of Louisiana from France and had yet to get California and New Mexico, the big drive West (the inspiration behind all the hollywood westerns) had yet to occur. When you think about it its amazing the US became a huge industrial superpower so fast in only a century. Also Brazil and Argentina with similar dynamics to US with similar huge bounties of natural resources failed to become industrial giants themselves, Brazil is as big as the US, I know Argentina for a time was very wealthy.
However the US didn't become an industrial powerhouse by trading internally with itself it was through international trade and running huge trade surpluses for many years.
Also interesting that Napoleon sold Louisiana a huge territory then to the US for a pittance, his reasoning was that he didn't then have the military power to hold onto it due to all the wars he had started in Europe. Also he was afraid it would fall into the hands of the British and he reasoned if the US got control of it it would make the fledgling US alot more powerful country and a rival to Britain, how right he was.
 
However the US didn't become an industrial powerhouse by trading internally with itself it was through international trade and running huge trade surpluses for many years.
You reckon?

Go back to the table that I already provided a link to, showing US trade as a percentage of US GDP — 6.3% in 1820.

That table goes forward to 1913. Trade as a percentage of GDP falls after 1820, down to 5.3% in 1830. Thereafer it rises, but it doesn't get back to 6.3% until 1860. And it doesn't get above 6.3% until the 1870s. Then it falls again. In 1904-1913 it's still 6.3%

Now, sure, these figures are a bit rubbery. They're estimates, taken from differerent series of data. Plus, during this time the composition of US trade is changing — less agricultural produce, more manufactured goods. Also, this is trade in goods only. Trade in services is counted nowadayes, and would be reflected in current figures. (But in the nineteenth century the US's international trade in services would have been negligible, so thi isn't really material.) And of course this is 6.3% of a strongly rising GDP, so the volume of trade has increased hugely.

Still, there's nothing in these figures to confirm your understanding of trade as the primary engine of US growth. The principal drivers of US growth were territorial expansion, leading to the acquisition and exploitation of more resources, and rapidly growing population, and therefore labour force. (Plus labour in certain sectors of the economy - principally, agriculture - was kept artificially cheap through slavery.)
 
Still, there's nothing in these figures to confirm your understanding of trade as the primary engine of US growth. The principal drivers of US growth were territorial expansion, leading to the acquisition and exploitation of more resources, and rapidly growing population, and therefore labour force. (Plus labour in certain sectors of the economy - principally, agriculture - was kept artificially cheap through slavery.)
well then why didn't brazil have the growth that the US did, it also had slavery in fact thats where it originated from long before the US even existed?
It also didn't have the costs of acquisition of new territories like the US incurred, it also had the mass migration movements from Europe in the nineteenth centuries and before it aswell.
I concede your point that the US economy experienced huge growth internally because of the expansion of the country and of the population growth through migration flows.
However it still did not become an economic superpower through internal growth, it was from international trade.
And that brings me straight back to my original argument that PPP statistics gives China a large share of global GDP in 1820 which it did not deserve , China was a declining inward looking country for centuries, it closed itself off from the outside world because it was afraid of the developments that were happening which it could not deal with. Its internal economy did not generate the economic growth or technical advancement like the US economy did, it was only after 1990 and the abandonment of Communist doctrinal laws and opening up to the global economy that it developed as a modern economy, also help from the soviet union in 1950s to develop a nuclear weapon.
 
Ironically, Brazil is actually an example which refutes the argument that you advance

We've established that the US economy didn't trade very much internationally during the 19th century, during which time it grew explosively.

The Brazilian economy did trade internationally during the nineteenth century. It produces sugar, gold, diamonds, coffee and rubber, and had thriving export markets in all these commodities. You know how the US was exporting 6.3% of its output in 1820? The corresponding figure for Brazil is 26%.

So why didn't the Brazilian econony grow, or industrialise, like the US economy?

Landholding in Brazil was very different from landholding in the US. Although Brazil, as already noted, was independent of Portugal from early in the nineteenth century, its economic and political organisation remained very colonial in style. A very small aristocratic settler class owned vast estates. They exploited those estates for profit and consumed the profit - most of the profits from Brazil's exports accrued to them. They didn't think of investing the profit to create wealth because, as far as they were concerned, they were already wealthy and, if they wanted more wealth, their first instinct was to acquire more land and farm it.

They were politically influential; they liked taxes low and government weak so that was what they got. Hence, by comparison with the US, as the century progressed there was limited investment in road, canals, ports or in due course railways, and this hampered the development of an integrated domestic market economy. There was limited investment in education, a striking contrast with the US where free public schooling was the norm long before it became so in most European countries, never mind Brazil. An undereducated workforce, coupled with a reliance on slavery, meant a cheap but unproductive workforce and this, too, limited economic growth. And, because wages were low compared to the US, Brazil did not attract immigrants as readily as the US and its population growth was slower.

I think an engine of growth in the US was the farmer class. For much of the nineteenth century a landless US worker, dissatisfied with his lot, could travel west, be allocated a large tract of fertile land, shoot a few indigenes and become a man of modest but productive property. His children would be educated and, all going well, the farm would generate sufficient capital set at least some of them up in modest businesses - merchants, carriers, mechanics, builders. And so forth. Over a few generations, you have the development of a thriving domestic economy, generating sufficient domestic demant to stimulate industrialisation. Brazil, by contrast, has a large slave class and large peasantry, but they are too poor to generate the kind of demand that might kick-start industrialisation. Also, while Brazil has abundance of many resources, it has limited iron and very little coal, and in the nineteenth century industrialisation required lots of both.

The key point here is that, in the nineteenth century, international trade isn't the engine of growth. Industrialisation doesn't follow from growing international trade; it precedes it.

Which is why China can have a huge share of the global economy without doing a lot of trade. China at the time has about a third of the world's population. If Chinese workers were of global average productivity then China would also have a third of global GDP. In fact it has a bit less than this, because its workforce is of below average productivity. This isn't because of a lack of foreign trade but it probably is because of a limited industrialisation (though not as limited as you might think; China did have thriving textiles, porcelain, iron, steel, paper, printing and shipbuilding industries). But most global product at this time was agricultural, and China had everything needed for productive agriculture - land, labour, know-how and well-developed internal and regional markets for agricultural production.
 
Great post @TomEdison. In 1820 the USA had a property owning middle class, a highly connected network of navigable rivers in its temperate zone which meant it would get coal to the industrial cities, lots of river suitable for Mills, particularly in Connecticut, a young population and lots of land.
By the end of the Second World War it also had more than 50% of the world industrial manufacturing capacity, accounted for 50% of global GDP and held 80% of global hard currency reserves.
 
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The 16th century was the age of discovery of the New World. It also coincided with a seismic cultural split in the Western World - the Protestant Reformation. Cue the greatest social experiment in history. The Protestant North had the North American continent for its work space and the Catholic South had Latin America (Central and South).
The results are clear to any reasonable level of significance. The truly enormous human development over the following 5 centuries was driven by the Reformation's rejection of superstition etc. It was even evidenced to an extent in the old North of Europe but was stark in the New World.

Source: The Reverend Dr. Ian Paisley
 
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