The Economist has an interesting review of a new book entitled Peak Human, by Johan Norberg. This caught my eye:
Song emperors were much keener on the rule of law than their predecessors, who tended to rule by whim. To enforce predictable rules, they hired lots of officials via meritocratic exams. The first Song emperor enacted the “unconventional policy reform” of “[not] killing officials who disagreed with him”.
Peasants were granted property rights and allowed to move around, rather than being tied to a lord’s land. Farm output more than doubled, and the extra food supported much larger cities. In the 1100s Kaifeng, the capital, had 65 times the population of London. Canals made domestic trade easier. International trade followed. . . . Artisans devised new industrial processes, such as burning coal to smelt iron. The invention of movable type in the 1040s allowed the printing of books so cheap that one philosopher griped that people would stop learning the classics by heart. By 1200 Song China had the world’s richest economy, a merchant navy with “the potential to discover the world” and a habit of tinkering that could have brought on an industrial revolution centuries before Europe’s.
Unfortunately, the Chinese golden age did not last, as the Ming dynasty switched from classical liberalism to statist nationalism:
Free movement within the country was ended. Free exchange gave way to forced labour. Foreign trade was made punishable by death, and even the construction of ocean-worthy ships was banned. Pining for the good old days, a Ming emperor brought back the fashions of 500 years before. Men caught with the wrong hairstyle were castrated, along with their barbers. Largely thanks to reactionary Ming policies, Chinese incomes fell by half between 1080 and 1400. The country did not recover its mojo until it opened up again in the late 20th century.
By modern standards, all ancient civilizations were highly flawed. Nonetheless, Norberg shows that at least in a relative sense, the golden ages of civilizations in many different eras tended to occur when political and economic policies were marginally less restrictive.
