Bob Allen and Friends: Before the Industrial Revolution
How much to make of the post-1400 pre-1650 divergence between London and Amsterdam on the one hand and Valencia and Florence on the other? We want to grab for the explanation that the Black Death (and associated fourteenth-century demographic disasters) was a huge deal--and then things returned to Malthusian normal in southern Europe. But not so in northern Europe. And Delhi laborers are hanging up there, as well-off as Londoners (as best as Bob Allen and company can tell) in 1625 and 1650...
