The Earliest Economic Growth in World History

Most of today’s approaches to growth are expressed in terms related to goods, innovations, savings, technology, etc., and all are related to modern thought and recent historical developments. From the standpoint of technology and production, the economic historian Robert C. Allen has demonstrated that the route to the economies of the 20th century AD was determined by what happened in Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries AD. In this sense, one can point out that the context of the Industrial Revolution dominates thought about economic growth. By contrast, from the standpoint of finance, it can be suggested that the route to the 21st century AD began in Mesopotamia in the fifth millennium BC. The issue of the difference stands at the centre of what causes economic growth – and that is the principle concern of the discussions in this volume, the outcome of the workshop Economic Growth in Antiquity, held in Berlin in 2016.