World economic history

The Wikipedia page for Gross world product includes a dataset developed by Berkeley professor Brad DeLong that estimates world economic production over the course of history.

Here is a streamlined version of this data. The time periods are chosen to coincide with significant changes in the growth rate. (Data for the last period is from the World Bank, as found here.) Here goes:

Time period (AD)	Annual growth rate (%)
600–1600	0.13
1600–1700	0.26
1700–1800	0.56
1800–1875	1.58
1875–1950	2.66
1950–1975	5.38
1975–2000	4.06
2000-2019	2.83

I think we are safe in attributing the slope change around 1600 to two related factors, both of which raise serious moral questions: colonization (European civilization occupying the Western hemisphere) and enslavement. These factors continue to play a role through 1875, but are joined, and overshadowed, by the Industrial Revolution.

The Industrial Revolution was, of course, heavily dependent on human cleverness, but more specifically cleverness working to harness an energy source. The more productive textile mills of the English Midlands and elsewhere got their start with water power, but soon it was all about coal, and later oil and natural gas.

Then came electricity, which of course is not an energy source but an energy carrier. Again, some electricity came from water power (I grew up where the electric utility was Niagara Mohawk) but most from the burning of fossil fuel, as it is to this day.

Many people are foolish enough to believe that ‘Peak Oil’ is a debunked idea, but the table above is enough to show a prima facie case that Peak Growth, at least, is already well in the rear-view mirror.