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20 - Changing Europe’s Economic History

from Prosperity and Solidarity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 October 2023

By
Ivan T. Berend
Edited by
Mathieu Segers  and
Steven Van Hecke
Mathieu Segers
Affiliation:
Universiteit Maastricht, Netherlands
Steven Van Hecke
Affiliation:
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
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Summary

From the late eighteenth century, Europe started rising to the top of the world. The first industrial revolution in Britain gradually spread over the continent and the first important steps of a second industrial revolution, partly by Germany, were made after the middle of the nineteenth century. By 1870, Europe produced 45 per cent of the world’s total income. Around the turn of the century, however, Europe lost its leading position, and produced only 27 per cent of the world’s total income by 1913. The combined per capita gross domestic product (GDP) of the overseas West (the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) was already more than 70 per cent higher than that of western Europe.

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Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of the European Union , pp. 565 - 599
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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References

Recommended Reading

Berend, I. T. An Economic History of Twentieth-Century Europe: Economic Regimes from Laissez-Faire to Globalization (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2016).Google Scholar
Eichengreen, B. The European Economy since 1945: Coordinated Capitalism and Beyond (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2007).Google Scholar
Judt, T. (with Snyder)., T. Thinking the Twentieth Century (London, Penguin, 2012).Google Scholar
Lowe, K. Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II (New York, NY, St Martin’s Press, 2012).Google Scholar
Mazower, M. Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century (London, Allen Lane, 1995).Google Scholar
Polanyi, K. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (Boston, MA, Beacon Press, 2001 [1944]).Google Scholar
Sandholtz, W. High-Tech Europe: The Politics of International Cooperation (Berkeley, CA, University of California Press, 1992).Google Scholar
Servan-Schreiber, J.-J. Le défi américain (Paris, Denoël, 1967).Google Scholar

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