Criteria

1465 - Introduction to Modern and Contemporary History

19 January 2023

Group I

1. William Cobbett was

a) The English MP and leading campaigner against the changes brought by the Industrial
Revolution
b) The English MP and leading campaigner in favour of the changes brought by the Industrial
Revolution
c) The French politician and minister of Louis XIV, who established Colbertism
d) I do not choose any of the options

2. The Yangtze and Yellow rivers provided _________ emperors with transport links between
their fertile heartlands.
a) Ottoman
b) Japanese
c) Chinese
d) I do not choose any of the options

The “thrifty gene” theory suggests that

a) Certain individuals possess a greater capacity to save and a greater vision of the future
b) Our pre-historical ancestors survived to periods of food scarcity by accumulating fat
c) Genes are transmitted vertically, contrarily to culture, which is transmitted horizontally
d) I do not choose any of the options

In 1485, the Ottoman sultan prohibited

a) The movable-type printing press using Arabic writing
b) The shape allowing for the functioning of the movable-type printing press in Arabic
c) The movable-type printing press using Roman writing
d) I do not choose any of the options
 Group II

II.1) How did medieval Maghrebi merchants trade without formal legal and political
institutions? What does this tell us about the impact of institutions on economic growth?
Develop.

II.1) Como é que os comerciantes medievais magrebinos negociavam na ausência de

instituições jurídicas e políticas formais? O que é que isto nos diz sobre o efeito das
instituições no crescimento económico? Desenvolva.

Building on the insights of Douglass North, Avner Greif developed an alternative definition of
institutions. He considered the crucial role of cultural beliefs in enforcing institutions and even
in constituting them. For Greif, institutions are not just the "rules of the game" but also
include the beliefs and social norms that uphold those rules. Beliefs and social norms, like
institutions, are difficult to change, even when doing so brings clear economic benefits. Avner
Greif has studied the Maghrebi merchants - Jewish merchants in Muslim North Africa - who
traded in the 10th and 11th centuries. In the absence of a reliable and centralized legal system,
Maghrebi traders engaged in long-distance trade and faced a problem of exchange, i.e., they
had to hire agents to conduct their business. The key to the success of the Maghrebi
merchants was their ability to use a multilateral punishment strategy. That is, parties agreed
to punish anyone who defrauded a person in the group. The effectiveness of this punishment
depended on the nature of their tight-knit community and how quickly information about the
behaviour of an agent was disseminated within a coalition of merchants. While Greif did not
deny the role of formal institutions, he emphasized the complementary role of informal
institutions, such as ostracism and reputation-based punishments.

Overall, the case of the Maghrebi merchants helps explain how trade functioned without the
widespread rule of law. Although these institutions differed over time and pace, they had a
common element: they incentivized people to keep their promises (informal institutions).
They allowed trade to flourish long before states could ensure the rule of law throughout
their territory.

However, as human societies became more extensive and complex, it became necessary to
formalize these norms (formal institutions). Societies that eventually developed institutions
that were conducive to trade - currencies, protection of property rights, and a set of laws that
was uniformly enforced - would have been better able to foster economic growth and
reinforce the virtuous cycle between population size and composition and technological
progress. On the other hand, societies that were late in developing trade-promoting
institutions would have lagged behind.
II.2) The Serial Founder Effect explains the development of the different regions of the
world. Do you agree with it? Why or why not? Explain.

II.2) O efeito do fundador em série explica o desenvolvimento das diferentes regiões do

mundo. Está de acordo? Explique.

The Serial Founder Effect does not fully explain cross-country differences in economic
development. The Serial Founder Effect corresponds to the loss of genetic variation when a
small subset of a large population founds a new population. That is, an initial group left Africa
and settled in fertile regions nearby, bringing with them only some of the diversity of their
original African population. When the original migratory group became so large that its new
environment did not permit further dispersal, a less diverse subgroup set out to find other
untouched areas and settled in more distant habitats. Despite some exceptions, the tendency
of these migration patterns was such that the groups that left Africa and reached western
Asia were less diverse than the original human population in Africa. Accordingly, this dispersal
out of Africa left deep marks on the global variation in the level of diversity among
populations. This decline in the overall level of population diversity with increasing distance
from Africa is reflected, in part, in the reduction of genetic diversity among native ethnic
groups at greater distances from Africa. This negative correlation between diversity and
migration distance from East Africa is a pattern observed not only on all continents but also
within continents.

Although living conditions throughout history have been influenced by the degree of diversity
and, thus, by the migration of Homo sapiens from Africa, this alone is not a determinant of
the economic rise and fall of nations. Migration distances from the cradle of humankind in
East Africa have resulted in a persistent "hump-shape" influence on development outcomes,
reflecting a trade-off between the beneficial and detrimental effects of diversity on
productivity. The "sweet spot" where diversity is most conducive to economic prosperity has
increased in recent centuries and is now similar to that in the United States. Therefore, this
pattern is consistent with the hypothesis that diversity is increasingly beneficial in the rapidly
changing technological environment characteristic of advanced stages of development.

Human diversity is, of course, only one of the factors that have influenced economic success,
but proximity to the "sweet spot" of population diversity is no guarantee of prosperity. Galor
argues that diversity has a significant impact on the economic development of countries.
According to him, about a quarter of the unexplained differences in wealth among nations,
as reflected in average per capita income, can be attributed to societal diversity. But although
human diversity is such a strong determinant of prosperity, the fate of nations is not
determined by it (one must also consider geography, culture, and institutions). On the
contrary, if countries understand the nature of human diversity, they can develop appropriate
strategies to promote the benefits of diversity while mitigating its adverse effects and
ultimately promoting economic development and growth.
II.3) Religion may or may not affect economic growth. Do you agree? Why or why not?
Please elaborate.

II.3) A religião pode afetar o crescimento económico. Concorda? Porquê ou porque não?
Justifique.

Religion does affect economic growth. A clear example of that is the relationship of
Christianity with wealth. The Christian Church’s earliest founders argued against the pursuit
of personal wealth, considering it an obstacle to spiritual development and salvation, an idea
that Christian theologians continued to develop for centuries and can be summarized in
Christ’s sentence “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man
to enter into the kingdom of God”.

This kind of reasoning suffered a drastic reversal in the early sixteenth century, when the
German monk and theologian Martin Luther nailed the Ninety-Five Theses to the door of a
Wittenberg church. Luther was decrying the Catholic’s Church sale of indulgences, unleashing
a ferocious debate between himself (together with his followers) and the papacy. In the
sequence of the confrontation, Lutheranism sparked the Protestant Reformation in Western
Europe.

Protestantism generated a wave of new religious norms and beliefs on a range of issues,
including thrift, entrepreneurship, and wealth. Luther argued that the Church had no role
mediating between man and God, encouraging independent Bible reading, a radical practice
that incentivised his followers to acquire literacy skills. The French theologian Jean Calvin,
founder of the Calvinist branch of Protestantism, asserted that all faithful Christians were
duty-bound to serve God through diligent work, frugal living, and abstinence from waste and
licentiousness; economic success, in his view, might be a sign of God’s favour, possibly even
that one was predestined for salvation. And other branches of Protestantism followed along
these lines, looking positively on the accumulation of wealth. Such ideas spread through
countries like Germany, Switzerland, France, England, Scotland, or Holland, encouraging
cultural traits such as thrift and hard work that are commonly associated with economic
growth.

It was these religious aspects that made early-twentieth century German sociologist Max
Weber propose in his book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism that Protestantism
had contributed to the conviction that the ability to amass wealth in this world was a strong
indication of the likelihood of reaching Heaven. Accordingly, he argued that the Protestant
ethic played a role in the emergence of cultural traits conducive to economic growth, and he
could find evidence that parts of Prussia and the Holy Roman Empire where Protestantism
was prevalent did enjoy higher levels of literacy and economic prosperity that others where
Catholicism prevailed.
II.4) What is the continental verticality hypothesis presented by Jared Diamond in Guns,
Germs and Steel? Is it possible that such a hypothesis explains the historical variation of
income per capita in the different regions of the world? Elaborate.

II.4) Em que consiste a hipótese de verticalidade continental ventilada por Jared Diamond
em Guns, Germs e Steel? Será que essa hipótese explica a variação histórica dos
rendimentos per capita nas diferentes regiões do mundo? Justifique.

The continental verticality hypothesis presented by Jared Diamond states that the North-
South (vertical) orientation of most of the Americas and Africa made the diffusion of
domesticable crops, animals and agricultural practices after the early stages of the Neolithic
Revolution more difficult than in the Eurasian landmass. This hypothesis is associated with
another idea purported by Diamond, which is that the Neolithic Revolution emerged first in
Eurasia thanks to its biodiversity. Diamond argues that the Neolithic Revolution happened
12,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East due to its abundance in a wide
range of domesticable species of plants and animals. Meanwhile, biodiversity elsewhere in
Eurasia contributed to the independent emergence of agriculture 10,000 years ago in South
East Asia.

Wild grains in the Fertile Crescent were simple to domesticate since they spread through self-
pollination, were already rich in protein and were easy to storage. In contrast, the distant
ancestor of maize, a plant called teosinte that grew in Meso-America, required a lengthy
selective breeding process in order to be easily used by humans. As a result, humans in Meso-
America domesticated maize thousands of years later than those of the Fertile Crescent
domesticated wheat and barley. And the same happened with animals. By the time of the
Agricultural Revolution, animals in Eurasia had been living alongside hominids for millions of
years and had adapted to their hunting strategies. In Oceania and the Americas, however,
humans arrived at a much later stage in their development and the animals did not have time
to adapt to the hunting strategies and soon were extinct.

Besides this original advantage, Eurasia had the additional advantage of its East-West
orientation, contrary to Africa and the Americas. Since Eurasia stretches mostly along this
horizontal axis, large areas of it lie along similar lines of latitude and thus enjoy comparable
climatic conditions, enabling the dispersal of plants, animal and agricultural practices across
a vast territory. By contrast, the landmasses of Africa and the Americas did not allow for the
same sort of process.

Jared Diamond defends that the uneven development of the different regions of the world is
due to the timing of the onset of the Neolithic Revolution. This would explain why Europe
developed first than the other areas of the world and is still the most developed one today.