More: A History of the World Economy from the Iron Age to the Information Age

by Philip Coggan

Overview

A sweeping history that tracks the development of trade and industry across the world, from Ancient Rome to today.

From the development of international trade fairs in the twelfth century to the innovations made in China, India, and the Arab world, it turns out that historical economies were much more sophisticated that we might imagine, tied together by webs of credit and financial instruments much like our modern economy.


Here, Philip Coggan takes us from the ancient mountains of North Wales through Grand Central station and the great civilizations of Mesopotamia to the factories of Malaysia, showing how changes in agriculture, finance, technology, work, and demographics have driven the progress of human civilization. It's the story of how trade became broader and deeper over thousands of years; how governments have influenced economies, for good or ill; and how societies have repeatedly tried to tame, and harness, finance. More shows how, at every step of our long journey, it was the connection between people that resulted in more trade, more specialization, more freedom, and ultimately, more prosperity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781610399838
Publisher:	PublicAffairs
Publication date:	03/24/2020
Pages:	496
Sales rank:	273,373
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.70(d)

About the Author

Philip Coggan writes the Bartleby column for The Economist and is the former writer of the Buttonwood column. Previously, he worked for the Financial Times for twenty years. In 2009, he was voted Senior Financial Journalist of the Year in the Wincott awards and best communicator in the Business Journalist of the Year Awards. Among his books are The Money Machine, The Economist Guide to Hedge Funds and Paper Promises.

Editorial Reviews

"Philip Coggan tells his epic story of humankind's economic development with both wisdom and wit. Brilliantly weaving together a sweeping historical narrative with a focus on the drivers of development, Coggan has written a book that should be essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how our modern day economy came into being."
Stephen D. King, senior economic adviser at HSBC and author of Grave New World


" More is an extraordinary achievement. How can it be possible to turn 1000 years of human endeavor into a tale which is at once exciting, coherent, and surprisingly optimistic? Coggan has a very rare gift. He distills a vast expanse of human history-the history of trade and economic advance-into a beautifully light and elegantly written tale, full of surprises, and free of ideology. I cannot recommend this book highly enough."
Eric Lonergan, author of Money: The Art of Living


"An engaging and highly accessible narrative about the long historical development of global trade, commerce, and innovation. Philip Coggan writes clearly about how and why it all happened, and gives us cause for optimism in difficult times."
George Magnus, author of Red Flags: Why Xi's China Is in Jeopardy


" More takes a vast 1000-year sweep of economic history and melds it into a compelling story of countries and conflicts, civilizations and civic institutions, stagnations and transformations. All in little more than 300 pages of lucid prose. It is a majestic must-read."
Andy Haldane, chief economist, Bank of England

From the Publisher

2019-11-26
"If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes the world to stock your house with goods"—a broad-ranging survey of world trade and the global marketplace.

Contrary to the stances of certain world leaders, including Donald Trump, trade is a good thing, and the freer the trade the better. So argues Economist columnist Coggan (The Last Vote: The Threats to Western Democracy, 2013, etc.) in this sweeping, nontechnical history of the rise of the modern world economy, which has taken a long, winding course over millennia. With the development of agriculture and settled towns and cities, labor was able to diversify and become specialized, with the scope of the economy broadening. A village first consumed only its own goods, but then the goods of the next village came into offer, and then the next, all aided by a growing network of traders, brokers, and other harbingers of the market economy. Throughout much of history, however, trade was sometimes an afterthought. As Coggan notes, "neither the Greeks nor Romans seemed to have believed that it was their duty to try to expand the economy as a whole," leaving it to Chinese, Arab, and Persian entrepreneurs to develop transcontinental trade routes. Europe later pulled ahead in a time of exploration and expansion, one that, in its mature phase, the author attributes to three factors: inexpensive transport, rising wages, and an improvement in living standards. The U.S. was a locus of this broadened economy. Coggan looks into past trends to suggest the outlines of future ones, such as a continued debate over state control of the economy. "Silicon Valley tycoons may think that they are setting the intellectual agenda with their calls to shrink the state," he writes, "but for many people in the rest of the world, the more appealing example is China, with its heavy state direction and near 40-year record of rapid growth." That widespread trade enriches is one thing, Coggan says, looking to the developing world, but it also serves as a means of encouraging democratization everywhere.

A sharp, readable introduction to how the modern economy came to be.

Kirkus Reviews

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