these newcomers and the creative destruction they wreak
must often overcome several sources of resistance,
including that from powerful rulers and elites.
Prior to seventeenth-century England, extractive
institutions were the norm throughout history. They have at
times been able to generate economic growth, as shown in
the last two chapters, especially when they’ve contained
inclusive elements, as in Venice and Rome. But they did
not permit creative destruction. The growth they generated
was not sustained, and came to an end because of the
absence of new innovations, because of political infighting
generated by the desire to benefit from extraction, or
because the nascent inclusive elements were conclusively
reversed, as in Venice.
The life expectancy of a resident of the Natufian village of
Abu Hureyra was probably not that much different from that
of a citizen of Ancient Rome. The life expectancy of a
typical Roman was fairly similar to that of an average
inhabitant of England in the seventeenth century. In terms of
incomes, in 301 AD the Roman emperor Diocletian issued
the Edict on Maximum Prices, which set out a schedule of
wages that various types of workers would be paid. We
don’t know exactly how well Diocletian’s wages and prices
were enforced, but when the economic historian Robert
Allen used his edict to calculate the living standards of a
typical unskilled worker, he found them to be almost exactly
the same as those of an unskilled worker in seventeenth-
century Italy. Farther north, in England, wages were higher
and increasing, and things were changing. How this came
to be is the topic of this chapter.
E VER-PRESENT P OLITICAL C ONFLICT
Conflict over institutions and the distribution of resources
has been pervasive throughout history. We saw, for
example, how political conflict shaped the evolution of
Ancient Rome and Venice, where it was ultimately resolved
in favor of the elites, who were able to increase their hold
on power.
English history is also full of conflict between the
monarchy and its subjects, between different factions
fighting for power, and between elites and citizens. The