Modern History According to W.W. Rostow (1960)
["Forward momentum" via "economic growth"yet "history is full of variety", p. 53]

Unspecified past time: 1) Traditional Society: Pre-Newtonian Science and Tech, attitudes toward physical world

• -potentials of modern science and tech. unavailable
• -high amount of resources in agriculture
• -concomitant hierarchical social structure
• -clans and family imp, long-run fatalism, though also short run options
• -but no regular, built-in economic growth
• -Ex.s: medieval dynastics and civilizations, but also contemporary societies "untouched"

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Late 17th-Early 18th: Sir Isaac Newton as Watershed: 
men came widely to believe that external world subject to a few knowable laws,
was capable of productive manipulation (p. 4)

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Early 17th-18th W. Europe : 2) Preconditions for Take-off: transitioning societies

• -Break-up of the Middle Ages
• -capital imports for "social overhead capital"
• -political and economic coalitions for creating modern state against landed elites
• -slow change against vested interests
• -new colonial wars as European powers compete for new forms of national prestige;
• leads to wars of independence.
• -wars of regional aggression due to national ebulliance and seeking social cohesion in face of modernization schisms; give way to absorption in modernization efforts.
• -Societies in confusion most vulnerable to Communist takeover

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19th-Early 20th: 3) The Take-Off (first in Great Britain): 
the great watershed in the life of modern societies;
growth becomes normal condition; Railroads as major impetus;
"...once having occurred, was irreversible, like the loss of innocence" (p. 31)

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1783-1802: Britain Take-off

1780s: canal and cotton textile boom; beg. indust. rev. in Great Britain

1815-1850: Industrialization takes hold in Britain, Confident period; New world order of balance of power in Eurasia under British dominance.

1830s-40s: Railway booms

1830-60s: U.S. and France Take-off

1870s: Sweden Take-off

1850-1873: Germany Take-off

1850: Great Britian Maturity

1878-1900: Japan Take-off

1890s-1914: Russia and Canada Take-off

End 19th century: 4) Drive to Maturity : Germany, Brit, France, US maturity; shift from heavy indust. to machine tools, chem, electrical

1900: U.S. Maturity

• 1901-1916 U.S. Progressive Period
• 1920s U.S. boom: age of mass automobile
• 1930s U.S. Depression
• 1946-56 U.S. Post-war boom

1910: Germany, France Maturity

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1913-1914 in U.S.: 5) Age of High Mass-Consumption :
Henry Ford's assembly line: makes cheap mass automobile
widely available to consumers

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1930: Sweden Maturity

1935- Argentina Take-off

1937- Turkey Take-off

1940: Japan Maturity

1940s-1960: American South Take-off

1950: Russia, Canada Maturity

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1951- Watershed in world history with development of H-bomb;
man's control of physical environment to point where can destroyall
organized life on planet; at same time as China and India come to maturity

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1950s: India and China Take-off; W. Europe and Japan age of High Mass consumption

1960: Soviet Union ready for HMC, but face political adjustments

1960s: post WWII baby boom in U.S. and rise of welfare states=new economic stage of growth?

 

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