书评：《觉醒的经济 · 一部不列颠经济史（1700-1850）》

Review Essay: The Enlightened Economy. An Economic History of Britain, 1700-1850 by Joel Mokyr

书评：《觉醒的经济 · 一部不列颠经济史（1700-1850）》，作者：Joel Mokyr

Gregory Clark, University of California, Davis

格里高利·克拉克，加州大学戴维斯分校

“Economic change in all periods depends, more than most economists think, on what people believe.” (Mokyr, p. 1)

“所有历史时期的经济变迁都依赖于人们的信念，后者的影响比大多数经济学家认为的都要深。”(Mokyr, p. 1)

The Industrial Revolution is the key break in world history, the event that defines our lives. No episode is more important. Yet the timing, location, and cause of the Industrial Revolution are unsolved puzzles. Explaining the Industrial Revolution is the ultimate, elusive prize in economic history. It is a prize that has inspired generations of scholars to lifetimes of, so far, fruitless pursuit.

工业革命是世界历史进程中的关键突破，是定义现代生活的重大事件。历史上没有哪一章节比它更重要。然而这场革命的时间、地点和由来仍是一团未解之谜。成功解释工业革命是经济学史上一项难以达成的终极成就，一代又一代的学者受此激励，倾毕生之力研究，到目前为止，成果寥寥。

This record of failure has not deterred a bevy of authors from publishing in recent years books on the cause of the Industrial Revolution. Not only do we have the book considered here, but also Robert Allen The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective (2009), my own A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World (2007), Jan de Vries The Industrious Revolution and the Industrial Revolution (2007), Deirdre McCloskey, Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can’t Explain the Modern World (2010), Jan Luiten van Zanden’s The Long Road to the Industrial Revolution (2008), and E. A. Wrigley’s Energy and the English Industrial Revolution (2010). And to this collection we can add a set of articles with the same objective such as Broadberry and Gupta (2009), and Galor (2005).

这一失败的历史没有吓倒过去几年大群作者发表新书来诠释工业革命。除了我们将要在此探讨的这本，还有 Robert Allen 的《全球视角下的英国工业革命》(2009)，我自己的《告别济贫院：全球经济简史》(2007)，Jan de Vries 的《勤勉革命与工业革命》(2007), Deirdre McCloskey，《中产阶级的尊严：为什么经济学不能解释现代世界》(2010)，Jan Luiten van Zanden 的《通往工业革命的漫漫长路》(2008)，以及 E. A. Wrigley 的《能源与英国工业革命》(2010)。我们还可以向这一作品集中加入一系列带着同样使命的文章，例如 Broadberry 和 Gupta(2009)，还有 Galor(2005)。

These books can be divided into three broad categories. First there is the “incentives” approach, such as that of Allen, and Broadberry and Gupta. This explains the Industrial Revolution by the creation in Britain by 1800 of the incentives needed for economic growth. Next there is the “idealist” approach of Mokyr and McCloskey, which grounds the Industrial Revolution in the arrival of a particular culture or ideology. Finally there are hybrid “historical materialist” approaches like my own book, and perhaps also those of de Vries and van Zanden, which locate the Industrial Revolution in a particular set of values, but think of values as themselves subject to material or demographic forces.

这些书籍大致可被分为三类。第一类选择 “激励” 的视角，如 Allen，Broadberry 和 Gupta 的作品，认为工业革命的诱因在于英国 1800 年前因经济增长而创造的激励。其次是 Mokyr 和 McCloskey 采取的 “观念主义” 的视角，认为是一种特殊的文化或意识形态的引入诱发了工业革命。最后，如我自己的书，也许还有 de Vries 和 van Zanden 的作品，是混合的 “历史物质主义”视角，这一角度把工业革命框定在一簇价值体系中，但同时认定这些价值本身受到资源和人口压力的影响。

Below I discuss Mokyr’s “idealist” solution to the puzzle of the Industrial Revolution in the context of this wider Industrial Revolution debate.

以下我将把 Mokyr 针对工业革命给出的“观念主义”解答放在这场争论的更宽泛语境下进行讨论。

However while a substantial portion of the The Enlightened Economy, the first 100 pages, is devoted to this classic question, the book is actually two very different works melded in one body. The first of these is Mokyr’s distinctive theory of the cause of the Industrial Revolution. But the remainder of the book, the bulk of the content, is an exhaustive primer on all aspects of the British economy and society 1700-1850. This covers agriculture, industry, transport, services, demography, gender, firms, social norms, institutions and living standards. The resulting work of nearly 300,000 words has been squeezed through some subtle art of typography into a mere 564 pages. There is a treasure trove of information here on the Industrial Revolution, though this gives the text a forbidding density. For example, table 3.1 (p. 47) has 180 numbers listed in its 90 cells! So the second part of the review considers the text as also a general history of the Industrial Revolution era in Britain.

尽管《觉醒的经济》投入了大量篇幅（前 100 页）来考察这一经典议题，该书实则将两套颇为不同的工作熔合在一个框架里。首当其冲的固然是 Mokyr 解释工业革命的与众不同的理论。然而书的余下内容，占据大块目录的，是有关1700-1850年英国经济社会上上下下的全手册，包括农业，工业，交通，服务业，人口，性别，公司，社会规范，学院和生活标准……最终呈现出的近 30 万字的内容通过一些精妙的排版艺术被压缩进了区区 564 页内。这是一个有关工业革命的信息宝库，尽管它给文本带来了令人生畏的密度。举个例子，第 47 页的表格 3.1 往 90 个网格中塞进了 180 个数字！故而，本书评的第二部分也将视该书文本为英国工业革命时代的历史概述。

The Problem of the Industrial Revolution

工业革命的疑难

There is general agreement on some aspects of the Industrial Revolution. The key break it represented was the appearance for the first time of continuous technological advance, at rates characteristic of the modern world.

工业革命这一议题在某些方面是存在共识的。它象征着一个关键突破——持续技术进步的首次出现，以一种现代社会所特有的高速度。

Prior to 1760 the average rate of efficiency advance through technological change in the world economy through millennia was very close to 0. At a world level for example, efficiency growth rates 1000-1500 were 0.02% per year, and 1500-1750 still only .045% per year. Efficiency growth rates in England 1760-1860 were still modest by modern measures – only about 0.5% per year – but such growth rates over 100 years were still a unique break in world economic history.

1760 年以前，全球经济通过技术进步带来的平均效率增长率在百年尺度下十分接近于0。比如：1000 到 1500 年的全球年增长率是0.02%，1500 到 1750 年仍然仅有每年 0.045%。英国在 1760 到 1860 年期间的效率增长率也不高——现代测度下仅为 0.5%，但纵观全球经济历史，英国这样的突破是头一回。

Thus the key to the Industrial Revolution is explaining the increase in the rate of technological advance. But we see in the modern world that explaining our main measure of technological advance, total factor productivity growth rates -essentially explaining the residual in growth accounting equations-is extremely difficult.

因而解答工业革命议题的关键是解释技术进步率的提升。但是正如我们在现代社会所见的那样，解释全要素生产率增长率这一衡量技术进步的主要指标——本质上是解释增长核算方程的残差项——是极其困难的。

The one hypothesis that is widely employed for this purpose – the convergence hypothesis, countries with lower initial productivity levels will grow faster – has at best limited success. But when we turn to events like the Industrial Revolution we are dealing not with convergence, but with the technological frontier. Here we have no theory of the rate of technological advance. We have just the empirical observation that the country at this efficiency frontier for most of the past 150 years, the USA, has maintained rates of efficiency improvement of about 1.3% per year. For all the ink spilled recently on “endogenous growth theory” it provides nothing in the way of testable implications on productivity growth rates. We observe only that the normal state for successful economies since the Industrial Revolution is one of steady technological advance.

为此目的而广泛采用的假说——收敛假说（初始劳动生产力水平较低的地区会更快发展）——只能说取得了有限的成功。当我们考察像工业革命这样的事件时，我们要处理的并非（落后地区向发达地区的）生产力的收敛，而是前沿技术的发展。对这一技术进步的速率我们没有理论可以解释，有的只是经验数据：在过去 150 年的大多数时间里，处于效率前沿的国家——美国——保持了每年约 1.3% 的效率增长。对于近来在 “内生发展理论”上所倾注的笔墨来说，这一经验数据对于验证该理论有关生产率增长率的可验证含意并无帮助。我们仅仅观察到自工业革命以来稳定的技术进步是成功经济体的常态。

Why was the transition to this modern regime delayed at least 10,000 years from the development of settled agriculture? Why did it occur in a small country on the fringe of Europe, and not in the great center of world population in China? England had a population in 1760 of 6 million compared to 270 million in Quing China, 31 million in Japan, and at least 100 million in India. Why did it not occur 2,000 years earlier, in the classical civilizations of Europe in Greece or Italy, or in the already developed economy of China?

为什么直到人类发展出定居农业后至少一万年，工业革命这一向现代社会制度的过渡才发生？为什么它发生在欧洲边缘的一个小国，而不是当时庞大的人口聚集中心——中国？1760 年时英格兰仅有 600 万人口，相较之下，清帝国有 2 亿 7000 万人口，日本人口为 3100 万，印度人口至少为 1 亿。为什么它没有早 2000 年在希腊、意大利这些古典欧洲文明区域发生？或者在彼时已然有着发达经济体的中国？

Incentive Accounts of the Industrial Revolution

工业革命的激励叙事

For those in economics outside economic history it would seem that any explanation of the Industrial Revolution would involve uncovering the reasons why Britain was the first society with incentives to innovate. There has been a long tradition of such arguments. But to understand why Mokyr focuses on ideas rather than incentives we need to first outline why the “incentives” explanations for the Industrial Revolution have, recent publications notwithstanding, represented such a dismal failure.

似乎在那些不涉足经济史研究的经济学者看来，任何对于工业革命的解释都绕不开论证为什么英国是第一个拥有创新激励的社会。这样的论证有着悠久的传统。但要理解为什么 Mokyr 关注“观念”而非“激励”我们首先需要概述为什么从“激励”出发解释工业革命代表着一个糟糕的失败——尽管仍然有最新的出版物在这么干。

Douglass North and Barry Weingast, for example, argue that the Glorious Revolution of 1688-9, which gave Parliament supremacy over the King, created for the first time security of property rights immune from political meddling and so created the incentives to innovate (North and Weingast, 1989). The Glorious Revolution, however, preceded the Industrial Revolution by 80 years, nearly three generations. The Dutch, and even earlier the Venetians, had secure property rights long before the Glorious Revolution, without an Industrial Revolution. And there is little evidence of significant insecurity among private property owners in England prior to 1688. Taxation rates in pre-industrial England before 1688 were actually very low, with the central government collecting only 1-2% of output. The major result of the Glorious Revolution was indeed a significant increase in the government appropriation of output. But the tax revenues collected were almost all consumed before 1815 in the “Second Hundred Years War” with France for world supremacy.

举例而言，Douglass North（诺斯）和 Barry Weingast 认为 1688-89 年的光荣革命——议会获得了凌驾于国王之上的权威——创造了历史上头一遭免于政治干预的产权保障，从而创造了对创新的激励（North 和 Weingast，1989）。然而，光荣革命比工业革命 早80 年发生，时间是近三代人。荷兰人，甚至更早的威尼斯人在光荣革命之前很早就有了产权保障，但他们没有工业革命。并且，少有证据能够证明 1688 年以前的英格兰私产者们财产不受保障。实际上那一时期的前工业英格兰有着相当低的税率，中央政府仅仅征收 1-2% 的产出。而光荣革命一个重要后果恰恰是政府大幅提高了对产出的侵占。这期间所征税收在 1815 年前的“第二次英法百年战争”中为争夺世界霸权而挥霍一空。

North and Thomas (1973) earlier argued that since modern growth is based on knowledge, the key to modern growth must be the development of systems of property that created and enforced intellectual property rights. Mokyr has an excellent discussion of the limitations and weaknesses of the English patent system throughout the Industrial Revolution era (pp. 403-410). He shows that patents were used sparingly, even as late as 1851, because they were costly and of uncertain value.

North 和 Thomas 早前（1973 年）曾主张，鉴于现代社会的发展是源于知识的积累，那么其关键必然在于产生一个可以孕育和实施知识产权的财产体系。Mokyr 在书中就英国工业革命时期专利体系的局限和不足进行了精彩的讨论（403-410 页）。他指出即使晚至 1851 年，专利仍然很少被使用，因为它们代价高昂并且收益无常。

Further whatever incentive patents gave to a minority of innovators were counterbalanced by the obstacles they created for others. Thomas Savery, for example, patented his steam engine in 1698, and had the patent extended to 1733. Even though his engine was of minor value, and operated on very different principles, his patent prevented Newcomen from patenting his own highly useful steam engine, which with its novelty of the piston was the progenitor of modern steam engine technology (p. 408).

此外，不管专利给少数创新者创造了怎样的激励，同时都会被其他人受到的阻碍所抵消。举例而言，Thomas Savery 在 1689 年为他的蒸汽引擎注册了专利，并将专利延长到了 1733 年。即使这一引擎使用价值不高，且操作原理颇为不同，它的专利阻碍了 Newcomen 注册自己的蒸汽引擎，而这一引擎开创性的活塞技术使它成为现代蒸汽引擎技术的起源。（408 页）

Allen (2009), and Broadberry and Gupta (2009), propose an induced innovation explanation for the Industrial Revolution. In this story, British entrepreneurs were induced by the low prices of energy and high cost of labor in Britain compared to other countries, to adopt labor saving innovations that would not be profitable elsewhere: “the steam engine, the water frame, the spinning jenny, and the coke blast furnace….were adopted in Britain because labour was expensive and coal was cheap” (Allen, 2009, p. 2). “Britain’s success in the early Industrial Revolution was based on inventing technology that was tailored to its circumstances and useless elsewhere.” (Allen, 2009, p. 3).

Allen 2009 年的作品以及 Broadberry 和 Gupta 在同年的文章提出了工业革命的“诱发性创新”解释。在这套叙事中，不列颠相较于其他国家而言低廉的能源价格和高企的劳动力成本刺激了企业家们采用节省人力的创新，而这些创新在其他国家无法创造利润：“新技术如蒸汽引擎、水力纺纱机、多轴纺织机、焦炭高炉等等之所以在英国被采用是因为劳动力昂贵而煤炭便宜”（Allen，2009，第 2 页），“不列颠在早期工业革命的成功是源于正符合其处境需求的新技术的发明，而这些发明在别处无用武之地。”（Allen，2009，第 3 页）

In brief the British were no smarter or more energetic than anyone else, they just happened to be sitting on a mountain of coal. Broadberry and Gupta focus only on high British wages, but with the same overall conclusion, “…high silver wages in Britain meant that cotton textiles produced domestically using traditional labour-intensive production methods could not compete with Indian goods in world markets. This stimulated a search for new methods of production, which led ultimately to a shift of competitive advantage in Britain’s favour” (Broadberry and Gupta, 2009, 302).

简单来讲，英国人并没有比其他人更聪明或更有精力，他们只是碰巧生活在煤山上。Broadberry 和 Gupta 仅关注了英国的高工资，但得出了同样的结论，“……英国高额的银币工资意味着国内生产的传统劳动密集型的棉纺织产品无法与印度货在全球市场上竞争，这刺激了对新型生产方式的追求，最终导致了英国在全球市场竞争中的优势。”

As Mokyr points out, a high relative price of labor will not increase the rate of innovation in a society, except under special circumstances. It has to be the case that producers pay attention to the relative scarcities of factors in deciding where to devote energy to innovation, and that there are inherently more potential gains through local “learning by doing” from labor saving technological change than from saving on other inputs (pp. 268-9).

正如 Mokyr 所指出的，除特殊条件外，（相对其他要素）较高的劳动力价格不会刺激更多的创新。而特殊条件必须是，制造商会通过比较稀缺性来决定针对某个要素投入精力寻求创新，并且当地劳动者学习新技术的方案相较于节省其他要素投入会带来更多潜在的收入。（268-9 页）

It also has to be the case that labor saving technological advances occur in small increments, so that they are only initially profitable in high wage/low energy cost countries, but then through local learning by doing become much more effective. And producers cannot anticipate the learning effects, otherwise even those with lower labor costs will see that after a few years they will gain from such innovation.

同时还必须满足的条件是，节省人力的新技术只能小幅逐渐涌现，这样一来它们仅仅在工资高企、能源廉价的国家在一开始是有利可图的，但此后通过局部的实践与学习，新技术的效率能得到极大地提高。而制造商必须是无法预计学习后的结果，否则即使那些人力成本低的制造商也会学习新技术，几年后他们就能从中获利。

Even finding specific innovations of the Industrial Revolution that meet the first condition – profitable in England but not in lower wage economies like France – is difficult. The only explicit comparison that Allen makes is for the spinning jenny, a hand powered machine that spun with 24 or more spindles instead of the one of the older spinning wheel.

即使找到仅满足第一个条件——在英格兰有利可图而在低人力成本的国家（如法国）则不能——的具体的工业革命时期的创新也是困难的。Allen 仅仅以多轴纺织机为例作了比较，这是一种人力机器，相较于老式纺车只有一个轴，它通过 24 个甚至更多的轴进行纺织。

And here, in order to demonstrate the spinning jenny was profitable in England in 1775, but not in France, Allen has to assume that a 24 spindle jenny would produce only 3 times as much per week as a single spindle spinning wheel. Otherwise the labor cost savings per pound of yarn would make the machine profitable at quite low wages. This assumption in turn relies on assuming both that
(a) A 24 spindle jenny would produce only one eighth the amount per spindle hour as a spinning wheel.
(b) A jenny spinner would utilize this more expensive capital good for only 24 hours in a whole week (in contrast early cotton factories often worked 80 hours per week or longer).

这里，为了表明 1775 年时多轴纺织机在英格兰而不是法国能创造盈利，Allen 不得不假设 24 轴纺织机的周产出量仅仅是单轴纺织机的三倍，若不然，每磅纱线的人力节省会使得这一机器在相当低的人力成本下有利可图。而这一假设又同时依赖于以下两个假设：
（a）一台 24 轴纺织机每轴每小时的产出量只是老式单轴纺车的八分之一。
（b）一台像多轴纺织机这样更昂贵的投资每周仅启用 24 小时。（相较之下早期棉纺织厂每周通常工作 80 小时以上）。

The only justification given for assumption (b) is Sir Frederick Eden’s report that women with families can only produce 40% as much hand spinning per week as single women. This presumes that no one thought to employ any of the very large supply of single women on jennies. The average age at first marriage at this time in England was 24 or later. Allen

对假设（b）的唯一的可靠性证明来自于 Frederick Eden 爵士的记述：家庭女性每周手力纺织的工作量仅仅是单身女性的 40%。已知当时没人雇用劳动力市场上的单身女性，而这一时期英格兰的平均首婚年龄是 24 岁以及上。

The justification for assumption (a) is that jenny spinners in the 1780s were reported to earn about 3 times the amount per week of wheel spinners, assuming they were paid on piece rates (Allen, 2009, 214-5). But if this was a competitive labor market and these quotes are from the same time, then it must be that jenny spinners worked three times as long per week as the average wheel spinner, which violates assumption (b).

Allen为假设（a）给出的理由是：据记载，1780 年代多轴纺织机的纺织工周薪是纺车纺织工的三倍（假设是计件工资）（Allen，2009,214-5 页）。但如果这是一个充分竞争的劳动力市场，且这些数据是取自同一时期的话，多轴纺织机的纺织工每周工时必然三倍于纺车纺织工的平均水平，违反了假设（b）。

If they were being paid the same amount per hank (which we would not expect with a superior more capital intensive technique) it would also imply that the productivity of the spinning jenny per hour was only 1⁄24per spindle than the spinning wheel, and no-one French or British would ever want to invest in a spinning jenny. If, as seems more likely, these weekly wages of Jenny spinners and wheel spinners reflect different piece rates per hank, and different hours worked per week, then we can infer nothing about the comparative spindle productivity of the Jenny compared to the wheel.

如果纺织工们每卷的工资相等 (这对资本型密集且性能优良的机器来说并不现实)，那就意味着 24 轴纺织机每轴每小时产量仅仅是纺车的 1/24——没有人会愿意投资这样一台纺织机，不论是英国人还是法国人。更可能的是，多轴纺织工和纺车纺织工的周薪数据背后是不同的计件工资和不同的工时，而这种情况下我们无法比较新旧纺织机的生产率。

Mokyr also points out that the low price of coal in England in the eighteenth century at locations even a modest distance from the pitheads was largely a function of low transport costs (p. 270). The share of the cost at the pithead in the northeast in the total cost in London in the late eighteenth century, for example, was only about 25% (Clark and Jacks, 2007, figure 9, 64). This implies two things. One is that the cheapness of coal in the English economy was largely an endogenous function of the efficiency of the transport and distribution system which delivered coal to consumers. The second is that since coal was shipped by sea to many consumers, places like Ireland and the Netherlands would have access to British coal on very similar terms.

Mokyr 同时指出 18 世纪英格兰各地煤炭价格低运输费用低的结果，即使在离矿区不近的区域也是如此。举例而言，18 世纪晚期，英格兰东北部采煤费用仅占伦敦用煤费用的 25%（Clark 和 Jacks，2007，图 9, 64 页）。这意味着两件事，首先，英国经济中煤炭费的低廉很大程度上是运输和配送系统高效的结果，其次，因为当时煤炭通过海路大量销往海外，像爱尔兰、荷兰这样的地方就能以相近的价格使用英国煤炭。

If we focus on the price of coal relative to wages as the key inducer of mechanization, that price was not particularly low in the eighteenth century. Figure 1 shows the price of coal measured by the number of days work by building craftsmen needed to buy a ton of coal, as a 50 year moving average from 1300-9 to 1860-9. As can be seen, at least from 1300 onwards, coal was always cheap in England: less than 6 days work by a craftsman would buy a ton of coal even in the Middle Ages. England was literally awash in coal. In the northeast coal field around Newcastle the seams were exposed under the sea, and coal would be eroded and wash up on the beaches (as happens to this day).

如果我们集中于机械化的关键催化剂：煤炭 / 工资相对价格，这一价格在 18 世纪并非特别低。图 1 显示了从 1300-9 到 1860-9 按 50 年移动平均数计算的煤炭价格波动，其中煤炭价格由建筑工匠购买一吨煤所需的工作天数来衡量。正如图中所示，至少从 1300 年开始，煤炭在英格兰一直很低廉：甚至在中世纪，工作不到 6 天，一个工匠就可以买一吨煤。英格兰煤炭之丰富是名副其实的。在东北部纽卡斯尔附近的煤田，海底煤层被挖掘出来，煤炭被侵蚀、冲刷到海滩上（正如今天发生的那样）。

Even in the Middle Ages the monks of Durham were exploiting the rich coal seams of the northeast. And “seacoal,” presumably from the northeast coal fields, is recorded in use in Westminster Palace near London as early as 1259. After 1600 average coal prices to consumers increased, in part because of taxation of the sea trade in coal from the northeast coalfield to the south.

甚至早在中世纪，达勒姆的修道士就已经在开采东北部的煤层。据记载，早在 1259 年，伦敦附近的威斯特敏斯特宫就已经在使用据信产自东北部煤田的 “煤粉”。而 1600 年后，消费者面临的平均煤炭价格上涨了，部分是因为官方对从东北煤田销往南方的海上煤炭贸易进行征税。

So if there was an incentive to mechanization, it was actually stronger in the fourteenth century than in the eighteenth. The delay in mechanization must reflect the importance of forces other than just the price of coal relative to craft wages. Coal eventually became very cheap in England, in the late Industrial Revolution period. But as Mokyr observes, this was largely a function of declining transport costs with improvements in shipping, and the building of canals and railways, though reductions in coal duties were also important.

这样一来，若煤炭价格果真存在对机械化的激励，14 世纪的激励比 18 世纪的实则强很多。那么机械化的推迟到来必然反映了煤炭 / 工资相对价格以外的其他因素在起作用。在工业革命时期晚期，煤炭价格最终变得非常低。但是根据 Mokyr 的观察，这很大程度上是因为随着船运技术的提高、运河的开凿、铁路的修筑，运输成本下降了，尽管煤税的削减也是很重要的因素。

Another important point raised by Mokyr is that we cannot assume that day wages across societies reflected the cost per unit of labor: “high wages do not necessarily imply dear labor” (p.271), or in the classic quote of Arthur Young, “labour is generally in reality the cheapest where it is nominally the dearest” (p. 272). Not all industries were transformed by innovations in the Industrial Revolution. Boots and shoes, for example, were still made by handicraft methods well into the late nineteenth century.

Mokyr 还提出了一个重要的观点，即我们不能假设不同地区的日薪反映了单位劳动力成本：“高工资未必意味着昂贵的劳动力”（271 页），或者引用 Arthur Young 的名言，“名义上最昂贵的劳动力在现实中大体上是最便宜的”（272 页）。并非所有的产业都在工业革命中通过创新而变革，比方说制鞋制靴业就保持了手工工艺并很好地延续到了 19 世纪末。

Given high British wages, we would expect such goods to be mainly imported into Britain by 1860. Yet as Peter Temin points out, even in such untransformed manufacturing sectors Britain was largely self sufficient as late as 1856 (Temin, 1997). The implication is that these industries in Britain must have been more efficient than their foreign competitors. Whether this was a greater efficiency by workers, or better organization of production we do not know. However, we do know that in the early nineteenth century high wage English and Scottish farm workers had high rates of output in basic farm tasks, such as hand threshing grain, compared to many of their low wage European counterparts (Clark, 1987).

考虑到不列颠人的高工资，我们可能会想这些货物在 1860 前应该主要依赖进口。然而如 Peter Temin 所指出，即使在类似的延续不变的制造业部门，晚至 1856 年前后，英国大体上是自给自足的（Temin，1997）。这其中的含义是这些本国产业必然比外国竞争对手更高效。究竟是更高效的工人，还是更高效的生产组织，我们不得而知。然而我们知道的是，在 19 世纪晚期，相较于在欧洲的低工资同业者们，高工资的英格兰、苏格兰农场工人在一些基本的农活儿如手工打谷上干活效率更高。（克拉克，1987）

It is the issues above that led Deirdre McCloskey a number of years ago in a couple of brief but persuasive surveys of innovation in Industrial Revolution Britain, to argue against the plausibility of incentive based explanations (McCloskey, 1989, 1994). The innovations of the Industrial Revolution occurred across such a diverse range of sectors and activities – new rotations in farming, animal breeding, yarn production, cloth production, canals, railways, steam power, iron and steel, pottery – that they could not be explained by accident, or by cheap coal.

正是出于以上讨论的种种，Deirdre McCloskey 在几年前通过一系列简短但有力的对英国工业革命时期技术创新的考察，否定了基于激励因素论的有效性（McCloskey，1989，1994）。由于这一时期的技术创新发生在种类繁多的活动和产业中——农场轮种，动物育种，纱线生产，制布，运河，铁路，蒸汽动力，钢铁，制陶——故而它们不可能简单地用 “偶然” 或“便宜的煤炭”来解释。

There were capital using innovations, and capital saving innovations, fuel using innovations and fuel saving innovations. The economy was transformed by a broad wave of innovation, in industries facing very different relative cost shares of labor, capital and energy. The driver of this must be more general than any accidental price configuration.

当时既有资本消耗型创新，也有资本节省型创新，既有燃料消耗型创新，也有燃料节省型创新。经济在一波创新的巨浪中发生变革，各个产业面临的人力、资本和燃料成本占比不尽相同，这一切背后的推手必然比偶然的价格配置更综合，更广泛。

The “Idealist” Account of the Industrial Revolution

工业革命的 “观念” 叙事

There is general agreement, but not unanimity, that modern economic growth occurred long after the major scientific breakthroughs of the sixteenth and seventeenth century. The dogmas of the ancient Greeks which had informed medieval science were discarded in a broad Scientific Revolution, often dated to 1543, that involved advances in physics, astronomy, biology, chemistry, human anatomy. At the same time general levels of literacy rose all across northern Europe, and there was a vast expansion of the amount of printed material.

虽然不乏反对意见，普遍共识一般是现代化经济增长直到 16、17 世纪一系列重大科学突破之后很晚才出现。在一场包含着物理学、天文学、生物学、化学、解剖学进步的广泛的科学革命中，指导着中世纪科学的古希腊教条被扬弃。与此同时，大众识字率在欧洲北部普遍提升，出版物数量大幅增长。

Yet even in economies like England there is little sign of productivity advance in the interval 1540-1760.(The rate of productivity advance in the English economy, 1500-1750, has been a matter of much debate.) In other areas of Europe, such as Italy, there was economic stagnation or decline.

然而就在 1540-1760 年这个时间段内，即便在像英格兰这样的经济体中，生产力进步的实证信号也微弱难寻。（1500-1750 年英格兰经济中的生产率增长率一直以来是个充满争议的话题）而在欧洲的其他地方，例如意大利，经济是停滞或衰退的。

Mokyr, however, hopes to explain the Industrial Revolution as a byproduct of this earlier intellectual revolution. His solution to the problem of the mismatch in timing is to posit that it was only when this scientific revolution took a particular intellectual turn in the eighteenth century with the Enlightenment that advances in science and reasoning could have economic purchase. Mokyr defines the Enlightenment as that branch of the general scientific awakening concerned with applying reason and observation to improving the human condition. It was a movement that “believed in social progress and the improvability of mankind” (p. 33). But as importantly it believed that the aim of society should be “the greatest happiness of the greatest number.”

但是，Mokyr 希望将工业革命解释为早先这场知识革命的副产品。他针对时间差问题提出的解决方案是，认定只有在科学革命和 18 世纪的启蒙运动交替作用后科学和理性上的进步才能产生经济效益。Mokyr 定义启蒙运动为普遍的科学觉醒运动的分支，它关注如何运用理性和经验观察去提升人类福祉。这是一场 “相信社会进步和人类社会可改良性的运动”（33 页）。但是同样重要的是这场运动相信社会的目标应当是 “最多数人的最大幸福”。

I think Mokyr correct in giving the greatest weight to a differential response to incentives as the source of the Industrial Revolution. Though material living standards in the pre-industrial world were remarkably static under the influence of Malthusian constraints, there had been significant developments in intellectual life for the average person between northern Europe in 1800 and any earlier society, including the Classical world in Europe. These background circumstances of people must have played some role in subsequent economic growth.

我认同 Mokyr 给予这件事最大的权重——反对激励叙事，而提出对工业革命的另一种解释。在马尔萨斯陷阱的影响下，前工业革命世界的物质生活水平令人惊讶地停滞不前，尽管如此，相较于之前的任何社会，包括古典时期的欧洲，1800 年欧洲北部人的智慧生活还是有显著的发展。这些背景事件在后来的经济增长中必然起到了一定作用。

Mokyr faces, however, a number of challenges in proving the Enlightenment specifically was the source of this differential response.

但是具体地证明启蒙运动也是源头，Mokyr 要面临一系列困难。

(1) The Enlightenment was a movement across large parts of Europe, yet the Industrial Revolution has been traditionally identified with Britain. Even Italy in the eighteenth century had such Enlightenment luminaries as Galvani, Volta, and Beccaria. Yet in Italy the Enlightenment was accompanied by economic stagnation and decline. Paolo Malanima recently estimated that 1760-1855 output per person in northern Italy declined at 0.12% per year (Malanima, 2011, table 4). East Prussia, where Kant published his famous essay on the Enlightenment in 1784, remained a largely feudal agrarian society for many years thereafter.

（1）启蒙运动是一场遍布欧洲大部的运动，而工业革命传统上被等同于英国工业革命。18 世纪的意大利有着杰出的启蒙者如 Galvani，Volta，Beccaria，但是伴随着意大利启蒙运动的是经济停滞和衰退。Paolo Malanima 不久前估计了在 1760-1855 年间，意大利北部的人均产出以每年 0.12% 的速率减少（Malanima，2011，表格 4）。而东普鲁士，在这里康德于 1784 年发表了他著名的关于启蒙运动的论文，此后延续了多年的封建农业经济。

(2) There is no precise dating for the Enlightenment. Though the term was made famous by Kant’s essay, some would date the beginning of the Enlightenment to Descartes’ Discourse on Method of 1637. Claims could equally be made for its beginning with the founding of Scientific Academies in both France and England in the 1660s. Robert Boyle’s experimental methods in chemistry were widely known by the 1660s, and Boyle himself had a strong interest in the application of science to technological improvements. The Netherlands in the seventeenth century was – as the richest, most commercially developed European economy then - one of the centers of this new scientific interest. Why was it not the center of an Industrial Revolution?

（2）启蒙运动没有确切的时间。尽管这一术语因康德的论文而广为人知，存在一些观点将其开端定在了 1637 年笛卡尔《谈谈方法》的出版。同样的，你也可以声称其开端为 1660 年代英法科学院的相继成立。Robert Boyle 的化学试验方法在 1660 年代广为人知，Boyle 本人也对应用科学、改良技术十分热情。而作为 17 世纪欧洲最富有、商业最发达的经济体，荷兰也是这一科技潮的中心。但为什么它没能成为工业革命的中心？

In all historical discussion, time tends to be compressed, and events that were actually remote in time get merged. An Enlightenment dated to 1637, or 1660, would have begun 100-130 years, 3-4 generations, before the Industrial Revolution. That is too long a gap to have any plausible causal role.

在这些历史考察中，时间仿佛被压缩了一般，实则相隔遥远的事件被糅合在一起。一个可以追溯至 1637 年或者 1660 年代的启蒙运动，在工业革命前 100-130 年就开始了，也就是 3-4 代人。对任何可靠的因果分析对这一时间间隔都显得太长。

(3) The Industrial Revolution was largely made not by the Philosophes in the Salons, or the professors in the Universities, but by craftsmen with limited formal education solving basic technical problems. Textiles accounts for at least 50 percent of productivity growth in England in the Industrial Revolution era (Clark, 2007, table 12.1). Yet the most important innovators of the British Industrial Revolution in textiles had little or no connection to the Enlightenment. Allen (2009) makes this point at length in chapter 10 of his book on the background of Industrial Revolution innovators.

（3）工业革命很大程度上是由旨在解决基础技术问题的工人引导的，他们受教育程度有限，不是出入沙龙的哲学家，也不像大学教授。工业革命时期英格兰的生产力增长中，纺织业至少贡献了50%（Clark，2007，表格 12.1），而这一产业中最重要的发明家和启蒙运动之间几乎没有联系。Allen（2009）在他的书，介绍工业革命发明家背景，第十章中详细了说明了这一点。

(4) The Industrial Revolution was not about grand designs for social engineering, the distinctive focus of the Enlightenment, but about cheaper production of textiles, coal, iron and motive power. Most of the focus of the Enlightenment had little bearing on this.

（4）工业革命无关于社会工程的宏大设计这一启蒙运动的目标，而是关于更便宜的工业品如纺织品，煤炭，钢铁和能源。启蒙运动的目标基本与这些无关。

(5) Even if the Enlightenment can be shown to be the key, we still have to explain the timing of the Enlightenment. Why not in 1543? Why not in ancient Greece or Rome, or in China? Indeed aren’t intellectual revolutions going to be even harder to explain than economic revolutions? Mokyr, sensibly, does not attempt to explain the timing of the Enlightenment, so it is in some ways unfair to even dwell on this point. If he could show that the Enlightenment truly was the trigger for the Industrial Revolution that would be a major advance, independent of any theory about the timing of this intellectual development.

（5）即使启蒙运动可以被证明是解决工业革命问题的钥匙，我们仍然要解释启蒙运动发生的时机。为什么不是 1543 年？【译注：（疑）这一年哥白尼发表《天体运行论》，译者不太确定 Clark 是不是在指这件事，如果是，译者不太理解的是：哥白尼及其著作属于科学革命的重要组成部分无疑，但是否属于启蒙运动呢？结合此前 Mokyr 对启蒙运动的定义，天体运行的学说似乎不属于很直接的科技造福人类？】为什么不发生在古希腊、罗马或者中国？老实说知识革命不是比经济革命更难解释吗？Mokyr 明智地没有去尝试解释启蒙运动的发生时机问题，所以在这一点上抓住不放某种程度上说不太公平——如果他能论证工业革命确实由启蒙运动所触发，便已经是重大的突破，独立于任何有关知识革命发生时机的理论。

(6) The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement about the possibilities of improving one’s circumstances through the application of reason. It was a movement that Mokyr estimates directly influenced the thinking of the top 10-15% of the British population (p. 39).

（6）通过运用理性和逻辑来改善自身处境的可能性，是启蒙运动作为一场知识运动的主题。据 Mokyr 估计这一运动直接影响了英国上层 10-15% 人口的思维方式。

If people were taking control of their lives, one of the first things we would expect is that they would control fertility. Upper class households in England at the beginning of the eighteenth century still had on average 6 births per marriage (Josiah Wedgwood, for example, had 7 children, and Erasmus Darwin had 14 through two marriages and an extra-marital affair). Because of low mortality rates such marriages producing four or more surviving children on average, many more than poorer families. But the accidents of birth and death implied some upper class families had 10 or more surviving children.

如果人群能控制自己的生活，我们首要期待的就是对生育的控制了。18 世纪初时，英格兰上流社会家庭每段婚姻仍然有平均六次生育（举例而言 Josiah Wedgwood 有 7 个孩子，Erasmus Darwin 两段婚姻加一段婚外情共生育了 14 个孩子）。由于低死亡率，这样的一次婚姻平均可以养活 4 个以上的孩子，比相对贫穷的家庭要多得多。而出生和夭折的偶然性意味着有些上流社会家庭养活了 10 个以上的孩子。

By the late nineteenth century, without any public discussion of contraception or the introduction of new contraceptive measures, fertility rates for the upper classes declined rapidly. Yet even when they had accumulated many surviving children these English upper class couples made no attempts to control fertility before 1780, long after the onset of the Enlightenment (Boberg-Fazlic, Sharp and Weisdorf (2011), Clark and Cummins (2010)).

而到了 19 世纪末，在没有任何关于避孕的公共讨论或者新避孕手段的提出和采用的情况下，上流社会的生育率急速下降。反观 1780 年之前——这时候启蒙运动已经开始了很久——即使他们已经积累了很多的下一代，这些上流社会的夫妇仍然不会做出控制生育的任何尝试。（Boberg-Fazlic, Sharp 和 Weisdorf (2011), Clark 和 Cummins (2010)）

If Enlightenment thinking had so little impact on as basic a decision as fertility, why would we confidently expect it to have impact on the conduct of production and business? There has to be more evidence to establish such a link.

如果启蒙运动的思维方式对人们生活的最基本抉择——如生育——都影响甚微的话，我们凭什么自信地认为它会影响到生产和商业行为？建立这样的联系将不得不要求更多的证据。

(7) How would we empirically distinguish between Mokyr’s “Industrial Enlightenment” and McCloskey’s “Bourgeois Revolution”, which emphasizes the enhanced status of the bourgeoisie and their activities in European society in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries? How much is the Industrial Revolution the product of enhanced rationality, as opposed to just enhanced social status for entrepreneurs and the activities they had always carried out?

（7）如何靠实证区分 Mokyr 的 “工业启蒙” 和 McCloskey 的“资产阶级革命”？后者强调资产阶级社会地位的提升和他们在 17、18 世纪欧洲社会的活动。在什么程度上可以说工业革命是理性进步的结果，而不是由企业家提升了的社会地位以及他们一直以来开展的社会活动导致的？

There is a fundamental problem with the approach of Mokyr to these difficult causal questions, and that is, ironically, the lack of serious quantitative evaluation of his hypothesis. Mokyr earlier was strongly identified with the Cliometric Society, the group within history that has sought to make historical explanations into testable hypotheses and subject them to empirical interrogation. Earlier works such as Why Ireland Starved: A Quantitative and Analytical History of the Irish Economy, 1800-1850 are classics of this genre.

Mokyr 尝试理清这些因果链的方法存在一个根本的问题：缺乏严格定量分析。这一点略显讽刺，考虑到此前 Mokyr 对计量经济史学社的强烈认同。而这一学社自成立以来一直追求通过可检验的假说来解释历史，并将假说诉诸经验考察。Mokyr 早期的著作是当中翘楚，例如《为什么爱尔兰会发生饥荒：一部爱尔兰经济的计量分析史，1800-1850》。

This book offers interesting stories of the fascination of people with science in the eighteenth century, and proof in the form of the extravagant amounts they were willing to pay for scientific lectures and demonstrations. But this is no demonstration of the causal role of these fascinations in the Industrial Revolution. In recent years, for example, the average person in the US has shown heightened interest in investments in shares and real estate. This created no improvement in the ability of the average person to act rationally in financial markets, as Bernie Madoff and millions of home foreclosures now testify.

《觉醒的经济》里讲述了很多关于 18 世纪的人们如何着迷科学的有趣故事，并将人们愿意花在科学讲座和展示上的巨额钱财当做证据提出。然而这完全不能说明这种着迷和工业革命构成了因果联系。近年来，美国人表现出高涨的投资股票和房地产市场的热情，但这没能在平均意义上提高美国人在金融市场的理性决策力，正如麦道夫骗局和数百万房屋止赎者所证明的那样。

Mokyr cites the increase in the numbers of books published in the British Isles between 1700 and 1800 that were devoted to medicine, science and technology. These increased in absolute numbers by 285% between 1701-20 and 1781-1800, and grew from 5.4% to 9.0% of all books published. But at the same time literary works grew by 255%, and grew from 19.4% to 30.3% of all books (p. 47). Was the Industrial Revolution the product of the invention of the novel? Publication data do show two things – a general increase in printed material per person, and a switch from religious to secular topics. But I hazard that if we went back to the seventeenth or even the sixteenth centuries we would see similar trends.

Mokyr 引用了 1700 到 1800 年间不列颠诸岛医药、科学、技术类出版物数量增长的数据。从 1701-20 到 1781-1800，此类书籍的绝对数字增长了 285%，在全部书籍的占比从 5.4% 增长到 9.0%。但是与此同时，文学类书籍增长了 255%，占比从 19.4% 增长到 30.3%（47 页）。难道工业革命是小说的产物？这些出版数据确能反映出的是两件事——人均出版物的普遍增长，阅读主题从宗教类转向世俗类。但我大胆猜测如果我们回溯考察 17 甚至 16 世纪，我们会发现类似的趋势。

Mokyr makes testing for causality all the more difficult by an arguing that the Enlightenment created multiple paths towards faster efficiency advance. The primary one was through a greater utilization of experiment in exploring better technique. But “In addition to its effect on technology, the Enlightenment had another impact that is hard to quantify: It affected the institutional structure of society…it redirected creativity and energy away from rent-seeking and towards activities that increased national prosperity.” (p. 63, my emphasis). However, while admitting that this institutional effect is hard to quantify on page 63, he insists on page 65 that “The institutional reforms inspired by the Enlightenment were crucial to continued growth.” (p. 65, my emphasis).

Mokyr 还提出，启蒙运动创造了多条通往更快效率进步的路径，而这只会让因果链的检验更加困难。首要的一条是通过开展更多的实验来探索更好的技术，但是 “除了这一技术上的效应以外，启蒙运动还有一个很难量化的影响：它影响了社会的体系结构… 它使得社会的创造力和精力从寻租转向了能带动国家繁荣的活动上去”（63 页，我划的重点）。然而，尽管他在 63 页承认了这一结构性影响的难以量化，在 65 页他坚持道 “由启蒙运动激发的这一社会体系变革对于经济持续增长是至关重要的”（65 页，我划的重点）。

The idea here is that new technologies, once created, would have been limited or suppressed before the Enlightenment by vested interests and rent seekers. But how can we judge the truth of any of these claims? We are well into the modern scientific era, but the economy abounds with people engaged in all forms of rent seeking. Self interest and avarice has not withered away with a belief in science and progress – armies of rent seekers march to work each day in the citadels of capitalism.

作者该处的想法是，在启蒙运动之前，新技术在问世之后会被特权阶级和寻租者限制或压制。但是我们要如何判断这类论断的真假呢？我们早已进入现代科学时代，但我们的经济体中仍然充斥着各种形式的寻租行为。自私和贪婪没有因为对科学和进步的信念而消退，日复一日，寻租者大军向着资本主义的城堡迈进。

One reviewer of the book, at least, thinks this embrace of multiple causal pathways is a virtue: “he gives all single- or primary-cause explanations of Britain’s sea-change a respectful hearing but makes plain their inadequacy to account for the multitude of diverse changes he presents so well” (Goldstone, 2010, 993). But I cannot agree. The point of the Cliometric Revolution in economics was to work towards a testable scientific history. Mokyr’s re-embrace of this earlier casual mode of history, however richly illustrated his story, and however deep his erudition, puts us on the wrong path.

至少有一名评论者认为拥抱多重因果路径是该书的一个优点：“他（Mokyr）认真听取了所有对英国巨变的单一原因或主要原因的解释，并清楚的阐明了这些解释在面临如此大规模的、各方面被他很好的展示出来的社会变革时的不足”（Goldstone，2010，993）。但我不能认同。经济学的计量革命旨在构建一个可检验的、科学的历史。Mokyr 重新拥抱这种旧式的、即兴的历史叙述模式，将我们置于一条错误的道路上，无论他的故事多么丰富生动，也无论他的学识多么渊博。

Thus the ‘idealist’ interpretation of the Industrial Revolution proposed by Mokyr is an interesting conjecture. This reviewer is very sympathetic to his argument that the Industrial Revolution was the product of a change in people, not a change in circumstances. But as developed here the Industrial Enlightenment is a hypothesis that is not specified tightly enough for us to think, even in principle, what the empirical test of its truth would be.

因而，由 Mokyr针对工业革命所提出的 “观念” 叙事只是一个有趣的臆测。这位评论者十分感召于 Mokyr 的工业革命是源自于人的改变而不是境遇条件的改变的观点。但是正如以上展开讨论的，“工业启蒙”作为一个假说还不够细致牢固，以致于我们无从设想哪怕是理论上的实证检验会是什么样的。

Industrial Revolution Britain

工业革命的英国

Though I have focused above on Mokyr’s novel hypothesis on the cause of the Industrial Revolution, this as noted occupies no more than a fifth of this long book. The majority is devoted to setting out the many developments in British economy and society between 1700 and 1850.

尽管我在上面集中讨论了 Mokyr 关于工业革命起因的新奇假设，如之前提到的，这部分内容在这本大部头中只占不到五分之一。大部分的笔墨都在陈述 1700-1850 年间英国经济社会的许多发展。

These chapters cover all aspects of the Industrial Revolution era: international trade, population and demography, agriculture, commerce, transport, finance, personal services, children, women, factories, firms, politics, taxes, public spending, the law, living standards, inequality. Almost any question about the details of the Industrial Revolution economy are discussed here. As such the book will be a valuable and enduring source for those looking for such details.

这些章节覆盖了工业革命时期的方方面面：国际贸易，人口，农业，商业，交通，金融，个人服务，儿童，妇女，工厂，公司，政治，税收，公共支出，法律，生活标准，贫富差距。有关工业革命时期经济的细节的种种议题，几乎都在这里得到了讨论。就这一点而论，该书将长期作为一个宝贵的资料以供对这些细节感兴趣的人查阅。

Mokyr’s sensibility is definitely not of the “10 points to take from the Industrial Revolution” or “Isn’t Capitalism great, and let me show you how” variety. He is very much a “just the facts” writer, setting out the details of each topic, and where necessary contrasting and opposing views. Chapter 18, for example, discusses the seemingly never ending debate on whether living standards for the mass of people rose or fell in the Industrial Revolution era.

以 Mokyr 的见识，他显然不是那种 “工业革命的 10 个要点”或者“资本主义万岁！让我来告诉你为什么”型的写作者，他的写作风格更像是“就看看事实是什么”，陈述每一个议题的细节，必要的时候对比不同的观点，做一些反驳。比如第 18 章，他讨论了看上去永不止歇的争论——工业革命时期普罗大众的生活水平是变好了还是变坏了。

As Mokyr points out, the debate on this, which still grips the popular imagination, is in some sense pointless (p. 469). Fertility began to increase all across England prior to the onset of the Industrial Revolution, and even in the most rural areas population grew substantially 1750-1850. The population of Britain nearly tripled between 1750 and 1850. Given this population growth, and a fixed land area, the standard of living would have declined substantially, absent the productivity advance of the Industrial Revolution.

正如 Mokyr 指出的，这场仍然吸引着大众想象力的争论，在某种意味上是不得要领的（469 页）。工业革命前夕，整个英格兰的生育率都开始上升，甚至在大部分农村地区，人口在 1750-1850 年间也都大幅增长。英国总人口在这百年中增长了近两倍。基于这样规模的人口增长，和一片固定的土地，倘若不是工业革命的生产力进步，人们的物质生活本应是大幅恶化才是。

So whether living standards in fact rose or declined in Britain 1750-1850 is not the crucial issue. The alternative to the Industrial Revolution was not a pastoral idyll, but rural squalor. Mokyr nevertheless lays out in detail the competing and often contradictory measures of actual living standards – wages, average human stature, life expectancy, consumption shares - with the conclusion that “The economic history of the standard of living in Britain is thus full of contradictions” (p. 467).

因此，1750-1850 年间不列颠人的生活水平究竟变好还是变坏不是问题的关键。被工业革命抛开的另一条岔路不是田园牧歌，而是脏乱差的农村。尽管如此， Mokyr 还是详细的列出了常常是自相矛盾的有关实际生活水平的测量数据——工资，平均身高，预期寿命，消费占比——并得出结论：“有关英国生活水平的经济史充斥着矛盾”（467 页）。

The comprehensiveness of the book is both a triumph, and a curse. For example, on page 352 there is a discussion of methods of capital accounting in the early Industrial Revolution which includes references to the Dowlais Iron Company, Vitruvius the Roman writer, an eighteenth century accounting manual by John Mair, John Smeaton the engineer, Joshua Milne a cotton spinner, and Sidney Pollard the modern historian.

丰富翔实是本书的一个成就，同时也是一个诅咒。比如在 352 页，作者讨论了工业革命早期资本会计的方式，为此他从以下材料源中进行了引用：Dowlais Iron Company，古罗马作家 Vitruvius，18 世纪的一本会计手册（作者 John Mair），工程师 John Smeaton，一个纺织工人 Joshua Milne，以及当代历史学家 Sidney Pollard。

Mokyr shows clearly the inadequacies and confusions about how to account for capital by early industrialists. But at the end of this discussion, informed as we are, it is evident little would have changed in Britain by 1850 had these early entrepreneurs been clearer on depreciation accounting. Nor does this discussion contribute to the overarching question of the first fifth of the book, the Industrial Enlightenment.

Mokyr 清楚的展示了早期工业革命家们在资本会计上的不足和困惑。但是在这一讨论的末尾，尽管我们大长了见识，还是很明显能认识到，即使这些早期企业家在折旧核算上更得心应手些，也不会对 1850 年前的英国造成什么改变，并且这一讨论也没有对 “工业启蒙” 这一首要的占全书前五分之一的问题作出贡献。

The discussion of child labor on pages 330-337 is similarly rich in detail, and comprehensively sourced. But empathize as we might for those waifs whose adolescence was spent locked up in factory or mine, had we learned nothing about these Dickensian abuses we would have been just as informed about the momentous transformation the Industrial Revolution represented.

330 到 337 页的对童工的讨论也是类似的丰富翔实。也许我们会因此对那些在上锁的工厂或矿井里渡过青春期的流浪儿感到同情，但是假如我们完全不知觉这些狄更斯式虐待的存在，我们对工业革命所象征的重大社会变迁的认识也一点不会减少。

This is all a matter of taste. There are those who delight in the highways and byways of history, and for them this book will afford many hours of pleasurable exploration. There are those who like their books to have one clear plot, and only the elements that contribute to the narrative drive. This is very much a book for that former group, and not for those for whom the best way between any two locations is the interstate highway.

话说回来，这只是个品味问题。对那些既喜爱历史的 “高速公路” 也喜爱 “羊肠小道” 的读者而言，这本书值得他们花很多个小时去愉快地探索。同时，还有一些读者偏爱主题单一清晰、书中各元素只为论述主线服务的书籍。这本书很大程度上是写给第一拨读者的，而不适合后者——对他们而言，两个地点之间最好的路线永远是高速公路。

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