The periodization of growth

The mere measuring of long-term growth can never satisfy the historian. Growth does not evolve at a uniform pace and cannot be charted on a graph by a straight line. The history of an economy is punctuated by fluctuations, especially by the alternation of years of prosperity with years of depression, with crises at the point of change from one to the other. Broadly speaking, in nineteenth-century Britain, these ‘Juglar cycles’ are ‘intradecennial’, as the length of time separating two successive maxima or minima was less than ten years. But in addition to these short-term fluctuations, many scholars have identified longer cycles in the medium term, covering roughly a half-century. These cycles were first identified in the movement of prices (where long rises and long falls alternate) by Kondratiev, hence the name ‘Kondratiev cycles’ or simply ‘Kondratievs’. Then J.A. Schumpeter and S. Kuznets worked out the concept of a series of’long swings’ in the total economy (sometimes called ‘Kuznets cycles’). In the course of each of these, and also beyond the intradecennial movements, one may see a long phase of fast growth followed by a phase of deceleration and slower growth. Using these concepts, many scholars since W.W. Rostow in 1948 ¹ have established a periodization in British economic history between 1815 and 1814, which has become more or less classic; and all the more so because the idea has the advantage of corresponding with the breaks that have been brought to light in the social, political and even cultural evolution of Great Britain. We will first set out this standard view, and then see to what extent recent research supports it.

	Total industrial production %	Volume of exports %	General prices %	Real wages %
1793–1815	2.1	4.1	1.8	–0.5
1815–47	3.5	2.8	–1.4	0.7
1847–73	3.2	4.9	0.6	0.6
1873–1900	1.7	1.7	–1.5	1.2
1900–12	1.5	2.7	1.5	–0.5
1793–1912	2.6	3.3