It wasn't all bad. Photo: Columbia/Getty Images)
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People in the past were of course poorer than we are. Certain periods and certain societies in history were richer than others, however, and some were richer (or less poor) than some societies in modern times. England has throughout its history been relatively well off: in the late 15th century, it was around three times as rich as Africa at the time, and comparable with India and China even in the 1990s.
Yet even with these variations, the overall story is plain. Average living standards (in terms of food consumption, ownership of goods, and life expectancy) improved very slowly, if at all, over the millennia; any fluctuation around that relatively low level was due to climate, disease, population growth and political conditions.
A historic change came only with the Industrial Revolution, the shift from an “organic” to a “mineral” economy — from one reliant on muscle, wind and water to one using the power of coal and later oil — that raised global living standards at a previously unimaginable rate, with the good and bad consequences that we know.
Pioneering this change was early Victorian or “Dickensian” England, and so one might think that we would remember it as a time of epoch-making success: instead I don’t think it is controversial to say that we generally think of it as a time of grim suffering and oppression.
Historians have long been aware of a paradox: that while productivity rose over the crucial period of the Industrial Revolution, living standards did not. Working hours greatly increased. Women and children worked more intensively. Yet real wages barely shifted — by only 4% between 1760 and 1820. Food prices rose and diet deteriorated. Health and hygiene in industrial cities worsened. Infant mortality was high, and life expectancy low, and both actually deteriorated. In 1841, average life expectancy at birth was 41.7 years — comparable with much of Africa in the 2000s.
People’s physical condition as measured by their heights fell to one of its lowest ever levels, and showed marked difference between classes – over 5 inches difference between rich and poor boys in 1790. It would seem that industrialization amounted to stunted and damaged lives for generations of ordinary people.
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