About the author
American economist, historian, and rhetorician (b. 1942), professor emerita at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The author of some twenty books across economics, history, and the philosophy of the field, McCloskey is a prominent classical-liberal thinker; her 'Bourgeois Era' trilogy argues that ideas and dignity, not capital, created the modern world.
Synopsis
Second in McCloskey's 'Bourgeois Era' trilogy, the book systematically knocks down materialist explanations of modern economic growth — thrift, investment, trade, empire, slavery, even good institutions — arguing each is insufficient. What ignited the Great Enrichment, she contends, was a change in attitudes: a new respect for markets, innovation, and the dignity and liberty of ordinary commercial people, especially in the Dutch Republic and Britain.
Core passage idea
Paraphrase · Modern copyrighted workMcCloskey argues that the vast enrichment of the modern world was caused not by capital, trade, or even institutions, but by a change in ideas — a new dignity and liberty accorded to commerce, innovation, and the bourgeoisie.
By making rhetoric and ideas, rather than material forces, the cause of modern prosperity, McCloskey challenges both Marxist and mainstream economic history. Her claim that respect for commerce unleashed the Great Enrichment is a distinctive classical-liberal account of how the modern world got rich.
To avoid a bubble
Pair with the institutionalist account of Acemoglu and Robinson and with Marxist and Pomeranz-style material explanations (capital, colonies, coal), which McCloskey is arguing against, and weigh whether ideas or institutions and resources did the decisive work.
Reading note
Wide-ranging and conversational. Read it as the ideas-first, classical-liberal rival to institutionalist (Acemoglu) and materialist (Marxist) explanations of the rise of the modern economy.
Best paired with
Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, Why Nations Fail; Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.