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FOCUS: a€oeWesta€C or a€oeDover Circle-Plusa€D?

A student asked me why, in my lectures earlier this week, I kept on referring to the a€oeNorth 
AtlanticaCD rather than the a€oeWesterna€n economies. Why did I use the first to refer to those 
that have become vastly richer than the world average over the past 200 years?
I was not aware that I had settled on a€oeNorth Atlantica€D, at least for last week. I find myself 
bouncing around when I am not focusing on what descriptor to use.

I do, however, try to avoid a€oeWesta€D. Part it is that a€ceWesta€D is out-of-date. a€ceWesta€D 
comes from a time and a place now long ago: a time and a place when it was assumed that pretty much 
everything of interest was in Eurasia, and that the most important thing was the contrast between 
the western edge of Eurasia and everything else that was easta€”that was the a€oeOrienta€n, from 
the Latin word for the direction from which the sun rose.

But even then, a€ceWesta€D as in a€oeWestern edge of Eurasiaa€D did not really cut it. As of the 
early 1800s, Portugal, Spain, Italy, and southern France were no longer securely among the 
relatively rich. The United States, and Canada too, were very rich indeed, and the United Statesa€™ 
s population was growing rapidly. Even as of the early 1800s, a€oeNorth Atlantica€D made more sense 
than did a€ceWesta€d. And in the 2000s things have changed
furtehr: Japan? South Korea? Australia and New Zealand? Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan island? By 
1960, a€oeNorth Atlantica€D itself became less apposite. Would a€oeGlobal Northa€D be a good 
replacement?

But a€oeGlobal Northa€D is not quite right either: New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, 
and soona€”we hopea€”Chile?

I am swinging around to think that a more useful and informative label would be a€oeDover 
Circle-Plusa€D: those economies and societies that are, that have received very large settler 
inflows from, or that have strained every nerve to emulate the particular economic structures and 
patterns and practices that developed in the years after 1500 in a 300-mile radius circle centered 
on the port of Dover at the southeast corner of England.
I would use "Dover Circle-Plus", if anyone would understand me.


2000

'* 1900                                   ᶻ 1900

"1800 CE

250 BCE-

250 CE     9600 BCE-

1400 CE

2000


Figure 2.4. The shifting locations of the Eastern and Western cores. Map by
Michele Angel.

But there is another reason to avoid much talk of the a€ceWesta€D and the a€oeEasta€D. Above is a 
map showing what Stanforda€™ s Ian Morris chttps://archive.org/details/whywestrulesfornOOmorr 
l/mode/lup> thinks are the economic and civilizational "core areas" of a€ceWesterna€O and 
a€ceEasterna€D civilization since the year -9600.

For nearly all the time since the invention of agriculture, the Eastern core is the Yellow River 
and Yangtze Valleys, according to Morris. He sees it as, by 1900, moving a little further east: 
gaining Manchuria and Japan, while losing Sichuan and the upper Yellow River Valley. By 2000 the 
core has further gained Taiwan island and the Pearl River Delta, but lost has non-coastal China 
(including Manchuria).
There is continuity here: political continuity, cultural continuity, unbroken chains of influence, 
even substantial continuity of genetic descent.

This is in great contrast to the a€oeWestern corea€d. Morris claims that from -9600 to 1400 it 
extended from Basra on the Persian Gulf to Tbilisi in the Caucasus to Ithaka off the northwest 
corner of Greece to Thebes in Egypt. Then, from -250 to 250 ita€!moved? a€!had added on? a€! 
comprised Italy, Sicily, and Sardinia. Yet after 250 it reverted back to the original 
Basra-Tbilisi-Ithaka-Thebes quadrangle.

In 1400, however, that then pops like a bubble. For the period 1400 to 1800, according to Morris, 
the a€oeWestern coreaCD picked up stakes and moved to Western Europe. And by 1900 the Western 
a€oecore areaa€D has extended a pseudopod across the Atlantic to the American northeast and 
contracted in Eurasia, where it is: Ireland and Britain, the Low Countries, northern and western 
France, and northwest Germany.
Come 2000, Morrisa€™ s a€oeWestern corea€D is the continental United States plus the more-settled 
parts of Canada.

Truly a moveable feast.

I feel a great lack of continuity here. What has the civilization of Uruk in -3000 have to do with 
the civilization of Silicon Valley today? In what sense are they both a€oethe Westa€U, save that 
there are some people at Stanford who read The Story of the Man Who Saw the Deep, the Epic of 
Gilgamesh chttps: //archive .org/details/gilgameshnewrend00ferr>?


Certainly there was a time in the 1800s when people wanted to tell the Story of Civilization as 
something like an Olympic-torch relay race:

• The flint is struck and the torch lit in the Uruk of Gilgamesh and in Ur of the Chaldees.

• It is then passed down to the Pharaohs of Egypt and to the Babylon of Hammurabi.

• It winds up in Jerusalem, in the hands of Kings Dovid Melech Yisrawel and his son Salomo.

• The torch is then passeda€’’perhaps through Kurush and the other Loyal-Spirit Great Kings of the 
Persian Empirea€”to Athens!

• And then on to Rome!

• And conquering Rome is then conquered by Jerusalem and Galilee, as the torch is carried forward!

And so on. In the aftermath of the fall of Rome, barbarian invasions and western Christendom then 
meld themselves into European feudal civilization, which picks up the torch. The torch is handed 
off to the Renaissance. The Reformation, The Enlightenment rise of representative government and 
common-law systems: governments that exist to secure peoplea€™ s natural rights and that derive 
their just powers from the consent of the governed. Then the British
Industrial Revolution. And on to modern democratic capitalism, or capitalist democracy.

But this is like picking out pictures of things you like in a photograph and claiming that they are 
a€ceyoursa€D.

There was no single torch. There were no hand-offs. And if there had been a single torch, it would 
come with all kinds of things that we do not like at all.

Thus it does annoy me when people speak of cultural-civilizational patterns rooted in the 
early-modern imperial-commercial age Dover Circle and then the Dover-Circle-Plus as a€oethe WestaCD 
and talk of and unreflective believe in some a€ceita€D that is a€oeWestern Civilizationa€D, which 
the people living in the Thames Valley of the island of Great Britain in the 1800s possessed as 
rightful heirs.

Earlier peoples ascribed the rATes of torch-bearers in this relay would have been very surprised to 
learn that the inhabitants of the Thames Valley were in any way them or their heirs. In the -50s, 
Roman Senator and Proconsul Marcus Tullius Cicero snidely snarked argued that the Britons had no 
silver and were too stupid and uneducated to make good slavesa€”hence they were not worth 
imperializing. Athens had very little tolerance for Jerusalem. And
Jerusalem had even less tolerance for Athens.

If you want continuity starting at the Western edge of Eurasia of the same kind as you see in the 
a€oeEastern Corea€Da€’’political, cultural, linked chains of influence, some continuity of genetic 
descenta€”you certainly cannot start before 800, and perhaps not before 1500. And you have to start 
in the Dover Circle.

North Sea

Edinburgh

United
Kingdom



Toulouse
o

Mona

But do not carry this tradition-demolition project too far. In 800 the Dover Circle a backwater, 
technologically behinda€”and hundreds of years technologically behind, much of the timea€”the world 
average. But around the year 800, in the Dover Circle, a local barbarian, a Frankish king, Charles, 
son of the usurper Pippin the Short, extended his military reach from his sometime capital city of 
Aachen or Aix-la-Chapelle in the Dover Circle to the Elbe River in
Germany, the Tiber in Italy, the Ebro in Spain, and to the borders of Hungary. Pope Leo II then 
crowned a€ceCharlemagnea€D Emperor, the first emperor dwelling west of Constantinople for three and 
a quarter centuries. And after that interesting things did begin to happen between Stockholm and 
Sevilla, ultimately concentrating in the Dover Circle.

But they did not happen rapidly. Even as of 1500 the Dover Circle held no place special in world 
civilization. Yes, the Dover Circle by 1500 was no longer a backwater. Yes, it had from 800 to 1500 
had a rapid creative run of growth and technological advance for a pre-Imperial-Commercial 
civilization in the Middle Ages. But much of that was simply a Viking-raided backwatera€™ s 
catching up to world civilization. In 1500 it certainly had no a€ceedgea€D in
governance or culture, and in technology whatever edge it had was narrowa€’’ships and gunpowder and 
cannon, and perhaps precision machinery like, clocks.

Maybe it has a small technological edge on average in 1500. Perhaps 1.1 over the other high 
civilizations of Eurasia? It did forge ahead after 1500 in technology faster than the world 
average, but not that much faster.

It certainly developed a politically and militarily important technological edge in ocean 
navigation and gunpowder weaponry. Caravels begin to dominate the worlda€™ s oceans from 1500 
ona€”although the first great exploratory-imperialist wave comes from Portugal and Greater Castile. 
But do not overstate that edge. The Ottoman Empire was still besieging Vienna in 1688. It was only 
in ships that it dominated up until 1800. And its ships did not dominate
always: the Omani from Muscat threw the Portuguese out of East Africa, and then ruled the coasts of 
the Indian Ocean from Zanzibar.

Even in the late 1700s it was touch-and-go. The British started to conquer India, but they could 
not maintain their hold on North America. What had been a perhaps 1.1-1 edge in technological 
prowess in 1500 was only perhaps 1.4-1 in 1770.
Even in the 1800s the French failed in their conquest of Mexico and had a devil of a time 
conquering and colonizing Algeria.

Not until 1880 and the machine gun did it become the case that Dover Circle-Plus armies could march 
anywhere and conquer anything (save, for the Italians, Ethiopia; and save, for the British and the 
Russians, Afghanistan). And in the end the durable expansion of the Dovber Circle to the Dover 
Circle-Plus of today was as much a soft- as a hard-power process.


ine Dover circie-rius since Deep lime...

The Dover Circle—& Its Spread

• Conquest, Settlement, Emulation...

• Plus resource engrossment: imperialism & neoimperialism

•  2.5% of the world’s population in 800, 11% of the world’s population today

•  Leading edge vs. world as a whole: 1.2-1 in 1500, 1.4-1 in 1770, 2.3-1 in 1870, 3.9-1 in 2010

POL: 25.9k
tST 23.6k


LUX: 62 6k
SUI: 60.1k
ISL. 56.0k
WO 52.8k

mi: 51.7k
Ml 49.6k
AUT: 48.3k

46.4k
FRA 43.0k
GBR 42 8k
6S8: 37.3k
PA: 3$.4k
POR 24.5k

NOR: 53.6k

(XN: 52 6k

SWt: 42 8k
FIN: 42.1k

LTV: 22.9k
LAT: 22.4k

SLO: 35.0k

Qfc 23.7k
SYK: 23.5k
HUN : 21.7k


15.0k - 25,0k

USA: 60.2k
CAN: 48.4k
CHI: 28 4k
M8X: 153k

AUS: 59 Ik

NZt 39 2k

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MUST-READ: Slouching Towards Utopia Makes the New Yorker:

It is nice to see it recognize the existence of my Slouching Towards Utopia book <bit.ly/3pP3Krk>. 
It is only a little squib, but stilla€!:

New Yorker: Briefly Noted: a€~Slouching Towards Utopia, by J. Bradford DeLong (Basic). This 
economic history takes up the period from 1870 to 2010a€”what its author calls the a€oelong 
twentieth century a€Da€’’and examines why, despite the vast wealth generated during that time, 
problems such as climate change and inequality persist. DeLong, an economics professor, searches 
for explanations in the work of the perioda€™ s
major political and economic theorists, such as Karl Polanyi and John Maynard Keynes, tracing their 
ideasa€™ intellectual and practical legacies. If our ancestors could see this era, he imagines, 
they might marvel at humanitya€™ s a€oetechnological and organizational powers,a€D but theya€™ d 
also wonder why we have a€oedone so little to build a truly human world, to approach within sight 
of any of our utopiasa€Da€!

Leave a comment

Very Briefly Noted:

•  Gillian Tett: Four is the new two on inflation for many investors: a€~At Davos, a number of 
business leaders do not anticipate a return to the pre-2019 pattern of zero ratesa€!

•  Paul Krugman: a€~Prices moderating everywhere; wage growth still elevated but moderating in 5 
districts. Goes along with BLS, Atlanta Fed, Indeed etc. I was curious to see how the 
fire-and-brimstone inflation crowd would react to improving data. To my surprise and slight 
disappointment, many of them seem to be admitting that a soft landing is possible...

•  Franck Leroy: a€~14 years ago, Satoshi Nakamoto designeda€! the blockchain. Today, it weights 60 
000 tons, wastes constantly 10 gigawatts (more than Belgium or Chile) to process less than 7 
transactions per second: Less than a 33 bps modem from 1990a€!. A joke if it didn't havea€! 
environmental impacta€! ransomwarea€!

• Wikidpedia: You didn't build thata€!

•  Noah Smith: How college towns can survive and thrive over the next 20 years: a€~Two types of 
places with lots of educated workers have tended to thrive in the U.Sa€! a€oesuperstara€Da€! and 
college townsa€!. This was a local development solution that could really scale. There are only a 
handful of big superstar metros in existence, but America has a surprisingly large number of 
colleges a€” 2,832 four-year institutions, to be exact, scattered
very evenly throughout the populated regions of the countrya€!. I still believe college towns are 
well-positioned to thrive in the 2020s and 2030s, buta€! small cities are going to have to think 
carefullya€!

•  Rebecca Eliott: What if Tesla Isa€!Just a Car Company: a€~Tesla came up short of its growth 
target for 2022. Annual growth in vehicles delivered to customers slowed to 40%, from 87% in 2021 
.a€! Teslaa€™ s stumble buys time for its emerging EV rivalsa€!

•  Greg Robb: Fed must keep raising rates until it is certain inflation has stopped climbing, 
Kashkari says: a€~The terminal rate remains an 'open question,' Minneapolis Fed president saysa€!

•  Sarah Constantin: Kelly Criterion: a€~A risk-neutral agent with respect to long-term gains 
becomes a risk-averse agent with respect to local wins and losses [if you must stop betting when 
your bankroll runs out]...

•  Bob Kuttner: Turning the Debt Ceiling Crisis Against McCarthya€™ s Republicans: a€~Biden needs 
to play serious hardball, or he will get rolled...

• C .P. Snow (1964): The two culturesa€!

•  Tim Walters: Is Facebook a€ceradicallya€D evil? - TCA: a€~Remember that contract you signed with 
Facebooka€! entering into an agreement to surrender so much of your personal data (and perhaps that 
of your networked friends) in exchange fora€! targeted advertising?a€! According to Katharina 
Raabe-Stuppniga€! a€oeFacebook now says that they do not need consent for the use of the data 
because users ordered this advertising. Advertising
on Facebook is now supposed to be an important part of the a€~service promise.a€™ Ita€™ s as if 
[Facebook thinks] users join Facebook only to see adsa€Da€!

•  Hyunjoo Jin: Tesla video promoting self-driving was staged, engineer testifies: a€~The video, 
which remains archived on Teslaa€™ s website, was released in October 2016 and promoted on Twitter 
by Chief Executive Elon Musk as evidence that a€oeTesla drives itself.a€D But the Model X was not 
driving itself with technology Tesla had deployed...

• George F. Kennan (1947): The Sources of Soviet Conducta€!

• Michael Kremer: The O-Ring Theory of Economic Development: 
a€~<https://www.jstor.org/stable/2118400>a€!


volatilitya€!

• Sarah Constantin: Is Human Intelligence Simple?: Evolution and Archaeology Genetics 
Disambiguating Types of Simplicitya€!

• Wikipedia: Michael Postana€!

• Wikipedia: Fortrana€!

• Tyler Cowen: US Industrial Policy: a€~If someone says, a€oeWell, there's a crisis in 
semiconductors,a€D or, a€oeDoing things to help universities is far too indirect,a€D I strongly 
suspect that's true. I don't know exactly how to fix that problema€!. I'm pretty convinced we 
shouldn't be doing nothing. I would just say it's more useful to talk about specifics. Industrial 
policy per se doesn't really mean anything to mea€!
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AJs:

Brian Potter: The Rise of Steel Part II: Bessemer: a€~The 1850sa€! Henry Bessemera€! hypothesized 
that if a large enough surface of molten pig iron could be exposed to air, it would quickly be 
turned into wrought irona€! blowing air through the irona€!. Exothermic reactionsa€! [removed] 
impuritiesa€! required no fuel inputa€! could be cast into large elementsa€!. Two problems vexed 
Bessemer. First, the air blast left oxygen dissolved in the metal. This
was solved by Robert Mushet, who added "spiegeleisen," a cast iron with a high manganese content, 
to the liquid iron after the air blow was completeda€!. The second problem was the phosphorus 
content of the iron orea€! wouldna€™ t be solved until 1877 with the development of the 
Thomas-Gilchrist process, which substituted a dolomite lining for the sand lining in the converter. 
The basic dolomite lining would react with the acidic phosphorus oxide in the
liquid iron, producing slag that could be removeda€!

Matt Yglesias: Never answer mailbag questions angry!: a€~[That] people who want to criticize me 
tend to bring up the same small number of takes, often ones that are years old and usually ones 
that are on subjects that are outside my normal range of coverage, tells you 
somethinga€’’especially because my usual range of coverage is itself pretty large. People are not 
saying a€oewow, Matt really blundered when over a decade ago he made the economic costs of
land use regulation a major theme in his work.a€D Theya€™ re not saying my advocacy for more 
stimulative macroeconomic policy in Obamaa€™ s second term aged poorly. When I wrote a€oeSwing 
Voters are Extremely Reala€D in the summer of 2018, it was an unfashionable and mildly contrarian 
point, but I dona€™ t think people seriously dispute it todaya€!. I dona€™ t think enough attention 
is paid to sins of omission, and I almost never hear anyone
own up to having committed any of thema€!. Nobody is required to weigh in on every controversy that 
passes through the world. Buta€! Ia€™ ve never seen someone say a€oeyou know what, I was too 
reluctant to engage in this hot-button policy controversy.a€Da€! If I were writing a profile of 
myself, that would be my key thesisa€!. Journalistsa€! should be less afraid of 
a€cecancellation.a€D Ia€™ ma€l critical of a€oecancel culture.a€Ua€! Ia€™ ve also
become uncomfortable with the extent to which cancel culture critics tend to tell exaggerated scare 
stories of the threat of cancellation^!. I have a good life and a successful career and more people 
should be more outspoken about things they believe in and have more confidence in their ability to 
succeed that waya€!

Tim Harford: Is life in the UK really as bad as the numbers suggest? Yes, it is: a€~The past 15 
years have been a disappointment on a scale we could hardly have imagined.  Real household 
disposable income per capita has barely increased for 15 years. This is not normala€!. Had the 
pre-crisis trend continued, the typical Brit would by now be 40 per cent richer. Instead, no 
progress has been made at alla€!. The past 15 years have been a disappointment on a

scale that previous generations of British economists could hardly have imagineda€!. In normal 
circumstances, we cana€™ t have it all. Right now, we cana€™ t have any of ita€!

Martin Wolf: Davos: Therea€™ s life in global capitalism yet: a€~Rumours of the demise of 
international business and trade have been exaggerateda€!. Ultimately, capitalism is global, 
because opportunities are globala€!. Yet whether they are exploited, and by whom, is also 
determined by the risks and the constraints. What has changed are perceptions of riska€!. 
Perceptions have, in sum, shifted towards a€oedog eats doga€D from a€oedog trusts doga€D.
How far has this shift gone in practice? a€oeNot so fara€D is the answera€!

Sarah Constantin: Why Infinite Coin-Flipping is Bad: a€~It makes sense to ask whether a reckless 
investora€™ s beliefs about risk led him to take lots of riska€!and here it seems undeniable. FTX 
totally practiced what SBF preacheda€!. Above-Kelly betting can only be optimal if you are willing 
to accept facially absurd conclusions like a€oel will almost surely go completely broke, but ita€™ 
s okay, because Ia€™ 11 win big if I keep getting lucky forever,
even though the long-run probability of that is literally zeroa€Da€!

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