The graph above is an economic history of the world, after 1 AD, from a research letter written by Michael Cembalest, chairman of market and investment strategy at JP Morgan. I posted it yesterday with this summary: "Everything to the left of 1800 is an approximation of population distribution around the world and everything to the right of 1800 is a demonstration of productivity divergences around the world."
But that's not exactly right. The Industrial Revolution that occurred in Western Europe around 1800 did dramatically raise productivity and personal income far above what any country had seen in the previous millennia. But in fact, GDP per capita -- an approximation for productivity and income -- started to diverge centuries before the steam engine.
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