<論説>価格革命期英国の経済成長 : 一五五〇-一六二〇年代

Abstract

G・ヴィーベやE・J・ハミルトンによって定式化された価格革命像は、今や理論的にも実証的にも批判に耐え得なくなっている面が多い。英国について伝統的な価格革命説を再検討し、そこから十六世紀後半、十七世紀初頭の英国経済の成長型をうかび上らせることが本稿の目的である。すでに別の個所で扱った一六五〇-一七二〇年代の成長型とはまさしく正反対のものがここには見出せる。たとえば、実質賃金の低下、工業より農業に有利な価格構成などがそれで、これらは全て、人口増加の圧力に第一次産業の生産力が応じ切れなかったことを示すものである。と同時に、毛織物業を中心とする工業セクターも-外需は明らかに停滞、内需も人口成長以上の拡大は予想できず-繁栄の局面にはなかった。したがって次のように結論できる。この期間を通じて全体としての英国経済の規模は拡大しつつあったが、人口ひとりあたりのそれはさして成長しなかったであろう。産業革命のステップに足がかかるためには、十七世紀後半、十八世紀初頭のこれとは逆の型の成長を経験することが不可欠であった。

Today we can no longer accept the traditional theory of the Price Revolution that G. Wiebe and E. J. Hamilton formulated. The object of this essay is to indicate the pattern of English economic growth in the later 16th and early 17th centuries, through examining the traditional Wiebe-Hamilton theory. I have already discussed in the other journal the pattern of the growth from middle of the 17th to the early 18th centuries. During these centuries, the scale of the whole economy or England was developing rather slowly, but as the population growth was also very weak, the indices of per capita showed considerable upward movements. Now, in the 16th and early 17th centuries, almost all the indices of the national economy we take are moving reversely: falling trend of real wages, the price construction fabourable to agriaultural sector, and above all the Price Revolution itself. These movements of indices can be accounted only by Population Pressure to the agricultural sector. Agricultural production per head in real term, therefore, seems not to have increased. On the other hand, English industries, of which of course the woollen and worsted industries were the most important, were caught by a long-lingering stagnation. Then, I want to put the conclusion: during these years, while the whole English economy was expanding, the national production per capita might be rather stationary. Such a pattern of growth can never produce any decisive Industrialization.