Patterns of economic retardation and recovery in south-western Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
Ts there a specific Latin or south-west European pattern of economic modernization? A simple inspection of tables i and 2 and of figure i would suggest that there is. The special characteristic of the south-western economies (Spain, Portugal, and Italy) seems to be their stagnation and backwardness in relation to north-western Europe during the nineteenth century, while in the twentieth century they grew rapidly and recovered most, if not all, of the ground lost. We must first investigate the sources of the evidence presented in these tables and graphs. Table i is based on the calculations in classical works2 as recalculated by Prados, and sometimes linearly interpolated. Table 2 relates these income series to the combined British and French per caput income (hence the virtual mirror images of the British and French curves in figure i). Relative to the British-French norm, the Latin economies appear to have declined dramatically during the first half of the nineteenth century, almost held their own during the second half, begun a halting recovery from I900 to I930, sunk again-Spain especially-in I930-50, and partially caught up since then.