• 1: The great divergence


• 2: The rise of the west


• 3: The industrial revolution


• 4: The ascent of the rich


• 5: The great empires


• 6: The Americas


• 7: Africa


• 8: The standard model and late industrialization


• 9: Big push industrialization


• Epilogue

Robert C. Allen is Professor of Economic History at Oxford Univeristy and a Fellow of Nuffield College. He has written on English agricultural history, international competition in the steel industry, the extinction of whales, andt he contemporary policies on education. His articles have won the Cole Prize, the Redlich Prize, and the Explorations Prize. His previous books include Enclosure and the Yeoman: The Agricultural Development of the South Midlands, 1450-1850 (2009), and Farm to Factory: A Re-interpretation of the Soviet Industrial Revolution (2003), both of which won the Ranki Prize of the Economic History Association.He is currently studying the global history of wages and prices and pre-industrial living standards around the world. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and the Royal Society of Canada.

The gap between the rich and the poor can be vast. Robert C. Allen considers the main factors that contribute to this gap, looking at the interconnections between economic growth, culture, technology, and income distribution. Exploring the historical processes that have created the unequal world of today, he takes a global look at wealth worldwide.