The West in Perspective: An Interview with David Landes

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Joseph Lucas

The West in Perspective: AnInterview with David Landes

David Landes belongs to a lamentably rare species among

academics, the truly independent-minded. Precocious from the start,

he was invited to join Harvard’s exclusive Society of Fellows, which

certified him as of sufficiently strong and interesting mind to be

exempted from the obligation to complete a Ph.D. As a member of

the Society, he pursued his own work, and, upon leaving it, moved

effortlessly into a distinguished academic career. Nothing in the in-

terview he granted to Joe Lucas of The Historical Society betrays

a hint of the price he may have paid along the way, but the public

record leaves no doubt that he never compromised with reigning

pieties. Perhaps most important, he steadfastly rejected the growing

divorce between history and economics that has led to an excess of

personalism and impressionism on the one side and pyrotechnics on

the other. The growing mathematical and statistical sophistication

of economic historians—frequently known as econometricians—has

frightened and alienated historians who lack the training to compete

on terrain they frequently do not understand. By the same token,

the economists tend to sneer at the impressionistic methods of histo-

rians and, to their great loss, to miss the irreplaceable contribution

of human action, inaction, and more than occasional irrationality.

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Landes has, from the start, insisted on bridging that gap, and

his work has illuminated the importance of entrepreneurship; the

uneven—and unequal—responses of different cultures to the possi-

bilities of progress, especially technology; the role of culture in the

making of economic decisions; and the wonderful perversity of hu-

man beings, who often refuse to conform to the patterns of statistical

probabilities and even to act in their own best interest. In these ways

and countless others, he has insisted on perpetuating and advanc-

ing the great tradition of economic history, which from the days of

the Scottish Historical School until well into the second half of the

twentieth century has figured as one of the most important modes

of historical understanding.

Joseph Lucas: What did it mean to you to be selected for Harvard

University’s Society of Fellows? In retrospect how would you evalu-

ate the advantages and disadvantages relative to the Ph.D. program?

David Landes: Well, being in the Society of Fellows was a huge

privilege, both in financial and in cultural/intellectual terms. Finan-

cially, it meant that I would receive full support for three years, and

that kind of graduate support was rare in those days. I had not

even heard about the Society of Fellows when my teacher, Donald

McKay—who liked what I was doing and, I guess, must have liked

the way I was doing it—said to me, I am going to nominate you to

the Society of Fellows, and then he explained to me what it was.

Sure enough, I was elected, and it was a huge privilege for the sup-

port and, of course, the Monday night dinners. The dinners were

an occasion to meet the most interesting and intelligent visitors to

Harvard, who made it a point to come to these dinners with the

idea of meeting bright Harvard students. Over the years, I came to

meet and know some very great and famous men. And there was

the privilege of sitting with my fellow fellows, and meeting them. I

was not the most famous of the group by any means, but I sat with

future famous people. . . . I remember coming home one night and

saying I’d met a fellow, Noam Chomsky, and I could not agree with

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The West in Perspective: An Interview with David Landes

him on anything. I was in my third year; he was in his first year. By

the time we were through talking, I said, this is impossible. We still

disagree on everything. Being a fellow did not necessarily mean you

agreed with everybody. It unquestionably helped me to get my ap-

pointment in the history department later on. The Fellows program

was a chance to talk about your work, or about politics, culture, or

art. I can imagine what it must be like today. Any past fellow can

go, but I have not been going. Politics today are the kind that can

divide people forever—between Republicans and Democrats, look-

ing at the Middle East, looking at the Iraq war, and so on. I can

imagine that discussions at these meetings are not always easy.

Lucas: What were the issues on the table at the Monday night dinners

you attended as a Fellow?

Landes: It was very easy then. We were talking about postwar

America, prospects for economic development, and the question

of whether the government should intervene or mind its own busi-

ness. These were classic questions. We did not invent them, but they

changed with time. Among the people were Frank Sutton, I remem-

ber, and other economists, and that is where I met some of the very

bright economists. We also had visitors who would come in and

talk to us about economic cycles and history. But I liked to talk

to the economists, because I had so much to learn. I had never re-

ally been trained in economics before Harvard. I did history at City

College, which was full of very bright students, including some bril-

liant economists like Ken Arrow. I did not know them there; I got

to know them here.

Lucas: What were you working on at the time, during those three

years?

Landes: Very early on I decided that I wanted to do history, economic

history, and economic development. Why were some countries rich

and others not so rich? Why had some gotten an early start and

others had to catch up? I decided that I wanted to do, in particular,

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business history, because I worked as a junior fellow very much in the

context of the Arthur Cole Center for Entrepreneurial History. It was

a very hospitable place intellectually, and it took good care of people

like me. It seemed logical that I should pursue some topic in the his-

tory of a business enterprise. That was my first consideration; the

second was, whatever I did, I wanted it to deal with France, because

I had a special commitment to the study of French history. I had

learned to speak French, so I had a kind of opening to French civili-

zation, a society where language is ultra important. They like the

idea that foreigners make an effort to speak French, and they like the

idea that foreigners do not quite succeed. It upsets them to have forei-

gners who speak French the way they do, but they like the idea of the

effort, which they take as a salute to their cultural superiority. In any

case, I wanted very much to do something connected with France.

In my years in the army, 1942-45, I was taught Japanese, which is

a story in itself. I had made a hobby of codes and ciphers as a young

teenager, and I had taken courses in New York City in cryptanalysis

and code breaking. These courses started with things invented by

the teacher, but then moved on to the army Signal Corps program,

which had a whole series of textbooks they used to train their own

people. The army made these available to outsiders like me who

were taking these courses, with the understanding that people like

me—I was sixteen at the time—when and if we had occasion to go

into the service, would continue in this activity. I was going to enlist

in the army around about 1941-42, when we got into the war. The

army and navy anticipated people like me by deciding that everyone

would be subject to collective service, the draft. You would not

volunteer anymore, you were not allowed to volunteer, you would

be drafted. I remember writing the people at the Signal Corps, who

had been telling me that I could enlist, and they would arrange for

me to go to their schools in the army and then go on to operations.

I wrote them upon learning of this new rule about the draft to say

that there was no point in pursuing the matter, I had no choice, and

I would simply be drafted like everyone else and would be lost in

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the huge flow of conscripts. They wrote me, I will never forget this,

“Dear Mr. Landes, don’t worry, you don’t have to find us, we’ll find

you.” And that is exactly what happened, because I was drafted, and

unlike all the other people drafted in my group, I was somehow set

aside. They were sent to camps for draftees, but I was immediately

sent to a special inductees program. They had found me!

I was sent to a place to take classes in cryptanalysis and cryp-

tology. I was doing fine there, and then something totally unex-

pected happened—they needed more guards for the operations cen-

ter, Arlington Hall, which been a girls’ school in Arlington, Virginia.

The operations center needed people who had already got clearance,

because it took at least a week to get clearance, and they wanted the

guards now. The most immediately available people with this kind

of clearance were the people in my entering class in the cryp school.

I was sent to Arlington Hall to be a guard. That is where I learned to

sleep standing up; it is a great art to sleep standing up. I was a guard

there, and I was not happy. Who the hell wants to be in the armed

services doing guard duty? I am in this dormitory, and I see people I

knew from college, whom I had met during my one year of graduate

school at Harvard. And they said, “What are you doing here?” When

I told them the story, they said, “Why don’t you try to get into the

Japanese school?” I said, “What Japanese school?” And they said,

“That’s what we’re doing. There is a Japanese school here and maybe

they will be willing to take you, and if they take you, you will be lifted

out of guard duty and be in school with us.” And I said, “Who heads

this school?” It was Edward Reischauer, who later became a profes-

sor at Harvard. Reischauer gives me an interview and asks, “What

are you doing?” I tell him I am doing guard duty. He said, “What

makes you think you can learn Japanese?” I said, “Well I am pretty

good at languages, I’ve learned French.” He said, “But French is like

English, it’s another Indo-European language. Do you know any

non-Indo-European languages?” And I had an inspiration—I said,

“Hebrew.” The next thing I know, he accepts me in the Japanese

school, and they taught me Japanese. All of this is leading back to

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France. Come the end of the war, the Japanese surrender, and all of

us are being sent to Japan for the occupation, because you know,

how often do you find people who can read and speak Japanese?

But I want to go to France. So, I run down to the Pentagon, and I

start shopping around for an assignment in France. I find an offer,

at the university they started for American armed forces personnel

in France and Western Europe, to keep them occupied until they

can be returned to the United States. It was at Biarritz in France,

and they needed teachers. I said, “Well I’ve done a year of graduate

work in history, and I’m ready to teach.” And the next thing you

know, I am sent to France.

Lucas: What did you teach?

Landes: I taught history—European, French, and so on. We had

standard textbooks. Oh yes, it was fun. I got to know French people,

some of whom I kept as friends for decades thereafter. I spent a year

and a half in France before returning to the United States.

Lucas: Did your interest in economic history and French history lead

you to the Annales?

Landes: I read their stuff, and I went to their meetings. I began to

attend French professional meetings. Back in the United States, as a

junior fellow, I participate in Arthur Cole’s Center for Research in

Entrepreneurial History. I go to France to look for a topic, and I had

an idea that I wanted to work on a bank, De Neuflize, Schlumberger

et Cie, which had something to do with some of the research I was

doing on French economic development in the 19th century. I think

I met a member of the Neuflize family who had come to Harvard

to do some graduate work, and this person suggested that there

might be stuff in the history of their firm. I came to France with

a letter of introduction, and I was told they would be happy to

let me look in their records. You have to understand, this was a

huge privilege. French firms in those days were very cautious about

curious people, whether scholars or not, because they never knew

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what may be a kind of probe by the tax authority. They all had things

to hide, without exception, so they would normally say no. I was

an American, and so they felt that I was almost surely not involved

in any such ploy. They allowed me to work in their archives, which

were kept in a vault in the Bank of France. Every week or two I

would meet with one of their executives, and he would bring me

into the vault and leave me there to work. Something else they did,

which, when I think back on it, was unheard of, and which shows me

how important luck is in determining the fate of any kind of career,

including scholarly careers: They let me take a package of records

home with me. This was before the days of Xerox, of course, but

they themselves did not know what was in these records. How did

they know what a stranger could do with the material? But they let

me take a batch of papers home, and I would work for a couple of

weeks and bring it back.

Speaking of luck: One day, I am getting the package together to

take it back to the bank, and I find one package I had not looked

at, because it was labeled “Ottoman Affairs.” I was interested in

French economic history, I did not have any particular interest in

Ottoman affairs. But I had a nagging feeling that, as a scholar, I had

no right to return it without looking at it. So that morning, when

packing the materials to return to the bank, I opened the package. I

saw stuff I could not believe—correspondence of what had been the

ancestral bank of De Neuflize, Sclumberger et Cie, the Andre bank,

a correspondence that I had never seen before in all the business

papers. I had never seen anything like it—so intimate, so candid, so

detailed. I had stumbled on a treasure. Out of that came Bankers

and Pashas.

Little did I know, the bank at this point would play a major role in

the financing of the Suez Canal. That is how it came to be known as

“Ottoman Affairs”—the Suez Canal was, of course Egyptian, and

Egypt was part of the Ottoman Empire, and so, of course, it was

Ottoman. These records opened the way to the larger view of what

was going on in the world of trade in those days, particularly

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European and Asian trade. The book became a study in not only the

nature of entrepreneurship and the role of family in entrepreneur-

ship, but also the larger process of worldwide commercial develop-

ment. You said at one point, “Your later work appears much broader

in compass and interests,” but I would never say that. Bankers and

Pashas is quite broad because of the canal business. The Suez Canal,

you have to understand, immediately became the major route for

East-to-West, and West-to-East, travel and commerce.

I think, God willing, my next book is going to deal in part with

latitude and the opening of the world. It is no accident that it is a

European achievement from the start, from the circumnavigation of

Africa. Everybody has looked at longitude; I am going to look at

latitude.

Lucas: In what ways did Bankers and Pashas direct you toward your

subsequent work?

Landes: That book was instrumental in getting me an appointment

in history, first at Columbia. Even before the book appeared I was

giving talks, first at Columbia, then at Berkeley, because I went

to the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences at

Stanford in 1957-58 and then worked from 1958-1964 at Berkeley.

In 1964 I came back to Harvard. I was teaching economic history

in history departments; in particular, I taught the story of indus-

trialization and the Industrial Revolution, which led to the book

The Unbound Prometheus, on the history of the Industrial Revo-

lution. I also developed this special interest in clocks and watches,

timekeeping, and time, and that led me to the next book.

Intellectual things move that way: You are doing something in-

teresting, and it suggests a possible piece of work. I said to you a

moment ago that I wanted to do something on latitude. Why? Well,

in the course of my work, I had worked on and talked about the

whole question of longitude and the scientific basis for the calcula-

tion of longitude. But I also got involved in the business of East and

West, and one of the things that the proponents of Eastern cultural

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and scientific priority have emphasized is that they made these great

inventions like the compass, which were later exported to Europe

and became the basis of European development. So the Europeans

were, in effect, pupils of the Chinese. The compass and its role had

been stressed, and that got me started on what the Europeans did

with the compass and the special geographical problems the Euro-

peans were encountering as they tried to expand and get to Asia by

sea. Europeans had already traveled to Asia by land, but getting there

by sea was important, because if you are going to move cargo in ei-

ther direction, it is a lot cheaper and easier to move it by water.

The Europeans had a special problem: their instinctive choice of

route along the west coast of Africa turned out to be very difficult

and unhelpful. The coast is dry and inhospitable, and the winds and

currents are contrary as you go south. It takes a long time to fight

your way south. They did do it eventually, but people were dying left

and right, because you cannot stay at sea that long without losing

people.

The Europeans found that, if they left the winds that could not

carry them, they went far west to the coast of what later became

known as South America. If they went farther south, they found

currents going the other way, around the Cape of Good Hope and

around Africa into eastern seas. That was a fantastic discovery. It

was not an accident—they knew they could do it because they could

calculate the latitude of the southern tip of Africa, and they could

recognize when they had actually reached that latitude. If they took

these eastward winds and currents, they would clear Africa. Con-

trary to what was long historical orthodoxy, this was not a lucky

break. This discovery led to my decision to write a book about lat-

itude. That is the way you move, from one topic to another. I have

never done that type of book, but now, God willing, if I live long

enough, I will.

Lucas: How do you evaluate the future of “literate” economic

history, the kind of economic history that can be read and

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absorbed by an educated person who has not had technical training

in economics?

Landes: This is the kind of question you can ask about any science.

Take physics: There are books that the physicists can read, and then

there are books that are intended for the educated layman. And the

second kind of book makes all the difference, because not only does

it give the layman a sense of the value of what the physicist is doing,

but he also gains a much better idea of the world. It is the same with

economics, which has become a science—not a natural science, but

a social science—and as a science it has become more mathematical,

more statistical. It is full of equations and charts and so on, which the

ordinary person cannot possibly read. Listen, I cannot read the stuff

anymore. There was a time I could read anything that came out in the

field; not anymore. I know that. I take one look at those pages, and

I stagger. I can still do the statistical tables, if they take the trouble

to print the statistical tables, and then I can work out things from

them. But the kind of analysis they do, I cannot follow anymore. On

the other hand, the issues that economists and economic historians

are dealing with can be expressed in prose, which can become an

important aspect of intellectual exchange.

Consider the whole business that I stressed in Atlanta [at the

2002 Conference of The Historical Society] about global change

over time. A thousand years ago, China was in the lead, and the

Muslim Middle East was also ahead of Europe, which, in spite of

some glorious periods in the past, had lost ground and was seen

by some as barbaric and certainly backward. Why did everything

change, and how did it change, and where did it change? That stuff

is never really going to be satisfactory in mathematical form. It is

the kind of thing where you have to be able to talk to colleagues

in the other social sciences, maybe even colleagues in literature. It

will be of interest even to natural scientists, when you talk about

the calculation of longitude and latitude and things of this kind, or

the role of time and time keeping. One has to learn to write in such

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a way that it will be understandable. There will even be room for

style.

Lucas: So you see a bright future for economic history?

Landes: Yes, I do. To me it’s the most exciting aspect of history. There

are people who like military history, people who like the history of

violence, the history of empire, the history of power, and so on. I

like the history of wealth and knowledge.

Lucas: Are there economic historians at the early stages of their

careers whose work you admire?

Landes: Yes. I brought with me today a work by a young fellow

named J. Klock, whom I do not know. I have never met him, but he

sends me things, such as “How the West Got Richer Than Every-

body Else,” and so on. I like his work. He sends me things because

he likes my work, and we are talking to each other. Of course I

like some of the people closer to my age who are still around and

writing. Francois Crouzet: this is a guy who is eighty years old, but

everything he writes is exciting and important. There are cycles in

the production of scholars; it may be that we are not getting as many

people like Carlo Cippola, for example, as we had thirty or forty

years ago. I do not find the postmodern view of things reassuring.

I do not think these people are coming to terms with what strikes

me as the real problems, and coming to terms with problems—how

did we get where we are?—seems to me the heart of the matter.

Lucas: Who were your greatest intellectual influences? Were any of

the scholars and intellectuals you most admired your teachers? Did

you know or study with Schumpeter?

Landes: I never knew Schumpeter. He was a great man, but I was

influenced much more, both personally and through written works,

by Abbott Payson Usher, who was my teacher when I was an en-

tering graduate student at Harvard. I was also influenced by my

contemporaries—Bob Solow and many others. Solow is a brilliant

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economist. These were the people from whom I took the most and

argued with most.

Lucas: How about nineteenth-century forbears?

Landes: Max Weber. At Harvard there was a sociologist named

Talcott Parsons, who was a great Weberian, and he influenced me

very much. I was getting more significantly influenced by people

like Parsons than by someone like Schumpeter.

Lucas: What were you learning from Parsons?

Landes: His notions about the role of cultural and religious fac-

tors in shaping behaviors, and the role of behavior in shaping

performance—which makes a huge difference to me. I have just

about finished a book, which I am going to call Dynasty: Families

and Business Enterprise. I have a chapter devoted to Japan, and the

Japanese case is an extraordinary example of the significance of cul-

tural attitudes and values for performance. Anybody who tries to

understand Japanese success without taking culture into account is

simply not facing reality. Parsons and the other sociologists of the

time whom I got to know at Harvard—Frank Sutton, for example—

influenced me to consider the relationship between culture and

economic behavior. I still find it in all kinds of places, wherever

I look.

Lucas: How would you evaluate the role of political philosophy or

ideology in the writing of history?

Landes: I think it makes more of a difference than I thought it did.

Looking back again at the Atlanta conference, and the stress that

some people seem to lay on European or Western attitudes toward

other civilizations and cultures in the world, I think that much of

the meaning we give to such attitudes is of a political character and

is based on ideology. The notion that arrogance, for example, can

make a difference in national comportment, and the historian’s reac-

tion to it, seems laden with political ideology. So, what should I say?

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Is the feeling about Western arrogance political in character? Yes. Is

it related to resentment of imperialism? Yes. Is it possible to speak in

similar terms of France, in Europe? I have noticed that the French are

like the Chinese of the West. They are not good learners; they do not

want to learn from somebody else. Now, the Chinese are changing

in that regard. China is a huge state, a huge society, and they have

to be willing and eager to learn if they are to play the role they want

to play. They are moving in that direction because of the Japanese

example, which has constituted a counter system to the Chinese for

many decades. But the French are different—they are not that big,

and so their response may be somewhat different. It is interesting,

and I may want to do a study here someday. Well, I do not want the

French to be upset with me. I lived in Paris for quite some time. But,

they are heavily influenced by cultural considerations, and people

see them differently according to their political position. How do

you feel about Europe? How do you feel about continental Europe

as against Britain? How do you feel about continental Europe and

what is going on in Iraq, as against what Britain has done and what

is going on in Iraq? So sure, politics make a difference, and political

ideology makes a difference. Political philosophy, I cannot speak

about.

Lucas: Do you think the role of ideology in the writing of history

today differs dramatically from the role it played in the 1950s?

Landes: Times have changed because politics change. The nice thing

about political ideology is that it is related to the events of the day.

What do you do with consistency and inconsistency, persistence and

transience of political positions? These questions clearly play a role

for intellectuals as much as politicians. Maybe more. Intellectuals

are freer to change than politicians are.

Lucas: How much confidence do you think historians should place

in their evidence, and how do you evaluate different kinds of evi-

dence, notably qualitative and quantitative evidence?

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Landes: Is that a question that seems to assume something about

the evidence? On the assumption that the evidence is accurate,

reasonably complete, and reasonably objective, historians should

have confidence in it. But it is equally true, and it goes back to the

previous question, that political ideology acts as a filter for evidence.

Historians accept some kinds of evidence and throw others away.

They like some evidence better than others. They like evidence that

agrees with them more than evidence that does not agree with them.

You are playing on my cynicism, but I think the most meaningful

aspect of the question of evidence has to do with statistical against

qualitative evidence. I think I would have more faith in statistical

evidence. If you told me that the vote was such and such, or that

so many women are married and so many are not, or so many get

divorced and so many do not, I am more prepared to believe that

kind of evidence than if you told me that in this society women hate

men or love them.

Lucas: What about the role of quantitative evidence in the de-

bates you have had with Frank and Pomeranz about when was the

West richer than the East, how wealth should be measured, and

so on?

Landes: I think the evidence is quite clear. I think the difference be-

tween Pomeranz and the other Sinophiles and me has to do with the

role of chance. Pomeranz does not deny the rise and the increasing

wealth of the West and the superiority of Western clocks, although

we differ somewhat on the timing of these inventions. The ques-

tion is, how much of the difference in wealth resulted from a real

difference in values and cultures and attitudes. How much was a

result of a willful Chinese refusal to learn and Western eagerness

to learn? When the Sinophiles tell me about all the things the West

got from China, I agree and I say it is a good sign. To them it is a

sign of Western inferiority. I say, no, no, no—it is a sign of Western

desire and eagerness to learn, which makes all the difference. We

as teachers should be the first to see how important it is to be an

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eager learner and a good learner. I do not hold it against the West

that they got all of this stuff from China—they were behind, and

the Chinese were ahead, so they learned from China. Other societies

did not learn from China, so the question is, why was Europe will-

ing and able to learn? That is the kind of questions historians have

to ask.

Lucas: What do you think accounts for the West’s relative openness

as compared to other societies, which have tended to be more closed

and more suspicious of foreign influence?

Landes: Most important, the West was fragmented politically and

engaged in competition for position and power. It was soon appar-

ent that the mastery of devices that produced wealth and force, and

that could be used to make better arms, made all the difference.

Those societies that were willing and able to learn enjoyed a huge

premium. In the modern world, Japan is the great example. Early

on, the Japanese decided they were going to have to learn. The gov-

ernment decided that, if private individuals were unable, unwilling,

or not interested, the government would have to come in and make

up for that, and it did. I was just writing in my chapter on Japan

about the importance of the role of government in the development

of the Japanese computer industry. When IBM asked the Japanese

in 1964 for permission to start making computers in Japan, the gov-

ernment said fine, as long as you make your technology available to

any interested Japanese company. You have to license it. Where the

Japanese were not ready to pursue certain matters, the government

created research and development groups to study these things and

to make up for the shortcomings of private initiative. Now, you can

say, any government can do that, but it is not an accident. You have

to have a government willing to catch the cues, to profit from the

opportunities, to ask for things, and so on. This attitude, to me, is

the most exciting aspect of contemporary history, to find out why

some are doing so well and others are not. If scholars do not look

at that, then forget it.

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Lucas: If capitalism and technology have transformed the world—

frequently for the good—have they also undermined traditions and

institutions you value or see as essential to civilization?

Landes: That sounds like a Muslim question, if you’ll pardon the

phrase, because they do worry, more than anybody I know—there

are some other religions, also—about the effects of new ways of

doing things on the values they cherish and have inherited. My own

feeling is one of laissez faire, laissez allez. The economic and tech-

nological changes that occur are going to happen—if one place does

not do it, some other place will and just leave them behind, which

is the worst thing that can happen. That is, to me, the heart of the

story of the Middle East, which was once much more open-minded,

one of the leading centers of thought and science and so on. But

then they fell behind, and their response has been—not completely

and not evenly, since one part is different from another—to develop

a very strong sense of refusal and rejection: This stuff is danger-

ous, it is wrong, it goes against all the things that count and matter.

The biggest and costliest issue for them, of course, is going to be—

has always been—the relations of men and women. You are talking

about what you do with half the human race and its potential—that

is the point I stress, because most people do not. They talk simply

about the women. Even Muslims recognize that they have given up

all kinds of productivity because of the limitations and constraints

they place upon women. They treat women in this way to protect

them against the dangers of sexual temptation and abuse. But I

would want to emphasize the effect of discrimination on men, who

are treated from childhood as princes just because they are male.

I find that to be the costliest aspect of Arab Muslim culture and

one of the main reasons for the refusal to change and learn. It is no

accident that so many of those who have been successful in the West

have not wanted to go home.

Lucas: Economists and economic historians lately seem to focus on

women and economic development as they look for certain clues or

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markers as to what makes economies grow—female literacy, female

education, declining birth rates, and so on.

Landes: The best indicator of the prospects of a given society for

development is the opportunities they give their women. That is the

best single indicator. Even we in the United States have ground to

gain in that area, and we are. Women are playing a bigger role in

the United States than ever before. And that is a good sign, a very

good sign.

Lucas: Do you date some of these changes to late medieval and early

modern Europe—later age of marriage, fewer children, gradually

increasing female literacy rates?

Landes: It goes back hundreds of years. It is interesting to see how

varied it is within Europe—northern and southern Europe. One of

the things that is sort of a marker is whether you allow the country to

be ruled by queens, because there are societies where that is simply

impossible.

Lucas: How would you respond to Eric Hobsbawm’s claim that

the wars of the twentieth century have attained a level of mindless

violence that our nineteenth-century ancestors would have regarded

as barbarism?

Landes: No question, the wars of the twentieth century were ex-

tremely violent. Certainly World War I was terrible, and World

War II, the carpet bombings of the cities of Japan by the United

States, was violent and barbaric. If that war had gone the other

way and the United States had lost, we could expect Curtis

LeMay and others like him to be tried for war crimes. We talk

about the atom bombs, but these carpet bombings of the cities,

which aimed at destroying civilians, were far more costly than the

atom bombs. It was a brutal, violent, disgusting thing. I do not

know what Hosbawm wrote about it, but I do know how I feel

about it.

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Lucas: Do you think that the carpet bombings and other twentieth-

century acts of war were more barbaric than those in the nineteenth

century because of some change in the West’s moral compass or

simply because war makers had new technology available to them?

Was it some civilizational change that took place between the nine-

teenth and twentieth centuries?

Landes: Yes, technology. By the way, I do not want to omit the

barbaric Japanese ways, and so on. You know, there is nothing worse

than the Holocaust and the treatment by Germans of the Jews—

talk of barbarism. The twentieth century reached depths that the

world had never known before, and I think it was primarily due to

technology—the ability to kill. Now we are upset if we get one or

two deaths a day in Iraq. I think the people of World War I would

have had a good laugh at that: “What are you upset about?”

Lucas: How do you evaluate the prospects for Israel in the current

situation?

Landes: Well, the task of the historian is to explain how we got

where we are—in other words, to understand the past. In a way,

to ask a historian to evaluate prospects is to ask something that is

outside his domain of duty.

Lucas: You make that point nicely in Wealth and Poverty of Nations.

Landes: Like any person who reads the newspapers and watches

television and listens to the radio, I follow events in the Middle

East. I look at Israel’s situation and prospects with considerable

concern, because it seems to me that the ultimate objective of the

Palestinians, and even more the Arabs who are using the Palestini-

ans, is to eliminate Israel. Israel’s very existence and performance is

a reproach. It is not an accident that minorities in general—whether

we are talking about Christians or any other minority—have left

the Muslim Middle East. They have not stayed, they have all pulled

out. It is not a hospitable place. The Muslim majority is unfriendly

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and worse to these outsiders, and their very religious view of their

duty and destiny in the Muslim world does not include the goal

of happy co-existence. The prospects for Israel are uncertain and

inevitably difficult. The only thing I would add is that I am struck

by the extent to which the media avoid talking about that aspect of

the story. They do not like to deal with it. So, they talk simply in

terms of moving the frontier, and so on. If these people come into

Israel, they will be returning home, and then the two sides can learn

to live together, either side by side or within the same unit. Muslims

talk, not of a Jewish state and a Muslim state or a Palestinian state,

but of a single state in which they will live together. It all aims essen-

tially, eventually—if not for military reasons, then for demographic

ones—toward the elimination of the Jewish population of the area.

One cannot help but be concerned.

Lucas: To what extent do you see the difficult situation faced by

Israel in terms of the West and the Rest, wealth and poverty?

Landes: I think it is a major issue. The performance of Israel is a

source of embarrassment. Even when the two populations seem to

live and work together, the Israelis almost always hold the higher

positions and the Palestinians do the dirty work, which is a source of

grievance. Look, the Muslim world is at war with modernity and at

war with the West. We have just heard a report that says we do not

spend enough money for public relations in the Arab world, only

$150 million a year. We should spend more money and persuade

them to like us. They are at war with us. Why should they like us?

We represent all the things that they are against. They are at war with

modernity because that is where the Muslim world looks weakest,

has the least to show. The day that the Muslims start copying the

Japanese, you will know it is a different world.

Lucas: In The Wealth and Poverty of Nations you argue that the

gap between the West and the Rest is not getting any smaller, and

the idea of convergence is in many ways a pipe dream. But you

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also write that this problem is important, and it is going to cause

turmoil, violence, and unrest, and we have to try to figure out ways

of narrowing the gap.

Landes: Yes, and the gap is growing, which represents a great threat

to peace on earth, because it tends to reduce good will toward men.

Given the technology of violence, it is quite possible to have a con-

tinued war against what has been denominated as terrorism, namely

a war against angry people. They resent that they have so little and

we have so much. It is a huge problem, and it has been growing,

and we have not been paying attention. I think the most interesting

thing about 9/11 is that it took years to prepare for it. They were

thinking about it for years—how to do it, where to do it—and we

were just oblivious.

Lucas: You argue that many of the causes of the economic success of

the West, in relation to the Rest, are cultural, arising from various

changes during the Middle Ages and the early modern era made the

West different from the Rest. Do you see any hope for some kind of

transfer of the culture of the West to the Rest?

Landes: The Japanese case is interesting. Japan itself made the

decision to emulate, to learn, because of a chauvinistic pride in

power, a determination to maintain its autonomy and independence

vis-a-vis China, which they knew as their great big neighbor. Now,

they mishandled it, and in particular they laid all this stress on mil-

itary might. Undertaking an attack on the United States was crazy.

They thought, what with the United States enmeshed in war against

Germany and the rest, that it was the time to do it, that they could

get away with it and pick up the Philippines while they were at it.

The attack was very foolish, and they have shown much better sense

since then, to the point where the United States loves them. I think

the Japanese still concern themselves more than most with the sig-

nificance of economic development for national status and identity.

But even so, they have gone at it with determination. Where the

gap is growing in places like Africa, the Muslim Middle East, South

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America—there it is going to take a great deal, a real change in

culture, in particular, in my opinion, to allow these people to catch

up. Catching up requires this sense of objective self development

and a willingness to learn, neither of which is easy, particularly be-

cause it is easier to say no, I do not want to do it, leave me alone.

But when I read the history of Japanese enterprise, the amount of

time that they put in—they kept a six-day week when the rest of

the world had gone over to a five-day week, they did all kinds of

extraordinary things, worked extra hours, when they had a project.

They sacrificed family intimacy and activity to focus on achieve-

ment. It was a tremendous performance. They did not always love

each other, but they felt that achievement mattered. I think that is

the big challenge. All this business assuming that everybody is go-

ing to be rational and do the right thing—I do not think so. In the

meantime, the world is a dangerous place. It is not getting better

and safer.

Lucas: While dramatic societal and cultural differences exist, many

people from all over the world are attracted to the West. They come

here and succeed dramatically.

Landes: Yes, yes, they get the same food they eat at home, only

better. My son was just at the home of a very successful Pakistani,

enormously rich. To give you an idea how rich he is, next to the

kitchen of his house, he has an indoor squash court, part of a huge

mansion. He is not going back to Pakistan. He made it here and

likes it. He wants to build a mosque, but the people in his town,

Dover, Massachusetts, told him no: “We do not want a mosque; if

we have a mosque, we will have Muslims.” Do you know who gave

him permission? The Jews of Sharon.

Lucas: Is there anything you want to add in conclusion?

Landes: I consider one of the best and most fruitful aspects of

my career that I have lived and worked with both historians and

economists. I am a historian, but I spent the last half of my

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career here at Harvard in the economics department. That was a

great opportunity for me and made all the difference. I could not

have written Wealth and Poverty of Nations without that kind of

company. To this day, it interests me. I started out with a big fight,

with Alex Gerschenkron. I was just a graduate student, and I had

the temerity to write an article on French development, which he

saw as a contradiction of his thesis of catch-up development—that

countries that are behind in catching up will grow more rapidly. He

was very upset with me, and we were sort of adversaries, but that

did not stop me from being appointed at Harvard or from moving

to the economics department. When he was too old to teach any-

more, he asked me to take over his classes, which I attribute to my

good fortune in having lived with him and the other economists.

So they knew me and I knew them, and our mutual respect testi-

fies to the value of multicultural teaching opportunities. We are all

worried about multicultural opportunities for students, but teachers

also need these opportunities.

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Documents

The West in Perspective: An Interview with David Landes