Table Of ContentTHE GREAT
LEVELER
Albrecht Dürer, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, from The Apocalypse,
1497–1498. Woodcut, 15¼ × 11 in. (38.7 × 27.9 cm).
THE GREAT
LEVELER
VIOLENCE AND THE HISTORY OF
INEQUALITY
FROM THE STONE AGE TO THE
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
WALTER SCHEIDEL
Princeton University Press
Princeton and Oxford
Copyright © 2017 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William
Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TR
press.princeton.edu
Jacket art: Albrecht Dürer, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, from The Apocalypse, 1497–1498.
Woodcut, 15¼ × 11 in. (38.7 × 27.9 cm).
All Rights Reserved
ISBN 978-0-691-16502-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016953046
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For My Mother
“So distribution should undo excess,
And each man have enough.”
Shakespeare, King Lear
“Get rid of the rich and you will find no poor.”
De Divitiis
“How often does God find cures for us worse than our
perils!”
Seneca, Medea
CONTENTS
List of Figures and Tables xi Acknowledgments xv Introduction: The Challenge
of Inequality 1
PART I. A BRIEF HISTORY OF INEQUALITY 23
1. The Rise of Inequality 25
2. Empires of Inequality 62
3. Up and Down 86
PART II. WAR 113
4. Total War 115
5. The Great Compression 130
6. Preindustrial Warfare and Civil War 174
PART III. REVOLUTION 211
7. Communism 213
8. Before Lenin 232
PART IV. COLLAPSE 255
9. State Failure and Systems Collapse 257
PART V. PLAGUE 289
10. The Black Death 291
11. Pandemics, Famine, and War 314
PART VI. ALTERNATIVES 343
12. Reform, Recession, and Representation 345
13. Economic Development and Education 367
14. What If? From History to Counterfactuals 389
PART VII. INEQUALITY REDUX AND THE
FUTURE OF LEVELING 403
15. In Our Time 405
16. What Does the Future Hold? 424
Appendix: The Limits of Inequality 445
Bibliography 457
Index 495
FIGURES AND TABLES
FIGURES
I.1 Top 1 percent income share in the United States (per year) and
references to “income inequality” (three-year moving
averages), 1970–2008
1.1 General form of the social structure of agrarian societies
3.1 Inequality trends in Europe in the long run
3.2 Gini coefficients of wealth distribution in Italy and the Low
Countries, 1500–1800
3.3 Ratio of mean per capita GDP to wages and real wages in
Spain, 1277–1850
3.4 Inequality trends in Latin America in the long run
3.5 Inequality trends in the United States in the long run
4.1 Top income shares in Japan, 1910–2010
5.1 Top 1 percent income shares in four countries, 1935–1975
5.2 Top 0.1 percent income shares in Germany and the United
Kingdom
5.3 Top 1 percent wealth shares in ten countries, 1740–2011
5.4 Ratios of private wealth to national income in France, Germany,
the United Kingdom, and the world, 1870–2010
5.5 Capital income share in total gross income for top 1 percent of
incomes in France, Sweden, and the United States, 1920–2010
5.6 The share of government spending in national income in seven
countries, 1913–1918
5.7 Top marginal tax rates in nine countries, 1900–2006
5.8 Average top rates of income and inheritance taxation in twenty
countries, 1800–2013
5.9 World War I and average top rates of income taxation in
seventeen countries
5.10 Top 1 percent income share in Germany, 1891–1975
5.11 Top 1 percent income share in Sweden, 1903–1975
5.12 State marginal income tax rates in Sweden, 1862–2013
5.13 Trade union density in ten OECD countries, 1880–2008
6.1 Military size and mobilization rates in years of war in great
power states, 1650–2000
6.2 Gini coefficients of income and top 0.01 percent income share
in Spain, 1929–2014
9.1 Median house sizes in Britain from the Iron Age to the Early
Middle Ages
9.2 House size quartiles in Britain from the Iron Age to the Early
Middle Ages
9.3 Gini coefficients of house sizes in Britain from the Iron Age to
the Early Middle Ages
10.1 Real wages of urban unskilled workers in Europe and the
Levant, 1300–1800
10.2 Real wages of urban skilled workers in Europe and the Levant,
1300–1800
10.3 Rural real wages measured in terms of grain in England, 1200–
1869
10.4 Top 5 percent wealth shares and Gini coefficients of wealth
distribution in the cities of Piedmont, 1300–1800
10.5 Gini coefficients of wealth in Poggibonsi, 1338–1779
10.6 Top 5 percent wealth shares in Tuscany, 1283–1792
10.7 Top 5 percent wealth shares and Gini coefficients of wealth
distribution in Lucca, 1331–1561
11.1 Real wages expressed in multiples of bare-bones consumption
baskets in central Mexico, 1520–1820
11.2 Daily wheat wages of unskilled rural and urban workers in
Egypt, third century BCE to fifteenth century CE
11.3 Changes in real prices and rents between 100–160s and 190s–
260s CE in Roman Egypt
11.4 Wealth inequality in Augsburg: number of taxpayers, average
tax payments, and Gini coefficients of tax payments, 1498–
1702
13.1 Gross National Income and Gini coefficients in different
countries, 2010
13.2 Estimated and conjectured income Gini coefficients for Latin
America, 1870–1990 (population-weighted averages for four,
six, and sixteen countries)
14.1 Counterfactual inequality trends in the twentieth century
15.1 Top 1 percent income shares in twenty OECD countries, 1980–
2013
A.1 Inequality possibility frontier
A.2 Estimated income Gini coefficients and the inequality
possibility frontier in preindustrial societies
A.3 Extraction rates for preindustrial societies and their counterpart
modern societies
A.4 Inequality possibility frontier for different values of the social
minimum
A.5 Different types of inequality possibility frontiers
TABLES
2.1 The development of the largest reported fortunes in Roman
society and the population under Roman control, second
century BCE to fifth century CE
5.1 The development of top income shares during the world wars
5.2 Variation in the rate of reduction of top 1 percent income
shares, by period
6.1 Property in 1870 relative to 1860 (1860 = 100), for Southern
whites
6.2 Inequality of Southern household incomes
8.1 Income shares in France, 1780–1866
11.1 Share and number of taxable households in Augsburg by tax
bracket, 1618 and 1646
15.1 Trends in top income shares and income inequality in select
countries, 1980–2010
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The gap between the haves and the have-nots has alternately grown and shrunk
throughout the course of human civilization. Economic inequality may only
recently have returned to great prominence in popular discourse, but its history
runs deep. My book seeks to track and explain this history in the very long run.
One of the first to draw my attention to this very long run was Branko
Milanovic, a world expert on inequality who in his own research has reached all
the way back to antiquity. If there were more economists like him, more
historians would be listening. About a decade ago, Steve Friesen made me think
harder about ancient income distributions, and Emmanuel Saez further piqued
my interest in inequality during a shared year at Stanford’s Center for Advanced
Study in the Behavioral Sciences.
My perspective and argument have been inspired in no small measure by
Thomas Piketty’s work. For several years before his provocative book on capital
in the twenty-first century introduced his ideas to a wider audience, I had read
his work and pondered its relevance beyond the last couple of centuries (also
known as the “short term” to an ancient historian such as myself). The
appearance of his magnum opus provided much-needed impetus for me to move
from mere contemplation to the writing of my own study. His trailblazing has
been much appreciated.
Paul Seabright’s invitation to deliver a distinguished lecture at the Institute
for Advanced Studies in Toulouse in December 2013 prompted me to fashion
my disorganized thoughts on this topic into a more coherent argument and
encouraged me to go ahead with this book project. During a second round of
early discussion at the Santa Fe Institute, Sam Bowles proved a fierce but
friendly critic, and Suresh Naidu provided helpful input.
When my colleague Ken Scheve asked me to organize a conference on
behalf of Stanford’s Europe Center, I seized the opportunity to gather a group of
