Knowledge and Global Inequality Since 1800

The Element highlights the monopolization and exclusion from high-value knowledge in analysing divergent and, recently, partially convergent income trends across 200-odd years of the global capitalist economy. A Southern lens interrogates this history, in the process showing how developing command over knowledge creation sheds light on the middle-income trap. Overall, it shows a new way of looking at global capitalist economic history, highlighting the creation of, command over and exclusion from knowledge. This forces us to analyse the role of the subjective or agential element in making history; a subjective element that, however, always works from within and transforms existing structures and processes. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

'This book is sure to be of great interest to those concerned with the history of global Inequality in the modern world, and highlights the ways in which knowledge enclosures shape and deepen economic enclosures under industrial capitalism. The book is written in accessible prose, which makes it easy for scholars at all levels to engage its important arguments.' Arjun Appadurai, Professor Emeritus, New York University, 'Nathan provides a novel, knowledge-based, reading of the history of economic development as well as a powerful analysis of the contemporary battles over the control of technologies such as AI, semiconductors and in the renewable energy sector that are so crucial to the fate of low- and middle-income countries. He shows that the 'enclosure of knowledge' since the mid-18th century has had a cumulative impact, since it generates monopoly returns that feed on themselves. Accessible yet profound, Knowledge and Global Inequality is an important contribution to our understanding of the persistence of the divide between Global North and Global South.' William Milberg, Professor of Economics, New School for Social Research, New York, 'This latest study by Dev Nathan, Knowledge and Global Inequality, 1800 Onwards, is a valuable extension of his innovative work on value chains and the historic contribution of knowledge oligopolies in apportioning the distribution of income along these value chains. The research seeks to explain global inequalities through rent appropriation made possible by the monopolization of knowledge created in the North under the political economy underlying the prevailing global economic order. The work should be read by policymakers, business executives and scholars who remain committed to the construction of a more just international system.' Rehman Sobhan, Centre for Policy Dialogue, Dhaka, 'In this fascinating and highly original study veteran scholar Dev Nathan explains how the knowledge monopoly of advanced technologies created global inequality from 1800 to the present. Importantly he convincingly demonstrates how it was not always like this and shows how a more equal world could be constructed. Knowledge and Global Inequality provides a much neglected Southern perspective in Inequality Studies. It is likely to become a key text in this growing field of scholarship.' Edward Webster, Distinguished Professor, Southern Centre for Inequality Studies, WITS University, Johannesburg