Reviews for The Impact of Population Growth on Well-being in Developing Countries

The average rating for The Impact of Population Growth on Well-being in Developing Countries based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-09-25 00:00:00 Jose Gutierrez Hamerow calls upon his readers to acknowledge the 1848 revolution from the perspective of the small artisans and peasants whom drove it. Doing so breaks down the idea of a cohesive "German Revolution" and replaces it with many smaller rebellions, all with different actors and objectives. Overall, he argues that the poorest in German society (societies?) at the time were terrified by the pace of industrial development and so joined the middle class at the barricades in the hope of reversing it. The reaction of the 1850s was a result of reactionaries providing welfare measures, one last hurrah of an archaic social order which in the end proved economically unviable. This Bismarck's turn to industry and all that followed. The argument of the book was well written and convincing, but I would have liked to have seen more evidence used. Quotes: 1. "A sleepy land of noblemen and peasants was miraculously turning into a bustling nation of entrepreneurs and workingmen, experiencing the strains of far-reaching economic and social change. Within the lifetime of one generation Germany was forces to accept new forms of production, new methods of transportation, new social classes, new civic ideals, new demographic pressures. It proved too much for a bewildered people. The masses in their agitation began to mutter, complain, threaten, and finally they rose in open revolt against the effects of technological progress." (20) 2. "The peasantry, deserted by those on whom it called for help, bewildered by it's new rights and duties, finally turned to revolution in order to cope with the perplexing questions which the nineteenth century had thrust upon it." (55) 3. "The Revolution was all things to all men. To the bourgeois liberal it meant the establishment of a new nation parliamentary government and material prosperity. To the guild master it meant the restoration of corporate control over industrial production. To the peasant it meant above all the abolition of manoralism and the redistribution of landed property." (156) 4."The lower classes were not ready for the gospel of dialectical materialism. They still yearned for the innocence of a precapitalist economy in which every man earned his bread and knew his place. They sought to escape the factory age, not to dominate it." (217) 5. "The truth is that there was no German Revolution of 1848. There were rather several simultaneous German revolutions, each with its own ideology and objective, all combining their efforts to achieve the overthrow of an oppressive system of government. One of these, the uprising of the middle class, came to dominate the political scene so completely that to this day it remains the only revolution in the textbook and in the classroom." (260-1)

Review # 2 was written on 2017-12-09 00:00:00 Quentin Wensveen I came in expecting a diplomatic history of 1848 and I got an economic one, so be warned. It's still pretty good though.