Brexit May Save European Growth After All

For those of us troubled by Brexit, and for Europeans concerned about the survival of the wider European project, a much-awaited book by one of the world's most renowned economic historians and an expert on long-run economic growth might, on the face of it, offer some light at the end of the tunnel.

According to Joel Mokyr, Europe's magisterial rise from economic backwater to superpower between the 16th and 19th centuries had much to do not with integration but with its division into multiple competing states. That is not the conventional view. After the fall of the Roman Empire, Europe disintegrated and political power was increasingly exercised at the local level, leading to the rise of the medieval knight and his castle. By the 15th century, Europe was still divided into some 500 separate political entities. To followers of Adam Smith, such political fragmentation was straightforwardly bad for the economy: It made trade much more cumbersome, leading to multiple tariffs and tolls, numerous currencies and an array of different legal systems.