> Roughly speaking, China had the largest GDP in the world for more than 1000 years
For a continuous duration of nearly 1700 years from the year 1 CE, India was the world's largest economy, constituting 35 to 40% of the world GDP.
For a continuous duration of nearly 1700 years from the year 1 CE, India was the world's largest economy, constituting 35 to 40% of the world GDP.
https://archive.is/kQNT4#selection-1577.155-1581.525
Although there are problems with the analysis that are mentioned in both articles:
A major caveat: If you looked at the chart in any depth, you probably noticed a big problem with it. The time periods between data points aren't equal -- in fact they are not close at all
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So, one way to read the graph, very broadly speaking, is that everything to the left of 1800 is an approximation of population distribution around the world and everything to the right of 1800 is a demonstration of productivity divergences around the world
But the analysis for China is equally flimsy, so I edited my comment to say "China and India" and "likely"
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TBH now that I see this data, I think both claims are a little flimsy. I was more referring to Dalio's analysis, which covers the last 500 years only, and probably got a few claims mixed up.
For some reason Dalio does not include India much in his analysis -- it is mostly focused on China, the Netherlands, Great Britain, and the USA. That could be his bias, or perhaps a definitional issue with what counts as "India" (and similarly what counts as "China"), which is a difficult question over 500-1000 year time frames
China and India between them counted for at least half of humanity during that period, and probably more. No wonder they were the largest economies.
c) Having lots of ships, sailors and powerful army (many in Europe)
d) Being a trading hub (Italy)
e) Having access to lots of valuable metals, salt, gold (richest person in history was Mansa Musa, King of Mali)