Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is perhaps the best known early modern
novel. It tells the timeless tale of two young people along a bumpy path destined to
bring them together. As one of the great love stories it has been portrayed in film,
on stage, and in television. Often such performances focus just on the love story
between Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, with a suitable back-story given by the
other Bennet sisters and their affairs. However, readers of the book and fans of the
1995 six episode BBC version know that the truly endearing and engaging elements
stem from Austen’s effortless descriptions of institutional detail at the turn of the
nineteenth century.
Austen may have been writing a modern love story, but it takes place at the end
of an era. For close to 300 years Britain (and the Continent) had been organized
around a set of social norms, laws, expectations, and customs that are as alien
to us today as Limburger cheese is to a five year old. From beginning to end
these institutions abound in the Austen story. We are introduced to the Bennet
family of five girls, whose sole interest seems to be to marry well. The lives of the
Bennets revolve around parties and dances. These and other leisure activities seem
to occupy the time of the other aristocrats as well. No one ever seems to do anything
of substance! The failure to dance by Mr. Darcy is a scandal, as is the fact that
Elizabeth has an uncle who is a lawyer. There are large private “parks” everywhere
to aimlessly walk about, private turnpikes to travel on, and large personified homes
(called “seats”) in which the occupants must reside for most of the year. Mr. Bennet
stands to lose his estate to his cousin because he does not have a male heir; he risks
entering a duel with the nasty Mr. Wickham (who had purchased his way into the
army) because he has shacked up with his youngest daughter; and he doesn’t have
a real occupation. The world of Jane Austen was a strange one, indeed.
From approximately 1500 to 1850, England and the other European nations
were organized by an unusual set of institutions. These institutions generally took
on two forms: patronage and venality. Patronage was a system where a person
of authority granted a valuable office to someone he could trust. Trust, was a
valuable commodity in the pre-modern world and many aspects of society (like the
aristocracy and dueling) were related to it. Venality was a system where an office
was sold, generally to the highest bidder, and then the service was provided. The
sale of office took place among services unimaginable today. Army command was
up for sale, as were roads, port commissions, judicial court offices, lighthouses, and
postal services.
Then, over the course of the nineteenth century, things began to change. Workers became free labourers, not servants (indentured or otherwise). Voting was extended to non-landed individuals. Commoners were allowed to participate in all
civil appointments. Exams were given to bureaucrats. Truck and barter were outlawed. Patronage and venality ceased to exist as official methods to run the state. I
call this sudden and radical transformation of society The Institutional Revolution.
Institutions are humanly created rules we live by. They (usually) make life better by constraining bad behavior, and encouraging good actions that create a civil
society. Every society, whether our modern one or the pre-modern one of Samuel
Pepys, attempts to get by as best as it can under the circumstances it faces. In this
struggle societies design and/or accidently arrive at various institutional arrangements. When they work well the society performs well relative to its neighbors.
Often this leads to institutional copying, other times to conquest.
The institutions of the pre-modern world worked well because the environment
of the time was so different from our own. Theirs was a world of poor measurement.
Not measurement over things we worry about, but over fundamental basic things like
time, distance, weight, and effort. In a world where basic measurement was difficult
or meaningless there were ample opportunities for bad behavior. When an employer
cannot measure his worker’s effort, then less effort is exerted. When a king cannot
tell if a minister’s hand is in the treasury, then revenues are likely to end up in the
minister’s pocket. Without meaningful direct measurement shirking, embezzlement,
theft, and hosts of other bad behaviors were ever present. To combat this, the
leaders of the pre-modern world developed special institutions to accommodate the
problem. Patronage, the appointment of a trusting person, was used in cases where
the holder of an office often had incentives that conflicted with the interests of
the Crown. The complex system of patronage policed the incentives of the office
holder. Venality was used when the interests of the office holder matched those of
the Crown. Here, the office holder policed himself, and in doing so benefited the
state as well.
Throughout the other revolution — the Industrial one — the world changed in
its ability to measure. Suddenly accurate clocks appeared. This solved the problem
of determining location (especially at sea), and allowed for the accurate measure
of hours. New standards for weights and distances arrived, as did consistent forms
of power. Better roads, inputs, and schedules allowed products to be standardized.
Changes in laws and the arrival of police allowed for new types of contracting and
firm organization. On and on it went. The new ability to measure meant that the
Crown could now hire workers based on merit, monitor their performance directly,
and reward those who did well. The modern world of meritocracy had arrived.
This transition, in all its detail, is laid out in my new book: The Institutional
Revolution. It shows how the behavior we find so odd in Pride and Prejudice is all
part and parcel of the pre-modern institutional world. The actions and behaviors of
the aristocratic class were taken to demonstrate their special investments to assure
others they could be trusted. Every entail, every dance and Latin lesson, had a
purpose. Private roads, postal services, and watchmen were methods to provide “public service” at a time when the state was simply incapable of doing so. It was
not a world of “Old Corruption.” Rather it was a clever world in which the poor
players managed to do the best they could in the face of incredible measurement
problems. |