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Invited Lecture EHES Association Meetings Imperial Ottoman Bank, Istanbul September 10, 2005 Globalization, De-Industrialization and Underdevelopment in the Third World Before the Modern Era Jeffrey G. Williamson Harvard University This lecture draws heavily on and extends parts of the Ohlin Lectures given at the Stockholm School of Economics in October 2004 which will appear shortly as Globalization and the Poor Periphery Before the Modern Era (MIT Press 2005a). This work exploits collaborations with Luis Bértola, Chris Blattman, Michael Clemens, David Clingingsmith, John Coatsworth, Yael Hadass, Jason Hwang, Saif Shah Mohammed, Kevin O’Rourke and Alan Taylor, to whom I am very grateful. In addition, it has been improved by help with the data and the argument by Max Corden, Jean-Pierre Dormois, Bob Gregory, Tim Hatton, Elhanan Helpman, Pedro Lains, Peter Lindert, Leandro Prados, Şevket Pamuk, Rod Tyers and, especially, Steve Dowrick and Jason Hwang. In addition, I am happy to acknowledge useful comments from lecture attendees at the Stockholm School of Economics, the Canadian Economic History Network meetings at Queen’s University, the University of Melbourne, and the Australian National University. Finally, I acknowledge the able research assistance of Pedro Glaser, Katherine Johnson and Miray Topay. Abstract Between 1810 and 1940, a large GDP per capita gap appeared between the industrial core and a poor periphery that was producing, increasingly, primary products. Over the same period, the terms of trade facing the periphery underwent a secular boom then bust, typically peaking in the 1870s or 1890s, exactly when, depending on the primary product in which the periphery country w