The concept of human rights (natural rights), which stepped into the limelight of human history in the latter half of the eighteenth century, rapidly disappeared from the limelight in the nineteenth century and was replaced by the legal positivist concept of rights (in Japan, it was strongly advocated at the beginning of the Meiji Restoration in the latter half of the nineteenth century but rapidly faded away). After World War I, human rights came to be strongly advocated in the realm of international law, especially in the face of the tyranny of totalitarian regimes, and the United Nations Charter adopted at the San Francisco Conference in June 1945 proclaimed human dignity and respect for human rights. The Potsdam Declaration of July of the same year (accepted by the Japanese government in August) strongly called for “the establishment of respect for human rights.”
　Initially, the Japanese government and people did not take the meaning of this seriously but in February 1946, the General Headquarters strongly demanded that the Constitution stipulate the guarantee of human rights. The Constitution of Japan, which was enacted in the form of an amendment to the Meiji Constitution, sets forth that “the people shall not be prevented from enjoying any of the fundamental human rights” (Article 11) and calls for “the supreme consideration” for “their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” (Article 13).(View PDF for the rest of the abstract.)

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　The historical interpretation of the British industrial revolution has undergone a significant change since the 1960s. The publication of British Economic Growth, 1688-1959 by P. Deane and W. A. Cole in 1962 marked an epoch by applying national accounting methods to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century historical data. Their stage-specific estimates of real gross domestic product (GDP) growth were thought to reflect the acceleration process of industrial and GDP growth in the c.1760-1830 period, during which a series of innovations are said to have revolutionised the scene of manufacturing. However, this interpretation was radically revised by Nick Crafts' 1985 book, British Economic Growth during the Industrial Revolution. With his estimates of slower rates of GDP growth and arguments derived from growth accounting analysis, it is suggested that the contribution of new technologies (such as steam engine) to output growth was surprisingly low, taking more time in harvesting the fruit of a general-purpose technology (GPT) than we tended to assume. The thesis of slow growth was reconfirmed by a 1992 joint-paper by Crafts and Knick Harley and the growth accounting scenario by Crafts' own 2018 book. (View PDF for the rest of the abstract.)

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