Gulzar at Urbanomics picks up a graph courtesy of the Economist showing the top contributors to world GDP over the last two thousand years using 1990 dollars based Purchasing Parity Index. Over the years it seems that atleast using the Purchasing Parity Index the Global Economy has actually shrunk. Also witness the rise of the US economic might post independence in the 19th century and the rise and fall of the British Empire in the same timeframe. Then the consistent Chinese and Indian contribution to the Global economy over an 1800 year period.
