History & Antiquity1 CE–2025
Share of World GDP
Two thousand years of the world economy as slices of a single pie, in PPP terms from the Maddison Project. For most of history India and China together made up more than half of global output; China peaked near a third of the world around 1820. Then Western Europe and the United States surged ahead in the industrial age — before China's dramatic return to the top in the 2010s.
1×
Source: Maddison Project Database Historical GDP (PPP) estimates; pre-modern figures are scholarly reconstructions with wide uncertainty. Updated 2026-07-03