Angus Maddison is justly famous for historical national account reconstructions.
He did much of his work at the University of Groningen, where I currently teach. Work in his tradition continues here, where we have the Groningen Growth and Development Centre, and host the (soon-to- be-updated) Maddison and Clio infra projects.
Despite the importance that Maddison’s GDP and population figures had in stimulating our thinking about economic history and development, it is fair to say that his pre-1820 figures were less than solid. (In one review published in the Journal of Economic History, Gregory Clark said of Maddison’s tendency to “guesstimate” that his figures were as real as medieval relics.)
One reason why most of Maddison’s pre-1820 numbers were indeed questionable is that, while he often relied on the work of others when he could, there just wasn’t much quantitative work available for the period prior to 1820.
But in…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
Sep 28, 2016 @ 13:48:01
Fascinating article. thanks heaps for it.
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