The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy

Citation

Pomeranz, K. (2021). The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton Classics ed.). Princeton University Press.

Chapter Summary

First published in 2000, the book is a comparative history that asks why sustained industrial growth began in northwest Europe and not in the advanced regions of China and Japan. The publisher's description gives the thesis: as recently as 1750 life expectancy, consumption, and product and factor markets were comparable in Europe and East Asia, and key regions of China and Japan were no worse off ecologically than western Europe, each facing shortages of land-intensive products. The divergence of the nineteenth century, Pomeranz argues, came from two circumstances: the fortunate location of coal and access to trade with the New World. The Princeton Classics edition, about 400 pages, adds a preface from the author. It is arranged in an introduction and three parts, with statistical appendices, a bibliography and an index.

Introduction

Sets out the question, the comparative method and the case against explaining Europe's industrialisation by earlier European superiority.

Part One, A World of Surprising Resemblances (Chapters 1–2)

Chapter 1, Europe before Asia?, and Chapter 2, Market Economies in Europe and Asia, compare the core regions of Europe and Asia as they stood before the nineteenth century, asking whether Europe was already ahead. The second chapter ends with a conclusion on multiple cores and shared constraints.

Part Two, From New Ethos to New Economy?

The second part asks whether new attitudes and institutions in Europe can account for the divergence. Its closing discussion concerns the importance of luxury demand, capitalism and New World colonisation, and ends with a conclusion at the end of the part.

Part Three, Beyond Smith and Malthus: From Ecological Constraints to Sustained Industrial Growth

Chapter 5, Shared Constraints: Ecological Strain in Western Europe and East Asia, compares pressure on land, wood and fuel in the two regions. Chapter 6, Abolishing the Land Constraint: The Americas as a New Kind of Periphery, argues that the New World gave Europe, and particularly Britain, relief from its land constraint, with sections on precious metals and ecological relief. Together with the coal argument, this part explains the divergence.

Appendices

Statistical appendices give estimates of forest cover and fuel supply for France and for Lingnan, estimates of "ghost acreage" provided by various imports, and estimates of cotton and silk production in the Lower Yangzi.

Key Concepts

Part One

• Core regions: the most developed areas of Europe and Asia, compared with one another rather than with whole continents.
• Market economies: the extent to which markets for goods, land, labour and capital operated in both regions.

Part Two

• Luxury demand and New World colonisation: the book discusses how consumer demand and overseas expansion bear on the rise of capitalism.

Part Three

• Ecological constraints: shortages of land-intensive products, especially fuel and timber, that both regions faced.
• Ghost acreage: land elsewhere whose products reach a region through trade, easing its own land constraint.
• Coal and the New World: the two circumstances to which the publisher attributes the divergence.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• A clear comparative design. The three-part structure moves from showing resemblance, through testing explanations based on culture and institutions, to the proposed answer in the ecological and resource analysis.
• Quantitative support in appendices. The appendices give estimates for forest cover, fuel, imported land-intensive goods and textile production in the Lower Yangzi, so that the key claims can be checked.
• A challenge to earlier assumptions. The publisher describes the book as showing that Europe and East Asia were similar until about 1750 in living standards, consumption and markets, and thereby questions accounts that put the origins of European industrialisation in much earlier European advantages.
• Importance for the field. The Princeton Classics reissue indicates the book's continuing place in discussions of comparative economic history.

Limitations

• A demanding read. Much of the argument depends on comparative data and on the historiography of both regions; readers new to economic history will find it dense.
• Narrow set of causes. The explanation rests on coal and New World resources; readers should compare it with accounts that emphasise institutions, technology or culture.
• Date of the argument. The main text was first published in 2000; later work on the same question is not part of the book, apart from the author's new preface.

Where It Fits in the Course

Among the economic and social history books, Pomeranz is the specialised comparative study of why industrial growth began where it did. Robert Allen's Global Economic History: A Very Short Introduction is a short explanation of why some parts of the world became rich after 1500 and is the best preparation. Persson, Sharp and Lampe's An Economic History of Europe gives the European economic background, and Peter Stearns's The Industrial Revolution in World History presents industrialisation globally. E. P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class looks at the same British industrialising society from a social and cultural point of view, and Peter Burke's A Social History of the Media is a further social history.

How to Use This Book

The book is for advanced undergraduates, graduate students and readers who already know the outline of the industrial revolution and have some economics or economic history behind them.

A practical reading plan:

• Core: the Introduction, then Part One for the evidence of resemblance and Part Three for the proposed explanation.
• Part Two for the arguments about attitudes, institutions and the role of luxury demand and colonisation; it can be read alongside the other economic histories in the list.
• Appendices: consult them when the text refers to estimates of fuel, land and textile output.
• Alongside: read a short survey first, and follow the bibliography to the debates on European and Chinese economies that the book joins.