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

The Princeton Economic History of the Western World #6

by Kenneth Pomeranz

The Great Divergence brings new insight to one of the classic questions of history: Why did sustained industrial growth begin in Northwest Europe, despite surprising similarities between advanced areas of Europe and East Asia? As Ken Pomeranz shows, as recently as 1750, parallels between these two parts of the world were very high in life expectancy, consumption, product and factor markets, and the strategies of households. Perhaps most surprisingly, Pomeranz demonstrates that the Chinese and Japanese cores were no worse off ecologically than Western Europe. Core areas throughout the eighteenth-century Old World faced comparable local shortages of land-intensive products, shortages that were only partly resolved by trade.

Pomeranz argues that Europe's nineteenth-century divergence from the Old World owes much to the fortunate location of coal, which substituted for timber. This made Europe's failure to use its land intensively much less of a problem, while allowing growth in energy-intensive industries. Another crucial difference that he notes has to do with trade. Fortuitous global conjunctures made the Americas a greater source of needed primary products for Europe than any Asian periphery. This allowed Northwest Europe to grow dramatically in population, specialize further in manufactures, and remove labor from the land, using increased imports rather than maximizing yields. Together, coal and the New World allowed Europe to grow along resource-intensive, labor-saving paths.

Meanwhile, Asia hit a cul-de-sac. Although the East Asian hinterlands boomed after 1750, both in population and in manufacturing, this growth prevented these peripheral regions from exporting vital resources to the cloth-producing Yangzi Delta. As a result, growth in the core of East Asia's economy essentially stopped, and what growth did exist was forced along labor-intensive, resource-saving paths--paths Europe could have been forced down, too, had it not been for favorable resource stocks from underground and overseas.

Genres: History, Economics, China, Nonfiction, World History, Politics, European History

392 pages, Paperback

First published February 22, 2000

About the author

Kenneth Pomeranz (born November 4, 1958) is University Professor of History at the University of Chicago. He received his B.A. from Cornell University in 1980 and his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1988, where he was a student of Jonathan Spence. He then taught at the University of California, Irvine, for more than 20 years. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2006. In 2013-14 he was the president of the American Historical Association.

Reviews

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very fun book to read. Pomeranz takes a sledgehammer to older ideas of European exceptionalism and Weberian ideas of a nebulous capitalist spirit, instead suggesting that until about 1800, Europe and China (more precisely, England and the Yangzi delta) were on very comparable courses. They had a similar life expectancy, levels of commercial development, and comparable demand for new goods. Both were approaching a population ceiling and were, as a result, taking a very heavy toll on the local ecology. Pomeranz's main point is that England moved on to industrialization while the Yangzi delta did not for two reasons: England's coal deposits were much nearer to their sites of economic development, encouraging a switch from the increasingly-scarce timber to coal, and England's access to their colonies on the New World, which could provide them with all the land-intensive products they lacked domestically. In a lot of ways, it's portrayed as an accidental development, a sort of geographical fluke, that England became the world's first industrial power.

It's a really fascinating read, though occasionally a bit dense. I'm not sure that I entirely agree with it - Pomeranz's first section that underlines the pre-1750 similarity of England and the Yangzi Delta is really great (at least to a non-specialist on China), but I'm slightly skeptical that industrialization was as accidental as it was portrayed here. There's a total rejection of cultural factors in differing developments. I can understand this, because broad, unsubstantiated cultural differences have played too large a role in scholarship of this sort in the past. But I do think that culture is important here, particularly in trying to figure out why England dove headfirst into technological innovation and China did not. Pomeranz goes into this a bit, but it's not always convincing as a complete portrait. I'm not sure, for example, why more-distant coal deposits should be so damning for an empire that had such good systems of water transportation.

Those caveats aside though, it's a really interesting book. Particularly for fans of history who have had a largely European perspective.

[AC · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pomeranz argues, in a book which has become quite influential of late ( -- Martin Jacques, for example, relies on Pomeranz' revisionist history), that the 'great divergence' of China and the West only occurs about 1800; that before that time, China was -- if anything -- ahead; and that the divergence came as a result of fortuitous and purely material circumstances… viz. as the world exhausted its supplies of energy (wood), England had ready access to large deposits of coal that lay near its industrial heartland, while China had coal, but it was in the north and northwest, and at a distance from the industrial areas; and because Europe also had a sudden access to large quantities of natural resources in the New World.

Of course, this begs the question as to why it was Europe, and not China, that engaged in a period of Discovery; that Europe (as Mokyr has argued) was already ahead in early forms of industrialization well before 1800, during the 16th and 17th centuries; why it was Europe that built and then USED guns (e.g.), and not China (which had invented gunpowder), etc. etc.

While there are many factors -- there can be little question that Europe brought something 'cultural' to the table. 'The 'Spirit of Protestantism', of course, was Weber's answer. But there is something more to be added to this -- namely, to use J.H. Parry's brilliant phrase, "an extreme readiness to apply science in immediately practical ways" (Age of Reconnaissance, p. 15).

The Chinese had technology (gunpowder) and they had theory (science), but like the Greeks of the Hellenistic period who only used their knowledge of steam-power to power toys at the court of the Ptolemies, they largely failed to combine the two -- which is precisely what was accomplished, to a degree previously undreamt of, in the Europe of the 15th-18th century.

What Europe had, of course, that was unique -- was a fully developed and formalizable theory of induction, which had been developed by logicians in Oxford at the time of Robert Grosseteste (see, e.g., A.C. Crombie, Robert Grosseteste and the Origins of Experimental Science, 1100-1700; also http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/73...), which itself was developed directly out of the concept of analysis (which Descartes describes in the Regula as the method of discovery, as opposed to Synthesis, which is the method of exposition), which was in turn derived from early Greek mathematical writers (the notion is already in Aristotle) who passed it on to the Greek commentary tradition (the so-called Aristotelian Commentators of the CAG), and thence to the Arabs, from whom it passed (via Averroes) to the West under the Latin name of 'regressus'. This concept of analysis (by which one passes from the confused whole presented in sensation to the elements that compose it -- and then, via synthesis, back to the whole) -- this concept of analysis, however, as Francis Bacon and only a few others have seen, was derived directly from the Socratic dialectic -- which itself is inconceivable without the highly articulated and inflected nature of the ancient Greek language. Thus the seeds of the 'Great Divergence' lay far in advance of British coal mines.




(I read this book about a year -- no, maybe two years ago -- and was not impressed. Of course, this is not my field, and it was the first book I had read on the topic of the great divergence -- so the following needs to be taken with large heapings of salt….

First of all the writing was turgid and repetitive -- it had all of the vices, and none of the graces of good academic writing. But more than that (though that is a lot), I recall feeling that the book underweighted the advantages that Europe had in terms of a culture of rational analysis -- that must have been critical to the development of industrialization.

I also could not believe that the mere proximity of coal could be a distinguishing characteristic of importance, since access doesn't necessitate use. It is well known, for example, that the Alexandrians (in the Hellenistic period) knew how to harness steam power, but used it only to make toy battleships for the Ptolemaic court to play with; the Greeks knew all about induction and deduction, had a full grasp of the hypothetical method as early as Plato's Meno, and knew the difference between analysis and synthesis as early as Plato and Aristotle, and yet STILL never developed the experimental method -- which had to wait upon Roger Bacon (who himself had to learn of it, of course indirectly, from Averroes and from the Arabic translations of the late Greek commentaries on Aristotle; see, e.g., the works of A.C. Crombie). Indeed, the Greeks did have the concept of zero (ouden), despite what is often said -- they just didn't use it in mathematics as a place holder -- which was the key innovation made by the Arabs.

So knowledge of a thing does not necessarily mean that a thing gets used. There has to be some sort of intellectual catalyst, as well as a material one.

Anyway -- all this by way of preface to the claim that this article by Joel Mokyr (h/t caseyang) offers a very nice introductory critique of Pomeranz' oft-cited book -- though I am sure that Mokyr's argument will be unwelcome to many in the Academy: http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/...

But the merit of a book rests upon its method, not upon its implications -- a fact generally overlooked by contemporary scholarship in *many* a field.)

[Jason Furman · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Great Divergence is a monumental historical argument for why European economies diverged from Asian Economies in the 18th and 19th centuries, achieving the first large-scale sustained growth in GDP per capita the world had ever known. It was first published in 2000 and has generated substantial debate since then, I am not expert enough to have a view on the overall debate but this book certainly shifted my thinking—and the accretion of argument and detail is much, much more than the thumbnail summary I had been familiar with before reading the book or that you will be if you read the rest of this review.

The summary of Kenneth Pomeranz’s argument: Around 1800 living standards were similar in the Yangzi delta area of China and England/the Netherlands (the book shifts the reference points back and forth from these particulars to Europe more broadly vs. Asia more broadly, sometimes even including Japan and India). If anything China was closer to market capitalism with more freely alienable land, rental contracts, market sales of produce, and fewer state monopolies and guilds to interfere with the, say, rural textile production. Other supposed advantages of the European system were non-existent or small including double-entry bookkeeping (not widely used in Europe plus China sophisticated accounting), the capitalist spirit of Weber, focus on luxury goods/consumption, joint stock companies (weren’t important until railroads), better patent system (didn’t matter much because technology did not play much role until later in the takeoff), etc.

But for two developments: (1) the European conquest of the Americas and importation of large-scale slavery and (2) the fortunate location of English coal deposits, both Europe and Asia were reaching ecological limits where land technology was not getting better, timber prices were rising, less land for raising cattle/sheep, reduced manure and fertilizers, etc. This ecological constraint would have capped both of their growth.

The Americas, however, relieved the ecological constraint by allowing large-scale imports of sugar, cotton, timber and much more—enough to replace more than all of the available English land. The Americas also exported silver and some gold which went to Asia to purchase manufactured goods, especially from India. At the same time, English coal also relieved the ecological constraint, created a massive energy supply that overcame the Chinese advantage in energy efficiency, and was critical for industries like iron, glass, beer etc. China had coal too but it was unfortunately located in the North which had been depleted by Mongol invasions, plagues, floods, etc.

The alternative to the Pomeranz argument is the idea the the European industrial revolution was less inflection point than something that was growing slowly over many centuries and so another cause or set of causes was already present and it was not these two key features that differentiated them from Asia. Pomeranz brings an enormous amount of detail to bear in arguing against every aspect of this thesis but at times one worries that he is simply collecting data to support his case. He also makes simpler arguments like if the differences were centuries in the making why not much divergence as late as 1800.

As I said, this summary does not do justice to the book. It is filled with enormous amount of detail. Which system was closer to markets, for example, is addressed in man, many ways like looking at wage disparities between rural laborers in agriculture and textiles or looking at interest rate differentials.

The modern approach to economic history is to focus on statistical analysis of well identified deep historical questions, something that was summarized and advanced well in The Journey of Humanity: The Origins of Wealth and Inequality. This book is a reminder that deep historical comparative scholarship criss-crossing across many, many areas can both help better understand the rise of the West and the complex interactions of the global economy at a critical period of divergence.

P.S. Would welcome people’s thoughts on this book or recommendations on alternative histories of the great divergence.

[Randall Wallace · Rating 3 out of 5]

Europe beat out China historically because Europe started stealing overseas resources and England alone discovered large supplies of subterranean energy (coal). By 1500, Europe was on a capital-intensive path while China was on a labor-intensive path. With fossil fuels and stolen land, Europeans didn’t have to manage their land as effectively as China. Western European peasants won freedom from the land after the Plague while Eastern European peasants got squeezed harder after it, while seeing neither agricultural improvements nor “labor-saving innovations”. Until 1860, England was the chief beneficiary of European industrialization. England’s turn to coal created half of its wealth, the other half came from its overseas exploitation. England’s turn to coal meant fewer trees cut down locally for heating. Europe benefited also from having had fewer natural disasters than China. Life expectancy was only age thirty-two in 1650 in England; it only passed forty in 1750.

Indian bar iron was better than English bar iron as late as 1842, according to British observers. Asian cities at this time were far ahead of Europe in basic sanitation and clean water. Charcoal back then could not be transported over the 12 miles and usually travelled under five miles, due to transport cost. Coal led to iron, steam, power and transport breakthroughs. Steam power alone allowed the mining industry to expand, because only it could work successfully at the depths needed in coal mines. Super cool fact: “Historically, the exploitation of energy has depended more on the costs of transportation than on the costs of gathering the resource itself (DeVries and Van der Woude on Europe).” British mines failed due to excess water to be pumped while Chinese mines failed for entirely different reasons: lack of ventilation because the lack of water in their arid mines led to deadly spontaneous combustions.

Coal in England after 1500 was used primarily as home heating; the glass and iron making industries demanded less smoke impurities and how coal could be made purer wasn’t solved until the eighteenth century. Water was competitive with steam power for textile machinery until after 1830. Before 1800, “two-thirds of those from England came (to the New World) as indentured servants”. Englishmen consumed one pound of tea per year in 1800 and five pounds by 1880. Chinese drank more tea because of the obvious smaller shipping costs. China’s top cloth-producing region was the Lower Yangzi.

Check this out: “In the early 1600s Mt. Tai alone drew close to a million visitors each year – with no major city nearby”. There were package tours then – for Chinese wishing to travel for enjoyment, pilgrimage, education, or business. If you were ambitious, back then and there, you’d leave your hometown and travel. If your Chinese town then had a few thousand households” you’d have “over 45 wine shops and 90 teahouses”. People would stimulate the economy by coming from surrounding villages to see entertainment, gamble, eat, drink, and be merry. Sounds remarkably like today without the neon and tacky synthetic clothing. Missionary Matteo Ricco wrote that in about 1600, “books were cheaper and more widely available in China than in Europe.” Unlike in Europe, China had a lot of people speaking and reading one language. The destruction of Pacific Islands by Chinese for Sandalwood only abated when Chinese ships began instead being filled with opium.

The Chinese were all about importing tons of silver; they prized it over gold because China had few silver mines. The best profits were in sending silver to China. This in return led to increased Chinese exports to Europe of exotic consumer goods (non-necessities). Cool fact: “Somewhere between one-third to one-half of all New World silver wound up in China.” China did its bit to keep the Spanish empire functioning. Cheap energy has allowed synthetic everything to be economical, otherwise you’d have 90% of humans today growing food with little work outside of agriculture, as in our ancestral past.

The European population pretty much doubled between 1750 and 1850. Population growth was much slower in Mughal India, than in China, Japan or Western Europe. “On the eve of the American revolution, one-third of Britain’s merchant fleet had been built in the American colonies alone.”

Madrid became famous and could afford to import expensive resources, not because of its location, or even what it produced, Madrid became famous first for being the weigh station for all that New World silver. Tree conservation in Europe then had to do with conservation for ship building and fuel. Chinese stoves were much more fuel efficient using fast stir fry cooking techniques instead of inefficient European open hearths with their slow roast and boast. Europeans got their fuel from wood while Chinese got it from crop residue. The resultant lack of crop residue on soil led to soil erosion in Northern China, which had lighter soils.

By 1800 in China, some lumber floated over a thousand miles to its destination. By the time Baltic timber reached the English dockyards its price was 20x its price back at the stump (even before processing). Note that main British commercial items were all a bit addictive (tobacco, sugar, cocoa, coffee and tea) to keep its subjects happy with their crappy industrial jobs.

The thesis here is: Without the British coal input and new resources (stolen from New World and other colonies) Europe would have stayed labor intensive as Asia did. Entitled Europeans with coal, steam, and mechanization in their back pocket, exploited the vast resources of others and abolished land constraints also conveniently in the land of others in the New World. This book’s final hindsight historical messages to the Chinese from “civilized” Europe: To get the “deal”, you had to steal; if they took a stand, you took their land and you were only brave, if you had a slave. Very good book.

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

A truly excellently researched and thorough argument against European "exceptionalism" in the Industrial Revolution and that there was something special about Europe that made it inevitable that the IR should happen. In Pomeranz's view, the only things different about Europe and China (and by that, he really means Britain and the Yangzi Delta, but for reasons of either selling more books to speak to modern controversies or a misguided attempt to address every Eurocentric argument in the world, he uses the more general categories of China and Europe) were: Britain had coal deposits and Europe as a whole had access to the New World and its vast raw materials, which China did not. His argument is that they were both approaching an ecological "cul-de-sac" where their respective population growth and unsustainable resource use was about to screw them both and make the kind of leisure time that allowed industralization to be invented totally obsolete as both areas worked to survive... but Europe got a break and basically cheated by getting more trees and sugar from the New World. I'm exaggerating, but that is the gist. I found his economic treatment compelling, his dismissal of cultural differences the books greatest weakness. I also had a problem with the fact that he stated he was setting out to do an equalized treatment of the two questions: Why is China not like Europe? and why is Europe not like China? and ended up mostly writing an extremely defensive piece about why China is just as good as Europe.... by European standards, engaging a lot in particularly with Marx and Weber. I know he is an economic historian, but be honest about what you're doing. Had he said he was redressing an imbalance in Industrial Revolution history, I would have been fine- this read mostly like him going overboard in trashing Europe. I have a whole long thing about this, but I just had to write an essay on this for class, so I'm not writing another one! Anyway, it's a HUGE slog, and put me to sleep every ten pages, which is why it doesn't get the fifth star. But it's an extremely compelling argument, and I recommend it to all economists, or anyone interested in the rise of China.

[Nick · Rating 2 out of 5]

The great divergence summed up would be as follows; there is this theory on why China was different from Europe and that is why Europe become the economic powerhouse and not china, then Kenneth Pomeranz steps in and in a dozen or so pages filled with tons of data and comparative analysis or case studies points out how much assumption and how little fact based research is in this specific theory and up we go to the next theory.

It is as if the author was sick and tired of the many stereotypical assumptions on China and Japan when compared to western Europe that he decided to list all the things he heard and systematically disproved them so he could easily counter the said assumptions in debates. "ah but your theory is flawed for I have actually studied the data and they tell me you are wrong!" I get why he chose this approach and style for his book, but I did not like it; in short if your not already deep in the subject, the book will feel as a blur afterwards with a few general impressions in stead of a few solid arguments. Well except for; the final statement (spoiler) "rather than pretend we are seeking the differences among truly independent entities on the eve of industrialization, we must acknowledge the importance of pre existing connections in creating those differences." This statement refers to his big counterpoint to the many theories ( which he denounces as following It makes for an awkward marriage between history and economics at least schools of economics that posit single equilibrium as the destination towards a given system trends. a form of intellectual anarchy).

The author is adamant that it was the existence of the new world and European colonies there, in particular those of the United Kingdom, that proved to be the defining edge and factor in allowing the possibility of mass industrialization. For both China and west Europe, (and to a lesser extent Japan) had strong core regions with proto industries, an emerging consumer class, a changing relations with regional peripheries and a similar ecological challenge that limited the growth of aforementioned factors. there were differences between West Europe and East Asia, only a lot of the times not as the theories assume them to be, for example it seemed China and Japan in the 18th century were closer to the Adam Smith idea of a classic market economy with companies and market oriented farmers/craftmen then most of Europe was including Great Britain and the Netherlands. In the end it all boils down to the fact that most theories on why Europe rose above Asia, refrain from taking into account the dominance of Europe over the Atlantic trade. the trade in silver, slaves, cloth, drugs (sugar, tabacco, coffee) and energy ( food/timber ) that allowed Europe to circumvent ecological limitations that East Asia had and could not circumvent with relatively limited expansions in the pacific, south-east asia, siberia or central Asia. And even then still East Asia outranked Europe on a few fronts such as life expectancy, capital accumulation and while Europe was the bigger factor (war investments and research, the author makes a strong case of dismantling the seemingly obvious advantage this brought for Europe). With noted exception of coal, for the author there is no denying the obvious difference that europe had coal (and more importantly great Britain had coal as it did have a lot of alternative food, timber and energy foods for workers) while China had not in the 18th/19th century or limited uses for it at the time. But as the author points out, if coal is the main factor or a huge factor, then there is little room for big theories and economic models explaining the inevitable rise of Europe and its civilization (and thus these theories tend to downplay coal).

All in all I liked the theme and purpose of the book, but it needed a story. As it is now it is rather boring to read if your not fully part of the discussion and now the nuances of the theories and positions. I have a limited affinity with the subject so I could keep track but I do prefer a historical narrative over a dry comparison. We do get a narrative but you have to piece it together. For instance on why China and Japan had less use for coal to begin with. China and Japan either had to grow more food for more workers or more cotton for more material but the first would mean less material and the second less workers, ergo an ecological catch 22 that limited the proto industry and thus a potential mechanized industry (to speak even less of growing sugar to a scale to help sustain a proletariat). While Great Britain could grow cotton in the Americas and thus grow more food and material at the same time by regional specialization on massive scale. another example would be on how luxery interacted with the growth of a capitalist society, an interesting approach but it needed more, I did not quite get the subtle differences which would not have been the case if there had been some space for presenting societies aspects of need for luxury ( a lot of luxury guides are mentioned yet we get very little content from them)/ So we do get a narrative but it is all over the place. I would have loved a general societal structure analysis before we dove into all the theoretical comparisons. Still if you are into this material and tend to believe the Europe was destined to be top dog, check it out and challenge your views especially if you insists on data comparison.

[Robert Jeens · Rating 3 out of 5]

The British academic Joseph Needham famously formulated the question, given that Chinese scientific development outpaced European scientific development for centuries, how was it that China fell behind Europe? This book is an attempt to answer that question.
Pomeranz shows that economic life in the most developed part of Europe, England, was more similar to economic life in the most developed parts of the rest of the world, the lower Yangzi Basin in China, Japan, and northern India, until probably around 1800, when the English Industrial Revolution really took off. He looks at various aspects of economic development: how capital was organized, interest rates, living standards, economic inequality, the relationships of core economic areas to their peripheries, and scientific and technological developments. Much of this is controversial in detail but it seems to me solid in his overall conclusions. Something else that I think is a strength of the book is Pomerantz’s desire to not treat English development as the norm, but rather English and Japanese and Indian and Chinese developments as deviations from each other and look as much at why Europe deviated from the others as vice versa.
While the book has its strengths, the result is a lack of focus. Pomerantz is primarily trying to compare the lower Yangzi valley and England, and he adds the other regions, I think, rather superfluously. The author needs to write about places other than England and the lower Yangzi region because they are sometimes crucial to his analysis. What were the periphery regions, what were their relationships with the core, and how did this shape the economy? But sometimes he writes about what was happening in France or Germany or Spain or Japan or other Chinese regions, and I do not find these analyses as central to his thesis. Sometimes they just dilute his message and distract the reader in sidetracked dead ends.
His central finding is, given that there was so much in common between these areas, the main reasons for the English Industrial Revolution were two: coal and colonies. While China had coal mines, they were far from the lower Yangzi and dry: England’s coal mines were easily accessible by water and flooded, thus leading to the invention of steam engines to pump them out. Further, England had access to goods from the New World: tobacco, sugar, silver, and cotton, and was able to use these goods to prime the pump of industrialization without depleting her own resources. While China also had access to these goods, either growing them herself or securing them from Southeast Asia, she did not adopt the coercive, slave-based system that prompted economic specialization as did Britain. Further, while Chinese overseas trade was sophisticated, England’s joint stock companies and monopolies were probably more secure investments when it came to armed trading across large distances and trading with export and import colonies. "[A] combination of inventiveness, markets, coercion, and fortunate global conjunctures produced a breakthrough in the Atlantic world, while the much earlier spread of what were quite likely better-functioning markets in east Asia had instead led to ecological impasse."
This is all good, but there are some problems with his analysis. I think a good place to look is in Robert Allen’s “The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective” because Allen looks at the same question as Pomerantz, but more from a European perspective. Why in England but not France or the Netherlands? Allen agrees with Pomerantz about the importance of coal and colonies; however, rather than Pomerantz’s claim that there were no long-term causes for the English Industrial Revolution, Allen looks back to the years after 1500 and the growth of the English wool trade. Further, Allen shows that English wages were unusually high – much higher than in Asia or Europe – and thus provided a spur to those who were looking for ways to cut back on labor costs through labor-saving devices. I am not a specialist in any of this, but Allen’s book was written in 2009, after Pomerantz’s book, which means he had to take Pomerantz’s analysis into account when he wrote, and so I think Allen is probably right about that.
The book is worth reading because of so much of his fascinating analysis of the Chinese economy. Rather than a poor cousin of Europe, until the Industrial Revolution, China’s government and economy functioned as well as any in Europe. This might be new news in 2024, but Voltaire knew it in the eighteenth century. The nineteenth century, however, was not kind to China. Political and economic life faltered and weakened and the country became prey to the newly industrialized parts of the world. We would do well to remember, however, that that situation was just temporary.

[Charles Haywood · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is hardly news that the West has led the world economically for the past 200 years, or more. This superiority (let’s be honest—that’s what it is) academics commonly call the “Great Divergence,” a term coined by Samuel Huntington in 1996, though the study of Western economic superiority began much earlier. There are many sub-questions one can ask—e.g., what constitutes “the West”? Is it England? England and parts of the Continent? How does America fit in? When exactly did this takeoff begin? Are other countries now catching up, or even passing, the West? But these sub-questions are all small change compared to the most important question—why did the West diverge from the rest of the world at all, when all of world history up to that time exemplified the Malthusian Trap, where productivity increased too slowly to increase per capita output even when aggregate output increased?

I once saw a list of roughly 200 different answers to this question, each with academic citations. Probably some of them were Captain Crazy ideas tied to theories like the Phantom Time Hypothesis (look it up). But most of them were at least superficially plausible. Wading through this morass is not for the faint of heart, especially because this is one of those questions where many people want a single answer, and the answer may well be “all of the above,” or at least “many of the above.” But, upon examination, it is possible to divide works examining the Great Divergence along three axes. One is academic vs. popular writing. Another is unitary, or largely unitary, theories vs. theories that ascribe the difference to a multiplicity of factors. And the third axis is those theories that cite cultural differences vs. those that cite material or economic differences. This book, Kenneth Pomeranz’s “The Great Divergence,” falls squarely into the academic, unitary, material bucket. It is a scholarly and thought-provoking book—not without failings, but forceful in its conclusions and compelling in much of its analysis.

As far as the writing itself goes, this book is a blend of extreme clarity combined with unfortunate opacity. It is clear in that Pomeranz precisely states every single one of his arguments, identifies opposing arguments, marshals the facts, and gives his conclusions, appropriately hedged if necessary. The reader is grateful for this focus on academic excellence. The opacity comes in with the phrasing, which is infected with a heavy dose of academic-speak. It’s not dreadful, and the careful reader can understand everything. But Pomeranz does not try to grab the reader’s attention, find compelling turns of phrase, or dazzle the reader with his analogies. In this, he is the opposite of popular authors such as Jared Diamond (author of “Guns, Germs, and Steel,” which posits that Europeans were the lucky beneficiary of a series of ecological rolls of the dice), whose book is mostly flash (though that does not mean Diamond is wrong). So careful reading of Pomeranz’s book is a chore. An interesting chore, perhaps, like mucking out the stables of a herd of unicorns, but still a chore.

Pomeranz begins, in his Introduction, by narrowing the scope of the discussion. Every careful author on the topic has to do this, or the size and scope of the topic will necessarily overwhelm. What specific countries are we examining? What time period are we talking about? What measures are we using? Pomeranz does this, and he applies the same narrowing analysis to both the West and to Eurasia, which is his main comparison area. Thus, he ascribes to England the prime mover role; he focuses on the (first) Industrial Revolution, beginning around 1800; and he uses mostly precisely defined, but narrow, economic measures, which are widely available for England but less so for Eurasia (a problem he works hard to remedy). He sometimes brings in data from other European countries as parallels (e.g., France, the Netherlands) or as contrasts (e.g., Denmark). Similarly, as to Eurasia, he focuses mostly on parts of China (east and southeast, and most of all the Yangzi Delta), sometimes bringing in data from other Asian countries (Japan and India), and sometimes contrasting to other areas of China (which, given China’s size, is roughly analogous to comparing different European countries to each other).

Pomeranz’s analytical and argumentative framework is as follows. First, European progress prior to 1800 was not significantly advanced beyond the most advanced portions of China. Past authors thought it was, but new data “has made . . . [what were previously thought] unique European achievements look more and more ordinary.” Second, past authors ignored the other-than-superficial benefits of the New World to Europe. They focused on metals, but it was much more than that—the New World “relieved ecological pressures” that Europe faced, primarily “land constraint,” where an increasing population would otherwise have been doomed to increase agricultural output through more, and less efficient, use of labor (the curse of diminishing returns), and would not have had access to necessary supplies such as timber and fiber. Third, England’s easy access to large volumes of coal was unique, and it was this that made exponentially increasing energy production, needed for “takeoff,” possible. Fourth, Europe’s institutions, whether that means capital accumulation, markets, technological inventiveness, state protection of property contractual rights, class structures, or other of the multitude of factors adduced by other authors, were not in fact superior to Chinese structures in their actual impact as that relates to the Industrial Revolution (they may have been superior for human society, and they may have been somewhat superior for certain aspects of expansion, but they were not determinative). In short, Pomeranz focuses on “what was truly [globally] scarce: land and energy,” and concludes that the edge Europe, and particularly England, had was more land and more energy at exactly the time they needed it. This framework is the sum of the book, and it is clearly laid out in the Introduction. The rest of the book, divided into three parts and six chapters, merely adds detail, and plenty of it.

Part One is devoted to “doubt[ing] various contentions that Europe had an internally generated economic edge before 1800,” instead positing “broad similarities among the most densely populated and commercialized parts of the Old World” (i.e., the entire world of the time). Pomeranz identifies this as the main difference between his and the “mainstream” position, with the latter holding that the takeoff of the Industrial Revolution was just the fully visible effect of underlying differences proceeding into the past—although there is little agreement among “mainstream” proponents of what exactly those differences were. Pomeranz goes through the various candidates for pre-existing relevant differences, ranging from different types of accumulated and non-accumulated capital (mostly non-monetary); life expectancy; birthrates; technology; market characteristics (which gets their own chapter); and so on. He addresses each and concludes it fails to demonstrate a real difference between China and Europe prior to 1800.

It is in Part One, though, that the two major faults of this book show up: an eagerness, bordering on desperation, to tout Chinese accomplishments while minimizing European accomplishments; and a failure to adequately acknowledge a fact obvious from the text—that data for China is extremely limited and therefore can only be used with extreme caution, especially as a comparison to the much more voluminous data available from Europe.

As to the first fault, for example, Pomeranz begins by admitting that Europe was more advanced technologically and had a culture more open to science. Then he backpedals rapidly, claiming that he has shown that European productivity was not higher, and therefore, “it is unlikely that the average level of technology [Europeans] deployed was superior.” This is deficient logic, since productivity is not linearly tied to technology, and anyway Pomeranz has not shown (and does not show) that European productivity was not higher. And, notably, here, and in similar sections where Pomeranz stretches to reach a conclusion he desires, the word “clearly” shows up repeatedly. My legal writing teacher my first year of law school was useless (even if today she is the dean of a relatively high profile law school), but she did tell us one thing that was correct—anyone who uses the word “clearly” is trying to cover up that what he says is not actually clear at all.

Pomeranz tries to avoid the implications of his initial admission about superior European technology by claiming that “in many ways, various non-European societies remained ahead.” For this, he cites irrigation as being superior in China. No doubt, but irrigation was not needed in Europe, both because rainfall was more constant and because rice was not the main crop, so it is hardly surprising that Europeans did not focus on the technology of irrigation. Then he starts rambling about land in the New World, prefiguring one of his main contentions but not sticking to the point at hand. Then he says that India was better at (hand) textile weaving and dyeing, which is true enough, but irrelevant (and that India is today still the leader in hand-weaving seems relevant, but is not mentioned here). And then he says that “various parts of Africa” (which?) “produced large amounts of iron and steel that were of a quality at least as good as anything available in early modern Europe.” That seems unlikely, unless he means Damascus, which isn’t in Africa. Then he claims that the only reason Europe had “formal scientific societies” was because they were “often essential to protecting science from a hostile established Church,” which is very bad history, given that such societies arose long after the heyday of Church power (and in the case of England, where the most important such society was, totally outside any Church power), and that the Church was by far the biggest supporter of scientific progress in the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance. All of this is merely flailing that never gets around to any concrete proof that “various non-European societies remained ahead.” Pomeranz would have been well advised simply to claim lack of certainty (something he does constantly with respect to China, as I note below) about the relative state of technology, and move on. It may be that those academics who claim superiority for Europe in both technology and scientific thinking are wrong. But Pomeranz fails miserably to show that to be the case.

Along the same lines, it seems unlikely that “European monarchs imitated the Chinese ritual of having the emperor plow the year’s first furrow”—I have never heard of such a custom, but to the extent it existed in Europe, it seems like a pretty obvious possible ritual for a monarch, and very unlikely to have been copied from remote China. But gullibly ascribing such imitation gives a window into Pomeranz’s desperation to build up China at European expense. Moreover, Pomeranz is fond of making sweeping generalizations on little evidence, as long as they favor China—such as claiming that “keeping Chinese women at home . . . kept China almost factory-less even though every other factor—available capital, technological inventiveness, and so on—made it as good a candidate for industrialization as Europe.” Pomeranz does a decent job showing some evidence for this position, but his conclusion is hardly justified (and the great weight of evidence suggests that China was very much lacking in technological inventiveness, but rather had a decent amount of scattered tinkering ability, which is very much not the same thing—Toby Huff has written extensively on this distinction, in his “The Rise of Early Modern Science”). Similarly, Pomeranz repeatedly claims that hundreds of years before the Industrial Revolution, China had “spinning equipment . . . very close to the machines that revolutionized English cotton spinning four hundred-plus years later,” which “differed in just one crucial detail” (which he does not specify). Maybe that’s true, but I can find no other evidence for it, and if it’s true, it just goes to prove the lack of Chinese technological inventiveness, suggesting those who allege Chinese cultural deficiencies in the application of technology are correct.

As to the second major fault, to take just one example, on page 63, where Pomeranz is discussing Chinese iron and coal production, a crucial question because of the importance of iron and steel to industrialization, and because the efficient use of coal is highly correlated to the expansion of iron and steel production, in the course of ONE PAGE Pomeranz radically qualifies statements about Chinese data in twelve different ways: “seem to have known”; “it is unclear”; a critical study “says very little about fuel”; “leading one to suspect”; “we still know very little”; “this study suggests”; “there is still much we do not know”; “it is unclear”; “a distinct possibility”; “even if it turns out”; “if it did”; “might well have been.” Such language appears continuously throughout the book, almost exclusively in sections examining facts about China critical to Pomeranz’s entire thesis. The simple fact seems to be that we don’t know nearly enough to support the claims Pomeranz makes about China to make comparisons, despite Pomeranz, in multiple appendixes, working to construct such data in narrow areas such as “Estimates of Manure Applied to North China and European Farms in the Late Eighteenth Century, and a Comparison of Resulting Nitrogen Fluxes.” He clearly worked very hard—but the result is not all that convincing. Which doesn’t mean he’s wrong, but it may well mean the data is simply not available, and never will be.

Pomeranz concludes Part One by claiming that “European science, technology, and philosophical inclinations alone do not seem an adequate explanation.” But this is assuming the conclusion, because he never tell us why that should be—especially because by this very statement he admits the superiority of “European science, technology, and philosophical inclinations.” It’s just a bunch of hand waving so that he can spend the rest of the book talking about coal and the New World and the real drivers of the Great Divergence. Which is fine, but it does suggest that the premise on which he builds the rest of the book rests on fragile foundations at best. Of course, many authors have written entire books on this topic (see, e.g., both Huff and Gregory Clark’s “Farewell To Alms”), so I suppose you can’t really aggressively fault Pomeranz for not wanting to get bogged down, and to instead want to turn to what he brings to the table that’s new.

In Part Two, Pomeranz treats as established that China and Europe did not materially economically differ around 1800. (He never addresses culture differences in any substantial way—as I say, this is a book about the economic/material axis of the Great Divergence.) He therefore turns to why China and Europe diverged after 1800. He examines many varied theories, including consumption of luxury goods; firm structure; state control and expropriation; interstate violence; and so on. Along the way he rejects the common left-wing trope that Asia was heading toward an industrial revolution until crushed by Western imperialism. Rather, the entire world was heading for a “common ‘proto-industrial’ cul de sac,” in which the Malthusian Trap would maintain primacy, until the unique combination of coal and the New World allowed Europe to escape.

This is what Pomeranz outlines in Part Three. He admits that technological creativity was the real driver of the Industrial Revolution—but claims that coal and the New World made that creativity possible. Every part of the world had ever-increasing constraints on growth, because without something new, diminishing returns were kicking in. Fuel, fiber and food were all getting harder to obtain; ecological damage was becoming widespread as different areas struggled to feed growing populations; and that damage was rapidly mortgaging the future. But the New World “abolished the land constraint” for the West, allowing manufactured goods made without much land use to be exchanged for “land-intensive food and fiber” that could not have been produced in the same way within the Old World. And coal allowed those manufactured goods to be produced in ever-greater quantities, creating an expanding engine of growth.

Pomeranz relies heavily on Denmark as a possible alternate path for Europe, the exception that proves the rule. Denmark had no takeoff until the 20th Century, instead relying on increasingly intensive agriculture with diminishing returns, and it had very little industry. Denmark’s path was, in fact, very similar to the path taken by China. Pomeranz believes this shows that “the path of ecological near self-sufficiency through rural labor intensification, once adopted, was not easily abandoned,” and that this path was the alternate path that Europe as a whole might have taken, along with the rest of the world (which raises the question whether we’d all still be living in a world equivalent to 1800 otherwise). Maybe. But this ignores the extremely significant cultural differences between Denmark (and all of Scandinavia, but especially Denmark) and other parts of Europe. Denmark is well-known for the so-called “Jante Law,” which is, as Wikipedia tells us, “a pattern of group behavior towards individuals within Nordic countries that negatively portrays and criticizes individual success and achievement as unworthy and inappropriate.” It is well covered in Michael Booth’s recent “The Almost Nearly Perfect People,” and provides an extremely plausible reason for Nordic economic backwardness. The crushing of excellence as shown by achievement necessarily leads to less, or zero, achievement. Thus, it’s not only as between Eurasia and Europe that cultural differences matter (though as I say Pomeranz mostly ignores them), but also in Europe. Another similar example is Spain, which after it promptly spent its own New World gains immediately sank into economic stagnation, and stayed there. Therefore, the existence of cultures in Europe that, like China, failed to advance might be due to coal and the “land constraint.” Or it might be due to their own internal cultural deficiencies, which Pomeranz does not address.

[Review continued as first comment.]

[X]

DNF @ p. 140 for now. Sorry to this book, I cannot keep reading paragraphs that start like “On the other hand, Zhao Gang quotes a mid-eighteenth-century source which claims that 20-30 percent of the cultivated land in Hebei (then known as Zhili) was under cotton: this would be 14,000,000-21,000,000 mu in that province alone. Though this seems implausible, another source’s claim that 20-30 percent of the prince’s acreage south of Baoding was in cotton is more likely. That would have equalled 7,000,000-15,000,000 acres in Zhili, depending on precisely what area the source meant to include.” (This paragraph is not over!)

I have a lot of respect for the work that went into this - shout out presumably not only to this guy but to the legions of grad students that toiled and collapsed before their plows in service to this research. This book is truly exhausting, excuse me, exhaustive. Excuse me, impressive!

I would definitely like to come back to this to focus just on the big picture/poli-econ takeaways - the gist is, Europe “developed” faster than China/India/etc. because it could draw on the resources of its colonial empires, which it obtained through violence/threat of violence (rather than smarts/merit/hard work), and then maybe a teensy bit because some mines were conveniently close to a city at one point, ie, an accident of geography. Which is a key insight, it has to said! And this conclusion is built on a degree of historical economic research which is frankly staggering.

For the non-academic researcher I would say - I highly recommend you feel free to skim or even skip as need be in order to get to the good parts! This is fascinating at times but so detailed as to be unreadable at other times - unless your speciality is, say, prevalence of at-home textile production for commercial sale in rural households in China versus Europe in the 1600s. …If *that* kind of thing is *your* thing, you will eat this book up with a spoon. (Now wondering if this book has buried in it a section on, like, marginal efficiency in spoon production in, say, Britain versus Bengal in the 1520s. It’s possible!!)

[Dewey · Rating 2 out of 5]

In his book The Great Divergence, Kenneth Pomeranz utilizes economic, commercial, and geographical data to argue that divergence in development between Europe and Asia did not occur prior to the 1800s and to show that Europe held no significant advantage in factor endowments that would have made European dominance inevitable. Rather, Europe faced significant resource constraints that, had it not traded significantly with new world colonies and possessed access to coal supplies, would have precluded it from achieving continued per-capita income growth.
Pomeranz’s compilation of demographic, trade, and resource data illustrate that Europe lagged behind Asia in some measures of development and did not surpass China or Japan until the beginning of the 19th century. The analysis effectively shows when European divergence occurred. However, it succeeds less in explaining the multi-causal reasons why. Europe’s use of coal and trade to escape resource bottlenecks, while part of the reason behind its rise, do not adequately account for the importance of competition among states in Europe that forced its military build-up and development of colonial trade companies. The book’s thesis also underestimates the degree to which competition among European states forced states to adopt and improve upon scientific discoveries in order to remain relevant in power politics.
The book first strives to show that Europe did not possess inherent advantages to China and Japan prior to the 19th century, and thus was no more likely to begin industrialization. Asia’s longevity, birth rates, capital stock and productivity compared fairly well to Europe’s, and some parts of Eastern Eurasia even developed irrigation and energy technology superior to the West. Europe’s labor and goods markets also functioned no better than Chinese counterparts due to language difficulties and legal barriers. Through this investigation, the first section definitively shows that Asia possessed the same necessary prerequisites to growth as Europe.
The next part of the book refutes the idea Europe produced more or had a larger consumptive society that enabled it to industrialize earlier by showing that Europe’s consumption of sugar, tobacco, and tea did not differ largely from Chinese consumption prior to the 19th century. The section also details the relatively equal consumption of luxury goods across regions. Because the causal link between consumption of luxury goods and ability to industrialize is unclear and unexplained by modern economic theory, the author’s arguments are neither bolstered nor weakened by proving similar levels of consumption. Still, Pomeranz’s thoroughness in using data to discredit the previous literature regarding the divergence of East and West deserves credit.
The final section of the book discusses the huge impact on Europe of new world colonial output and trade, and the use of English coal to overcome the ecological resource constraints that were more severe than Asia’s. For Asia however, the “slack” provided by these lesser constraints in food, fuel, fiber, and building materials may have eventually given it a disadvantage in industrialization at the end of the 19th century because it did not suffer from these constraints at an earlier date, which for Europe forced it to develop greater trade with peripheries. China, precisely because it faced fewer constraints to growth, developed non-agrarian economic capacities at a later date and did not reap the benefits of backwardness that caused Europe to seek new resources and markets. The determinism of resources presented initially in Diamond’s text proves equally important to Pomeranz’s arguments.
While the economic and trade data presented in the book offer persuasive evidence that Europe did not diverge from Asia prior to the 19th century and show why its constraints necessitated such divergence, economic factors lack the ability to sufficiently explain how and why Europe found itself able to diverge. The book briefly mentions the importance of the European corporation in pooling capital risks of colonial expeditions and funding the violence necessary to maintain control over colonies, yet it largely ignores the importance of competition in forcing the various European states to develop these capabilities.
The creation and success of European colonies occurred not purely because of resource constraints, as China also had traders engaged in expanding trade peripheries. European market expansion into new world territories succeeded because of strength in military and corporate organization that was necessitated by competition for resources. The Portuguese overwhelmed Asian counterparts through violence, and European organization provided the structure to maintain vast colonial empires, at a time when the Chinese empire lacked competing states that might have forced it to develop such capabilities. Although economic problems inspired the creation of military and commercial structures, the success of the institutions that Europe developed to expand into new territories was a function of the degree to which European groups faced competitive pressure from one another within Europe.
Similarly, the book’s arguments do not take into account the importance of European competition that necessitated technological developments and allowed it to develop clocks and mail, two technologies that allowed Europe to reach and rule its colonies overseas more effectively. The book’s discussion of coal also shows that its geographical location forced Britain to improve upon the steam engine in order to pump water out of English coal mines, an important innovation that China did not need to develop because the northwestern coal deposits that would have required it were located to far away from economic centers to be cost viable.
The Great Divergence details the degree to which East and West Eurasia faced similar conditions prior to the 1800s and posits that the main reasons for European divergence were the use of new world resources and British coal to relax resource constraints. Although the arguments prove valuable, the book’s focus on economics prevents it from adequately addressing the degree to which competition in Europe necessitated stronger militaries and innovations like the clock and mail. Through the trove of data presented, the argumentation seeks to place the majority of credit on economic and geographic determinism à la Diamond, an analysis that although trenchant, does not fully address the multi-causal reasons as to why Europe diverged.

[Oliver Kim]

The Great Divergence is a really remarkable synthesis that tackles two of the biggest questions in economic history -- why did the West industrialize first, and why not China?

This book is probably best known for advancing the "Late Divergence" view that China and Europe were pretty comparable along most economic / institutional metrics as late as 1800. But by that point both regions were running into what Pomeranz memorably calls the "pre-industrial cul-de-sac". Intensive agriculture was running into its ecological limits, with exhausted soils and barren forests becoming major constraints to further growth. What separated Europe from China, allowing the former to escape a developmental dead-end?

One factor was the location of coal. Britain's coal was located near its major industrial centers; China's was in the North, far away from the proto-capitalist South, which was surely the best candidate for a Chinese industrial revolution. (This answer has the same flavor as Robert Allen's thesis in his later book on the British industrial revolution.)

The other, which Pomeranz focuses on more, is the role of the conquest of the Americas and slavery. The rich resources of the New World -- and new plantations for calorie-rich sugar, exploited with the enslaved labor of Africans -- allowed Europe to escape the Old World's ecological limits. In one of the most striking passages, Pomeranz describes the Caribbean as a proto-Third World, exploited for Europe's benefit. What is past is prologue.

Even as an academic book, The Great Divergence errs a little on the side of being a little too exhaustive -- I found myself skimming through the Nth page on Chinese vs European luxury consumption patterns. A non-academic reader can probably just read the excellent first and last sections and get 90% of the argument. But Pomeranz has earned the right to be a little repetitive, since the sweep of his history is so ambitious, and the strength of the arguments so compelling.

[Shawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recognizing that this dense work is well-respected and obviously meticulously, methodically researched, MY GOD WAS THIS A BORING READ! Pomerantz runs (slowly) to exhaustive lengths to bolster his arguments and smash any potential doubts that he’s correct, but such thorough argumentative reasoning ends up becoming one tough slog of a read. I’d definitely recommend this for researchers and specialists, but for the layman, this is not a thrilling narrative read.

[Lordoftaipo · Rating 5 out of 5]

You will be so wrong if you come here for a ready-to-drink cocktail that never ceases to work wonders on your tongue. What Pomeranz presents to be retold by your tongue should rather parallel a cup of Wuyi tea, labouriously plucked and picked, one that gives you bitterness going through all those data and literature manifested in his signature comparative approach. This book is hard to chew, much less sit through fifty pages in one go. Or if you prefer a more solid analogy, it will be gobbling five bowls of rice without the slightest hydration.

What makes the efforts worthwhile? It is not, I believe, how compelling a case Pomeranz has made for the Great Divergence. As variously challenged, this book contains controversial views. They are nonetheless enlightening and eye-opening. His approach and conviction necessitates a tonne of work in which commonplace evidence and everyday narratives must be reconsidered. For the originality and success, I hold this work in high regard. Above all, it was me who signed up for this exactitude that any studious efforts are well solicited. I can safely recommend this book because, in a hotly debated topic as the Needham Question, the level of difficulty is inversely proportional to the benefits. You cannot have both (as I once had wished before reading Ferguson’s disappointment).

The first four out of six chapters are a show-stopping, bold exposition as to why the eighteenth century Europe, especially Western Europe (Pomeranz acknowledges the obscurity that comes with this generalisation), had not been more opportune than Qing China and Tokugawa Japan.

First, a comparison between chiefly China’s and UK’s demographics and resource abundance leads to the theme that it was some “accidents of geography and juxtaposition”. Second, with regards to land, labour and consumer preferences, Western Europe once again did not come out on top; and it is plainly incorrect labelling China’s economy “involuted”. Third, he argues from a luxury standpoint, where misconceptions about Asian spending abound, ultimately refuting them. Fourth, he reveals that the propellants of Western ascendancy were not decisive, neither were the constraints of China, Japan and India.

Each chapter gets more restrictive and puts himself in an increasingly wobbly position. Looking at chapter four will give a good idea of my (over)concern: on the one hand, Pomeranz doubts such propellants as “extra-continental trade, colonial expansion and military fiscalism”; on the other hand, he doubts such constrains as expensive credit, lack of core-periphery land transport, slow imposition of duties and zero protection for overseas merchants. The whole exposition is contrary to common belief. It takes time to grasp the arguments and be convinced. I had to go over and over some passages just to ensure I was not drowning in the swamp of data. Meditation is always rewarding.

The remaining chapters are central but in fact easy to follow. Pomeranz dives into the two key factors—coals and colonies—which contingently led to the ascendancy in the nineteenth century. The book’s recurring theme is contingencies. Only coals and colonies have steered the wheel, everything else was driving England and Western Europe further down the road of Malthusian trap. The abundant coals at home and the land-intensive goods from the New World constitutes ecological relief. It is not rocket science.

If you cannot so far be convinced, you can appreciate and most definitely learn from, as I say, his innovative approaches. In chapter five, he lays bare the core and periphery framework, by which he articulates the interplay of different factors in the least expected fashion. I am seeing Jiangnan and lower Yangtze Delta being placed vis-à-vis with England and the Netherlands. It effectively removes us from the Eurocentric view. The approach stands in striking contrast to some lumped-together country labels, to which we usually have recourse.

Little did he consider the importance of scientific revolution, which invites criticism. One can further date back to The Renaissance, adding to its persuasiveness by predating the eighteenth century. In response, Pomeranz might just tap into the none-too-unusual treatment again, arguing that those philosophical and scientific achievements merely provide the thrust for certain Malthusian constraints, but not all.

Another flaw is a potential downplaying of personal forces. Unless he confirms that personal discretion of colonisers and residents in the core and periphery regions had been involved, accepting ecological factors as indispensable runs a risk of determinism or dialectical materialism. I certainly do not take this flaw as the case, but acknowledging a third key factor could very well harm his thesis.

[Jeffrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Great Divergence is Pomeranz's attempt to explain how it is that Europe became the pre-eminent centre of power from the nineteenth century onwards. Pomeranz attacks the orthodox point of view that the reason for Europe's success was the fact it created a structures and institutions based on capitalist ideals. Instead, Pomeranz argues that much of Europe's success was instead linked instead to imperfect markets, as well a fortuitous breaks.

The first part of the book is devoted to showing Europe's structures were not particularly exceptional: "when it came to matters of "free labour" and markets in the overall economy, Europe did not stand out from China and Japan; indeed, in may have lagged behind at least China. At the very least, all three of these societies resembled each other in these matters far more than any of them resembled India, the Ottoman Empire, or southeast Asia." (p165)

Instead, Pomeranz argues that what explained Europe's success was its ability to coerce others, as well as other lucky breaks.

As regards the first point, this is the exact opposite of "free market" ideal, indeed the European success story was largely one in which the governments were able to extract advantages via coercion, rather than relying on market competition: "Generally, where weapons could not provide a trump card, Europeans found themselves losing out to Chinese, Gujarati, and other Asian merchants..." (p182). But the main advantage is that the Europe was able to outsource its locus of production for primary goods and relieve its domestic ecological constraints to the New World, with slavery helping to keep costs low that helped to generate the later market structures, rather than market dynamics creating the conditions that led to outsourcing abroad. As Pomeranz highlights: "it is crucial that the direction of explanation runs from coercion abroad to an extra boost to Smithian dynamics (and later to import-substituting industrialisation) at home, not from more efficient marketing and industrial production at home to the power to acquire people abroad."

Pomeranz's second argument is that Europe's development was often assisted by felicitous factors, for example, its geography by providing easy to access coal sources, or by allowing its shipping industry to develop more quickly due to the fact ships were able to sail twice a year. Or the fact that China's re-monetisation provided demanded for New World silver and kept those mine's profitable (even with the use of slave labour), until other profitable industries could be developed in the New World.

Pomeranz's arguments in The Great Divergence are by and large valid and convincing, but the book suffers from a few deficiencies. Pomeranz devotes an inordinate amount of time to highlight how much Europe, China and Japan were quite similar - often these rely on statistics, which then rely on certain assumptions. Quite often, I found myself slightly overloaded with these, weakening Pomeranz's argument. I also found the conclusion quite rushed, I would have liked to read more on Pomeranz's theory as to the mechanisms that led to Europe's decoupling. Beckert's Empire of Cotton is a far more tight and focused account that highlights how Europe's trade accelerated because it moved away from market ideals; whereas Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel is a more focused account of how felicitous factors led to Europe's rise.

Overall, Pomeranz does a commendable job in trying to explain the history behind Europe's rise, but suffers from trying to do too much, with the result being that The Great Divergence at times lacking focus.

[Dan Gorman · Rating 4 out of 5]

January/February 2015: Truly, this is one of the toughest books we graduate historians must read. Pomeranz's ideas are great, but the book's readability is not the best. If you're a casual reader, this is NOT the book for you. This book is for serious students of economics, history, and political science - and environmental science, now that I think about it.

Kenneth Pomeranz argues (quite compellingly) that we must stop privileging the West as innately superior to the East. He specifically wants to abandon ideas that Europe (especially Britain) was somehow predestined to experience the Industrial Revolution and surpass Asia technologically. To this end, he amasses a bunch of statistical data and evaluates the state of Chinese, Japanese, Indian, British, and continental European economics in the 1700s. Pomeranz shows that China and Japan in particular had relatively high levels of proto-industrialization, as well as impressive trade networks. On issues like lifespan, wages, creature comfort, the competitiveness of local markets, etc., China in particular often surpasses Great Britain! So Pomeranz does a good job of showing that the Industrial Revolution could have happened anywhere.

Why did the Revolution happen in England and not China, then? For Pomeranz, the key is an influx of natural resources (sugar, cotton, timber, and fossil fuels) from the New World. Supporting factors included the harnessing of coal and other fossil fuels in Britain, new tech, population growth in Britain's developed cities (as opposed to Chinese population growth in the farmlands), and precious metals (silver) from the New World that Europeans could use trade with Asia.

Critiques that have arisen for the book: Pomeranz makes the industrial divergence between East and West sound more sudden than it probably was. Some of the data is awfully speculative and based on small datasets from China et. al. Some of the comparisons between Britain and provinces of China and India are pretty broad. The last three chapters of the book are poorly organized, compared to the extremely well organized first three chapters. Near the end of the book, the prose becomes extremely dense. Pomeranz could have explored the role of science and fossil fuels (a most tantalizing motif he touches upon) in far greater detail.

But the big takeaways: Maybe we should define modernity based on who harnessed fossil fuels first, instead of defining modernity with awkward cultural claims. The East often was on a par or ahead of the West. The New World's raw resources may have mattered more than actual money obtained there.

Much food for thought!

Update, 9/29/2016: Re-read the book. I bumped my rating from 3 stars to 4. A second read reveals the strength of the writing, which one doesn't notice the first time because of the dense ideas. Pomeranz has a debt to Max Weber in thinking that capitalism appeared around the world at an early time. Unlike Weber, Pomeranz doesn't think capitalism is the inevitable form of modern civilization. Pomeranz draws from Thomas Malthus's idea of resource traps — civilizations are bogged down just feeding themselves, never mind using natural resources for industrialization. Supplies from America helped Britain escape its Malthusian limits. China, which experienced population growth in poor rural areas, had to spend more resources on feeding people; this process succeeded, but didn't leave much material left to use in industry.

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 5 out of 5]

Europe and the West by extension gets their balls clipped in this magisterial mostly economic history comparing and integrating the opposite ends of Eurasia. Ken argues that by 1750 Europe (meaning Britain) and East Asia (China and Japan) were basically at the same stage of economic development, type, and suffering from the same ecological constraints. It was only the "accident of geography and juxtaposition" that allowed parts of western Europe to exploit the New World and surge forth. A lot of that has to do with the bloodthirsty nature of European expansion, but Kenny doesn't go into that too much. This is very much an economic history and a look at how things are more the same than different in a global perspective.

[Henri Tournyol du Clos · Rating 1 out of 5]

Pretentious, circumvoluted and unsubstantiated revisionist blabber, apparently solely written for the sake of contrarian revisionism in itself. There is nothing scientific here in spite of the tepid flow of anecdotal "facts", all about as relevant to the main story (the emergence of economic growth from the Malthusian world) as deckchair moves were to the history of the Titanic. Economic history is done through models, not from selected anecdotes. Shame on an otherwise dependable publisher for having lent credence to this.

[Chloe Z · Rating 3 out of 5]

Basic argument was, the British had access to coal + the New World which led to the great divergence in economic development in Britain + China. Invitation for future scholarship, bc many comparisons were only between regions in China and regions in Europe, could be applied to other places in the world?

[Mega · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tries to explain why China fell behind, but the reason the book comes up with as Coal and Colonies don't explain why China had a century of humiliation even by its neighbour Japan.

[Parker · Rating 5 out of 5]

I struggled with how best to approach Kenneth Pomeranz's "The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy." Though not long, the book immediately dives to depths that would crush a nuclear submarine. I was not lost, but rather unprepared to appreciate the breadth and depth of Pomeranz's expertise on China and Europe. I wavered and my progress was slow. That is until I realized this book is not the beginning of a new study, despite launching the field of Chinese v. European historical comparison, but a complete and brilliant work dismantling all that was wrong with previous theories on why Europe became predominant.

Pomeranz approaches previous explanations for European success in comparison to China, only to systematically dismantle, or at least categorize the problem with, each argument. You will read one page and find an argument compelling, only to turn the page and witness Pomeranz rip it to shreds. As a novice in the field, it is whiplash. Without prior experience with the arguments and historians Pomeranz cites, it can be frustrating to constantly learn and unlearn these arguments. A more experienced historian with familiarity would better handle Pomeranz and his material.


So what is there to take away as a novice? Though not without his critics, I believe Pomeranz is an example of expertise. He calmly transitions between both nuance and generality. He goes deep enough to prove he is a specialist in the field but pulls back to ensure the point he has made is not forgotten in the overarching argument. There is no satisfying, easily packageable, one-sentence answer from Pomeranz. How could there be when analyzing hundreds of years of history? Instead, Pomeranz dissects the many important preexisting connections rather than trying to find the one difference. It is an example of how we should approach all historical questions, with the complexity and nuance they require and deserve.

"Our long journey through interregional comparisons has brought us to at least some resolution of the methodological question with which we began: it has shown that rather than pretend we are seeking the differences among truly independent entities on the eve of industrialization, we must acknowledge the importance of preexisting connections in creating those differences."

[David]

This is an interesting book, but I can't say that I enjoyed reading it. I was very drawn to the idea that Western Europe, China, and Japan were hitting a "pre-industrial cul-de-sac" whereby they could not expand their manufacturing except at the expense of agricultural resources, and I found Pomeranz's point of the role of European New World exploitation convincing. But I also balk a bit at his argument that these three regions were at similar states of development. Not so much because he doesn't convince me but because it goes against what I was taught. Although his theory is clean and exciting, it leaves me with questions. I wish I could have liked this book more, and I hope I get to engage more with this line of reasoning.

[Johanna · Rating 3 out of 5]

HEAR ME OUT! HEAR ME OUT!

Okay, in terms of thesis and argument... I liked it okay! I hate economic history, but the argument would have been lost without it.

Would I reread this book ever again? No, one migraine was enough.
Did I enjoy the one read I did? Sure, it gives a lot of counterarguments to European exceptionalism.
Did Pomeranz's writing style take years off my life, and could this have been written in a much simpler way? Absolutely.

Overall, three stars. I can't wait to never touch this book again. Sorry Kenneth.

[Gérard Doux · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ce n'est pas un 5 étoiles de "lecture" : c'est gros, long, aride, technique, rébarbatif par moments.
En revanche, on est admiratif devant la scientificité de l'ouvrage : rigoureux, exhaustif, sourcé, les hypothèses et incertitudes clairement exposées, on en sort avec le sentiment d'avoir "réglé la question" sur le sujet.

[Anna Grace Wenger · Rating 2 out of 5]

i am not buying his thesis here at all- why ignore cultural motives? not as comprehensive as it wants to believe. not a fun read.

[Aydan]

if you're my professor, yes I was able to read this whole book in time :)

[mohsen · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s a great book, uses real facts and historical data analysis to make the arguments. It might be too detailed for general readers but at least please read the introduction! The points were made by this book should be covered in school history books! Really critical for more accurate understanding of the “European miracle “!!

[Mihai Zodian · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Studiile sociale și istorice sunt deseori influențate de evenimente curente; moda intelectuală se schimbă, unele aspecte ignorate în trecut sar acum în ochi. Nu-i de mirare aşadar că ascensiunea economică a ”Asiei” a fost însoțită de noi contestări direcționate împotriva explicațiilor uzuale ale dezvoltării Europei, structurilor sociale și valorii coloniilor. Inevitabil a aparut și intrebarea: de ce nu a fost inventat ”capitalismul” în China?

Kenneth Pomeranz își propune să arate, prin metoda comparativă, că nu au existat deosebiri radicale de avere sau de eficiență instituțională la sfârșitul secolului al XVIII-la, care să avantajeze Occidentul în dauna Chinei sau a Japoniei. Toate lucrurile fiind egale, Revoluția Industrială și dezvoltarea ar fi venit din beneficiile directe și indirecte oferite de continentul american, în ceea ce privește agricultura, materiile prime, migrația și comerțul cu sclavi. Regiunile avansate riscau o criză de suprapopulare stil Thomas Malthus, dar coloniile au permis evitarea acesteia în Europa de Vest.

Astfel, el respinge două ”extreme” teoretice, pe cele care discută doar despre structurile interne și pe cele care reduc totul la ”imperialism” și pune în valoare geografia ca avantaj potențial, din perspectiva specialistului în istoria sinică, căreia îi adaugă stăpânirea unei capacităţi de sinteză şi de comparaţie ieşită din comun. Argumentul principal se referă la asemănarea instituțională dintre Europa și Japonia sau China, unde preferă să compare regiunile în funcție de criteriul dezvoltării, nu cel politic al statelor. Pomeranz consideră că multipolaritatea cea des invocată de Arnold Toynbee nu a reprezentat o diferență majoră, cum, de exemplu, imperiul chinez nu era atât de ”opresiv”, iar războaiele puteau conduce la falimentul creditorilor.

Marile societăți de creditare erau implicate mai mult în comerțul ”la mare distanță”, decât în producția manufacturieră; ”acumularea” nu era tocmai primitivă, ci reprezenta un vechi fenomen, prezent în ambele spații; avantajele europene din ”proto-industrie” erau compensate de deficiențele din agricultură. Rolul familiilor extinse din China nu ar fi fost atât de restictiv pe cât se consideră de obicei, companii bazate pe înrudire găsind și în Europa Revoluției Industriale. Deci, toate cele trei, eventual patru regiuni dacă adăugăm și India, s-ar fi aflat în preajma unei schimbări radicale; de ce doar Occidentul?

Kenneth Pomeranz arată că, pentru europeni, America a însemnat acces la metale prețioase, noi terenuri în dauna autohtonilor și controlul comerțului triunghiular cu sclavi. Comparativ, China și Japonia nu aveau la dispoziție ”debușee pentru capital, într-o perioadă în care nu existau tehnologii care să transforme procesele de producție, investindu-se sume mari în echipamente și fabrici centralizate”. Deseori, impactul agriculturii este subestimat, dar ”britanicii ar fi avut nevoie de 3,6 milioane de hectare în 1815 și peste 9,3 milioane în 1830”, dacă ar fi rămas la lână, în locul bumbacului.

Explicația sa combină perspectiva liberalo-marxistă a acumulării și diviziunii muncii cu un element politic și potențialul geografic. Capitalul, productivitatea și populația desigur că au contat, dar nu au fost de-ajuns pentru a determina o ruptură. Relațiile internaționale, războiul, coloniile, comerțul cu sclavi ne ajută să înțelegem cum Vestul a scăpat de-o epuizare internă, evident, un efect neintențional al acțiunilor respective.

Cum calcă pe bătăturile interpretărilor dominante, Pomeranz și-a construit un aparat critic impresionant, ceea ce face utilă cartea și pentru o trecere în revistă a domeniului. Din note aflăm informații variate, despre berea cehească, îngrășămintele din soia, consumul caloric sau prețul buștenilor în China, ceea ce sugerează o capacitate remarcabilă de sinteză. Trebuie remarcată și distanțarea față de-un ”eurocentrism metodologic”, autorul fiind destul de mult influențat de cercetările autorilor chinezi, japonezi sau indieni.

Lucrarea a generat diverse controverse, mai ales prin ideea instituțiilor economice comparabile funcțional, dar și un nou interes pentru chestiunile legate de dezvoltare[5]. Cu un stil mai dificil și o tendință poate de a supraestima impactul structurilor sociale (dacă nu se închideau China și Japonia? nu cumva multipolaritatea competitivă a stimulat și căutarea de colonii?), dar interesantă ideatic, Marea divergență ne arată cât de riscant este să te bazezi pe reducționism și aroganță. În același timp, ne sugerează importanța accidentalului în creionarea schimbărilor și a structurilor istorice.

[1]Kenneth Pomeranz, Marea divergență: China, Europa și nașterea economiei moderne, Polirom, Iași, 2012P. 10.

[2]Idem, p. 47-50

[3]Idem, p. 175.

[4]Idem, p. 266.

[5]Pe larg în Patrick O’Brien, ”Ten Years of Debate on the Origins of the Great Divergence”, http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/revi... (accesat august 2013)."

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[Nidan Basheer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Argues a plausible hypothesis and has evidence. But the writing was really overboard to an extent that it is easy to forget what point the author is trying to make.

[Tianxiao · Rating 5 out of 5]

久闻这本书的大名，刚刚看完。本书最精彩之处并不是得出了什么样的结论或者结论是否绝对正确，毕竟在任意时间段要搞清楚这个标题的疑问都不是一件易事，史料的残缺、数据的不全面导致的偏差，哪怕只有一点点都可能引向完全不同的结论。而本书内容带来的争论，确实是思想自由市场价值的最好例证。这种「自由」，需要理性作为前提，需要开放的知识传播作为介质，同时在与政治制度的竞争中，共同影响了整个地区的经济走向。
地理决定论似乎又是逃不开的一个点。与政治制度相互影响的战争、宗教思想、社群行为等等，导致这些差异的关键，是不是来自华夏大地和地中海的地形差异呢。

[Zugz · Rating 1 out of 5]

It is while reading the garbage that is the California school that one truly begins to realize how intellectually bankrupt Academia has become. For most economists the very idea of "GDP" and one can even say "wealth" is naturally associated with post industrial countries, where among other factors economic growth expanded due to productivity gains from technological innovation. The earliest proponent of historical economic analysis that is now the basis for all this nonsense was Angus Madison, who unlike the current California school flunkies had the privilege of being an actual economist. However, due to how utterly speculative historical "economics" is, his ideas had multiple mistakes. Madison's errors ranged from the significant but technical: assuming per capita income was similar across the entire world. To errors that would make a high school student blush: indicating virtually no change in GDP for Rome, because he assumes the same geographic area for the entire Roman empire as for modern Italy.

That said, Maddison was a godsend compared to the embarrassment that is Pomeranz. To start with the most obvious, even though he is constantly referred to as an "economist" he is as qualified to write quantum physics as he is to write economics. By all counts he has never taken an economics class in his life and instead his bio credits his economic knowledge to his experience in the Telluride House investment club(his college residential community). With economic qualifications that wouldn't get him a job as a bank teller he then proceeds to abuse the speculative nature of a "science" softer than a marshmallow to push what can only be described as a massively Pro China bias. He challenges Angus Maddison in many points in regard to Chinese GDP in the early pre industrial period. However in each case he is consistently proved wrong, see "Before the Great Divergence? Comparing the Yangzi Delta and the Netherlands" as just one example. In fact the latest analysis from CHINESE RESEARCHERS indicates that his claims to GDP parity has to be revised by at least 70 years. Let me say that again! The country that is banning mixed martial arts because it is culturally insensitive to traditional Chinese fighting styles thinks that Pomeranz's speculation is too aggressive! By a century!!

Thankfully all of this seems to have no impact on Pomeranz, whose only response to his incredible failure was basically: "hehe looks like I made a mistake, oh well". After all why should he care? He makes more income than most, his compensation is in no way tied to results(obviously), and he has tons of followers due to his university platform. Pomeranz is the living representation of everything wrong with academia, a pig who saddles his poor students in debt so he push his own political agenda through wild speculation that then immunizes him from any error.