About the Book
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? Kenneth Pomeranz shows, as recently as 1750, parallels between these two parts of the world in life expectancy, consumption, product and factor markets, the strategies of households, and perhaps most surprisingly, ecology. Pomeranz argues that Europe's nineteenth-century divergence from the Old World owes much to the fortunate location of coal, which substituted for timber, and trade with the Americas. 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.
Table of Contents:
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix INTRODUCTION Comparisons, Connections, and Narratives of European Economic Development 3 Variations on the Eurppe-Centered Story: Demography. Ecology, and Accumulation 10 Other Europe-Centered Stories: Markets, Firms, and Institutions 14 Problems with the Europe-Centered Stories 16 Building a More Inclusive Story 17 Comparisons, Connections, and the Structure of the Argument 24 A Note on Geographic Coverage 25 PART ONE: A WORLD OF SURPRISING RESEMBLANCES 29 ONE Europe before Asia? Population, Capital Accumulation, and Technology in Explanations of European Development 31 Agriculture, Transport, and Livestock Capital 32 Living Longer? Living Better? 36 Birthrates 40 Accumulation? 42 What about Technology? 43 TWO Market Economies in Europe and Asia 69 Land Markets and Restrictions on Land Use in China and Western Europe 70 Labor Systems 80 Migration, Markets, and Institutions 82 Markets for Farm Products 86 Rural Industry and Sideline Activities 86 Family Labor in China and Europe: "Involution" and the "Industrious Revolution" 91 Conclusion to Part 1: Multiple Cores and Shared Constraints in the Early Modem World Economy 107 PART TWO: FROM NEW ETHOS TO NEW ECONOMY? CONSUMPTION, INVESTMENT, AND CAPITALISM 109 INTRODUCTION 111 THREE Luxury Consumption and the Rise of Capitalism 114 More and Less Ordinary Luxuries 114 Everyday Luxuries and Popular Consumption in Early Modem Europe and Asia 116 Consumer Durables and the "Objectification of Luxury 127 Exotic Goods and the Velocity of Fashion: Global Conjuncture and the Appearance of Culturally Based Economic Difference 152 Luxury Demand, Social Systems, and Capitalist Firms 162 Visible Hands: Firm Structure, Sociopolitical Structure and "Capitalism" in Europe and Asia 166 Overseas Extraction and Capital Accumulation: The Williams Thesis Revisited 186 The Importance of the Obvious: Luxury Demand, Capitalism, and New World Colonization 189 Interstate Competition, Violence, and State Systems: How They Didn't Matter and How They Did 194 Conclusion to Part 2: The Significance of Similarities and of Differences 206 PART THREE: BEYOND SMITH AND MALTHUS: FROM ECOLOGICAL CONSTRAINTS TO SUSTAINED INDUSTRIAL GROWTH 209 FIVE Shared Constraints: Ecological Strain in Western Europe and East Asia 211 Deforestation and Soil Depletion in China: Some Comparisons with Europe 225 Trading for Resources with Old World Peripheries: Common Patterns and Limits of Smithian Solutions to Quasi-Malthusian Problems 242 SIX Abolishing the Land Constraint: The Americas as a New Kind of Periphery 264 Another New World, Another Windfall: Precious Metals 269 Some Measurements of Ecological Relief: Britain in the Age of the Industrial Revolution 274 Comparisons and Calculations: What Do the Numbers Mean? 279 Beyond and Besides the Numbers 281 Into an Industrial World 283 Last Comparisons: Labor Intensity, Resources, and Industrial "Growing Up" 285 Appendix A Comparative Estimates of Land Transport Capacity per Person: Germany and North India, circa 1800 301 Appendix B Estimates of Manure Applied to North China and European Farms in the Late Eighteenth Century, and a Comparison of Resulting Nitrogen Fluxes 303 Appendix C Forest Cover and Fuel-Supply Estimates for France, Lingnan, and a Portion of North China, 1700-1850 307 Appendix D Estimates of "Ghost Acreage" Provided by Various Imports to Late Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century Britain 313 Appendix E Estimates of Earning Power of Rural Textile Workers in the Lower Yangzi Region of China, 1750-1840 316 Appendix F Estimates of Cotton and Silk Production, Lower Yangzi and China as a Whole, 1750 and Later--With Comparisons to United Kingdom, France, and Germany 327 BIBLIOGRAPHY 339 INDEX 373
About the Author :
Kenneth Pomeranz is Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine. He is author of The Making of a Hinterland: State, Society, and Economy in Inland North China, 1853-1937, which won the John King Fairbank Prize from the American Historical Association, and coauthor (with Steven Topik) of The World that Trade Created.
Review :
Winner of the 2000 John K. Fairbank Prize, American Historical Association Co-Winner of the 2001 Book Prize, World History Association One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2000 "The vast international disparity in incomes and standards of living between Western Europe and its offshoots on the one hand, and most of Asia, Africa, and Latin America on the other, is a striking feature of the modern world. Pomeranz's study is an important addition to the literature that challenges elements of every major interpretation of the European take-off."--Choice "A profoundly though-provoking book which will change the terms of the debate about the origins of capitalism, the rise of the West and the fall of the East."--Jack Goody, Times Higher Education Supplement "This book makes, bar none, the biggest and most important contribution to our new understanding of the causes and mechanisms that brought about the great divergence' between the West and the rest of China in particular... An entirely new and refreshing departure. Although he makes new comparisons between Europe, China, Japan, India, Southeast Asia, Pomeranz also connects all these and more in a bold new sweep that should immediately make all previous and most contemporary related work obsolescent."--Andre Gunde Frank, Journal of Asian Studies "This book is very important and will have to be taken seriously by anyone who thinks that explaining the Industrial Revolution ... is crucial to our understanding of the modern world... [A] book so rich that fresh insights emerge from virtually every page."--Robert B. Marks, American Historical Review Exhaustively researched and brilliantly argued... Suffice it to say that The Great Divergence is undoubtedly one of the most sophisticated and significant pieces of cliometric scholarship to be published of late, especially in the field of world history."--Edward R. Slack, Jr., Journal of World History
