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The cover of The Great Divergence

The Great Divergence

Kenneth Pomeranz, 2000

Why industrial growth took off in England rather than China's Yangzi Delta, which around 1750 looked much alike, and how coal and the Americas made the difference.

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7 parts, about 26 minutes to read.

Why read it

  • Compares core regions such as the Yangzi Delta and Britain directly, instead of measuring China against Britain as nations
  • Tests claims of European advantage in capital, life expectancy, fertility control and markets, and finds Chinese and Japanese cores matched or beat Europe
  • Argues coal in Britain and land from the New World, worked by slaves, relieved the shortage of land that held every core back

Who it is for

  • Readers asking why Europe industrialized before China
  • Students of economic history and global trade
  • Readers skeptical of stories that credit European institutions alone

What the summary covers

  1. Introduction3 min
  2. Europe before Asia?3 min
  3. Market Economies in Europe and Asia2 min
  4. Luxury Consumption and the Rise of Capitalism3 min
  5. Visible Hands5 min
  6. Shared Constraints5 min
  7. Abolishing the Land Constraint5 min

Recommended by

  • Jack GoodyEnglish social anthropologist
    A profoundly thought-provoking book.
  • Andre Gunder FrankGerman American sociologist and economic historian
    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.
  • Robert B. MarksProfessor Emeritus of History and Environmental Studies at Whittier College
    So rich that fresh insights emerge from virtually every page.
  • Edward R. Slack Jr.Professor of History at Eastern Washington University
    Exhaustively researched and brilliantly argued.

About the author

  • Kenneth PomeranzAmerican historian, University Professor of History at the University of Chicago
    • He earned a BA at Cornell in 1980 and a PhD at Yale in 1988, where he studied under Jonathan Spence.
    • He taught at the University of California, Irvine, for more than 20 years.
    • His work focuses mostly on China, and he is also deeply interested in comparative and world history.
    • His earlier book The Making of a Hinterland, on inland North China from 1853 to 1937, also won the Fairbank Prize.
    • He was one of the founding editors of the Journal of Global History.
    • He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2006.
    • He was president of the American Historical Association in 2013 and 2014.
    • In 2017 he was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy.

Read it alongside

  • Pushes backEscape from Rome

    Kenneth Pomeranz judges that exploiting the New World likely did more than Europe's own institutions to set western Europe apart, while Walter Scheidel argues that such overseas resources made the breakthrough possible and sustained it without explaining it, and traces it to Europe's political fragmentation.

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