The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World EconomyThe 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. |
Contents
Europe before Asia? Population Capital Accumulation | 31 |
INTRODUCTION | 111 |
FOUR | 166 |
FIVE | 211 |
Forest Cover and FuelSupply Estimates for France Lingnan | 307 |
Late Eighteenth and Early NineteenthCentury Britain | 313 |
Estimates of Cotton and Silk Production Lower Yangzi | 327 |
339 | |
373 | |
Other editions - View all
The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy Kenneth Pomeranz No preview available - 2009 |