Crystal Lee

Kenneth Pomeranz and The Great Divergence

Academic biography:
2013 2014: President of the American Historical Association
2012 present: University Professor of History, University of Chicago
1988 2012: Distinguished Professor of History, University of California-Irvine, with
joint appointments in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures and
School of Social Ecology
Ph.D. in history (Yale, student of Jonathan Spence), B.A. in history (Cornell)
Major works: Worlds Together, Worlds Apart (world history textbook), The Great
Divergence (2000),1 The World that Trade Created (2000, co-authored with Steven
Topik2), Making of a Hinterland (1993)
Weber and the World Systems School of Historical Sociology
Braudel: The populated regions of the world faced with demands of numbers seem to us to be
quite close to each other, but there is an
historiographical inequality between Europe and the rest of the world. Europe invented
historians and made good use of them. Her own history is well lit and can be called as
evidence or used as claim. The history of non-Europe is still being written. And until the
balance of knowledge and interpretation has been restored, the historian will be reluctant
to cut the Gordian knot of world history.
Pomeranzs world of surprising resemblances
Questions for discussion
1) What is involution?
2) Why should the Great Divergence occur between Western Europe and East Asia, as
opposed to North-South (or even have and have-nots)? Where is Africa in this entire
picture?
3) Unlike other histories weve read thus far, Pomeranz relies almost entirely on secondary
sources. What is world history, and what are its merits/challenges?

1 Winner of John King Fairbank Prize for best book in East Asian history (AHA), joint winner of
World History Association prize for best book.
2 Historian co-author; interested in the study of world history through commodities.