Pathikrit Das

III BA (HONS.) History

St. Stephen’s College

Delhi

Question: Referring to the latest historiography, critically analyse the major factors that explain the
Great Divergence in the context of China.

Introduction
The world economic history of nineteenth century witnessed with the emerging of huge gap in
technological development between Orient and Occident, mainly between China and England, which
was named as a “Great Divergence” by the economic historians. In this century, despite all privileges
of China and the technological development that it possesses for centuries, the Europe, mainly
Western Europe, entered into the world history with its immense development in technology, which is
later identified as Industrial Revolution by the world historians.
For that reason, on of the challenged question that the economic historians of the world came upon
today is, if China had a priority over the rest of world in the term of the technical development and
economic sense approximately a millennium and was in the same development level with the most
developed part of Europe around end of eighteenth and beginning of nineteenth century, why
Industrial Revolution was produced in Europe, which gave it a world economic and political
superiority, but why not in Asia/China?
Much has been discussed about the Great Divergence in the recent historiographical construct.
Scholars have taken various historically debatable stance regarding the validity and consequence of
the topic. Major contributions were made by the Classical school of Economists like Adam Smith,
Karl Marx, Thomas Robert Malthus and few others. However, major boost was received by the
ground breaking work of Kenneth Pomeranz, who in his book added considerable validity and reasons
for the explosion of Industrial West over Oriental Chinese society. However, scholars have critiqued
Pomeranz’s theory and various trends of factors gained way to the debate. This tutorial assignment
includes the survey of the “Great Divergence” in terms of its historiography with special concern to
China.

Classical Economist Perspective

Adam Smith explored this topic in his book titled “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the
Wealth of Nations”, written in 1776. According to Smith, the keys to human prosperity were free
trade, limited government, competition, and open markets. He suggested that a minimal government
led to free trade regulated only by the “main invisible”, which was a metaphor conceived by Adam
Smith to describe the self-regulating behaviour of markets. It is clear that, according to Smith, will
succeed those nations presenting a minimal government that will led to the openness to trade and
finally to a wealth increase.
Thomas Robert Malthus suggested another hypothesis about the causes of the Great Divergence,
linked to the different marriage paths that characterized each area. He formulated that the younger
was marriage, the more was population growth and, consequently, the less were the possibilities to
achieve income growth. Thus, Western Europe escape from the so-called Malthusian trap thanks to
this change in marriage paths over the time. At the opposite, China did not experience this growth
because there were not a change in population behaviour. In this cases Malthus theorized
postponement of marriage in order to reduce fertility and enhance evolution.
The thesis of Karl Marx points out that Capitalism and free trade will concentrate authority and
assets in the hands of few people leading to social division in two classes: workers and capitalists.
Marx highlighted the differences between the capitalist mode of production and that of other countries
as for example the Asiatic mode of production. He concluded that Western Europe was the first area
to experience the transit from feudalism to capitalist economy and those European countries, the more
developed, would have the greatest inequalities.

The California School perspective

Kenneth Pomeranz broke the shell by proposing his thesis about the Great Divergence in his book
titled “The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy”. The
central question that he tried to answer concerned the main reasons that led Western Europe,
especially Sothern Britain to have such a unique path of economic development. In fact, he focused
on regions of comparable size, population, and economic vitality in Eurasia in order to avoid
distortions of scale when using nation-state as a unit. Furthermore, he decided to focus on income
levels and living standards for demonstrating his thesis.
Pomeranz opines that first, recent research has found well-developed markets and other “capitalist”
institutions back in past, even during the “feudal” period often thought to be the antithesis of
capitalism. A similar sort of revision has occurred in analyses of medieval science and technology,
where what was once disparaged as the “Dark Ages” has now come to be seen as quite creative. This
has tended to reinforce the notion that western Europe was launched on a uniquely promising path
well before it began overseas expansion. Second, the more market dynamics appear even amid
supposedly hostile medieval culture and institutions, the more tempting it has been to make market-
driven growth the entire story of European development, ignoring the messy details and mixed effects
of numerous government policies and local customs. Third, since this ongoing process of
commercialization touched much of preindustrial western Europe, much recent literature treats
whatever is left of the Industrial Revolution as a European phenomenon, rather than, as used to be
common, as a British phenomenon spreading later to the rest of Europe.
Pomeranz disputes Jones notion of European wealth before revolution and opines that in fact there is
little evidence to suggest a quantitative advantage in western Europe’s capital stock before 1800 or a
set of durable circumstances— demographic or otherwise—that gave Europe a significant edge in
capital accumulation. However in comparisons of the technology embodied in the capital stock,
Pomeranz accedes to some important European advantages emerging during the two or three centuries
before the Industrial Revolution. Europe’s disadvantages were concentrated in areas of agriculture,
land management, and the inefficient use of certain land-intensive products especially fuel wood. But
even Europe’s technological leadership in various sectors would not have allowed a breakthrough to
self-sustaining growth without other changes that made it much freer than other societies of its land
base. This was partially a result of catching up in some of the land-saving technologies in which it
lagged, a process that was greatly facilitated by knowledge gained through overseas empire, and
partly a matter of serendipity, which located crucial resources (especially forest-saving coal) in
particularly fortunate places.
In response to the animal power even with relatively few draft animals, late eighteenth-century
Chinese placed considerably more and higher-quality manure on the soil than did their European
contemporaries. It seems very hard to find evidence of a European advantage in transportation. A last
possibility would be that European animals provided a crucial difference by providing power for
industrial activities, such as turning millstones. So if Europe’s animals made a difference, it would not
have been as a “capital good,” but only as an item of consumption: i.e., as a source of protein for
which other areas had no adequate substitute.
Various groups of Asians seem to have lived at least as long as these western Europeans. Chinese
longevity is less impressive but still quite comparable to European longevity. Recent studies of the
Qing imperial lineage—perhaps the best-documented large premodern population anywhere, and not
a universally well to do one present a mixed picture, but one that generally supports the idea that
“Chinese” lived as long as western Europeans. Life expectancies at birth seem low, in part because of
very high rates of infanticide—perhaps as many as 25 percent of female new born were killed, with
the rate peaking in the eighteenth century. However, life expectancies for those who made it to age
one were at or slightly above forty by the late eighteenth century, which makes them quite comparable
with the best-off among the western European populations Most recently, it has become clear that
Chinese families of various classes, and in both good and bad times, employed a variety of strategies
to limit their family size, space their children, and select their genders. The most widely used
strategies appear to have been delaying pregnancy in marriage and then preventing pregnancy after
establishing a family; The result was birth rates per marriage and per woman that were well below
those of western Europe throughout the 1550–1850 period. In sum, it appears that various groups of
Asians were at least as able and determined as any Europeans to keep birth rates down for the sake of
maintaining or improving their standards of living. There seems, then, little reason to think that most
Europeans even northwest Europeans were uniquely well-off, even as late as 1750.
In concern to the technological advancement Pomeranz opines that by 1850 northwest Europe
already had a marked technological advantage over the rest of the Old World, and this cannot be
entirely a nineteenth century creation. Much of the credit for both the accelerated diffusion of best
practices after 1750 and the burst of new innovations sprouted quite elements of the “scientific
culture”. Increased literacy and printing, the spread of scientific societies, relatively accessible public
lectures were some of the activities which were response to the situation. Pomeranz feels that “ behind
these phenomena stood a strong sense that the investigation of a mechanical nature was to be
encouraged, because it offered both material benefits to the individual and a society”.
Chinese interest in the physical sciences and mathematics increased markedly in the seventeenth
century, especially after the Manchu conquest in 1644-68 and that publishers found that medical
books were a particularly good way to sell lots of books, full-fill a commitment to improve the world
through their work, and steer clear of the post-conquest minefields of political controversy. Irrigation
was perhaps the most obvious and in many other agricultural technologies, too, Europe lagged behind
China, India, Japan, and parts of Southeast Asia. In many areas of textile weaving and dyeing,
western Europeans were still working on imitating Indian and Chinese processes. Pomeranz opines
that rather than searching for reasons why Chinese science and technology “stagnated” in general
which they did not a clear survey to look at why the paths on which they continued to progress did not
revolutionize the Chinese economy.
Pomeranz focuses on the application of coal and steam power to all sorts of processes which
eventually led to enormous labour savings, but the eighteenth-century innovations that made coal
usable in making iron, glass, beer, and so on were aimed at saving money on fuel (coal was cheaper
than wood), not at saving labour and the steam engines that pumped water out of coal mines did not
substitute for men doing the same work so much as they simply made it possible to exploit certain
mines that no number of men could otherwise have used. Pomeranz argues for the importance of two
factors causing the Great Divergence, essentially exogenous “shocks” outside the price system that
had important effects on the economy: the distribution of energy-generating resources and the
accident that Europe discovered the New World, whereas China did not. Conventionally believed,
“Geology is destiny”, and in fact the site and the availability of coal deposits determined the viability
of industrialization. Coal was the driven factor, the main cause of Industrial Revolution as evidences
accedes. In the European context, Britain was the sole to present a large availability of coal and the
lowest transportation costs, the ready availability of efficient water transport proved a boon to the
British fortune. At the opposite, Chinese coal miners were situated in the northwest that was far away
from the manufacturing and populated centres of the southeast. It means that mining was more
expansive than it was in Britain. Overall, the North and Northwest China as opines Pomeranz
probably had China’s most serious ecological problems. Lack of water may have been developing into
a serious problem by 1800 in parts of late eighteenth-century North China which was another
significant hindrance to industrial aid. Thus, Britain was actually geologically advanced than China.
The second cause concerns the New World. Again, it was a fortuitous case, for Europe, the discovery
of the Americas and China could not rely on such similar and huge advantage. For instance, this led
Europe to access to cheap raw materials, the use of slave workforce and an inflow of precious metals
rather than other products such as cotton, sugar, timber, and tobacco. Briefly, it help to break that
land-labour constraint that China did not do. Pomeranz adds the New World in to a new periphery
which according to him yielded both “real resources” and precious metals. The plantation areas of the
New World were a new kind of periphery: one that would import enough to keep its trade with the
core fairly balanced. Moreover, its imports and exports stimulated each other as more sugar exports
consistently led to more slave imports, more food and clothing imports. Pomeranz attributes three
factor which led to the creation of a periphery that was an ever-expanding source of raw materials in
an era before most production required expensive capital goods, which includes: - Demographic
catastrophe, colonial legislation, and slavery combined.
The flow of silver probably did the least to ease pressures on Europe’s land as opines Pomeranz. It
went to densely populated, heavily commercialized parts of Asia, where it was used as a medium for
transactions involving every class in society and in return, various consumer goods flowed to Europe
and to the Americas themselves. Pomeranz also pointed out that though the flow of silver was less in
china but nevertheless it was prevalent but the only difference was in the nature of its investment.
Here silver was clearly a good, not residual wealth used to settle unbalanced accounts as familiar to
West. Pomeranz attributes the trans-shipment of New World metals which allowed western Europe to
expand its imports of real resources far beyond what it could have obtained otherwise. Another
advantage which Europe had was the control over Egyptian and Indian Cotton which yielded the
inflow of raw materials and colonies in turn opened markets.

Criticism of Pomeranz
Robert Brenner and Christopher Isett threw considerable light through their book titled “England’s
Divergence from China’s Yangzi Delta: Property Relations, Microeconomics, and Patterns of
Development”. They started by criticizing the thesis of Pomeranz, especially about the possible
starting point of the Great Divergence. According to the authors, England began to have such a unique
path of economic development different from both the rest of Europe and the Yangzi delta from the
early modern period around 1500-1750. Finally, this existing divergence can really explain the Great
Divergence. From that point, the Yangzi delta experienced a Malthusian patter while Britain
experienced a sort of virtuous cycle of growth, the so-called Smithian pattern. The authors suggested
that China undertook the Malthusian path because there were strong peasant farmers and weak
capitalist farmers. This led to the decline of agricultural labour productivity and living standards, as
shown by the dropping long-term trend in real wages. At the opposite, Britain experienced the
Smithian path because there were weak peasant farmers and strong capitalist farmers. This, in turn,
led to many enclosure and farming innovations that permit a rapid agricultural growth making
increase the total wealth. Finally, this increase in wealth led to the Great Divergence.
Robert C Allen critiquing the thesis of Pomeranz suggested that his own thesis, in his book titled
“The Great Divergence in European Wages and Prices from the Middle Ages to the First World
War”. His aim was to define the trend of prices and wages in Europe from the fourteenth century to
the First World War. He tried to explain four main points in his paper, which were about the
consumer revolution (the shift to marketable goods), the history of heights, the origin of mid-
nineteenth century income gap and the implications of the standard of living debate in the
international and long-term context. In other words, origins and causes of the Great Divergence
through empirical analysis. Allen suggested that this divergence has been originated during the pre-
Industrial epoch, between 1500 and 1750. However, he found that English wages did not increase
over the time but they remain stables while they fell in most European cities. In fact, real wages
started to rose above medieval levels only after 1870. He showed that the process of enclosure and the
consequent replacement of small-scale farmers by those larger had quite influence to the English
economic success. In fact, enclosures and large farms enriched landowners without positive effects
toward consumers, workers or farmers. Thus, small-scale farmers were largely responsible for the
productivity growth.

Alternative Perspective

Shamkal Abilov critiques on the Eurocentric nature of the interpretation that Chinese Religion and
culture acted as hindrance on significant development for Industrial Revolution. Abilov points out
three factors which impelled England to reach Industrial Revolution in the second half of the
eighteenth century and gain industrial and technological superiority over the rest of world. The
factors includes: -1) Colonialism or access to Atlantic trade- by what England gained an immense
wealth, 2) Institutional changes -that inspired by overseas trade and pushed by merchants in order to
get efficient institutions that guaranty the property rights and provide freedom and trust, 3) Existence
of the natural resources (coal)- next to the industrial center of the British Empire. Abilov concludes
his observations by acceding the fact that It was not an “exceptionalist” European culture or, as Abu
Talib, an Indian Muslim visitor to Britain in late eighteenth century writes, any particular endowment
of “the British” with a natural passion for technical innovation.
 Conclusion

A few centuries ago it would have been difficult to tell Europe apart from the rest of the World in
economic terms. Indeed half a millennium ago Europe might justly have been considered a laggard.
The three innovations which, in word of Marxist writer -Karl Marx, “ Ushered in Bourgeois society”
were not invented in Europe. Gunpowder, the Compass and the Printing Press were probably all
invented in China. The wake of 19th century brought decisive change in terms of economy in Western
Europe and parts of North America. Max Weber in his book “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of
Capitalism” argued that religious factors were crucial for spurring European Economic growth.
Weber attributed to the Clavinistic spirit which induced the spirit of Capitalism was unique to Europe.
However, the point is clear that until 1800 China as an economy was not any way less than Europe as
several evidences with statistics has been provided at the initial Chapters of Pomeranz. Certain
limitations had pulled China down the ladder despite China having unified political system created by
dynastic empire. There has been no rise of significant market which was crucial for Industrial
commerce. Thus , the fact cant be rejected that Divergence did not occur but at the very same time a
clear historiographical analysis is apt to deal with the question of the factors which pulled Europe up
the ladder out of convincible similar conditions shared with the Orient.

Bibliography

 Pomeranz, Kenneth -The Great Divergence: the making of China , Europe and the
Modern World Economy;
 Abilov, Shamkhal – The Great Divergence Between China And England: Why
Industrial Revolution Happened In Europe;
 Weber, Max- The Protestant Ethics and The Spirit Of Capitalism;
 Online Reference