Book Review
The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy
The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy. By KENNETH POMERANZ. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000. Pp. x + 382. $ 39.95 (cloth).
Ken Pomeranz successfully undertakes the Herculean labors of explaining the myriad and complex reasons underlying Western Europe's Industrial Revolution, while debunking two centuries of Occidental myth-making in his book The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy. Exhaustively researched and brilliantly argued, Pomeranz describes a polycentric world economy wherein each core (Western Europe, China, Japan, and India), facing the shared Malthusian paradox of rising populations and ecological limitations, was headed toward a "proto-industrial cul-de-sac" between 1750 and 1800. What enabled Western Europe (that is, Britain) to escape in Houdini-like fashion the straight jacket of labor-intensive, resource constrained economic growth cannot be attributed to technological or cultural superiority, but a complicated and fortunate convergence of disparate factors: coercion (armed trading and slavery), disease, luck (global conjunctures, favorable coal deposits, Atlantic trade winds), a bounty of resources from colonization of the New World, slack resources, feudal institutions, and the partnership between state and entrepreneur in Europe. Thus, with these aforementioned tumblers already having fallen into place when machines began replacing human and animal labor around 1800, they unlocked an economic trajectory that was noticeably divergent from those of the Asian cores by 1830.
There are several novel elements in Pomeranz's methodology. By [End Page 495] focusing on smaller regions of comparable size, population, and economic vitality in Eurasia, Pomeranz avoids the distortions of scale that inevitably result from using the nation-state as the standard unit. Another refreshing and thought-provoking analytical tool is the "counter-factual" approach pioneered by U. C.-Irvine colleague R. Bin Wong. Postulating "what if" scenarios and employing reciprocal comparisons masterfully, Pomeranz is able to develop a more detailed picture of the manifold components and how they modified each other through the worldwide network of trade. The Great Divergence, therefore, is more than comparative history--it is also gestalt history. And where Andre Gunder Frank's ReORIENT at times reads like the diary of a kamikaze pilot, Pomeranz's calculated, multi-faceted strategy ultimately proves more decisive in the battle for interpreting the past.
The two most important resources tipping the scales in Western Europe's favor, Pomeranz contends, were coal and colonies. Large coal deposits conveniently located near Britain's primary markets rescued the country from deforestation, higher-priced arboreal fuel and building materials after 1800. Moreover, the "ghost acreage" conjured up from colonies in North America and the Caribbean provided unparalleled ecological relief unobtainable in the Asian cores. Since the latter areas grew virtually all of their own cash crops alongside foodstuffs, the amount of land accessible for cultivation was non-expandable while soil fertility was threatened by rising populations and consumption. Conversely, Britain was spared similar environmental stress through overseas trade with the circum-Caribbean zone that yielded cheap guano, wood, sugar, tobacco, cotton, and other land-saving products. The unique relationship between Western Europe and its unfree labor peripheries of the New World and Eastern Europe, compared to China's cores and their free-labor domestic and Southeast Asian peripheries (where disease and state support for colonization were non-factors), was yet another crucial advantage for the West.
Pomeranz systematically undermines much of the extant Eurocentric literature that extols the virtues of European family systems, lifestyles, political institutions, markets, technology, and finance as reasons for the Great Divergence. Another myth convincingly subverted is the notion of internally generated economic growth in Europe prior to 1800. Pomeranz reveals how luxury demand, consumerism, and the "industrious revolution" were heavily dependent upon external forces for their expansion and sustenance. Furthermore, he describes a sudden, unanticipated shift in the economic paradigm that places the Industrial Revolution in more of a Toynbeean framework long ago discarded by Europe-centered scholars. In the end, Pomeranz infers that [End Page 496] the most "exceptional" and "miraculous" elements of Western culture responsible for a distinct trajectory were killing (by disease and war) and enslaving non-Europeans, primitive agricultural practices, feudal institutions, a knack for tinkering, and the symbiotic relationship that evolved between state and merchants.
Perhaps the most appealing aspect of The Great Divergence from a world history perspective is how Pomeranz continually exposes the transcontinental interactions that uncannily worked in Western Europe's favor--for instance, how the trade in American silver to China underwrote both the colonization of the New World and luxury demand in Europe; how colonial administrators brought back crucial ecological knowledge from overseas plantations and applied it at home; and how European consumption of foreign-grown or manufactured goods suppressed caloric intake and spurred import-substitution during the nineteenth century. There are so many varied connections wired into the narrative that occasionally they rival the avionics systems of advanced jet fighters in complexity. Nevertheless, his argumentation cannot be construed merely as tricky verbal acrobatics. It is based solidly on a mountain of English and non-English language sources, reinforced by considerable statistical data and six appendices.
Although it is difficult to ascertain any weaknesses in the book, several do elude to the intricate web of his narrative: First, Pomeranz does not adequately explain what happened between 1800 to 1830 to account for the Great Divergence, specifically, what catalyzed the rapid shift in technology transfers and applications in the areas of mining, weaponry, and textile manufacturing in England. Hypothetically speaking, the technological/economic impact of withdrawing large numbers of British men from production to the armed forces during the Napoleonic era may be worthy of investigation, since it roughly corresponds to the period when Anglo-Asian trajectories began to diverge. Second, some scholars might find various technological comparisons dubious, for instance, how a spinning jenny (a mechanical laborsaving device) can be equated with a spinning cellar (a hole dug in the ground). Third, charts or graphs wherein the reader could visualize the variables effecting the trajectories of each core would enhance the totality of his thesis.
There are so many rich insights and controversial viewpoints expressed in the book that a short review is inadequate for the task. 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. This was clearly manifest at the recent conference of the World History Association [End Page 497] in Boston where two sessions were exclusively devoted to the book. In the polycentric arena of world history research, one cannot help but notice that the "Irvine School" of Pomeranz, Wong, and Topik is diverging on a unique trajectory of its own.
EDWARD R. SLACK JR.
Indiana State University
