The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy

About this book

"Why did sustained industrial growth begin in Northwest Europe, despite surprising similarities between advanced areas of Europe and East Asia?". "Pomeranz argues that Europe's nineteenth-century divergence from the Old World owes much to the fortunate location of coal, which substituted for timber. This made Europe's failure to use its land intensively much less of a problem, while allowing growth in energy-intensive industries. Another crucial difference that he notes has to do with trade. Fortuitous global conjunctures made the Americas a greater source of needed primary products for Europe than any Asian periphery. This allowed Northwest Europe to grow dramatically in population, specialize further in manufactures, and remove labor from the land, using increased imports rather than maximizing yields. Together, coal and the New World allowed Europe to grow along resource-intensive, labor-saving paths."--BOOK JACKET.

You might also like

Each one checked against a book catalogue before it was listed here.

• Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond
• The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 by Paul Kennedy
• Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson
• The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph A. Tainter
• The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor by David S. Landes

What readers said

Not yet rated. We show what readers thought once at least 3 of them have said something, because a verdict from one or two is not a verdict.