The 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 fa...
The 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.
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.
Meanwhile, Asia hit a cul-de-sac. Although the East Asian hinterlands boomed after 1750, both in population and in manufacturing, this growth prevented these peripheral regions from exporting vital resources to the cloth-producing Yangzi Delta. As a result, growth in the core of East Asia's economy essentially stopped, and what growth did exist was forced along labor-intensive, resource-saving paths--paths Europe could have been forced down, too, had it not been for favorable resource stocks from underground and overseas.
Kenneth Pomeranz is Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine. He is author of The Making of a Hinterland: State, Society, and Economy in Inland North China, 1853-1937, which won the John King Fairbank Prize from the American Historical Association, and coauthor (with Steven Topik) of The World that Trade Created.
Princeton Economic History of the Western World(共56册)，
这套丛书还有
《Growth in a Traditional Society》《The Corporation and the Twentieth Century》《Unsettled Account》《War, Wine, and Taxes》《The Winding Road to the Welfare State》
等
。
![[美国] 彭慕兰](https://img2.doubanio.com/img/author/medium/public/1516337044.51.jpg)
彭慕兰 作者
【读品】
江苏人民出版社2008版
理一分殊
星尘
北京日报出版社2021版
青妩
北京日报出版社2021版
Ellen汐
江苏人民出版社2004版
0 有用 Brenda 2009-05-06 20:54:50
需要再读！
0 有用 egg-white 2017-09-26 21:07:03
读完之后才开始重新有一点点理解彭老师研究Qing expansion的思路
0 有用 Alias 2011-02-23 01:24:52
上周刚和这哥们吃了饭
0 有用 YuRAY 2012-01-09 05:52:31
有种不知所云的感觉.
2 有用 功夫熊猫小碗熊 2015-11-25 10:33:23
与王国斌如出一辙但野心更大，把问题推到最终极形态后自然也消亡了讨论。加州学派终极提问“为何同样面对马尔萨斯陷阱的西欧和中国只有一方走上斯密增长/产生了资本主义”，首先如何定义解读马尔萨斯和斯密（和马克思）就决定了对问题走向和意义的判断（增长和发展和突破的分野，西欧普世抑或西欧特例、经济理性、资本主义定义），下来是方法技术上观察何种历史动力，考察何地区和时段，用何指标，指标得出是否同一样东西，最后是... 与王国斌如出一辙但野心更大，把问题推到最终极形态后自然也消亡了讨论。加州学派终极提问“为何同样面对马尔萨斯陷阱的西欧和中国只有一方走上斯密增长/产生了资本主义”，首先如何定义解读马尔萨斯和斯密（和马克思）就决定了对问题走向和意义的判断（增长和发展和突破的分野，西欧普世抑或西欧特例、经济理性、资本主义定义），下来是方法技术上观察何种历史动力，考察何地区和时段，用何指标，指标得出是否同一样东西，最后是定论是否有分野，分野在什么时候。彭氏竭尽所能将所有事情做到了极致：东西方几乎所有重要因素大致相同，西欧是特例甚至更为落后，突破马氏陷阱的可能性同时存在，西欧的落后（人口、环境和制度不早熟）加上地理大发现突破人口和能源桎梏并刺激航海贸易发展催生18世纪分流。随着历史动力在解释中的消亡，问题也不存在了。 (展开)
0 有用 DL 2023-10-23 08:36:06 美国
一本虽然论点和（大概）论据都已经很熟悉但是还是读一次吐一次的书
0 有用 半人馬的Z 2023-09-13 10:47:42 美国
大分流的重要性不言而喻. 論點之外，這本書最好的地方在於彭木蘭教授的文筆極好，妙筆生花，敘事平鋪直敘，十分清晰明確。閱讀起來不僅流暢，而且也趣味橫生。在2000年這個世紀之交是一部groundbreaking 作品，並且在當下也依然有很多可以借鑑的地方。至少，這本書的寫作風格和流暢程度依然是一個標竿。
0 有用 mioooy 2022-12-09 03:09:51 英国
勉勉强强，讨论到最后把问题都消解了.只剩偶然性和运气了.小学生都能看出来这本书最大的bug就是colony.这本书里colony已经快成为transcendental一般的自在地存在了.为什么欧洲能建立而中国不能呢？只是因为运气？ 完全的经济决定论，甚至科技都被看作是更多resources就能搞定的完全忽略了concept改变的影响.
0 有用 . 2022-04-16 22:03:49
无论是主旨，论据还是论证过程都是顶级的，确乎是加州学派的巅峰之作。p.s. 作者只是提出了一个值得进一步研究的学术理论，为什么会有人对此感到愤怒呢？动辄上升到“人种”“基因”层面轮优劣，这种赤裸裸的self-hate恕我实在无法理解。
0 有用 南极在逃企鹅 2022-03-14 07:54:31
mark一下这本 实在太难啃了😰