The great divergence

Cultural explanation

Karl Marx, NY Herald tribune

“India society conditions has remained inaltered since its remotest antiquity”

Marx Weber, The protestant ethnic and the spirit of capitalism

Religious reasons were key in encouraging european economic growth. European were thrifty, national, concerend with material gain. Elsewhere material was ignored entrepreneurship was subversive.

Frenand Braudel, Civilisation matérielle économique et capitalisme, XV et XVIII siècle 1975

China as an unchanging civilisation marked by continuity, stability and resistance to change its society, and bureaucracy restrained and suppressed capitalist impulses

David landes The wealth and poverty of nation 1998

China and especially its elite suffered from intellectual xenophobia which discouraged openness to foreign ideas and technologies which they saw as culturally inferior

Edward Said, Orientalism

The orient not hust a geographical region but above all a western construct

Has often been portrayed as despotic, backwards, mysterious, timeless

Was the other that could be used to construct european identity

R. Bin Wong China tranformes 1997

CHallenges traditional western historiography of europe as universal model of progress

Argues that china must be understood in its own historical context

China did not industrialize not because of stagnation but because its economic and state institution were organisation differently

Question shoudn’t be why didn’t china industrialise but why did europe indutrialize in such a distinctive way ?

Kenneth pomeranz, The great divergence 2000

Up until the 19th c, there was a surprising amount of similarity between europe and china : in terms of markets consumption and life expectancy 

Prasannan Parthsarathi, Why europe grew rich and asia did not 2011

Industrialisation in europe did not emerge from an effort to industrialize, rather it was an unanticipated, unforeseen and unintended outcome of the europe"‘s specific economic and social needs