Talk:Great Divergence

Newer sources
I think this article would benefit from some more recent articles on Great Divergence like this: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/190628777.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338251681_A_reassessment_of_the_Great_Divergence_debate_towards_a_reconciliation_of_apparently_distinct_determinants The claim that "Revisionist scholarship, however, estimates that the Great Divergence did not begin until the 19th century, during the Industrial Revolution" should be rewritten, because Pomeranz himself accepted that his ideas about Yangtze delta being on par with England was probably exaggerated, and now seems to settle divergence to somewhere between 1700 and 1750, see, page 6.

I also think this article relies too much on Paul Bairoch, who is imho very dated author. I almost never see him being mentioned in recent economic history books. Pomeranz himself barely mentioned him, only to say that his estimates are very vague and fraught with many difficulties. Roy Bin Wong, Prasannan Parthasarathi, Jean-Laurent Rosenthal don't mentioned any of his economic estimates at all. In fact Parthasarathi doesn't mentioned him at all in his book hy Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not. Nether did Bin Wong in his China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience. That leads me to conclusion that his estimates are not considered reliable. I think they should be removed. I think for wages and gdp estimates we should use up-to-date articles like, or .I am also extremely skeptical about ottoman Egypt having per-capita income comparable to France, as it is essentially again relies on Bairoch.

And also the claim that "Real wages and living standards in 18th-century Bengal and Mysore were higher than in Britain, which in turn had the highest living standards in Europe" is original research. See talk page in Mughal empire article where I explained the problem with it. Also see this discussion. I am going to remove it. DMKR2005 (talk) 20:25, 24 January 2021 (UTC)


 * Nope, this is entirely wrong. The Great Divergence didn't start until the 19th century. Anything else is "Western" pseudohistory. 2607:FB91:1624:4F1C:AC39:5F71:7FC4:FC0C (talk) 02:20, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

I also have problems with life expectancy claim. Pomeranz actually says that life expectancy were comparable and not necessary better. If you read his section "Living Longer? Living Better?" the data for life expectancy in both china and England is very vague and approximate, so only relative comparison is possible. Here is what Pomeranz said:"Chinese longevity is less impressive but still quite comparable to European longevity. The case can be made for other Asian populations as well. Telford’s study of genealogies from a relatively prosperous area suggests a mideighteenth-century life expectancy of 39.6 at birth, though with a decline to 34.9 (still comparable to estimates for England) by the early nineteenth century.36 Lee and Campbell, working with unusually good data for a village in rural Manchuria in the years 1792–1867, arrive at an expectancy of 35.7 for one-year-old males and 29 for one-year-old females. These figures are a bit lower than Telford’s numbers for the mid-eighteenth century, though for females they may be depressed by what seems to have been an unusually strong preference for sons in this population. At any rate, they are still comparable to those for prosperous parts of rural Europe"

Bin Wong in his "China Transformed" on page 26, also agreed that life expectancy in China and Europe is comparable. He cites Telford, that life expectancy peaked at 39.6 in 1750-1769 in Tongcheng country and   then declined to 33.4 half a century later. Bin Wong disagree about decline and writes that "decline: in life expectancy has more to do with improvement in completeness in data. My point is that those numbers should not be taken literally as this article does, but rather the evidence that life expectancy in China in Europe was comparable. DMKR2005 (talk) 21:07, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

By the way the claim that "Others, while accepting parity of incomes between the most prosperous parts of China,[22] India,[22][19] Egypt[21] and Europe in the late 18th century, trace the first significant changes in European economies back to the 17th century" is textbook definition of abuse of sources. The whole claim is complete fantasy, Allen paper cited is about comparison between England and the Yangtze Delta in agricultural productivity, where he concluded that delta's agricultural productivity was about 90% of England in 1800. Allen says nothing about India or Egypt. In fact Egypt doesn't even belong to this article, as I never saw it being discussed in relationship with great divergence by any economic historian. Batou 1991, predates any discussion of great divergence, and is irrelevant here. Not to mention Batou claim, relying again on Bairoch seems like fringe view, as I never saw it being mentioned by other economic historians. DMKR2005 (talk) 21:54, 25 January 2021 (UTC)


 * The entire article is silent about European military domination. How, for example, could a small European kingdom win a naval engagement some 10,000 kilometers (accounting for Africa) away against the local empires in the Battle of Diu (1509)? The blinding answer is because the divergence had already started.
 * I personally would argue that Europe diverged militarily in the Late Middle Ages with feats like the production of plate armor on a massive scale.
 * Sentences like "in 1800 Egypt had the per capita income of France"? Yet in 1798 it was the French who landed in Egypt on dozens of ships far beyond Egypt's technological ability to build, with troops armed with weapons far beyond Egypt's technological ability to build.
 * Whatever the benefits of Colonialism for the Divergence, Colonialism itself was dependent on European naval (and to extend land) military supremacy. The rise of this supremacy is integral to the Divergence. Doggermire (talk) 16:01, 27 July 2022 (UTC)
 * The divergence didn't happen until the 19th century. There were incremental changes like you mentioned leading up to it, but it didn't come to "fruition" until the 1800's. 2607:FB91:1624:4F1C:AC39:5F71:7FC4:FC0C (talk) 02:27, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

Advantages of Eurasia
I have reverted the addition of an "Advantages of Eurasia" subsection to the "Possible factors". This is clearly not a possible factor for the Great Divergence, as all the other cores from which Europe diverged (listed in the first paragraph) were also in Eurasia. Kanguole 22:37, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

Why no 'Why Nations Fail'?
If talking about comparative growth, why not include the theories expoused in Why Nations Fail and The Narrow Corridor, by Acemoglu and Robinson? Their theory on the growth generating force of inclusive institutions.

If agreement, i'd be happy to write a short paragraph. 193.190.218.1 (talk) 13:02, 22 February 2023 (UTC)


 * WP:BEBOLD! Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 13:09, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Culture section biased
Quotes imply non neutrality on Wikipedia's part. 114.122.111.41 (talk) 01:38, 19 December 2023 (UTC)