Great Divergence
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| Great Divergence | |
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 Kanguole · CC BY-SA 3.0 · source | |
| Name | Great Divergence |
| Period | 18th–19th centuries |
| Location | Eurasia, Atlantic World |
Great Divergence The Great Divergence describes the period when industrializing regions in Northwestern Europe and settler colonies in North America experienced rapid increases in per-capita output relative to other parts of Eurasia and the Americas during the 18th and 19th centuries. Scholars debate its timing, geography, and mechanisms, linking events such as the Industrial Revolution, the Age of Exploration, the Atlantic slave trade, and the expansion of European empires to divergent trajectories across regions like Britain, France, Holland, Spain, Portugal, Ottoman Empire, Mughal Empire, Qing dynasty, Tokugawa shogunate, Ming dynasty, and the Americas.
Definition and scope
The term denotes a widening gap in measurable indicators—per-capita income, industrial output, and technological adoption—between a subset of Western Europe and North America on one hand and most of Asia, Africa, and parts of Latin America on the other, from roughly the 18th century onward. Historians and economists frame the phenomenon in relation to benchmarks like the onset of the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain, the diffusion of steam power associated with figures such as James Watt and institutions like the Royal Society, and comparative indices used by authors including Kenneth Pomeranz, Owen Chadwick, Eric Jones, Deirdre McCloskey, and Brad DeLong.
Historical background and chronology
Long-term precursors include demographic and commercial shifts during the Commercial Revolution, maritime expansion under crowns of Spain and Portugal, and the rise of trading networks centered on Amsterdam and London. Key chronological markers are the commercial breakthroughs of the 17th century, the mechanization and factory system emergence circa the late 18th century linked to inventors such as Richard Arkwright and entrepreneurs like Matthew Boulton, the 19th-century diffusion of railways and telegraph pioneered by firms like Stephenson's and inventors like Samuel Morse, and late-19th-century consolidation amid rivalries exemplified by the Scramble for Africa and treaties such as the Treaty of Nanking.
Causes and interpretations
Interpretations range from resource-based accounts emphasizing access to coal and colonies—invoked by scholars referencing Watt and the importance of coalfields in Britain—to institutionalist explanations citing legal frameworks tied to entities like the British East India Company and the role of property rights promoted in texts by John Locke and the legal reforms of figures such as William Blackstone. Cultural and ideological readings appeal to the spread of ideas through networks including the Enlightenment, salons in Paris, and academies like the Académie des Sciences, while dependency theorists highlight exploitation under the Atlantic slave trade and mercantile policies of states like Spain and Portugal.
Economic and technological factors
Economic narratives stress capital accumulation via profits from plantation economies, commerce dominated by firms such as the Dutch East India Company and Hudson's Bay Company, and financial innovations emerging in institutions like the Bank of England and stock exchanges in Amsterdam. Technological accounts foreground inventions—textile machines inspired by patents and innovators in Birmingham and Lancashire, steam engines by James Watt, iron production advances linked to Abraham Darby, and improvements in metallurgy utilized by industrialists such as Henry Bessemer—as well as infrastructural scaling through canals (e.g., Bridgewater Canal), railways championed by George Stephenson, and telegraphic links associated with Cyrus Field.
Social and institutional factors
Social explanations examine class structures transformed by the factory system, labor regimes shaped by urban migration to cities like Manchester and Glasgow, and demographic transitions influenced by public health interventions and census projects in nations such as Prussia and France. Institutional analyses emphasize legal and political frameworks including parliamentary reforms associated with Reform Act 1832, bureaucratic modernization in states like the Meiji government, and educational expansion through universities such as Oxford, Cambridge, and the University of Paris, which mediated scientific diffusion exemplified by figures like Adam Smith and Thomas Malthus.
Geographic and environmental explanations
Geographic accounts link proximity to navigable coasts and rivers around ports like Liverpool and Rotterdam, and access to fossil fuels—coal basins in Northern England and the Ruhr—to early industrial advantage, while environmental historians reference crop yields altered by the Columbian Exchange and ecological impacts of plantation monocultures in Jamaica and Saint-Domingue. Counterarguments note advanced commercial agriculture, manufacturing, and urban centers in regions under the Qing dynasty, the Ottoman Empire, and the Mughal Empire prior to divergence, complicating single-cause narratives.
Legacy and global consequences
The divergence reshaped global power hierarchies, facilitating imperial expansion by states such as Britain, France, and later Germany and the United States, and restructuring trade patterns established through treaties and alliances like the Concert of Europe. Long-term consequences include technological hegemony in industrial societies, economic dependency and underdevelopment debates concerning former colonies including India and China, and historiographical debates advanced by scholars like Kenneth Pomeranz, Paul Bairoch, and Immanuel Wallerstein about development, inequality, and the modern world-system.