1. Making History Week 5, Lecture 1 Tutor: Giorgio Riello Global Debates:
Divergence – The Rich and the Poor

2. 1. Divergence: A World of Inequality
Measured by GDP (Gross Domestic Product) /per capita

4. World Life Expectancy Map

5. 1. Divergence: A World of Inequality
Measured by GDP (Gross Domestic Product) /per capita

6. Today people in the world are richer than in 1600, but how much richer?
Twice
Three times
Six times
Twelve times

9. 1. When Divergence happened
Why Divergence happened

10. 2. Why Divergence: The Old School
Key explanation
as the era in which Western Europe brought the world under its influence
See the discoveries as the beginning of bringing the world into the orbit of European civilisation
Discoveries is what subjected the world to the rule and influence of European power (European expansion)
Is it a Eurocentric Story?

11. 3. Eurocentric Globalists
Eric Jones , The European Miracle (1981).
He emphasises:
the positive environmental position of Europe
unique family pattern, urbanisation, warfare, etc.
unique culture
Accused on ‘Eurocentrism’ and ‘triumphalism of Europe’, yet in a wide global context

12. 3. Eurocentric Globalists
David Landes, The Wealth and Poverty
of Nations (1998)
Landes emphasises the fact that before 1500 other parts of the world apart from Europe had wealth and knowledge far more advanced than Europe.
Accused on ‘Eurocentrism’ and ‘triumphalism of Europe’ on an even wide global context

13. 4. New Interpretations: Divergence
World as a whole as the unit of analysis: “global history”
2. Stress the accidents, conjunctures and contingencies in the story:

14. 4. New Interpretations: Divergence
Andre Gunder Frank, ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age (1998)
He underlines:
The dominance of Asia
The the shift to Europe is only temporary
Is he ‘Sinocentric’?

15. Importance of accidents and conjunctures
5. The Great Divergence
Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence
(2000)
introduces the new concepts of ‘Divergence’,
Pomeranz compares Western Europe and China from the 16th to the 19th century and he claims that Europe industrialised and modernised because of two factors missing in China:
- Coal, and
Colonies
These allowed Western Europe to diverge from a common Eurasian path of development in which per capita output had been relatively stable for centuries.
Importance of accidents and conjunctures

17. 5. The Great Divergence
Pomeranz is criticised by Prasannan Parthasarathi, ‘Review Article: The Great Divergence’, Past and Present, 176 (2002), pp
What is the role of technologies and technological innovation?
What is the role of trade?
There was a lot of coal in China

18. 5. The Great Divergence Two excellent textbooks:
Robert B. Marks, The Origins of the Modern World: A Global and Ecological Narrative (2002).
Jack Goldstone, Why Europe? The Rise of the West in World History, (2008)

19. 5. The Great Divergence Other historians
Prasannan Parthasarathi, Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia did Not? (2010)
Robert Allen, The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective (2009).

20. 5. The Great Divergence (Why some are rich and some are poor)
This debate (esp. Pomeranz’s book) gave rise to a discussion among historians;
Historians (mildly) disagree on the evidence;
And they disagree (a lot) on the explanation of Divergence
They especially disagree on the role played by Europe (though one can see a move from ‘European exceptionalism’ to ‘contingency’) contingency)

21. 5. Popular Accounts of Divergence
Ian Morris, Why the West Rules - For Now (New York, 2010).
Niall Ferguson, Civilization:
The Six Killer Apps of Western Power (London, 2011).

22. 6. Niall Ferguson’s Civilization
Key concept: civilization
“There are those who [claim] that all civilizations are in some sense equal, and that the West cannot claim superiority over, say, the East of Eurasia. But such relativism is demonstrably absurd. No previous civilization had ever achieved such dominance as the West achieved over the Rest”.
Six Killer apps (Competition; Science; Property rights; Medicine; the Consumer Society; and The work ethic)
The Rest?

23. 6. Inequality
Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (London, 2014).
International – across nations
Concentration of wealth within nations
Large database
Wealth – not income

25. 6. Inequality: within nations

26. Anthony Atkinson, Inequality: What can be done? (Cambridge MA, 2015)
Branko Milanovic, Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalisation (Cambridge MA, 2016)
Anthony Atkinson, Inequality: What can be done? (Cambridge MA, 2015)
review of Thomas Piketty in the NY Review of Books: A Practical Vision of a More Equal Society.
interview with Paul Krugman and Robert Solow in which the two are discussing Atkinson’s book.

27. 6. Inequality: A Global Problem

28. 6. Inequality: A Global Problem

29. Divergence as one example of a big debate in global history
8. Conclusion
Divergence as one example of a big debate in global history
This is a topic with very different interpretations
And a topic that has also public discussion and relevance
Now there is a shift to interpret not growth but poverty and inequality
view.