{"product_id":"the-great-divergence-china-europe-and-the-making-of-the-modern-world-economy","title":"The Great Divergence: China  Europe  and the Making of the Modern World Economy","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe 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 Europes nineteenth-century divergence from the Old World owes much to the fortunate location of coal  which substituted for timber. This made Europes 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 Asias 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.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44946251841589,"sku":"ByrdShop_0691005435","price":173.16,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780691005430.jpg?v=1769933488","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-great-divergence-china-europe-and-the-making-of-the-modern-world-economy","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}