Great Divergence

This article is about the era of dominance of Western Civilization. For post-1970 growth in inequality, see Great Divergence (inequality).
"European miracle" redirects here. For the 1981 book, see The European Miracle.

Maddison's estimates of GDP per capita at purchasing power parity in 1990 international dollars for selected European and Asian nations between 1500 and 1950,[1] showing the explosive growth of Western Europe and Japan in the 19th century

The Great Divergence or European miracle is the socioeconomic shift in which the Western world (i.e. Western Europe and the parts of the New World where its people became the dominant populations) overcame pre-modern growth constraints and emerged during the 19th century as the most powerful and wealthy world civilizations, eclipsing previously dominant or comparable civilizations from the Middle East and Asia such as Qing China, Mughal India, the Ottoman Empire, Safavid Iran, and Tokugawa Japan, among others.[2]

Scholars have proposed a wide variety of theories to explain why the Great Divergence happened, including geography, culture, intelligence, institutions, colonialism, resources, and pure chance.[3] There is disagreement over the nomenclature of the "great" divergence, as a clear point of beginning of a divergence is traditionally held to be the 16th or even the 15th century, with the Commercial Revolution and the origins of mercantilism and capitalism during the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery, the rise of the European colonial empires, proto-globalization, the Scientific Revolution, or the Age of Enlightenment.[4][5][6][7] Yet the largest jump in the divergence happened in the late 18th and 19th centuries with the Industrial Revolution and Technological Revolution. For this reason, the "California school" considers only this to be the great divergence.[8][9][10][11]

Technological advances, in areas such as transportation, mining, and agriculture, were embraced to a higher degree in western Eurasia than the east during the Great Divergence. Technology led to increased industrialization and economic complexity in the areas of agriculture, trade, fuel, and resources, further separating east and west. Western Europe's use of coal as an energy substitute for wood in the mid-19th century gave it a major head start in modern energy production. In the twentieth century, the Great Divergence peaked before the First World War and continued until the early 1970s; then, after two decades of indeterminate fluctuations, in the late 1980s it was replaced by the Great Convergence as the majority of developing countries reached economic growth rates significantly higher than those in most developed countries.[12]

  1. ^ Maddison 2007, p. 382, Table A.7.
  2. ^ Bassino, Jean-Pascal; Broadberry, Stephen; Fukao, Kyoji; Gupta, Bishnupriya; Takashima, Masanori (1 December 2018). "Japan and the great divergence, 730–1874" (PDF). Explorations in Economic History. 72: 1–22. doi:10.1016/j.eeh.2018.11.005. hdl:10086/29758. ISSN 0014-4983. S2CID 134669975.
  3. ^ Allen, Robert C. (2011). Global Economic History: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press Canada. ISBN 978-0-19-959665-2. Why has the world become increasingly unequal? Both 'fundamentals' like geography, institutions, or culture and 'accidents of history' played a role.
  4. ^ pseudoerasmus (12 June 2014). "The Little Divergence". pseudoerasmus. Archived from the original on 1 September 2019. Retrieved 19 August 2017.
  5. ^ "Business History, the Great Divergence and the Great Convergence". HBS Working Knowledge. 1 August 2017. Retrieved 19 August 2017.
  6. ^ Vries, Peer. "Escaping Poverty".
  7. ^ Bassino, Jean-Pascal; Broadberry, Stephen; Fukao, Kyoji; Gupta, Bishnupriya; Takashima, Masanori (1 December 2018). "Japan and the great divergence, 730–1874" (PDF). Explorations in Economic History. 72: 1–22. doi:10.1016/j.eeh.2018.11.005. hdl:10086/29758. ISSN 0014-4983. S2CID 134669975.
  8. ^ Pomeranz 2000, pp. 36, 219–225.
  9. ^ Hobson 2004, p. 77.
  10. ^ Bairoch 1995, pp. 101–108.
  11. ^ Goldstone, Jack A. (26 April 2015). "The Great and Little Divergence: Where Lies the True Onset of Modern Economic Growth?". SSRN 2599287.
  12. ^ Korotayev, Andrey; Zinkina, Julia; Goldstone, Jack (June 2015). "Phases of global demographic transition correlate with phases of the Great Divergence and Great Convergence". Technological Forecasting and Social Change. 95: 163–169. doi:10.1016/j.techfore.2015.01.017.