Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T00:11:57.744Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

4 - China: The Start of the Great Divergence

from Part I - Regional Developments

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2021

By
Christopher Isett
Edited by
Stephen Broadberry  and
Kyoji Fukao
Stephen Broadberry
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
Kyoji Fukao
Affiliation:
Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo
Get access

Summary

Economic growth in China prior to 1870 was kept in check by the performance of its agricultural sector, where diminishing returns to labour reduced effective demand, discouraged investment in manufacturing, and kept the urban share of population from growing. Economic recovery from the Wars of Transition (1644–1681) ended in 1740, when the rate of growth of total output – especially of food – fell below the rate of population growth. For the next century and a half, the economy shrank on a per capita basis. The resulting higher cost of capital relative to labour discouraged the adoption of labour-enhancing tools, even as the decline in the average size of farms raised demand for basic goods. Symptomatically, labour remained stuck in farming and a preponderance of manufacturing activity remained attached to the peasant household. For a period, the expansion of the frontiers coupled with labour intensification elsewhere were sufficient to feed the population, support trade, and fund the state. After 1800, however, environmental degradation took its toll and markets disaggregated. A period of rising social insecurity and political instability set in at the moment when China faced rising external threats from industrialized and industrializing nations.

Keywords

ChinaGreat DivergenceLittle Divergencepropertydemographyagriculturetradeproto-industryenvironment.
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Economic History of the Modern World , pp. 97 - 122
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bassino, J.-P., Broadberry, S., Fukao, K., Gupta, B. and Takashima, M. (2019). ‘Japan and the Great Divergence, 730–1874’, Explorations in Economic History, 72, 1–22.Google Scholar
Baten, J., Ma, D., Morgan, S. and Wang, Q. (2010). ‘Evolution of Living Standards and Human Capital in China in the 18th–20th Centuries: Evidences from Real Wages, Age-Heaping, and Anthropometrics’, Explorations in Economic History, 47(3), 347–359.Google Scholar
Bernhofen, D., Eberhardt, M., Li, J. and Morgan, S. L. (2016). ‘Assessing Market (Dis)Integration in Early Modern China and Europe’, Centre for Economic Policy Research, Discussion Paper 11288.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boserup, E. (1981). Population and Technological Change: A Study of Long Term Trends, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Bray, F. (1984). Science and Civilisation in China: Agriculture, Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bray, F (1986). The Rice Economies: Technology and Development in Asian Societies, Oxford: Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brenner, R. and Isett, C. (2002). ‘England’s Divergence from China’s Yangzi Delta: Property Relations, Microeconomics, and Patterns of Economic Development’, Journal of Asian Studies, 61, 609–662.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Broadberry, S. and Gupta, B. (2006). ‘The Early Modern Great Divergence: Wages, Prices and Economic Development in Europe and Asia, 1500–1800’, Economic History Review, 59, 2–31.Google Scholar
Broadberry, S., Guan, H. and Li, D. D. (2018). ‘China, Europe, and the Great Divergence: A Study in Historical National Accounting’, Journal of Economic History, 78, 955–1000.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, M. J. and Satterthwaite-Phillips, D. (2018). ‘Economic Correlates of Footbinding: Implications for the Importance of Chinese Daughters’ Labor’, PLOS ONE, doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0201337 (accessed September 29, 2020).Google Scholar
Bryant, J. (2006). ‘The West and the Rest Revisited: Debating Capitalist Origins, European Colonialism, and the Advent of Modernity’, Canadian Journal of Sociology, 4(31), 403–444.Google Scholar
Buck, J. L. (1937). Land Utilization in China: Statistics, Shanghai: University of Nanking Press.Google Scholar
Cao, S. (1997). Zhongguo yimin shi: Qing-min shidai, Fuzhou: Fujian renmin chuban she.Google Scholar
Cao, S (2001). Zhongguo renkoushi: Ming-Qing shiqi, Shanghai, Fudan daxue chubanshe.Google Scholar
Chang, C. (1955). The Chinese Gentry: Studies on their Role in Nineteenth-Century Chinese Society, Seattle: Washington University Press.Google Scholar
Chang, C (1962). Income of the Chinese Gentry, Seattle: Washington University Press.Google Scholar
Chao, K. (1977). The Development of Cotton Textile Production in China, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Chapman, S. D. (1972). The Cotton Industry in the Industrial Revolution, London: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Chuan, H-S. and Kraus, R. (1975). Mid-Ch’ing Rice Markets and Trade: An Essay in Price History, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Cohen, M. (2015). ‘Historical Sociology’s Puzzle of the Missing Transitions: A Case Study of Early Modern Japan’, American Sociology Review, 80(3), 603–625.Google Scholar
Daniels, C. (1996). Science and Civilisation in China: Agro-Industries and Forestry, Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Deng, K. and O’Brien, P. (2015). ‘Nutritional Standards of Living in England and the Yangtze Delta (Jiangnan), circa 1644–circa 1840: Clarifying Data for Reciprocal Comparisons’, Journal of World History, 26(2), 233–267.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dietrich, C. (1972). ‘Cotton Culture and Manufacture in Early Ch’ing China’, in Willmott, W. E. (ed.), Economic Organization in Chinese Society, Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Ellis, E. C. and Wang, S. M. (1997). ‘Sustainable Traditional Agriculture in the Tai Lake Region of China’, Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment, 60, 177–193.Google Scholar
Elman, B. (1992). ‘Political, Social, and Cultural Reproduction via Civil Service Examination in Late Imperial China’, Journal of Asian Studies, 50(1), 7–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elman, B (2000). A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China, Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Elvin, M. (2004). The Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China, New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Fan, J. (1998). Ming-Qing Jiangnan shangye de fazha, Nanjing daxue chubanshe.Google Scholar
Fang, X. (1996). ‘Qingdai jiangnan nongmin de xiaofei’, Zhongguo jingji shi yanjiu, 3, 91–98.Google Scholar
Farnie, D. A. (1979). English Cotton Industry and the World Market: 1815–1896, Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Frank, A. G. (1998). ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age, Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Gao, W. (2005). Zudian guanxi xinlun: dizhu, nongmin, han dizu, Shanghai shudian chuban she.Google Scholar
Gardella, R. (1994). Harvesting Mountains: Fujian and the China Tea Trade, 1757–1937, Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Guo, S. (1991). ‘Qing chu shehui jingji yu Qing zhengfu de tunken zhengce’, in Yuquan, W. (ed.), Zhongguo tunken shi, Beijing: Nongye chubanshe.Google Scholar
Guo, S (1994). ‘Qingdai liangshi shichang he shangpin liang shuliang de guce’, Zhongguo shi yanjiu, 4, 40–49.Google Scholar
Hiyama, M. (1996). ‘Shindai tentō-gyō no rishi-ritsu ni kansuru ichikōsatsu – Kōki ∼ kenryū-ki no Kōnan o chūshin to shite’, Tōhō-Gaku, 91, 76–89.Google Scholar
Ho, P. (1959). Studies on the Population of China, 1368–1953, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hommel, R. (1969). China at Work: An Illustrated Record of the Primitive Industries of China’s Masses, Whose Life is Toil, and Thus an Account of Chinese Civilization, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Hong, P. (2005). Mingdai yilai Taihu nan’an xiangcun shehui de jingji yu shehui bianqian: Yi Wujiang xian wei zhongxin, Beijing: Zhonghua shuju.Google Scholar
Huang, P. C. (1985). The Peasant Economy and Social Change in North China, Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Huang, P. C. (1990). The Peasant Family and Rural Development in the Yangzi Delta, 1350–1988, Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Huang, P. C. (1996). Civil Justice in China: Representation and Practice in the Qing, Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Huang, P. C. (2002). ‘Development or Involution in Eighteenth Century Britain and China? A Review of Kenneth Pomeranz’s The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy’, Journal of Asian Studies, 61(2), 501–538.Google Scholar
Isett, C. (2007). State, Peasant, and Merchant on the Manchurian Frontier, Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Jiang, J. (1992). Qingdai qianqi migu maoyi yanjiu, Beijing University Press.Google Scholar
Jiang, T., Jinyu, W. and Xing, F. (2000). Zhongguo jingji tongshi: Qingdai jingji juan 3, edited by Xin, F., Junjian, J. and Jinyu, W., Beijing: Jingji ribao chubanshe.Google Scholar
Kishimoto, M. (1997). ‘Min-Shin jittai no okeru ‘zhaojia huishu’ mondai’, Chûgoku shakai to bunka, 12, 263–293.Google Scholar
Kuhn, D. (1988). Science and Civilisation in China Volume 5. Chemistry and Chemical Technology, Part 9. Textile Technology: Spinning and Reeling, edited by Needham, J., Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kwon, G. (2002). State Formation, Property Relations, and the Development of the Tokugawa Economy, 1600–1868, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Li, B. (1984). ‘Ming Qing shiqi jiangnan shuidao shengchan jiyue chengdu de tigao’, Zhongguo nongshi, 15(1), 1–14.Google Scholar
Li, B. and van Zanden, J. L. (2012). ‘Before the Great Divergence? Comparing the Yangzi Delta and the Netherlands at the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century’, Journal of Economic History, 72(4), 956–989.Google Scholar
Li, L. (2007). Fighting Famine in North China: State, Market, and Environmental Decline, 1690s–1990s, Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Liu, A. (2018). Tea War: A History of Capitalism in China and India, 1834–1939. Unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar
Liu, Q. (2000). Ming-Qing gaoli dai ziben, Bejing: Shehui kexue wenxian chuban she.Google Scholar
Ma, Y. and de Jong, H. D. (2017). ‘Unfolding the Turbulent Century: A Reconstruction of China’s Historical National Accounts, 1840–1912’, Review of Income and Wealth, 65(1), 75–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maddison, A. (2007). Contours of the World Economy 1–2030 AD: Essays in Macro-Economic History, Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mann, S. (1987). Local Merchants and the Chinese Bureaucracy, Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Marks, R. (1998). Tigers, Rice, Silk, and Silt: Environment and Economy in Late Imperial South China, Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mazumdar, S. (1998). Sugar and Society in China: Peasants, Technology, and the World Market, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Min, Z. (1984). ‘Song, Ming, Qing shiqi Taihu diqu shuidao muchan liang de tantao’, Zhongguo nongshi, 3, 37–52.Google Scholar
Myers, R (1970). The Chinese Peasant Economy: Agricultural Development in Hopei and Shantung, 1890–1940, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Myers, R.(1972). ‘The Commercialization of Agriculture in Modern China’, in Willmott, W. E. (ed.), Economic Organization in Chinese Society, Stanford University Press, 173–191.Google Scholar
Myers, R. and Wang, Y. (2002). ‘Economic Developments, 1644–1800’, in Peterson, W. (ed.), The Cambridge History of China: The Ch’ing Empire to 1800, vol. 9, part 1, Cambridge University Press, 563–645.Google Scholar
Notehelfer, F. D. (1990). ‘Meiji in the Rear-View Mirror: Top Down and Bottom Up History’, Monumenta Nipponica, 45(2), 207–228.Google Scholar
Overton, M. (1996). Agricultural Revolution in England: The Transformation of the Agrarian Economy 1500–1850, Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Oyama, M. (1986). ‘Large Landownership in the Jiangnan Delta Region During the Late Ming-Early Qing Period’, in Grove, L. and Daniels, C. (eds.), State and Society in China: Japanese Perspectives on Ming-Qing Social and Economic History, Tokyo University Press, 101–163.Google Scholar
Pan, M. (1996). ‘Rural Credit and the Concept of “Peasant Petty Commodity Production” in Ming-Qing Jiangnan’, Journal of Asian Studies, 55 (1), 94–117.Google Scholar
Peng, K., Zhiwu, C. and Weipeng, Y. (2008). ‘Jindai zhongguo nongcun jiedai shichang de jizhi’, Jingji yanjiu, 5, 147–159.Google Scholar
Perkins, D. (1969). Agricultural Development in China, 1368–1968, Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Pollard, S. (1981). Peaceful Conquest: The Industrialization of Europe, 1760–1970, Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pomeranz, K. (2000). The Great Divergence: Europe, China, and the Making of the Modern World Economy, Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pomeranz, K (2002). ‘Beyond the East-West Binary: Resituating Development Paths in the Eighteenth-century World’, Journal of Asian Studies, 61(2), 539–590.Google Scholar
Qiao, Z. (2017). ‘The Rise of Shanxi Merchants: Empire, Institutions, and Social Change in Qing China’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Stanford University.Google Scholar
Rawski, E. S. (1972). Agricultural Change and the Peasant Economy of South China, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Rowe, W. (2001). Saving the World: Chen Hongmou and Elite Consciousness in Eighteenth-century China, Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Rozman, G. (1974). Urban Networks in Ch’ing China and Tokugawa Japan, Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Schurmann, F. H. (1956). ‘Traditional Property Concepts in China’, Far Eastern Quarterly, 15(4), 507–516.Google Scholar
Shi, Z. (2017). Agricultural Development in Qing China: A Quantitative Study, 1661–1911, Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Shih, J. C. (1992). Chinese Rural Society in Transition: A Case Study of the Lake Tai Area, 1368–1800, Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Skinner, W. (1977). ‘Introduction: Urban Development in Imperial China’, in Skinner, W. (ed.), The City in Late Imperial China, Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, T. (1959). The Agrarian Origins of Modern Japan, Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Sun, E. Z. (1972). ‘Sericulture and Silk Textile Production in Ch’ing China’, in Willmott, W. E. (ed.), Economic Organization in Chinese Society, Stanford University Press, 79–108.Google Scholar
Thirsk, J. (1984). The Rural Economy of England, London: Hambledon Press.Google Scholar
Wakefield, D. (1998). Fenjia: Household Division and Inheritance in Qing and Republican China, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.Google Scholar
Wang, Y. (1973). Land Taxation in Imperial China, 1750–1911, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Wang, Y. and Guoshu, H. (1989). ‘Shiba shiqi zhong zhongguo liangshi gongxu de kaochao’, in Jindai zhongguo nongcun jingji shi lunwenji, Taipei: Academia Sinica.Google Scholar
Wen, D. and Pimentel, D. (1986a). ‘Seventeenth Century Organic Agriculture in China: I. Cropping Systems in Jiaxing Region’, Human Ecology, 14(1), 1–14.Google Scholar
Wen, D. and Pimentel, D (1986b). ‘Seventeenth Century Organic Agriculture in China: II. Energy Flows through an Agroecosystem in Jiaxing Region’, Human Ecology, 14(1), 15–28.Google Scholar
Will, P-E. (1990). Bureaucracy and Famine in Eighteenth-Century China, Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Wolf, A. P. and Engelen, T. (2008). ‘Fertility and Fertility Control in Pre-Revolutionary China’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 38(3), 345–375.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wong, R. B. (1997). China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Wu, C. (1985). ‘Lun Qingdai qianqi woguo guonei shichang’, Lishi yanjiu, 1, 96–106.Google Scholar
Wu, J. (2005). Ming Qing Jiangnan renkou shehui shi yanji, Beijing: Qunyan chuban she.Google Scholar
Xu, T. (1998). Qingdai qianzhong qi de yan hai maoyi yu Shandong bandao jingji de fazhan, Beijing: Zhongguo shehui jingji shi yanjiu.Google Scholar
Xu, X. (1992). Jiangnan tubu shi, Shanghai shehui kexue chuban she.Google Scholar
Xu, X. and Wu, C. (1990). Jiu minzhu zhuyi geming shiqi de zhongguo zibenzhuyi, Beijing: Renmin chubanshe.Google Scholar
Xu, Y., Shi, Z., van Leeuwen, B., Yuping, N., Zhang, Z. and Ma, Y. (2017). ‘Chinese National Income, ca. 1661–1933’, Australian Economic History Review. 57(3), 368–393.Google Scholar
Xue, Y. (2007). ‘A Fertilizer Revolution?: A Critical Response to Pomeranz’s Theory of Geographic Luck’, Modern China, 33(2), 195–229.Google Scholar
Yang, G. (1988). Ming-Qing tudi qiyue wenshu yanjiu, Beijing: Renmin chuban she.Google Scholar
Zhang, J. (2014). Coping with Calamity: Environmental Change and Peasant Response in Central China, 1736–1949, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.Google Scholar
Zhang, Z. (1996). Qian jindai zhongguo shehui de shangren ziben yu shehui zaishengchan, Shanghai: sheke xueyuan chuban she.Google Scholar
Zhou, Y. and Zhaohua, X. (1986). Qingdai zudian zhi yanjiu, Shenyang: Liaoning renmin chuban she.Google Scholar
Zurndorfer, H. T. (2011). ‘Cotton Textile Manufacturing and Marketing in Late Imperial China and the “Great Divergence”’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 54, 701–738.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×