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Historical national accounting and dating the Great Divergence

Part of: Dating the Great Divergence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 June 2021

Stephen Broadberry
Stephen Broadberry*
Affiliation:
Nuffield College, New Road, Oxford, OX1 1NF, UK
*
Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

By offering a particular interpretation of the new evidence on historical national accounting, Goldstone argues for a return to the Pomeranz (2000) version of the Great Divergence, beginning only after 1800. However, he fails to distinguish between two very different patterns of pre-industrial growth: (1) alternating episodes of growing and shrinking without any long-term trend in per capita income and (2) episodes of growing interspersed by per capita incomes remaining on a plateau, so that per capita GDP trends upwards over the long run. The latter dynamic pattern occurred in Britain and Holland from the mid-fourteenth century, so that Northwest Europe first edged ahead of the Yangzi delta region of China in the eighteenth century.

Keywords

Great DivergenceChinaEighteenth CenturyAccountingGoldstonePomeranz
Type
Rejoinder
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , July 2021 , pp. 286 - 293
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

1 K. Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).

2 K. Pomeranz, “Ten Years After: Responses and Reconsiderations,” Historically Speaking 12, no. 4 (2011): 20–5, Project Muse, https://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/historically_speaking/v012/12.4.coclanis.html; K. Pomeranz, “The Data We Have vs. the Data We Need: A Comment on the State of the “Divergence” Debate (Part I),” The NEP-HIS Blog, 2017, https://nephist.wordpress.com/2017/06/06/the-data-we-have-vs-the-data-we-need-a-comment-on-the-state-of-the-divergence-debate-part-i/#comments.

3 J. Goldstone, “Efflorescences and Economic Growth in World History: Rethinking the “Rise of the West” and the Industrial Revolution,” Journal of World History 13 (2002): 323–89.

4 J. Goldstone, “Dating the Great Divergence,” Journal of Global History (2019).

5 In addition to the cases discussed below, data are now available for France, Belgium, Portugal, Sweden, Germany and Poland for much of the period between 1300 and 1800. L. Ridolfi, “The French Economy in the Longue Durée. A Study on Real Wages, Working Days and Economic Performance from Louis IX to the Revolution (1250–1789)” (PhD thesis, IMT School for Advanced Studies, Lucca, 2016); E. Buyst, “Towards Estimates of Long Term Growth in the Southern Low Countries, ca.1500–1846,” Paper for the “Quantifying Long Run Economic Development” conference at the University of Warwick in Venice, March 22–24, 2011, http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/events/seminars-workshops-conferences/conferences/venice3/programme/buyst.pdf; N. Palma and J. Reis, “From Convergence to Divergence: Portuguese Economic Growth, 1527–1850,” Journal of Economic History 79 (2019): 477–506; L. Schön and O. Krantz, “The Swedish Economy in the Early Modern Period: Constructing Historical National Accounts,” European Review of Economic History 16 (2012): 529–49; O. Krantz, “Swedish GDP 1300–1560: A Tentative Estimate,” Lund Papers in Economic History; No. 152, Department of Economic History, Lund University, 2017, http://portal.research.lu.se/portal/files/21081639/LUP_152.pdf; U. Pfister, “Economic Growth in Germany, 1500–1850,” paper for the “Quantifying Long Run Economic Development” conference at the University of Warwick in Venice, March, 22–24, 2011, https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/seminars/seminars/conferences/venice3/programme/pfister_growth_venice_2011.pdf; M. Malinowski and J. L van Zanden, “Income and its Distribution in Preindustrial Poland,” Cliometrica 11 (2017): 375–404; S. Broadberry and J. Wallis, “Growing, Shrinking and Long Run Economic Performance: Historical Perspectives on Economic Development,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 23343, 2017, http://www.nber.org/papers/w23343.

6 S. Broadberry, B. Campbell, A. Klein, M. Overton, and B. van Leeuwen, British Economic Growth, 1270–1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015a).

7 Broadberry, Campbell, Klein, Overton, and van Leeuwen, British Economic Growth, 1270–1870.

8 G. Clark, “Growth or Stagnation? Farming in England, 1200–1800,” Economic History Review, 71 (2018): 55–81; Broadberry, 2018.

9 J. Goldstone, “Dating the Great Divergence,” Journal of Global History (2019).

10 S. Broadberry and J. Wallis, “Growing, Shrinking and Long Run Economic Performance: Historical Perspectives on Economic Development,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 23343, 2017, http://www.nber.org/papers/w23343.

11 In the words of J. L. van Zanden and B. van Leeuwen, “Persistent but not Consistent: The Growth of National Income in Holland, 1347–1807,” Explorations in Economic History 49 (2012): 119–30, Dutch growth was “persistent but not consistent”.

12 C. Álvarez-Nogal and L. Prados de la Escosura, “The Rise and Fall of Spain (1270–1850),” Economic History Review 66 (2013): 1–37.

13 Data are also available for India between 1600 and 1870, Broadberry et al., 2015b.

14 S. Broadberry, H. Guan, and D. Li, “China, Europe and the Great Divergence: A Study in Historical National Accounting,” Journal of Economic History 78 (2018b): 955–1000.

15 J.-P. Bassino, S. Broadberry, K. Fukao, B. Gupta, and M. Takashima, “Japan and the Great Divergence, 730–1870,” Explorations in Economic History 72 (2019): 1–22.

16 Broadberry, Guan, and Li, “China, Europe,” 955–1000.

17 B. Li and J. L. van Zanden, “Before the Great Divergence? Comparing the Yangzi Delta and the Netherlands at the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of Economic History 72 (2012): 956–89.

18 This does not have to mean that the Yangzi delta was always the leading region, but rather that there was always a region that was proportionally as far above the Chinese average as the Yangzi region in the 1820s.

19 Pomeranz, “Ten years,” 20–25; K. Pomeranz, “The Data We Have vs. the Data We Need.”

20 P. Malanima, “The Long Decline of a Leading Economy: GDP in Central and Northern Italy, 1300–1913,” European Review of Economic History 15 (2011): 169–219.