Debatable Conclusions

Patrick Karl O’Brien
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Patrick Karl O’Brien: London School of Economics and Political Science

Chapter Chapter 7 in The Economies of Imperial China and Western Europe, 2020, pp 109-114 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Some twenty years of stimulating controversy on the Great Divergence conducted in large part within the Kuznetsian paradigm for modern economic history remains heuristic to read and contemplate because it exposes the limitations of that paradigm for reciprocal comparisons across continents for premodern times. The debate returns historians, economists and other social scientists to the unwelcome realization that transitions to modern economic growth are path-dependent and have occurred among the nations of the world in sequences heavily conditioned by their geographical endowments and their complex and diverse histories of political, geopolitical and institutional development. Comparisons and controversy remain heuristic ways of understanding long run growth and locating contemporary controversies in their historiographical contexts helps us to appreciate their significance.

Keywords: Eurocentrism; Long-run growth; Chronology; Climacteric; Malthus; Smith; Elvin; Pomeranz (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palscp:978-3-030-54614-4_7

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-54614-4_7

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