The Great Divergence
by Kenneth Pomeranz · Kenneth Pomeranz
Pomeranz compares eighteenth-century China's Yangzi delta with England to argue that Europe's industrial lead owed much to coal geography and New World resources. Readers gain a comparative method for testing Eurocentric accounts of industrialisation.
This link may earn us a small commission at no extra cost to you. Affiliate disclosure
More resources on Economic History
Guns, Germs, and Steel
Argues that geography and environment, not innate ability, explain why Eurasian societies developed agriculture, technology, and immunity to disease earlier and came to dominate other civilizations across the last 13,000 years.
eh.net
EH.NET is a leading online portal for economic history, providing curated scholarly articles, bibliographies, datasets, and teaching resources. It serves as a hub for researchers, students, and educators seeking historical context, data, and reviews across economic history.
Cliometric Society
Academic society applying econometric methods to historical questions, hosting conference programmes, working papers, a member directory and teaching material. Useful for seeing how quantitative economic historians frame research designs and source historical data.
Our World in Data - Economic Growth
Data-led explainer on GDP per capita over centuries, with sourced charts on the Industrial Revolution, cross-country convergence and measurement caveats. Readers learn what growth statistics do and do not capture, and where the underlying series come from.
MeasuringWorth
Calculators and documented data series for comparing historical monetary values, wages, GDP, exchange rates and stock indices across centuries. Explains why no single inflation adjustment is correct and which measure fits a given historical comparison.
Why Nations Fail
Acemoglu and Robinson argue that prosperity follows from inclusive political and economic institutions rather than geography or culture, tested against cases from Rome to Botswana. Gives readers an institutional framework for explaining divergent national outcomes.