Historical national accounting and dating the Great Divergence. Issue 2 (July 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Broadberry, Stephen
• Is Part Of: Journal of global history. Volume 16:Issue 2(2021)
• Page Start: 286
• Page End: 293
• Publication Date: 2021-07
• Subjects: Great Divergence -- China -- Eighteenth Century -- Accounting -- Goldstone -- Pomeranz; World history -- Periodicals; Historiography -- Periodicals; Globalization -- Periodicals; 909
• DOI: 10.1017/S1740022820000388
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1740-0228

Abstract

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.