As of 1400, China was more advanced than Europe. Starting at around the time of the Renaissance, Europe developed a slight lead that grew over time and accelerated with the onset of the industrial revolution.
Why did China lose its advantage?
China's advantage in regards to population and becoming a civilized center earlier (because of locally available crops and some of the world's best agric) initially enabled it to surpass Europe. My opinion, shared with Jared Diamond, is that China's unity and hegemony over the surrounding region, produced by lack of strong geographic barriers, enabled its rulers to neglect and even repress technological and economic innovations. European powers by contrast could not suppress progress as vigorously without becoming vulnerable to those nearby whom didn't.
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Coal[edit]
The distribution of coal deposits shaped industrial development in Britain.
In the Industrial Revolution, coal and coke were extensively used in metallurgy and steam engines, being cheaper, more plentiful and more efficient than wood and charcoal. Coal-fired steam engines were also used in the railways and in shipping, revolutionizing transport in the early 19th century.
Kenneth Pomeranz drew attention to differences in the availability of coal between West and East. Due to regional climate, European coal mines were wetter, and deep mines did not become practical until the introduction of the Newcomen steam engine to pump out groundwater. In Chinese mines in the arid northwest, ventilation to prevent explosions was much more difficult.[33]
Another difference was geographic distance; although China and Europe had comparable mining technologies, the distances between the economically developed regions and coal deposits were vastly different. The largest coal deposits in China are located in the northwest, within reach of the Chinese industrial core during the Northern Song. During the 11th century, China developed sophisticated technologies to extract and use coal for energy, leading to soaring iron production.[8] The southward population shift between the 12th and 14th centuries resulted in new centers of Chinese industry far from the major coal deposits. Some small coal deposits were available locally, though their use was sometimes hampered by government regulations. In contrast, Britain contained some of the largest coal deposits in Europe.[34]
Efficiency of markets and state intervention[edit]
The claim that Europe had more efficient markets than other civilizations has been cited as a reason for the Great Divergence.[35] In Europe, market efficiency was disrupted by the prevalence of feudalism and mercantilism. Practices such as entail, which restricted land ownership, hampered the free flow of labor and buying and selling of land. These feudal restrictions on land ownership were especially strong in continental Europe. China had a relatively more liberal land market, hampered only by weak customary traditions.[36] Bound labor, such as serfdom and slavery were more prevalent in Europe than in China, even during the Manchu conquest.[37] Urban industry in the West was more restrained by guilds and state-enforced monopolies than in China, where in the 18th century the principal monopolies governed salt and foreign trade through Guangzhou.[38] Pomeranz rejects the view that market institutions were the cause of the Great Divergence, and concludes that China was closer to the ideal of a market economy than Europe.[36]
State prohibition of new technology[edit]
Jared Diamond in the book Guns, Germs, and Steel argues that explicit outlawing of new technology was an important explanation for the divergence. For example, in China in 1432, a new Emperor outlawed the building of ocean-going ships, in which China was the world leader at the time. Diamond traces this to differences in geography. Outside Europe advanced cultures developed in areas whose geography was conducive to large, monolithic, isolated empires. In these conditions policies of technological and social stagnation could persist. On the other hand, Europe's geography favored balkanization into smaller, closer, nation-states, as its many natural barriers (mountains, rivers) provide defensible borders. As a result, governments that suppressed economic and technological progress soon corrected their mistakes or were out-competed relatively quickly. As an example of this national Darwinism, Diamond offers the disappearance of the counter-progressive Polish state. He argues that geographical factors created the conditions for more rapid internal superpower change (Spain succeeded by France and then by England) than was possible elsewhere in Eurasia.
Another example is the firearms of Japan being almost completely prohibited by the Tokugawa Shogunate, in part because this new technology threatened the Samurai class and way of life.
East stopped trying[edit]
The attitude of the east towards innovation is one of the other factors that might have played a much bigger role in the west’s advancements over the east. As David Landes explained, after a few centuries of innovations and inventions, it seemed like the east stopped trying and began to sustain what they had. They kept nurturing their pre-modern inventions and did not move forward with the modern times. China decided to continue a self-sustaining process of scientific and technological advancement on the basis of their indigenous traditions and achievements.[39] The east’s attitude towards innovation showed that they focused more on experience, while the west focused on experimentation. The east did not see the need to improve on their inventions and thus from experience, focused on their past successes. While they did this, the west was focused more on experimentation and trial by error, which led them to come up with new and different ways to improve on existing innovations and create new ones (Lin, 1995 P 276).
Differences in wages and living standards[edit]
Classical economists, beginning with Adam Smith and Thomas Malthus, argued that high wages in the West stimulated labor-saving technological advancements.[40][41] However, more recent studies have depicted living standards in 18th century China and pre-Industrial Revolution Europe as comparable.[8][42] Life expectancy in China and Japan for adult males were 39.6 and 41.1 respectively, compared with 34 for England, between 27.5 and 30 for France, and 24.7 for Prussia.[43] Chinese laborers in the Yangtze delta consumed 4,600 calories per day on average (laborers in China overall consumed 2,637 calories on average) compared with 2,000-2,500 calories per day for England.[44] According to Pomeranz and others, there was modest per capita growth in both regions,[45] the Chinese economy was not stagnant, and in many areas, especially agriculture, was ahead of Western Europe.[46] Chinese cities were also ahead in public health.[47]
Economic historian Robert Allen estimates that family incomes in the Yangtze delta, the richest region of China, were substantially higher than England in 1620 and was the equivalent of 19 pence per day in 1820, compared with 20 pence per day in the contemporary English Midlands,[9] However, Allen states that Yangtze delta agricultural labor productivity was static between 1600 and 1800, while English and Dutch productivity caught up, greatly increasing from a much lower starting point.[48] Yangtse workers worked fewer days, and the trend was for the number of days worked to decrease as farms became smaller, reducing family incomes.[49]
Luxury consumption[edit]
Luxury consumption is regarded by many scholars to have stimulated the development of capitalism and thus contributed to the Great Divergence.[citation needed] Proponents of this view argue that workshops, which manufactured luxury articles for the wealthy, gradually amassed capital to expand their production and then emerged as large firms producing for a mass market; they believe that Western Europe's unique tastes for luxury stimulated this development further than other cultures. However, others counter that luxury workshops were not unique to Europe; large cities in China and Japan also possessed many luxury workshops for the wealthy,[50] and that luxury workshops do not necessarily stimulate the development of "capitalistic firms".[51]
Property rights[edit]
Differences in property rights have been cited as a possible cause of the Great Divergence. This view states that Asian merchants could not develop and accumulate capital because of the risk of state expropriation and claims from fellow kinsmen, which made property rights very insecure compared to those of Europe.[52] However, others counter that many European merchants were de facto expropriated through defaults on government debt, and that the threat of expropriation by Asian states was not much greater than in Europe, except in Japan.[53]
Government and policies are seen as an integral part of modern societies and have played a major role in how different economies have been formed. The Eastern societies had a government that was controlled by the ruling dynasties and thus, were not a separate entity. Their Government at the time lacked policies that fostered innovation and thus resulted is slow advancements. As explained by Cohen, the east had a restrictive system of trade that went against the free world market theory; there was no political liberty or policies that encouraged the capitalist market (Cohen, 1993). This was in contrast to the western society that developed commercial laws and property rights which allowed for the protection and liberty of the marketplace. Their capitalist ideals and market structures encouraged innovation.[54][55][56][57][58][59]
Pomeranz (2000) argues that much of the land market in China was free, with many supposedly hereditary tenants and landlords being frequently removed or forced to sell their land. Although Chinese customary law specified that people within the village were to be offered the land first, Pomeranz states that most of the time the land was offered to more capable outsiders, and argues that China actually had a freer land market than Europe.[36] Pomeranz does not address the most common form of land sale, known as the conditional sale. The conditional sale allowed the seller to return to the buyer many years after the sale, and many times, to demand extra payments. He also does not account for the inability of landlords to collect rent on second crops.
However, Robert Brenner and Chris Isett emphasize differences in land tenancy rights. They argue that in the lower Yangtze, most farmers either owned land or held secure tenancy at fixed rates of rent, so that neither farmers nor landlords were exposed to competition. In 15th century England, lords had lost their serfs, but were able to assert control over almost all of the land, creating a rental market for tenant farmers. This created competitive pressures against subdividing plots, and the fact that plots could not be directly passed on to sons forced them to delay marriage until they had accumulated their own possessions. Thus in England both agricultural productivity and population growth were subject to market pressures throughout the early modern period.[60]
New World[edit]
Distribution of colonial empires by the end of the 18th century
A variety of theories posit Europe's unique relationship with the New World as a major cause of the Great Divergence. The high profits earned from the colonies and the slave trade constituted 7 percent a year, a relatively high rate of return considering the high rate of depreciation on pre-industrial capital stocks, which limited the amount of savings and capital accumulation.[13] Early European colonization was sustained by profits through selling New World goods to Asia, especially silver to China.[61] According to Pomeranz, the most important advantage for Europe was the vast amount of fertile, uncultivated land in the Americas which could be used to grow large quantities of farm products required to sustain European economic growth and allowed labor and land to be freed up in Europe for industrialization.[62] New World exports of wood, cotton, and wool are estimated to have saved England the need for 23 to 25 million acres (100,000 km2) of cultivated land (by comparison, the total amount of cultivated land in England was just 17 million acres), freeing up immense amounts of resources. The New World also served as a market for European manufactures.[63] However, Ricardo Duchesne has argued against Pomeranz's assertion that the New World gave Europe a special advantage compared to other Asian cores by pointing out that China also engaged in expansion into the Southwest and Manchuria, which gave it similar advantages.[64]
High-level equilibrium trap[edit]
The high-level equilibrium trap theory argues that China did not undergo an indigenous industrial revolution since its economy was in a stable equilibrium.
Culture[edit]
Max Weber argued in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism that capitalism in northern Europe evolved when the Protestant work ethic (particularly Calvinist) influenced large numbers of people to engage in work in the secular world, developing their own enterprises and engaging in trade and the accumulation of wealth for investment. In his work The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism he focused on Chinese culture as an explanation for why capitalism did not develop in China. Chen (2012) similarly argues that cultural differences were the most fundamental cause for the divergence, arguing that the Humanism of the Renaissance followed by the Enlightenment (including revolutionary changes in attitude towards religion) enabled a mercantile, innovative, individualistic, and capitalistic spirit. In Ming Dynasty China, by contrast, some have argued that repressive measures stifled dissenting opinions and nonconformity. Even more fundamentally, aspects of traditional Chinese culture, especially Confucianism, taught that disobedience to one's superiors was tantamount to sin. In addition, Chen argues, merchants and artificers had less prestige than they did in Western Europe. He also sees the New World as an additional necessary factor, and trade as a supporting factor causing less developed areas to concentrate on agriculture supporting industrialized regions in Europe.[11] Justin Yifu Lin has argued for the role of the imperial examination system in removing the incentives for Chinese intellectuals to learn mathematics or to conduct experimentation.[10]
However, many people have questioned the view that Confucian teachings promoted unquestionable loyalty to one's superiors and the state. Scholars who have studied Confucianism have shown that one of the central teachings of Confucianism is that one should remonstrate with authority. Many Confucians throughout history disputed their superiors in order to not only prevent the superiors and the rulers from wrongdoing, but also to maintain the independent spirits of the Confucians.[65] In addition, historians like Yu Yingshi and Billy So have shown that as Chinese society became increasingly commercialized from the Song dynasty onward, Confucianism had gradually begun to accept and in many cases, support business and trade as legitimate and viable professions, as long as merchants stayed away from immoral actions. Merchants in the meantime had also benefited from and utilized Confucian ethics in their business practices. This is true especially in the Ming-Qing dynasties, when the status of merchants was on the rise.[66][67][68]Consequently, while Confucianism did not actively promote profit seeking, it did not hinder China’s commercial development either.
Of the developed cores of the Old world, India was distinguished by its caste system of bound labor, which hampered economic and population growth and resulted in relative underdevelopment compared to other core regions. Compared with other developed regions, India still possessed large amounts of unused resources. India's caste system gave an incentive to elites to drive their unfree laborers harder when faced with increased demand, rather than invest in new capital projects and technology. The Indian economy was characterized by vassal-lord relationships, which weakened the motive of financial profit and the development of markets; a talented artisan or merchant could not hope to gain much personal reward. Overall, scholars state that India was not a very likely site for an industrial breakthrough, despite its sophisticated commerce and technologies.[69]
Aspects of Islamic law have been proposed as one explanation for the divergence for the Muslim world. Islamic institutions which had at earlier stages promoted development later started preventing more advanced development by hampering formation of corporations, capital accumulation, mass production, and impersonal transactions.[70] Several other explanations have been proposed including the gradual prohibition of independent religious judgements (Ijtihad) and a strong communalism which limited contacts with outside groups and the development of institutions dealing with more temporary interactions of various kinds.[71]
The eastern culture of respect and unquestionable devotion to the ruling dynasty was as a result of a culture where the control of the dynasty led to a silent society that did not ask questions or experiment without the approval or order from the ruling class. On the other hand, the West of the late medieval era did not have a central authority or absolute state, which allowed for a free flow of ideas (Rosenberg, Birdzell, 1986). The eastern culture also showed a dismissal of change due to their fear of failure and disregard for the imitation of outside inventions and euro science; this was different from the western view as the Europeans were willing to experiment and imitate others to benefit their society (Duchesne, 2006 P. 76). They had a culture where change was encouraged, and their sense of anxiety and disregard for comfort led them to be more innovative. As Duchesne put it, the western culture “embodied a reflective sense of self-doubt about its way of doing things, dissatisfaction with the existing order of being.” (Duchesne, 2006 P. 87) The eastern societies also had little respect for traders and merchants, which made these occupations less desirable, leading to a shift away from innovation.
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