The Great Divergence By Kenneth Pomeranz

Kenneth Pomeranz goes into excruciating detail of the economic separation of the Western and Eastern world in his book, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy. While the book is intended to cover the entire Western and Eastern world, Pomeranz primarily focuses on the similarities of England and China, yet England was able to make a “great divergence” economically. Nevertheless, Europe and Asia seem to have economically separated due to a surplus of accessible coal and natural resources from American colonies. While Pomeranz’s book covers nearly all bases, Pomeranz’s comparisons are based mostly post 1800, but by that time European countries were beginning to control the global trade market. Since European countries were …show more content…
In comparison to Asia, Europe has very little land for population expansion. Europeans were able to expand across both Europe and the Americans to provide room for population growth because with the added land the Europeans had more farmable space to feed a growing population. Europe did not have to be concerned about over crowding or a lack of farmable land for food because the Europeans were not limited to just Europe. Asians, on the other hand, had a more limited space for population expansion causing their overall population size to decrease in comparison to the Europeans. Of course, with a higher population comes a larger number of minds to problem solve or invent. With more people to combat the issues going on in Europe, it was easier for the Europeans to develop more technology to advance towards industrialization. Gaining land is an obvious example of contingency and not structure. Pomeranz introduces the idea of contingency in history which allows readers to ponder on the