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Is California the measure of all things global? A rejoinder to Ricardo Duchesne, ‘Peer Vries,
the Great Divergence, and the California School: Who’s in and who’s out?’
Introduction
Duchesne’s review of my book is quite extensive and overall quite positive. So I have no
reason whatsoever to complain or be aggressively defensive. I do see, however, some points
in his review, and apparently in my original text, that need correction and clarification. In
particular I would like to use this opportunity to give those who haven’t read my book a
clearer idea why I wrote it and how I approached my subject. I think that could be helpful for
those interested in keeping track of the debate on the great divergence in general and of
Duchesne’s and my position in particular. For, if I have one fundamental criticism with regard
to Duchesne’s review, it would be that it too often is not about my book. The emphasis in his
review is quite different from that in my book. Repeatedly Duchesne brushes over my
intentions and arguments rather easily and uses them as a stepping stone for grinding his own,
personal axes. He has a strong tendency to use the pretext of a review to address other
people’s texts, especially those by members of the California School like Goldstone. Readers
may find it quite difficult, if not impossible, to reconstruct the exact structure, content and
underlying methodology of my book. I will therefore in this rejoinder present them - and
expand on them - in a ‘stylized’ manner, systematically taking on board the comments by
Duchesne along the way.
What Via Peking back to Manchester is about
The aim of my book was to evaluate six ‘classical’ approaches to the question why Britain
was the first country in the world to experience an industrial revolution, whereas at the same
moment in time nothing of the sort happened in China. I wondered to what extent those
attempts at explanation were still valid. Massive research has been done in recent decades into
the history of both countries in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In many respects our
picture of their history had to be adjusted. It would be highly unlikely that all this new
research would have no bearing on what, since Pomeranz, we all tend to call ‘the great
divergence’ between Britain and China. I wanted to find out what exactly this bearing could
or even should be.
Basic definitions
To tackle that question in a fruitful way, some definitions were indispensable. I defined the
Industrial Revolution in Britain as the first instance of modern economic growth in the history
of the world. By modern economic growth I meant a sustained, substantial increase of real
gross domestic product per capita.1 Britain’s economy was the first on the globe to ‘take-off’
into this type of growth, somewhere between the 1750s and the 1850s. I used the expression
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‘take-off’ not in the strict technical sense of Rostow,2 but rather more broadly as Hobsbawm
does when he describes it as the process in which “ … the shackles were taken off the
productive power of human societies, which henceforth became capable of the constant, rapid
and up to the present limitless multiplication of men, goods and services.”3 In the specific
case of the first industrial revolution, it had a couple of specific characteristics. It was borne
by the use of a new type of energy, new raw materials and tools, and by continual innovation.
To be more concrete: the first industrial revolution marked, in ‘Wrigleyan terms’, the
transition from an advanced organic economy to a mineral-based fossil-fuel economy, with
production increasingly taking place in factories with the aid of machines and with an ever
more prominent role for technology and science.4 With the spread of those new sources of
energy, raw materials and technologies, not only over industry but also over other sectors of
the economy, an ‘industrial society’ emerged where modern economic growth was normal.
Such a societal transformation of course implies, amongst many other things, major
institutional changes.
Explaining industrialization and the ensuing modern economic growth therefore, as Mokyr
rightly claims, implies explaining how a society finds a solution to bottlenecks in three
fundamental spheres, to wit, that of resources, that of knowledge, and that of institutions.5 It
was the combination of changes in all of these three contexts at a certain moment in time that
carried Britain across the threshold and transformed it into an industrial society. No factor on
its own, i.e. neither new sources of energy and raw materials, nor science and technology, nor
institutional changes, would suffice to enable a country to industrialize. Although my
reviewer clearly is aware of that, he, at least in this review, tends to focus so extensively on
science and culture that a reader cannot escape the idea that to him – and to me! - these would
be the explanatory factors ‘par excellence’. For me at least that is not the case, as may be
deduced from the fact that in my book those other factors get far more attention than
Duchesne’s review suggests.
Similarities and differences
Such combined changes take time. In the case of Britain it was only after various decades that
they had made their imprint clearly felt throughout society. Jack Goldstone does have a point
when he claims that modern economic growth only emerged in Britain somewhere between
the 1820s/1850s.6 It was only then that the innovations we associate with industrialization
began to have their macro-economic, nationwide effects. It was only then that they translated
into a sustained, substantial growth of GDP. Of course, the inventions that were to initially
carry that modern economic growth, the ‘sprouts of industry’ so to say, must have emerged
earlier on. But for various decades into the nineteenth century Britain continued to be an
advanced organic economy where by far the better part of growth continued to be unrelated to
‘coal and steam’. As such the second half of the eighteenth century and the first decades of the
nineteenth century - a period that is normally supposed to have witnessed the first industrial
revolution - indeed can better be regarded as the final flowering of the economic old regime
than as a period in which the new economy already ruled supreme.
In that respect I am somewhat surprised by Duchesne’s suggestion that I would follow
Goldstone too closely and by implication would also be “… unwilling to recognize something
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new behind the “efflorescence” of eighteenth-century England that could not be found in Qing
China.” (page 2) It is important to differentiate here. I agree with Goldstone and ‘the
Californians’ when they claim that till the first decades of the nineteenth century, when it
comes to the type of their economy, there still were striking similarities between Britain and
China as both still basically were advanced organic economies that might be growing, but did
not know modern economic growth. This means that to my definition they both still were pre-
industrial. I agree with Duchesne when he claims that eighteenth-century Britain clearly was
different from eighteenth-century China in the sense that its economy was on a different
trajectory with increasingly different options. I was somewhat surprised to see Duchesne
trying to create a major controversy here. Especially when he goes as far as writing that
Goldstone would claim that “before 1830 England was following a parallel pattern of
political, demographic, commercial, urban, agricultural and even industrial growth as Qing
China.” (italics in the original). It of course is not my task to defend Jack Goldstone. He is
perfectly able to do so himself, but as Duchesne tends to associate my point of view so closely
with Goldstone’s, it is imperative in this response to point to the fact that neither Goldstone
nor I would go as far as to make such a claim. I do not think it make much sense to create the
impression of fundamental disagreement whereas in fact the different points of view are
matters of emphasis, that can be conciliated, as Duchesne, if he would take an earlier
statement of his seriously, could easily admit:
“The real disagreement between us is that, for Goldstone, ‘the great divergence’ between England
and China occurred only after about 1820/1850 because it as only then that the fast and sustained
growth rates in GDP per capita and industrial output were discernible in England. I on the other
hand, rather than pointing to the effects of the transformation, would emphasize the many
qualitative changes – Hargreaves’s spinning jenny (c 1766), Watt’s separate condenser (1768),
Arkwright’s water frame, (1769), Cort’s conversion of pig iron to wrought iron (1784),
Cartwright’s power loom (1787) - which occurred in the last third of the eighteenth century and
which made possible the higher quantitative growth rates of the nineteenth century.”7
Differences between both countries with respect to their political, demographic, commercial,
urban and industrial structure and development during the eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries are so evident and so well-known that it would simply be foolish to deny them.8
What can be discussed is a) whether these differences were already so big in macro-economic
terms and in terms of development economics that one must already talk about two different
types of economies and b) whether they already were big enough to claim that
industrialization could possibly or even probably occur in one country (Britain) and not in the
other one (China). My answer to the first question would be: “No, the differences were not
that big yet.” To the second question I would answer: “Yes, the differences were big enough
already to make it possible or even probable that Britain would industrialize whereas there
was no reason whatsoever to expect that to happen in China.”
Pomeranz’s thesis that in the early modern world there would have been ‘surprising
resemblances’ between various parts of Europe and Asia has become immensely popular.9
Peter Perdue gives a good synthesis of much recent literature when he speaks of a ‘Eurasian
similarity thesis’ that would have “demonstrated – at least according to him and to its
proponents! – that in most measurable aspects of demographic structure, technology,
economic productivity, commercial development, property rights and ecological pressure,
there were no substantial differences between China and Western Europe up to around the
year 1800.”10 The work of Pomeranz and other Californians certainly was useful in
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‘relativizing’ the uniqueness of many traits of early modern European society. But it should of
course not be interpreted - and as I see it, was not meant to convey that idea - as implying that
there would be no relevant differences between ‘the West’ and ‘the Rest’ at all. One should
never forget that ‘similarity’ and ‘difference’ in the last instance are functions of the
perspective and aim of the researcher, not of the objects of study as such. What Pomeranz and
other Californians primarily want to convey, is that in terms of productivity the West was
much less peculiar i.e. advanced, in comparison to various parts of Asia than has long been
claimed by Eurocentrists. As such this of course does not imply that in other respects we
would be forced to believe in some kind of global uniformity. I at least don’t, and therefore
was extremely surprised when at the end of his text Duchesne advices me and all other world
historians to take seriously Weber and his ideas about Europe’s unique characteristics. I have
never done otherwise and have all my students read the text where Weber most succinctly
presents his thesis of European uniqueness at the very beginning of my course in global
history. I never expected to find myself accused of an easy discharge of Weber. (page 9). I
definitely do recognize his contribution to the debate on the rise of the West and would not
hesitate to claim that no theorist has been more important to that debate than Weber. I
completely fail to see how someone reading my book could come to the conclusion that I
think that “Weber was wrong.” (page 1) This conclusion of Duchesne is far too crash and
unsubstantiated, as I hope to show in this text.
Continuity, change and contingency
The first industrial revolution undoubtedly marked the dawn of a new era in the economic
history of mankind and the beginning of something unprecedented. It heralded a fundamental
and as such revolutionary break that, to me at least unsurprisingly, took decades before its
effects showed not only nationwide, but also in the gap between those countries that
industrialized and those that did not. Especially in circles where European ‘exceptionalism’
of whatever kind has become suspect, it has become surprisingly popular to point to
‘contingency’ as the main explanation of the fact that Western Europe could pass over from a
situation of being, supposedly, quite similar to ‘the Rest’ - or even as Gunder Frank with his
usual excess and bravado would claim being ‘backward’ and ‘marginal’11 - to one of
undisputable advance.12 Perdue undoubtedly is again taking a popular stance when he writes
that: “In the light of this recent research, the Industrial Revolution is not a deep, slow
evolution out of centuries of particular conditions unique to early modern Europe. It is a late,
rapid, unexpected outcome of a fortuitous combination of circumstances in the late eighteenth
century. … acceptable explanations must invoke a global perspective and allow for a great
deal of short-term change.”13 This indeed has become a very popular way of looking at the
Industrial Revolution. For people who subscribe to this interpretation, the comparative
question why Britain industrialized whereas China did not, can indeed, as he writes, best be
tackled by approaches that are “… historical (limiting key changes to relatively short time
periods, stressing contingencies) and externalist (focusing on the availability of resources
from outside the existing socio-economic system).”14
To some extent the ideas that Perdue synthesizes, are an understandable, justifiable and even
salutary counterpoise to approaches that make far too much of Europe being ‘different’, tend
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to push back the explanation of what happened in parts of Europe in the nineteenth century
into the mists of time and sometimes even give it an air of inevitability. What may have begun
as a salutary reaction against an untenable position, however, now clearly tends to err in the
opposite direction. To me at least, suggesting or even explicitly claiming that there were
hardly any substantial differences between various parts of Eurasia and that the great
diverging was just ‘a lucky accident’ is very unsatisfactory. To conclude with Marks that other
parts of the world in contrast to the West did not industrialize because “They simply didn’t
have colonies or coal”, does not solve anything and can not be regarded as a serious scholarly
answer. If only for the simple reason that even Britain did not ‘simply’ have colonies and coal
but had to put in enormous efforts during many decades, if not centuries, to be able to exploit
them. Not to mention the fact that there have been countries without coal that nevertheless
industrialized, countries without colonies that did so, countries with colonies that did not, and
so on and so forth.15
Of course, in the strictly ‘technical’ sense of the term it indeed was a contingency that
industrialization happened in Britain first, or for that matter that it happened anywhere at all.
In logic the technical term ‘contingency’ refers to a possible but not very likely future event or
condition. In that sense Britain’s industrialization and the rise of the West clearly were
contingent. But that does not mean they were contingent in the common sense meaning of the
word i.e. purely accidental, a matter of chance.16 The undeniable divergence between England
and the most advanced regions of China was neither simply a historical accident, nor was it
inevitable. I personally would never use that last term in any historical analysis. I regard it as
a matter of historical ‘conjuncture’. Historical events always are, and as such they in principle
can be explained by reference to historical context. Point then is how wide to draw the net.
Scholars favoring contingent explanations, overall, favor a short-term approach. I, as
Duchesne again correctly comments, have a “… determination to trace the long-term causes
of the first industrial revolution within British society, and to explain the long-term factors
within traditional China that, from the 1800s onwards, created the indisputable crises of
overpopulation, recurrent famines, political breakdown, semi-colonial status, ecological
deterioration, and widespread impoverishment so visible by the 1850s - all in stark contrast to
the British ‘miracle.’”17
What exact entities are we comparing?
I have no problems whatsoever to conclude with Duchesne, and Weber, that Britain and, more
in general Western Europe, in many ways and already for a long period of time, were on a
different path from the rest of the world. In this context it is very important to emphasize that
my book, as the title indicates, indeed is about Britain and China, not about ‘the West’ and
‘the Rest’, as so many related books, or about Western Europe and China, as Duchesne
sometimes suggests.18 This is not a minor detail. In various relevant respects Britain was quite
different from even the rest of Western Europe at the onset of and during its industrialization.
Duchesne is right in pointing to the fact that Goldstone makes too much of a specific British
‘engine culture’. In the end, notwithstanding some differences of accent and timing, science
and technology were Western European phenomena. But when we look at, for example, its
agriculture, its energy-system, the structure of its international trade, or its political economy,
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Britain at the end of the eighteenth century unmistakably had some very peculiar traits.19
Moreover, as the first, and for a couple of decades almost sole - or at least by far the most
strongly - industrialized nation of the globe, it had a quite unique and peculiar way of
industrializing.20 This is not the place to delve deeper into this question, but even a fairly
superficial reading of the latest literature would show beyond any reasonable doubt that, for
example, Britain, France and Germany, to mention only the bigger Western European
countries, managed to have their economies grow in quite different ways, whether one looks
at the role of the state, the market, technology, culture, the structure of their societies or the
availability of resources. There simply is not one model of industrialization, not even for
nineteenth-century Western Europe21, let alone for the entire globe.22
One, or rather two classical grand narratives
When it comes to giving a long-term explanation of Britain’s Industrial Revolution – and the
ensuing global dominance of the West – two grand narratives have long held centre stage: the
classical, liberal grand narrative that is so well exemplified in David Landes’ magnum opus23
and an alternative, more in line with the ideas of Braudel and Wallerstein, that is fiercely
defended by a substantial amount of scholars but less popular amongst the general public. The
classical liberal story as I present it in my book, is quite simple and well-known. It is built
around the following claims: 1) Britain’s economy had become capitalist in the Smithian
sense, which means it was characterized by private property, private enterprise,
commodification of goods and services, and free and perfect competition on the market 2)
The British state had become, to put it in modern terms, ‘clean’ and ‘lean’, basically confining
itself to taking care of as Adam Smith would put it “peace, easy taxes and a fair
administration of justice.” British citizens had nothing to fear from government when it comes
to their life, liberty and the pursuit of property 3) Britain had evolved into an open, mobile
community with a vibrant set of institutions that is usually described as ‘civil society’ 4) Its
culture not just tolerated innovation and change: it was enamored with it and with ‘progress’
5) It does not come as a surprise that in such a setting science and technology and their
application in economic affairs flourished 6) The problem that is associated with the name of
Malthus, i.e. a population growing so fast that resources become scarce, did arise. Malthus
after all is an Englishman. But as compared to the main Asian regions where industrialization
failed, in particular China, the growth of population was not really problematic.
The alternative grand narrative differs from the previous one especially in that it claims that
eighteenth-century British capitalism was much less characterized by free and perfect
competition and much more by collusion, monopoly, manipulation and intervention than
supporters of Adam Smith like to admit. Accordingly, the role of the state in Britain’s society
was much more prominent and interventionist too. Britain at the onset of its industrialization,
in this view, can best be described as a fiscal-military and mercantilist state. Finally British
social structure society is looked at from a different angle. One can of course not deny that
Britain in various respects was a relatively open society with a well-organized, free citizenry
but much more emphasis is laid on the fact that this society also had various privileged elites
that were ‘more equal’ and better protected than the mass of the populace.
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The traditional story about how China did not industrialize is well-known. With the passing of
time it has almost turned into a set of cliché’s, and can be read as almost the exact opposite of
the liberal grand narrative about Britain. By and large China is simply supposed to have
lacked all those characteristics that, according to the liberal story, were so prominently present
in Britain. The attributes of capitalism, i.e. private property, private enterprise,
commodification, a well-functioning market mechanism, let alone a free and perfect market,
were all supposed to be absent there. The Middle Empire was regarded as a textbook example
of oriental despotism, with an immobile social structure, lacking citizens and a civil society
and having a conservative, even backward-looking and self-enclosed culture. It was regarded
as an extremely unlikely place for modern science and technology to emerge. Finally, it was
considered the example par excellence of a county caught in a Malthusian trap, not managing
to keep its population in check, whereas Britain supposedly did.
My findings and Duchesne’s comments
Duchesne very competently summarizes my findings at the very beginning of his review
(page 1), focusing on whether or not I agree with the tenets of the California school. Just like
Pomeranz, who also took that as the main question in his review in Journal of Asian Studies.24
To be honest, agreeing or disagreeing with the California School was not my main concern in
writing the text. I simply wanted to test the traditional explanations as they existed before the
Californians came on stage, in the light of recent work, including theirs. That does not
invalidate his description of my position however. That is basically correct. I only have a
couple of minor comments on what he says there. With regard to the standard of living of
Qing China his synthesis of my position is somewhat too optimistic.25 Here too, it is very
important to differentiate between Britain in particular and Western Europe as a whole.
Britain was substantially richer than the rest of Western Europe, with the exception of the
Dutch Republic.26 In the light of two recent publications I now tend to think differences in
wealth between early modern Britain and China were substantial, although of course much
smaller than after the great divergence.27 His conclusion that I would think that Chinese
foreign trade was immense, is not entirely correct. (page 1) What I actually write is: “In
absolute terms China’s foreign trade of course was immense. Compared to the tiny British isle
its economy must have been rather closed.”28 When he writes that Chinese taxes seem to have
been lower, that is somewhat of a euphemism. I claim that, on a per capita base, the central
government of Britain at the end of the eighteenth century spent thirty times (!) as much as
that of China, when measured in terms of silver. That must mean its tax-income was much
higher than that of its Chinese counterpart. Finally, suggesting as Duchesne does in his brief
synthesis of my points of view, that according to me “Weber was wrong” is making far too
much of a fairly minor, specific criticism that I put forward in my book. As the reader can
easily verify for himself, I disagree with Weber with regard to his interpretation of the
economic effects of Confucianism as summarized in his famous quote about Confucianism
and Puritanism: “Confucian rationalism meant rational adjustment to the world; Puritan
rationalism meant rational mastery of the world.”29 What I actually say about that thesis is the
following: “Even if Weber were right about his claim that Confucianism had
‘Weltanpassung’ (adjustment to the world) as its ideal, in everyday practice the Chinese were,
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and are, permanently and intensively active in adapting the world to their will. If in doubt, just
take a look at China’s endless paddy fields. There was certainly nothing wrong with their
rationality, work ethos, business acumen, love of profit, practical sense, or materialism.”30
Duchesne reads far too much in this comment and uses it to construct a non-existent complete
rejection of Weber’s thinking. I agree, with Weber and Duchesne, that Confucianism as it was
interpreted in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century China was conservative; that Chinese elites
had a fairly closed, uniform view of the world and that modern science is an extremely
important part of Western heritage that had no chance of emerging in China. Much of what
Weber says about Chinese culture under the Ming and Qing can still be defended, or at least
fruitfully discussed. But anyhow, Weber has written about so many aspects of Western and
non-Western societies and I agree with him, as any reader of my work can see, in so many
respects, that Duchesne’s comment can only be regarded as a serious misinterpretation.
When we come to a step-by-step evaluation of the traditional explanations of the great
divergence, I would claim that industrializing Britain indeed was capitalist, but far more in the
sense in which Braudel and Wallerstein use that word, especially when it comes to its external
economic relations, than in the sense in which (neo-)classical economist would use it.
Synthesizing my findings with regard to the functioning of China’s markets I tend to the
conclusion that in its huge internal trade apparently a situation prevailed that resembled free
and perfect competition as well if not better than in Britain. Governments had a tendency to
interfere in foreign trade, but the effects of this interferences were quite different from those
in Britain as relatively spoken Chinese foreign trade was much less important than in Britain
and government intervention was unlike in mercantilist Britain not primarily concerned with
increasing the wealth of the state and thereby the nation. When it comes to working of
China’s internal markets for capital goods, labor and money, I indeed, as Duchesne writes, am
much more hesitant than the Californians to claim that these too were ‘Smithian’. What struck
me in reading his review was that as a Marxist-Weberian, or should I say Weberian-Marxist,
Duchesne does not emphasize much more the fundamental role that I accord to the fact that
China’s economy was characterized by a household mode of production. This had various
extremely important implications such as the virtual absence of real proletarians, the
predominance of small firms, and the lack of a formal separation of family and firm and of a
formal rationalization of many economic activities: characteristics that Weber as well as Marx
thought were essential for the workings of a capitalist economy.
My affinity with the approach and findings of Braudel and Wallerstein in their analysis of
capitalism in the West has not escaped Duchesne. I am not sure, however, what he thinks that
would imply for my overall stance. On page 6 of his text he gives the impression that this
would mean that I subscribe to the thesis that “… colonialism, slavery, and exploitation in the
America’s is a primary explanation for the rise of the West.”31 On page 3, however, he had
already written that I reject such a thesis. Again, I would first of all want to differentiate
between various Western countries. That thesis is evidently false when applied to the West as
a whole: how for example to connect Germany’s industrialization to what happened in the
Americas? I do, however, see a connection in the case of Britain, not in sense that the
phenomena Duchesne refers to would be the cause of its industrialization, or in the sense that
I would be fully endorsing something of a revived Williams thesis as so many scholars have
done recently. My point of view boils down to admitting that ‘colonialism, slavery, and
exploitation in the Americas’ did play a significant role in Britain’s rise.32 To present my view
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on these important matters I probably can do no better than quite extensively quote from my
book:
“‘Industry’ and ‘Empire’ in Britain were so entangled that explaining one of the two is simply
impossible without referring to the other. I am not maintaining that this collusion between
economic and political interests via the state somehow caused industrialization in Britain. From a
macro-economic point of view it is not even evident that mercantilism pays. And even if that were
clear: a breakthrough like the Industrial Revolution cannot be regarded as simply the ‘natural’
result of the way markets were manipulated in mercantilism.
We are nevertheless dealing here with a difference between Britain and China that has been
significant for the different routes taken by the economies of both countries. Mercantilism and all
it stands for gave Britons a privileged entry into various markets in the sense that they could buy
and sell on better conditions than would have been the case in a Smithian world of free and perfect
competition. A lot of British imports, exports and profits only came about because of British
power. Moreover, mercantilism played a very substantial role in the creating of a range of
institutions in Britain that were extremely important in facilitating its industrialization and would
turn out to be even more important in countries that were to industrialize later. I repeatedly
referred to its national bank, its consolidated national debt and its chartered companies. But I
might also have referred to all those refinements in Britain’s system of finance, banking, law and
taxation, which would not have come into existence without the close relationship between state
and economy in a mercantilist setting.”33
In my analysis I give a prominent place to the role of state.34 Here again it shows that I can be
quite Weberian. My thesis would be that the British state at the time of Britain’s economic
transformation was not that lean and clean state so dear to classical economist: it was a
‘heavy’, fiscal-military and interventionist state.35 When it comes to the rationalization of its
bureaucracy, a topic that according to Duchesne would have deserved more attention, I again
would like to differentiate between Britain and most of the rest of Western Europe. Duchesne
wants to remind me that Weber put much emphasis on this form of rationalization: “The West
carried this rationalization process further through the creation of bureaucracies increasingly
managed by specialized and trained officials in accordance with impersonal and universal
statuses and regulations formulated and recorded in writing and the creation of more
integrates and codified systems of law.” (pages 8-9) I agree that this is an extremely important
process, but want to remind Duchesne that to connect this development to the rise of
industrial society, one needs a rather optimist interpretation of the progress of
professionalization of public rule in Western Europe in the eighteenth century.36 The rise of
modern bureaucracy took place only very late in the early modern period, if not after that is
normally considered to be over. I would say that with the exception of very specific parts of
Britain’s government - especially the Excise Department - and of Prussian government -
probable ahead of all other governments in Europe when it comes to having a national
bureaucracy -, a systematic and clear rationalization of government only began to set in after
the French Revolution, or rather with Napoleons rule.37 One could indeed in various respects
call eighteenth-century Britain a more ‘bureaucratic’ state than China, but in some respects
one could just as well claim the opposite. Duchesne is of course correct when, following in
Weber’s footsteps, he points at the fact that Chinese officials were not modern bureaucrats.
But, on the other hand, would one really want to call the Chinese system of employing an
educated, selected elite of employees less rational than the system that was predominant in
Western Europe, including Britain, even in the eighteenth century: a system of (often indirect)
rule that was to a large extent manned by aristocrats or people who had bought their job,
normally just to regard it as a sinecure? To me the real point seems to be that China’s state,
even in the eighteenth century, was only a very thin veneer of a tiny group of gentry that
10
simply could not extend its grasp to the grass-roots level of society. In Michael Mann’s terms
it, all its despotic power and pomp notwithstanding, was very weak ‘infrastructurally’, too
weak to promote the kind of developments that took place at the time in Britain.38 In the
nineteenth century for various reasons its grip became even less.
When it comes to my conclusions with regard to the openness of Britain’s and China’s society
in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Duchesne finds it hard to square my various
remarks. I concluded that China in the eighteenth century was just as much or, if you prefer,
just as little an open society as Britain was. I moreover endorse Braudel’s view that Western
capitalism could flourish because Western society in a certain sense was less open and less
socially mobile than various other civilizations, including the Chinese.39 And I indeed think
that Britain had a vibrant civil society. To Duchesne my theses would imply that I have “a
reductive and ultimately distorted view of British bourgeois or civil society, as if it were
primarily characterized by “privilege, protection exclusion, hierarchy and manipulation
…” (pages 7-8) He apparently prefers to associate the presence of a strong civil society with
liberalism and that of capitalism with ‘openness.’ (page 8) To help the reader in finding his
way, I, again, probable can do no better that quoting from my original text.
“We must of course not lapse into anachronism. All this talk about mobility, rights and civil society
must not blind us to the fundamental fact that, formally speaking, the majority of the British
population in our period did not have political rights and that conservative elites were very
powerful. This lack of political rights may, in the long run, have been a blessing in disguise. For
decades industrialization brought few benefits for most ordinary Britons. More often than not it
entailed working harder for a wage that in real terms barely increased, if it increased at all. It very
often meant working in more unhealthy surroundings, whilst economic inequality, which was
already great, increased even more. In a democratic referendum the first industrial revolution
would have been voted out. The fact that the innovators could forge ahead has more to do with
their specific power than with broad public support, more with a lack of democracy than
democracy itself.” 40
“Privileges, which were so characteristic of Western Europe, were far less widespread in China.
This definitely had some positive effects on China’s social mobility. All in all, we may conclude
that Qing China in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was just a much, or if you prefer just as
little, an ‘open society’ as Britain was. Among many Western liberals it is very popular to take it as
something of a truism that ‘openness’ and a high social mobility are a ‘good thing’ when it comes
to economic change and industrialization. In that case it is far from obvious that China’s social
structure as such was an impediment to industrialization as compared to Britain’s. There is ample
reason, however, to at least doubt whether this premise is actually correct. I fully endorse
Braudel’s thesis that Western capitalism could flourish because Western society in a certain sense
was less open and less socially mobile than various other civilizations, including the Chinese. In
studies on the ‘uniqueness’ of Western society all too often the entire focus is on concepts like
‘rights’ and ‘protection’. What tends to be ignored is the fact that, in practice, the rights and the
protection which were claimed for a certain individual or group, could easily have negative
implications for other individuals or groups. This is evidently so in the case of privileges of all
kinds which by their very nature withheld rights and protection from the non-privileged in Western
society. It surely also applies to early modern Britain, that provided an environment where the
capitalist was not only allowed to ceaselessly accumulate but was often encouraged and helped to
do so, and protected in doing so. There clearly was a lot of collusion between the rich and the
powerful. We would be well-advised to pay more attention to the role of privilege, protection,
exclusion, hierarchy and manipulation in ‘the rise of the West’ and be less enchanted by the
ideology that this rise was caused by equality and equal rights, social mobility, freedom and fair
competition.41
I am clearly not saying that Britain was a closed society. Nor am I claiming it was
characterized solely by privilege, protection, hierarchy and manipulation. I do not want to,
and indeed do not suggest that in Britain civil society existed only for the elite, as an
11
exclusivist haven for the privileged. I am only warning against having too rosy a view of
social conditions in Britain at the onset of its industrialization. One does not have to be a
fierce cynic or pessimist to point at the many elements of privilege, protection, hierarchy and
manipulation that indeed did exist and that indeed did contribute to what on a macro-
economic level turned out to be economic growth.
That brings us to the role that culture, technology and science are supposed to have played in
Britain’s industrialization and in China’s failure to industrialize. In my original text culture on
the one hand and science and technology on the other, are discussed separately. But as in most
comments by Duchesne they are seen as tightly connected, I will discuss them jointly too. I
have no hesitation in claiming that there were significant cultural differences between Britain
and China. Even less in claiming that there were no signs whatsoever that a major
technological breakthrough was on the horizon in China that would make possible a new type
of growth there. Here we fundamentally agree. What strikes me in his review is that Duchesne
tends to set apart culture, technology and science from other factors that are also very
important, not to say more important, in my line of reasoning. Reading his review one can
easily think that my argument would be built around an analysis of exactly these factors. The
following quotes can serve as an illustration.
“… after measured consideration of all the salient points, and after synthesizing much of the
recent literature (Vries concludes) that by the eighteenth century it (Britain) had become both
technologically and scientifically a much more dynamic society than China.” (page 1)
“After considering all these points, however, … Vries stresses above all else the fact that
somewhere between 1500 and 1700 Britain had become a much more dynamic society when it
came making mechanical instruments and when it came to cultivating a scientific culture that
would eventually make possible the ‘industrial revolution’” (page 1)
“Vries emphasis on the scientific-practical culture of England … is a view also proposed by
Margaret Jacob, and Joel Mokyr.”(page 2)
“ … Vries follows too closely, or tends to confound Goldstone’s self-described ‘cultural’
explanation of the British industrial revolution with Jacob’s (and Mokyr’s) own approach.” (page
4)
I can only ask people to read my text and find out for themselves that, in contrast to what is
suggested by Duchesne’s review, I do not focus that strongly on culture, science and
technology, let alone that I would follow Goldstone - instead of Jacobs or Mokyr - and copy
his cultural explanation of Britain’s industrialization. Although I make some comments on, for
example, the traditionalism of many members of China’s ruling class and their ‘closed’ world
view as contrasted with the culture of progress in Britain, I hardly deal with culture as such:
“I do not wish to deal with culture as such at great length, neither here nor in my analysis of the
Chinese situation. This is not because I feel that culture defined as the socially acquired set of
dispositions of people to describe, interpret, and value social and natural phenomena in a certain
way, would be of no importance in economic history. On the contrary, the thesis can be defended
that what we call ‘economics’, is fundamentally subjective and as such cultural. Microeconomics
is about the choices people make on the basis of the preferences they have and the constraints they
see. Both are almost entirely a matter of perception and values, i.e. of culture. Macroeconomics is
about aggregate effects of these choices.
The first task of the economic historian would be to show these choices and their effects. That
already is a huge task. Then it comes to interpreting and explaining these choices. This can be
done ‘superficially’ by referring to the context in which those choices and their effects come
about. In this text I will constantly refer to the concrete contexts that structure people’s choices:
the economy, politics and social relations, science and technology, and the way and the extent to
12
which natural resources are used. These contexts can all be seen as direct or indirect expressions of
culture. Looked at from that perspective culture is fundamental in my analysis without, however,
being analyzed as a specific category as such. It is a given whose impact is charted as far as it
conditions and expresses itself in behavior in various contexts of life. The more ‘fundamental’
problem of what reasons people themselves had, in the last instance, to behave the way they did,
lies one level of analysis deeper than the level at which I am analyzing, and at which I want to
analyze, lacking the required knowledge and information.”42
When it comes to the role of science and technology as such in Britain’s industrialization and
more in general in British history, to a very large extent Duchesne and I agree. In my text I at
least nowhere suggest otherwise. Recent exploration of the literature has convinced me even
more of the existence of fundamental differences in this respect between Britain and China in
the eighteenth century. There indeed has been a long term gestation of the scientific
enlightened culture of Europe as Duchesne writes (page 5) and he is completely correct in
claiming that “Britain’s engine culture was not a lucky, unforeseen accident; it was an ethos, a
mentality, an outlook on life which had been brewing for a long time right across Europe, and
by the eighteenth century had spread and penetrated deeply into British civil society, the
schools and textbooks, the academies and journals, the coffee houses and printer’s shop.” Not
only were Britain’s – and Europe’s – science and technology no mere historical accidents,
they also were not just simple reactions to a practical challenge that one also might have seen
in China if only the Chinese had faced a similar challenge.43
I fully subscribe Duchesne’s - and Wrigley’s - thesis “that the problems associated with
converting mineral heat into kinetic energy or motive power had been readily perceived and
gradually overcome with the invention and development first of the Newcomen atmospheric
engine (1712) and later of Watt’s (1769) more powerful and efficient … steam engine.”44
Britain, in short, was already experimenting with new ways of producing energy at a time
when it clearly was not anywhere near a Malthusian crisis. Having steam pumps simply was
helpful in draining mines. In contrast to what Pomeranz claims that would also have been the
case in China, but there nothing of the sort happened. In his Great Divergence it reads that the
biggest coal deposits in China were in the northwest where by seemingly insuperable
transport problems they were separated from the rich but ecologically needy fuel users of
China’s major cities in the economic heart of the country.45 If we are to believe Li Bozhong,
who for the rest of his ideas finds a very receptive audience amongst the Californians, the
tranport problems involved in transporting China’s coal to places where it was neeeded, could
have been solved.46 Peter Perdue tends to share this point of view and rightly points at the
weakness of the Chinese state from the late-eigheenth century onwards and the fact that it had
other priorities as important factors in China’s ‘failure’ to solve the problem of transporting
bulky goods.47 Pomeranz’s second argument in explaining why China did not develop steam
pumps and more in general steam engines is very debatable too. According to him the biggest
technical problem faced by the Chinese coal miners, again especially in the northwest, was
fundamentally different from that faced by their counterparts in England. Chinese coal mines
had much less of a water problem: instead they were so arid that spontaneous combustion was
a constant threat.48 There, howver, are numerous indications that the Chinese too encountered
serious problems of drainage in their mines. One of the biggest experts in the field, if not the
biggest, at least does not hesitate to describe water removal as “…perhaps the biggest and
most widespread problem in Chinese coal mining.”49 Kent Deng very recently wrote that “ …
the Chinese avoided mines with the underground flooding problem altogether”, and he is not
the only one to think that in China the problem of the drainage of mines was not tackled with
13
much inventive stubborness.50 He moreover adds that even without problems of drainage
steam engines could have been put to good use in Chineses mines: “ … for ventilation or fire
prevention the use of the steam engine – a machine as versatile as is – would be indeed
handy.”51
What is more: there would have been plenty of room for inventions in early modern China to
save labor or resources outside the mining sector. Let me confine myself to quoting Mark
Elvin: “There should have been enormous benefits from more efficient pumping devices both
in irrigated agriculture as in mining, which was beset with a draining problem. Yet for half a
millennium almost nothing was done to improve on the methods inherited from the past.”52
The Chinese not only did not actually invent the steam engine: as far as I can judge the claim
that they just as well have might have invented it, is quite implausible.53 And to make just one
final point with regard to differences in technology and science between Britian and China: at
the core of the new economy emerging in industrialising Britain there was, without any doubt,
the transition to a mineral-based fosil-fuel economy. Coal and steam in the end would make
the fundamental difference. That, however, should not make us loose sight of the fact that at
the time Britain indeed was struck by ‘a wave of gadgets’, that is inventions, innovations and
improvements in agriculture, transport, manufacture, trade and finance, that simply had no
parallel in China and that contributed very substantially to total economic growth.54 As
Kristine Bruland writes: “… innovation was a broad process, pervasively embedded in many
industries, even those that were essentially matters of hand technology. ... There is in fact a
wide array of evidence from business, technological and industrial histories to lead us to the
firm conclusion that innovation in the industrial revolution was present across virtually all
activities that comprised the British economy at that time.55 The current tendency amongst
many anti-Eurocentric historians to minimize differences between Britain and indeed Western
Europe on the one hand and Eastern societies, especially China on the other hand, when it
comes to science and technology has to be regarded as a major error.
That brings us to the last topic that I discussed in my book: the question that what extent
Britain and China were caught in, or at least heading for, a Malthusian trap and the
challenges, possibilities and problems that caused for their economic development. Strictly in
quantitative terms no topic gets more attention in my book than this one, whereas surprisingly
none gets less attention in Duchesne review of it. I know Duchesne extensively discussed the
topic in various of his articles, and as far as I can see our views on it are quite similar.56 But
that of course does nothing to change the fact that a review has to pay attention to what
apparently is of fundamental importance in the text under review. Here I will confine myself
to repeating my conclusion in this respect and expressing the hope that readers would be
willing to read for themselves what I write about the existing differences in resource-
portfolio’s and the path-dependent differences in modes of production those differences
created.
“Finally we arrive at the explanations that point to the existence, non-existence or scarcity of
natural resources. Frankly, these explanations seem to me to be problematic. To begin with,
because they can too easily be twisted in various directions. If innovations occur in a context of
scarcity, one can claim that ‘necessity is the mother of invention’ and talk in terms of ‘challenge
and response’. In case they do not occur one can of course blame scarcity. If innovations occur in
a context of ample resources one can easily claim that in such a situation it is easier to innovate, in
case they do not of course one can say there was no need. This type of explanations in the end
14
does not explain very much. The comparison between Britain and China shows that once again.
Malthusian tensions were perceptible in both countries in the eighteenth century. In Britain,
though, there was still much more ‘slack’ than in China. In both countries natural resources
became scarcer because of population growth. As organic societies they both faced, in one way or
another, Malthusian constraints. Britain escaped a possibly acute crisis as it radically changed its
mode of production. China did not. The fact that Britain was the place where the technological
breakthroughs took place that allowed it to industrialize first and not China, is not simply a result
of their respective resource portfolios. The fact that China could not easily follow suit and
industrialize in the nineteenth century the way Britain did, to a certain extent, indeed can be
blamed on the specific way in which it exploited its natural resources. It makes sense to try and
defend the thesis that its geography set it on a path that made it ‘rational’ to opt for a mode of
production that became ever more land-, labor-, and resource-intensive. A society that has never
opted for this path can industrialize the British way far more easily than a society that has walked
it for centuries. Here I think further research into the implications of having a ‘rice economy’ or a
system of mixed agriculture, and into labor-intensive varieties of industrialization, like we see in
Japan in the nineteenth century, is called for.” 57
Overall one can only be grateful for an extended review as that by Duchesne, especially when
it is basically as positive as his. I wrote this extensive reply not so much as a systematic
rebuttal or to engage in scholarly quibbling, but to try and present my position more clearly
and systematically than it was done in his review and to a certain extent ‘up-date’ it. The
problems discussed are interesting and relevant enough to warrant such an endeavor.
1 In a context of an increasing population and structural economic change, I would now add. For this definition see, for
example, Simon Kuznetz, Six lectures on economic growth (New York 1959) and W.W. Rostow, The stages of economic
growth A non-communist manifesto (London 1960).
2 W.W. Rostow, The stages of economic growth. A non-communist manifesto (London 1960) page 39.
3 E.J. Hobsbawm, The age of revolution (London 1962) page 45.
4 I based this definition on work by E.A. Wrigley, Continuity, chance and change. The character of the industrial revolution
in England (Cambridge 1988); David S. Landes, The wealth and poverty of nations. Why some are so rich and some so poor
(New York and London 1998) and Joel Mokyr, ‘Editors introduction: The new economic history and the Industrial
Revolution’ in: Joel Mokyr, ed., The British Industrial Revolution. An economic perspective (Boulder 1993) 1-131.
5 Joel Mokyr, ‘Why was the industrial revolution a European phenomenon?’ and idem, ‘The enduring riddle of the European
miracle: the Enlightenment and the industrial revolution’, both on j-mokyr@nwu.edu
6 See for example Jack A. Goldstone, ‘Efflorescences and economic growth in world history: Rethinking the
‘Rise of the West’ and the Industrial Revolution’, Journal of World History 2 (2002) 323-390, page 356, and earlier work
by him he refers to on that page.
7 See R. Duchesne, ‘The post-Malthusian world began in Western Europe in the eighteenth century: a reply to Goldstone and
Wong’, Science and Society 67, 2 (2003) 195-205, page 201.
8 Goldstone never does. See, for example, his Revolution and rebellion in the early modern world (Berkeley, Los Angeles and
Oxford 1991).
9 Kenneth Pomeranz, The great divergence. China, Europe, and the making of the modern world economy (Princeton 2000)
part one.
10 Peter C. Perdue, China marches West. The Qing conquest of Central Eurasia (Cambridge Mass. and London 2005) pages
536-537.
11 This is the thesis of his Reorient. Global economy in the Asian age (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London 1998).
12 John M. Hobson, The Eastern origins of Western civilisation (Cambridge 2004) pages 313-316. For Hobson ‘contingency’
equals ‘fortuitous accident’. See page 313; Robert B. Marks, The origins of the modern world. A global and ecological
narrative (Lanham 2002) see, for example, under ‘contingency’. On page 118 he summarizes his explanation of the rise of
Britain as follows: “To be sure, British manufacturers and inventors rose to the challenges they faced, especially with regard
to coal mining and the development of the steam engine. But there is no reason to think that the Chinese or Indians (or other
people with advanced old regime economies, like the Japanese, for instance) would not also have been able to solve those
problems in similar ways. They simply didn’t have colonies or coal.”; Kenneth Pomeranz, The great divergence. China,
Europe, and the making of the modern world economy (Princeton 2000) with its references to ‘fortuitous global
conjunctures’, ‘geographic good luck’, ‘geographical accidents’, ‘crucial accidents of geography and juxtaposition’ and
‘massive windfalls’ in the flap text and on pages 12, 16, 68 and 241.
13 Peter C. Perdue, China marches West. The Qing conquest of Central Eurasia (Cambridge Mass. and London 2005) page
537.
14 Peter C. Perdue, China marches West. The Qing conquest of Central Eurasia (Cambridge Mass. and London 2005) page
538.
15 See note 12 for this quote.
16 The Collins Dictionary and Thesaurus in one volume (London and Glasgow; reprint 1988).
17 This quote may suggest I have an ‘internalist’ approach to explaining the rise of West. That definitely is not what Duchesne
intends and it would not be a correct description of my approach. I clearly do not want to underestimate geo-political factors
and have not done so I my book. I am not a world-systems hardliner but to think that Britain’s rise and China’s decline would
be unrelated to global developments would be a major error.
18 In his text Duchesne sometimes switches quite easily from Britain to Western Europe and back, as if these were
interchangeable. See, for example, the very first sentence. This vagueness with regard to the entities of comparison bedevils
much of the debate on the rise of the west. See my review of Pomeranz’s book ‘Are coal and colonies really crucial? Kenneth
Pomeranz and the great divergence’, Journal of World History 12, 2 (2001) 407-446, page 409.
19 See, for example, Alan Macfarlane, The riddle of the modern world. Of liberty, wealth and equality (Houndmills
Basingstoke 2000) and E.A. Wrigley, ‘The divergence of England: the growth of the English economy in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries’ in: idem, Poverty, progress, and population (Cambridge 2004) 44-67.
20 Let me give some figures to show the exceptional position of Britain in the global economy during its take-off: In 1830s
the United Kingdom produced no less than seventy per cent of all the coal in the world and about three quarters of all its pig
iron and cast iron. In the 1870s still about one quarter of all merchandise exports and almost half of total exports of
manufactured goods in the world were British. See for these figures Paul Bairoch, Victoires et déboires. Histoire économique
et sociale du monde du XVI siècle à nos jours (Paris 1997) Three Volumes, volume II page 29; Sidney Pollard, Britain’s
prime and Britain’s decline. The British economy 1870-1914 (London 1989) page 15, and Angus Maddison, The world
economy: a millennial perspective (Paris 2001) appendix F, pages 359-361.
21 As Duchesne is well aware. See his ‘The post-Malthusian world began in Western Europe in the eighteenth century: a reply
to Goldstone and Wong’, Science and Society 67, 2 (2003) 195-205, pages 204-205.
22 Rondo Cameron, ‘A new view of European industrialisation’, The Economic History Review 38 (1985) 1-23; Patrick Karl
O’Brien, ‘Do we have a typology for the study of European industrialization in the XIX century?’, Journal of European
Economic History (1986) 291-333, and M. Teich and R. Porter, eds., The industrial revolution in national context (Cambridge
1996). For the claim that there would exist a specific East-Asian road to economic modernization see Kaoru Sugihara, ‘The
East Asian path of economic development’ in: Giovanni Arrighi, Takeshi Hamashita and Mark Selden, eds., The resurgence
of East Asia. 500, 150 and 50 years perspectives (London and New York 2003) 78-123.
23 David S. Landes, The wealth and poverty of nations. Why some are so rich an some so poor (New York and London 1998).
Although with all his enthusiasm about the market Landes is fiercely opposed to international free trade on the basis of
comparative advantage. See my review of this book ‘Culture, clocks and comparative costs: David Landes on the wealth of
the West and the poverty of the rest’, Itinerario. European Journal for Overseas History 22, 4 (1998) 67-69.
24 See Journal of Asian Studies 63, 1 (2004) pages 149-150.
25 Compare my Via Peking back to Manchester, page 19.
26 See, for example, Angus Maddison, The world economy. A millennial perspective (Paris 2001) page 264.
27 See Robert C. Allen, ‘Real wages in Europe and Asia: a first look at the long-term patterns’, www.economics.ox.ac.uk./
members/robert.allen and Stephen Broadberry and Bishnupriya Gupta, ‘The early modern great divergence: wages, prices
and economic development in Europe and Asia, 1500-1800’. This working paper, written in 2003, can be downloaded from
the website of Stephen Broadberry http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/faculty/broadberry/wp/
28 See my Via Peking back to Manchester page 27.
29 Max Weber, The religion of China. Translated from the German and edited by Hans H. Gerth with an introduction by C.K.
Yang (paperback edition; New York and London 1968) page 248.
30 See page 35 of my Via Peking back to Manchester.
31 He does not explicitly say so, but readers can easily think this is the case on the basis of the fact that Duchesne explicitly
comments that I associate too much with Braudel’s vision on capitalism and thereby overstep the mark and border into
California territory. Which clearly is meant to be a Bad Thing. He then proceeds to write that Braudel's interpretation is
shared by Wallerstein and Marx and claims it implies that the West would have risen over the back of the Americas. This
looks like a clear case of guilt by association. See pages 6-7 of his review.
32 For the revival, sometimes in a somewhat mitigated and adapted form, of the Williams thesis see, for example, Robin
Blackburn, The making of New World slavery. From the baroque to the modern 1492-1800 (London and New York 1998)
chapter twelve; Javier Cuenca Esteban, ‘Comparative patterns of colonial trade: Britain and its rivals’ in: Leandro Prados de
la Escosura, ed., Exceptionalism and industrialisation. Britain and its European rivals, 1688-1815 (Cambridge 2004) 35-68;
Joseph E. Inikori, Africans and the industrial revolution in England. A study in international trade and economic
development (Cambridge 2002); Kenneth Morgan, Slavery, Atlantic trade and the British economy, 1660-1800 (Cambridge
2000), where the thesis is discussed, and, in a particular twist also, Kenneth Pomeranz, The great divergence. China, Europe,
and the making of the modern world economy (Princeton 2000). In his case because he thinks that non-consensual trade with
its Western periphery played a fundamental role in the development of Europe. See for example his ‘Introduction’. The thesis
that Europe ‘unfairly’ acquired a large part of the wealth that was at the basis of its industrialization in Africa and the
Americas, has also found support in ‘textbooks’ like the ones by Hobson, Marks, and Ponting. See John M. Hobson, The
Eastern origins of Western civilisation (Cambridge 2004) parts three and four; Robert B. Marks, The origins of the modern
world: a global and ecological narrative (Lanham 2002) chapter four, in which he heavily leans on Pomeranz’s ideas, and
Clive Ponting, World history. A new perspective (London 2001), for example, chapter 20.7. The best place to find information
on the Williams thesis of course is Eric Williams, Capitalism and slavery (Chapel Hill 1944). The position of Patrick
O’Brien, best known for his stance that the contribution of the periphery to even Britain’s economic development can easily
be exaggerated to me seems to be shifting towards that of Braudel and Wallerstein. See Patrick K. O’Brien, ‘European
economic development: the contribution of the periphery’, Economic History Review 35 (1982) 1-18; idem, ‘European
industrialization: from the voyages of discovery to the industrial revolution’ in: Hans Pohl ed., The European discovery of the
world and it economic effects on pre-industrial society, 1500-1800 (Stuttgart 1990) 154-177; idem, ‘Inseparable connections:
trade, economy, fiscal state and the expansion of empire, 1688-1815’ in: Peter J. Marshall ed., The eighteenth century. The
Oxford History of the British Empire (Oxford and New York 1998) 53-77, and Patrick K. O’Brien and Stanley L. Engerman,
‘Exports and the growth of the British economy from the Glorious Revolution to the Peace of Amiens’ in: Barbara L. Solow,
ed., Slavery and the rise of the Atlantic system (Cambridge 1991) 177-209.
33 See my Via Peking back to Manchester, pages 59-60.
34 See my Via Peking back to Manchester pages 7-9 and, 26-33 and my ‘Governing growth. A comparative analysis of the
role of the state in the rise of the West’, Journal of World History 13, 1 (2002) 67-138.
35 See, for example, John Brewer, The sinews of power. War, money and the English state, 1688-1783 (London 1989);
Patrick K. O’Brien, ‘The political economy of British taxation, 1660-1815’, Economic History Review 41 (1988) 1-32, and
Linda Weiss and John M. Hobson, States and economic development. A comparative historical analysis (Cambridge 1995)
chapters three and four.
36 See, for example, Michael Mann, The sources of social power. Volume II. The rise of classes and nation states, 1760-1914
(Cambridge 1993) 389-401 and 444-457.
37 See the book by Michael Mann referred to in the previous note.
38 See Michael Mann, ‘The autonomous power of the state: its origins, mechanisms and results’ in: John A. Hall ed., States in
history (Oxford 1986) 109-136.
39 See F. Braudel, ‘À propos des origines sociales du capitalisme’ in: R. de Ayala and P. Braudel, eds., Les écrits de Fernand
Braudel II. Les ambitions de l’histoire (Paris 1997), 359-371, and idem, La dynamique du capitalisme (Paris 1985) 75-79. I
must say I completely fail to see what the quote by Marx that Duchesne presents on page 7 has to do with the thesis of
Braudel. They refer to completely different phenomena. I take Marx’s quote to refer to primitive accumulation in particular
and that of Braudel to the role played in capitalism by collusion, coercion, protection, and monopoly in general.
40 See my Via Peking back to Manchester, page 10.
41 See my Via Peking back to Manchester, page 34.
42 See for my struggle with the problem of how to integrate culture into economic history P.H.H. Vries, ‘The role of culture
and institutions in economic history: can economics be of any help?’, NEHA Jaarboek 64 (2001) 28-60, also published on
http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/economicHistory/GEHN/GEHNWorkshops.htm, under Konstanz 2004.
43 As is claimed by Marks (see note 12) and strongly suggested by Pomeranz (see notes 48 en 51)
44 See R. Duchesne, ‘The post-Malthusian world began in Western Europe in the eighteenth century: a reply to Goldstone and
Wong’, Science and Society 67, 2 (2003) 195-205, page 197.
45 Kenneth Pomeranz, The great divergence. Europe, China and the making of the modern world economy (Stanford 2000)
pages 64-67.
46 Li Bozhong, The development of agriculture and industry in Jiangnan, 1644-1850: trends and prospects (Hangzhou 1986)
page 59. I found this reference in Chris Bramall and Peter Nolan, ‘Introduction: embryonic capitalism in East Asia’ in: Xu
Dixin and Wu Chengming, eds., Chinese capitalism, 1522-1840 (Houndmills 2000) XIII-XL, page XXVII.
47 Peter C. Perdue, China marches West. The Qing conquest of Central Eurasia (Cambridge Mass. and London 2005) pages
539-542.
48 Kenneth Pomeranz, The great divergence. Europe, China, and the making of the modern world economy (Stanford 2000)
pages 64-67.
49 Peter J. Golas, Science and civilisation in China. Part V volume 13 (Cambridge 1999) page 186. See also Xu Dixin and
Wu Chengming, eds., Chinese capitalism, 1522-1840 (Houndmills 2000), where there are references to flooding as a problem
in mining and to drainage on pages 5, 13, 93, 266, 267, 277, 280, 287, 289, 290, 291, 296, 297, and Mark Elvin, ‘Skills and
resources in late traditional China’ in: Mark Elvin, Another history. Essays on China from a European perspective (Broadway
Australia 1996) 64-100, pages 90-93. For copper mining see Tsu-yu Chen, ‘China’s copper production in Yunnan province
1700-1800’ in: Eddy van Cauwenberghe, ed., Money, coins, and commerce: essays in monetary history of Asia and Europe
(From Antiquity to Modern times) (Leuven 1991) 95-118, the conclusion on page 117: “In the beginning of the nineteenth
century, because of the perilous mineshafts that went deeper and deeper, the less rich copper lodes that had been exhausted,
the serious flooding of mines, and the fuel shortages for smelting, copper mining became more expensive. To produce 100
catties of copper, 1,400 to 1,500 catties of charcoal was required and soon deforestation occurred in the areas of copper
mining, so people must transport charcoal from afar. Copper production in Yunnan declined on account of failure to break
through the bottleneck of mining techniques.”
50 Kent G. Deng, ‘Why the Chinese failed to develop a steam engine’, History of Technology 25 (2004) 151-171, page 168.
Compare, for example, Mark Elvin, ‘Skills and resources in late traditional China’ in: Mark Elvin, Another history. Essays on
China from a European perspective (Broadway Australia 1996) 64-100, pages 92-93.
51 Kent G. Deng, ‘Why the Chinese failed to develop a steam engine’, History of Technology 25 (2004) 151-171, page 168.
52 Mark Elvin, ‘Skills and resources in late traditional China’ in: Mark Elvin, Another history. Essays on China from a
European perspective (Broadway Australia 1996) 64-100, page 90. In contrast to what Duchesne claims, I did know the
article when writing my book. I even refer to it – be it not to the version he used. See Via Peking back to Manchester note
172. But he is right in the sense that I could have done more with it.
53 For that claim see Kenneth Pomeranz, The great divergence. Europe, China, and the making of the modern world economy
(Stanford 200) pages 61-62: “The Chinese had long understood the basic scientific principle involved - the existence of
atmospheric pressure - and had long since mastered (as part of their ‘box bellows’) a double-acting piston/ cylinder system
much like Watt’s, as well as a system for transforming rotary motion into linear motion ... In a strictly technological sense,
then, this central technology of the Industrial Revolution could have been developed outside of Europe.” Compare John M.
Hobson, The Eastern origins of Western civilisation (Cambridge 2004) page 210: “… many of the fundamental aspects of
the steam engine had been pioneered in China many centuries before Europeans as Leonardo da Vinci even dreamed of such
a device.” For a, to me convincing denial of that claim see H. Floris Cohen, ‘Inside Newcomen’s fire engine, or: the
Scientific Revolution and the rise of the modern world’, History of Technology 25 (2004) 111-132, and Kent G. Deng, ‘Why
the Chinese failed to develop a steam engine’, History of Technology 25 (2004) 151-171.
54 See Joel Mokyr, ‘Accounting for the Industrial Revolution’ and Kristine Bruland, ‘Industrialisation and technological
change’, chapters one and five in: Roderick Floud and Paul Johnson eds., The Cambridge Economic History of Modern
Britain. Volume I. Industrialisation, 1700-1860 (Cambridge 2004). The expression ‘wave of gadgets’ is from T.S. Ashton,
The Industrial revolution 1760-1830 (London, Oxford and New York 1948) page 48.
55 See the article by Kristine Bruland mentioned in the previous note, page 146.
56 Most recently in his ‘On the rise of the West: researching Kenneth Pomeranz’s Great divergence’, Review of Radical
Political Economics 36, 1 (2004) 52-81.
57 See my Via Peking back to Manchester page 62.