I’m curious what numbers you are using for Europe’s growth between 1000-1700; I didn’t think European growth over that period was particularly unusual. It is worth remembering that Europe in 1000 (particularly northern Europe) was a backwater and so benefitted from catchup growth relative to (say) China. I also don’t know how much of European growth was driven by extensive growth in eastern Europe, which doesn’t seem to be relevant that to the great divergence.
Arguments against the idea that Europe c1700 was technologically ahead of the rest of Eurasia (r at least, China) are common in the great divergence literature. A good recent discussion is Chapter 16 of A Culture of Growth by Mokyr; he discusses various similarities and differences between the two regions around 1700. For detailed discussion focussed on military questions, see The Gunpowder Age by Andrade and Why did Europe conquer the world? by Hoffman, both of which argue that the gap between European and Chinese military technology was not very large during the 1600s.
For what it’s worth I think Europe development was distinct from previous economic efflorescences in so far as it took place in the context of a fractured political landscape. Most other examples (Rome, Abbasid caliphate, many Chinese dynasties) seem to be driven by political unification allowing the growth and diversification of markets; a discussion focussed on the roman example can be found in The Roman Market Economy by Temin. This seems different to the situation in Europe c1700.
For what it’s worth it seems to me that the most plausible explanations for the great divergence are rooted in European fragmentation. This allowed a number of different economic, political, and cultural arrangements to be explored while competitive pressure encouraged more efficient institutions to be adopted. A recent discussion of this can be found in Escape from Rome by Schiedel, but the argument is made in many other places and underpins a number of other more proximate explanations of the great divergence (including Mokyr’s cultural/institutional explanation).
(I also think 0-1000 growth is in the ballpark of +60%?)
The first two numbers are all higher than growth rates could have plausibly been in a sustained way during any previous part of history (and the 0-1000AD one probably is as well), and they seem to be accelerating rather than returning to a lower mean (as must have happened during any historical period of similar growth).
My current view is that China was also historically unprecedented at that time and probably would have had an IR shortly after Europe. I totally agree that there is going to be some mechanistic explanation for why europe caught up with and then overtook china, but from the perspective of the kind of modeling we are discussing I feel super comfortable calling it noise (and expecting similar “random” fluctuations going forward that also have super messy contingent explanations).
I’m curious what numbers you are using for Europe’s growth between 1000-1700; I didn’t think European growth over that period was particularly unusual. It is worth remembering that Europe in 1000 (particularly northern Europe) was a backwater and so benefitted from catchup growth relative to (say) China. I also don’t know how much of European growth was driven by extensive growth in eastern Europe, which doesn’t seem to be relevant that to the great divergence.
Arguments against the idea that Europe c1700 was technologically ahead of the rest of Eurasia (r at least, China) are common in the great divergence literature. A good recent discussion is Chapter 16 of A Culture of Growth by Mokyr; he discusses various similarities and differences between the two regions around 1700. For detailed discussion focussed on military questions, see The Gunpowder Age by Andrade and Why did Europe conquer the world? by Hoffman, both of which argue that the gap between European and Chinese military technology was not very large during the 1600s.
For what it’s worth I think Europe development was distinct from previous economic efflorescences in so far as it took place in the context of a fractured political landscape. Most other examples (Rome, Abbasid caliphate, many Chinese dynasties) seem to be driven by political unification allowing the growth and diversification of markets; a discussion focussed on the roman example can be found in The Roman Market Economy by Temin. This seems different to the situation in Europe c1700.
For what it’s worth it seems to me that the most plausible explanations for the great divergence are rooted in European fragmentation. This allowed a number of different economic, political, and cultural arrangements to be explored while competitive pressure encouraged more efficient institutions to be adopted. A recent discussion of this can be found in Escape from Rome by Schiedel, but the argument is made in many other places and underpins a number of other more proximate explanations of the great divergence (including Mokyr’s cultural/institutional explanation).
I took numbers from Wikipedia but have seen different numbers that seem to tell the same story although their quantitative estimates disagree a ton.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_demography gives +60% growth from 1000-1500
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Europe gives +60% growth from 1500-1700
(I also think 0-1000 growth is in the ballpark of +60%?)
The first two numbers are all higher than growth rates could have plausibly been in a sustained way during any previous part of history (and the 0-1000AD one probably is as well), and they seem to be accelerating rather than returning to a lower mean (as must have happened during any historical period of similar growth).
My current view is that China was also historically unprecedented at that time and probably would have had an IR shortly after Europe. I totally agree that there is going to be some mechanistic explanation for why europe caught up with and then overtook china, but from the perspective of the kind of modeling we are discussing I feel super comfortable calling it noise (and expecting similar “random” fluctuations going forward that also have super messy contingent explanations).