How Well Did Facts Travel to Support Protracted Debate on the History of the Great Divergence between Western Europe and Imperial China?

Deng, Kent and O'Brien, Patrick (2017): How Well Did Facts Travel to Support Protracted Debate on the History of the Great Divergence between Western Europe and Imperial China?

Abstract

This paper tackles the issue of how reliable the currently circulated 'facts' really are regarding the 'Great Divergence' debate. Our findings indicate strongly that 'facts' of premodern China are often of low quality and fragmented. Consequently, the application of these 'facts' can be misleading and harmful.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Great Divergence, evidence, GDP estimates
• Subjects: N - Economic History > N0 - General > N01 - Development of the Discipline: Historiographical; Sources and Methods; P - Economic Systems > P5 - Comparative Economic Systems

References

Deng, K. and P. O’Brien, ‘China’s GDP Per Capita from the Han Dynasty to Communist Times’, World Economics Journal, 17, 2, 2016a, pp. 79–123. Deng, K. and P. O’Brien, ‘Establishing Statistical Foundations of a Chronology for the Great Divergence: A Survey and Critique of the Primary Sources for the Construction of Relative Wage Levels for Ming-Qing China’, Economic History Review, 69, 4, 2016b, pp. 1057–82. Deng, K. and P. O’Brien, ‘Nutritional Standards of Living in England and the Yangtze Delta (Jiangnan), c.1644 – c.1840’, The Journal of World History, 26, 2, 2015, pp. 233–67.