Before and Beyond Divergence

Before and Beyond Divergence addresses the old 'Why Europe? Why not China?' question by presenting clear, original, and provocative arguments. It is an important contribution, both substantively and methodologically. -- Kenneth Pomeranz, University of California, Irvine An important contribution that will force a wide variety of scholars to rethink what they know about both China and Europe and that lays out a model for doing big comparative research projects in the social sciences. -- Timothy W. Guinnane, Yale University

Why did sustained economic growth arise in Europe rather than in China? The authors combine economic theory and historical evidence to argue that political processes drove the economic divergence between the two world regions, with continued consequences today that become clear in this innovative account.

China has reemerged as a powerhouse in the global economy, reviving a classic question in economic history: why did sustained economic growth arise in Europe rather than in China?

Many favor cultural and environmental explanations of the nineteenth-century economic divergence between Europe and the rest of the world. This book, the product of over twenty years of research, takes a sharply different tack. It argues that political differences which crystallized well before 1800 were responsible both for China’s early and more recent prosperity and for Europe’s difficulties after the fall of the Roman Empire and during early industrialization.

Rosenthal and Wong show that relative prices matter to how economies evolve; institutions can have a large effect on relative prices; and the spatial scale of polities can affect the choices of institutions in the long run. Their historical perspective on institutional change has surprising implications for understanding modern transformations in China and Europe and for future expectations. It also yields insights in comparative economic history, essential to any larger social science account of modern world history.