Globalization And The Colonial Origins Of The Great Divergence

In Globalization and the Colonial Origins of the Great Divergence Pim de Zwart examines the Dutch East India Company’s intercontinental trade and its effects on living standards in various regions on the edges of the Indian Ocean in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Contrary to conventional views, De Zwart finds significant evidence of the integration of global commodity markets, an important dimension of globalization, before the 1800s. The effects of this globalization, and the associated colonialism, were diverse and could vary between and within regions. As globalization and colonialism affected patterns of economic development across the globe they played a part in the rise of global economic inequality, known as the ‘Great Divergence’, in the early modern period.

Essay from the year 2013 in the subject Politics - Topic: Globalization, Political Economics, grade: 1,0, Indiana University (Department of Political Science), course: Politics of International Development, language: English, abstract: “Great Divergence” is the term used to describe the economical asymmetry that happened between the West and other parts of the world. To explain the process of the Great Divergence, a two-step analysis is necessary: Why was Britain in the position to industrialize and why could the other parts of the world not follow the quest of Industrialization, which led ultimately to the Great Divergence? The Industrial Revolution in Britain and its diffusion to Western Europe was the single most important event for the Great Divergence to happen. Britain had unique geopolitical contingencies on its side and was able to pull of the Industrialization due to the functionality of its centralized state and its achieved dominance in international trade. Other parts of the world, namely India and China, did not industrialize because they lacked the incentives Britain had and, in addition to that, they were also held back by dynamics of colonialism or internal struggles. The paper is structured in the following way: After a brief prologue and a look at a contested issue in the field (2.), the explanation will start out with processes and developments that were necessary in leading to the Industrial Revolution and Great Divergence (2.1). The next step is reserved for an in-depth analysis of the Industrial Revolution in Britain contrasted with a look at reasons for a lack of such an event in India and China (2.2). By looking at the diffusion of Industrialization in the West and factors that prevented any sort of that in the East (2.3), an understanding of the Great Divergence will be provided and ultimately finalized and comprehensively summarized in the conclusion (3.).

For better or for worse, in recent times the rapid growth of international economic exchange has changed our lives. But when did this process of globalization begin, and what effects did it have on economies and societies? Pim de Zwart and Jan Luiten van Zanden argue that the networks of trade established after the voyages of Columbus and Da Gama of the late fifteenth century had transformative effects inaugurating the first era of globalization. The global flows of ships, people, money and commodities between 1500 and 1800 were substantial, and the re-alignment of production and distribution resulting from these connections had important consequences for demography, well-being, state formation and the long-term economic growth prospects of the societies involved in the newly created global economy. Whether early globalization had benign or malignant effects differed by region, but the world economy as we now know it originated in these changes in the early modern period.

In stark contrast to popular narratives, The Great Divergence Reconsidered shows that Europe's rise to an undisputed world economic leader was not the effect of the Industrial Revolution, and cannot be explained by coal or colonial exploitation. Using a wealth of new historical evidence stretching from the seventeenth to the twentieth century, Roman Studer shows that this 'Great Divergence' must be shifted back to the seventeenth century, if not earlier. Europe was characterized by a more powerful transportation system, bigger trade flows, larger and better integrated markets, higher productivity levels, and superior living standards even before the Industrial Revolution brought about far-reaching structural changes and made Europe's supremacy even more pronounced. While the comparison with Europe draws significantly on India, the central conclusions seem to hold for Asia - and indeed the rest of the world - more generally. An interplay of various factors best explains Europe's early and gradual rise, including better institutions, favorable geographical features, increasing political stability, and increasingly rapid advances in science and technology--

How the rise of globalization over the past two centuries helps explain the income gap between rich and poor countries today. Today's wide economic gap between the postindustrial countries of the West and the poorer countries of the third world is not new. Fifty years ago, the world economic order—two hundred years in the making—was already characterized by a vast difference in per capita income between rich and poor countries and by the fact that poor countries exported commodities (agricultural or mineral products) while rich countries exported manufactured products. In Trade and Poverty, leading economic historian Jeffrey G. Williamson traces the great divergence between the third world and the West to this nexus of trade, commodity specialization, and poverty. Analyzing the role of specialization, de-industrialization, and commodity price volatility with econometrics and case studies of India, Ottoman Turkey, and Mexico, Williamson demonstrates why the close correlation between trade and poverty emerged. Globalization and the great divergence were causally related, and thus the rise of globalization over the past two centuries helps account for the income gap between rich and poor countries today.

This new monograph provides a stimulating new take on hotly contested topics in world modernization and the globalizing economy. It begins by situating what is called the Great Divergence--the social/technological revolution that led European nations to outpace the early dominance of Asia--in historical context over centuries. This is contrasted with an equally powerful Great Convergence, the recent economic and technological expansion taking place in Third World nations and characterized by narrowing inequity among nations. They are seen here as two phases of an inevitable global process, centuries in the making, with the potential for both positive and negative results. This sophisticated presentation examines: Why the developing world is growing more rapidly than the developed world. How this development began occurring under the Western world's radar. How former colonies of major powers grew to drive the world's economy. Why so many Western economists have been slow to recognize the Great Convergence. The increasing risk of geopolitical instability. Why the world is likely to find itself without an absolute leader after the end of the American hegemony A work of rare scope, Great Divergence and Great Convergence gives sociologists, global economists, demographers, and global historians a deeper understanding of the broader movement of social and economic history, combined with a long view of history as it is currently being made; it also offers some thrilling forecasts for global development in the forthcoming decades.

India, Modernity and the Great Divergence is an original and pioneering book about India’s transition towards modernity and the rise of the West. The work examines global entanglements alongside the internal dynamics of 17th to 19th century Mysore and Gujarat in comparison to other regions of Afro-Eurasia. It is an interdisciplinary survey that enriches our historical understanding of South Asia, ranging across the fascinating and intertwined worlds of modernizing rulers, wealthy merchants, curious scholars, utopian poets, industrious peasants and skilled artisans. Bringing together socio-economic and political structures, warfare, techno-scientific innovations, knowledge production and transfer of ideas, this book forces us to rethink the reasons behind the emergence of the modern world.

The Great Divergence debate has been the leading dialogue in economic history in the past 25 years. This review article explores new comparative horizons in global economic history. I argue that questions of South-South Divergence form a logical and timely extension to the Great Divergence research agenda. Asia’s economic renaissance did not only put an end to a century-spanning process of widening global income disparities, it also set a new process of divergence within the global South in motion. Deeper understandings of the historical nature and origins of this transition are pertinent in light of the increasing demographic and economic weight of the global South. South-South comparisons also offer an opportunity to counter the dominance of Western-centered and North-South perspectives and incentivize economic historians to develop new approaches and theories that go beyond mainstream concepts designed by development economists and political scientists. I argue that these novel approaches will have to grapple with the opportunities and constraints to ‘late development’ shaped by the globalized, post-colonial and closed-frontier world order of the late 20th and early 21st century.

Guiding the reader through the many guises of global economic history, this book uncovers its key issues, debates and subjects. With contributions from leading scholars around the world, it delves into the economic histories of Africa, Europe, Asia and the Americas from the 16th to the 20th centuries. From the environment to The Great Divergence, finance, consumption, trade, industrialisation, commodities and labour regimes, it demonstrates the global nature of economic history, and highlights how indispensable it is and has been. Updated throughout, this new edition boasts an expanded introduction and four new chapters on capitalism and political economy, European empires and colonialism, North Africa and the Middle East, and the North American Economy. A comprehensive introduction to global economic history, this textbook provides students with a confident grasp of the field, its key debates and essential issues.

Develops a fresh non-Eurocentric analysis of the rise and development of the global economy in the last half-millennium.