HIST363: Global Perspectives on Industrialization

1. A useful basic introduction to this debate is Jack A. Goldstone, Why Europe? The Rise of the West in World History, 1500-1850, New York, McGraw-Hill, 2009.

2. Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence. China, Europe and the Making of the Modern World Economy, Princeton/Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2000.

3. Jack A. Goldstone, « Efflorescences and Economic Growth in World History: Rethinking the "Rise of the West" and the Industrial Revolution », Journal of World History, 13, p. 323-389.

4. Rolf Peter Sieferle, Der Europäische Sonderweg. Ursachen und Faktoren, Stuttgart, Breuninger Stiftung, 2003.

5. These authors comprise Joel Mokyr, The Lever of Riches. Technological Creativity and Economic Progress, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1990; David Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations. Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor, New York, W. W. Norton, 1998; Michael Mitterauer, Warum Europa? Mittelalterliche Grundlagen eines Sonderwegs, Munich, C. H. Beck, 2003.

6. See, for example, Bishnupriya Gupta, Debin Ma, « Europe in an Asian mirror: the Great Divergence », in Stephen Broadberry, Kevin H. O'Rourke (eds), The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Europe, Vol. 1 (1700-1870), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2010, p. 264-285. With ample references to previous studies, Peer Vries, Escaping Poverty. The Origins of Modern Economic Growth, Göttingen, V&R unipress, 2013; Roman Studer, The Great Divergence Reconsidered. Europe, India, and the Rise to Global Economic Power, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2015.

7. Maxine Berg (ed.), Goods from the East, 1600-1800. Trading Eurasia, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

8. Frances Gies, Joseph Gies, Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel. Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages, New York, Harper Collins, 1994, p. 82-104.

9. Michael Adas, Machines as the Measure of Men. Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance, Ithaca/London, Cornell University Press, 1989.

10. Eric Jones, The European Miracle. Environments, Economies and Geopolitics in the History of Europe and Asia, Cambridge/M., MIT Press, 1981; David Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations. Why Some Are So Rich and Some Are So Poor, London, Little/Brown, 1998.

11. André Gunder Frank, Re-Orient: Global Economy in the Asian Age, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1998.

12. One among many examples is Prasannan Parthasarathi, Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not. Global Economic Divergence, 1600-1850, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2011.

13. P. Vries, Escaping Poverty, op. cit. See also his State, Economy, and the Great Divergence. Great Britain and China 1680s-1850s, London, Bloomsbury Academic, 2015. The arguments by Pomeranz and Vries are summarized at an earlier stage in Kenneth Pomeranz, « Repenser le changement économique de longue durée: la Chine, l'Europe et l'histoire comparée », dans Jean-Claude Daumas (dir.), L'Histoire économique en mouvement entre héritages et renouvellements, Villeneuve-d'Ascq, Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2012, p. 293-310, and Peer Vries, « Un monde de ressemblances surprenantes ? », dans id., p. 311-340.

14. John Hobson, The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004.

15. For this approach see, for example: Robert C. Allen, The British Industrial Revolution in global perspective, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2009.

16. A good example of a more balanced treatment of the history of technology in a particular epoch of Chinese history is Francesca Bray, Technology and Society in Ming China (1368-1644), Washington D. C., American Historical Association, 1997. For an attempt to contextualized technological developments better in various world regions during the Middle Millennium, see Dagmar Schäfer, Marcus Popplow, « Technology and Innovation within Expanding Webs of Exchange », in Benjamin Z. Kedar and Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks (eds), Expanding Webs of Exchange and Conflict, 500 CE-1500 CE, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2015, p. 309-338.

17. Surayia Faroqhi, Artisans of Empire. Crafts and Craftspeople under the Ottomans, London, Tauris, 2009; Giorgio Riello, Prasannan Parthasarathi (dir.), The Spinning World. A Global History of Cotton Textiles, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2009; Iqtidar Alam Khan, Gunpowder and Firearms. Warfare in Medieval India, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004; Gábor Ágoston, Guns for the Sultan. Military Power and the Weapons Industry in the Ottoman Empire, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006; Peter Lorge, The Asian Military Revolution. From Gunpowder to the Bomb, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2008; Francesca Bray, Vera Dorofeeva-Lichtmann, Georges Métailié (eds), Graphics and Text in the Production of Technical Knowledge in China. The Warp and the Weft, Leiden/Boston, Brill, 2007; Dagmar Schäfer, The Crafting of the 10 000 Things. Knowledge and Technology in Seventeenth-Century China, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2011.

18. Marcus Popplow, « Formalization and interaction. Towards a comprehensive history of technology-related knowledge in early modern Europe », ISIS 106, 2015, p. 848-856.

19. Joel Mokyr, The Enlightened Economy. An Economic History of Britain, 1700-1850, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2009; Margaret C. Jacob, The First Knowledge Economy. Human Capital and the European Economy, 1750-1850, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2014.

20. Liliane Hilaire-Pérez, « Technology as a public culture in the eighteenth century: The artisans' legacy », History of Science, 45, 2007, p. 135-153.

21. See, for example, Francesca Bray, « Science, technique, technology. Passages between matter and knowledge in imperial Chinese agriculture », British Journal for the History of Science, 41, 2008, p. 1-26. See also the « focus section » entitled « Global histories of science » in ISIS 101, 2010, p. 95-158, in particular Sujit Sivasundaram, « Sciences and the global: on methods, questions, and theory », p. 146-158. For a reconsideration of the notion of « science » as employed in Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. I-VII, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1954-2008, see David de Saeger and Erik Weber, « Needham's Grand question revisited: On the meaning and justification of causal claims in the history of Chinese science », East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine, 33, 2011, p. 13-32. Furthermore Jürgen Renn (ed.), The globalization of knowledge in history, Berlin, Édition Open Access, 2012; Dagmar Schäfer, « Technology and innovation in global history and in the history of the global », in Maxine Berg (ed.), Writing the history of the global. Challenges for the 21st century, Oxford, Oxford university Press, 2013, p. 147-164.

22. Such approaches are cited and discussed, for example, in the contribution to the « focus section » entitled « Bridging concepts: Connecting and globalizing histories of science, history of technology, and economic history » in ISIS 106, 2015, edited by Karel Davids.

23. Karel Davids, Religion, Technology, and the Great and Little Divergences. China and Europe Compared, c. 700-1800, Leiden, Brill, 2013. See also his contribution in this volume.