Based on a synthesis of the empirical scholarship on England and Germany, this paper demonstrates that in both regions, rural socio‐economic developments from c.1200 to c.1800 are similar: this period witnesses the rise to numerical predominance and growing economic significance of the ‘sub‐peasant classes’, which had a growing impact on the market as a result of their increasing market dependence, and from which – towards the end of the period – a rural proletariat emerged. Against the influential theory of Robert Brenner, it is argued that the period c.1200–c.1400 cannot really be categorized as ‘feudal’ according to Brenner's definition; and ‘agrarian capitalism’ does not adequately describe the socio‐economic system that obtained by the end of the sixteenth century. A genuine transition to capitalism is only evident from after c.1750, and can be found in Germany as well as in England; it is predicated both on ideological shifts and on the evolution of the rural proletariat, which is only found in large numbers by or after c.1800.
Proceeding from a critical assessment of two recent books, Prasannan Parthasarathi's Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not, and Jean-Laurent Rosenthal and R. Bin Wong's Before and Beyond Divergence, this paper takes stock of the present state of the "Great Divergence" debate. It is argued that the discussion needs to be refined to distinguish between levels of economic development, and paths or trends, in the eighteenth cen tury as well as between causes of sustained growth, and of stagnation or decline in the nineteenth century. It is further suggested that the debate needs to be connected to an understanding of the causes of a "Great Convergence" in the early modern world, and how different regions might have reached similar levels of economic complexity, but might nevertheless have been on different paths for future growth. Finally, this paper suggests that the divergence debate also needs to be connected to the debate on the transition to capitalism.
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