Abstract
Perhaps the period and chronology most realistically represented as marked by divergence between Western Europe and Imperial China can be most plausibly located as the centuries between 1644 and 1846—when structural change, urbanization, technological progress and state formation became the outstanding and commonplace features of transitions to modern economic growth in several regions and countries of Western Europe. In scale and scope nothing comparable became visible in Ming and significant for Qing China where the problem confronting the imperial state was how to maintain standards of living for a rapidly increasing population. For reasons that are elaborated in this chapter, the cluster of Sinocentred analyses and narratives concerned to explain why European economies responded more effectively and efficiently to the challenges of demographic change will be elaborated, referenced and exposed as partial and inadequate as European economic history.
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O’Brien, P.K. (2020). SinoCentred Reciprocal Comparisons of Europe’s and China’s: Economic Growth 1650–1850. In: The Economies of Imperial China and Western Europe. Palgrave Studies in Economic History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54614-4_5
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