Commercial Innovation in Global Comparative Perspective: New Approaches to the Great Divergence

A large body of literature seeks to isolate the causes of Western European economic takeoff by comparing early modern Europe with China. Increasingly, scholars focus on cultural, social, and political organization as a likely decisive difference. But the proximate mechanism is often economic, namely, the commercial and financial revolutions of the Middle Ages and seventeenth century, respectively—revolutions that China allegedly lacked. This paper challenges these premises, arguing for more similar developmental trajectories at least with reform to economic organization. This finding has important implications for global history and even development theory.