Our article is a critical survey of the concepts, methods and date constructed and utilized by scholars (particularly the late Angus Maddison) in order to provide estimates for the measurement of relative levels and long term trends in the GDP per capita for China from the Han Dynasty to modern...

This article is a survey and critique of recent endeavours to establish statistical foundations for a chronology for the great divergence based upon trends and levels in relative wages. Our reading of the bibliography in Chinese labour history, together with a preliminary investigation into...

Since the publication of Kenneth Pomeranz’s seminal book The Great Divergence, the landscape of world and global history has changed dramatically. For the first time, living standards, instead of labour, land and capital productivities, have become the prime concern among historians in various...

The Great Divergence Debate, initiated by the ‘California School’ in 1998 has revitalised a meta question for global history of “when,” “how,” and “why” the economies of Western Europe, on the one hand and the Ming-Qing Empire of East Asia, the Mughal empire of South Asia and the...