Talk:Great Divergence

Great Divergence was a Social sciences and society good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
June 23, 2010	Good article nominee	Not listed

History Mid‑importance

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Section sizes

Section size for Great Divergence (41 sections)
Section name	Byte count		Prose size (words)
Section name	Header	Total	Header	Total
(Top)	2,977	2,977	297	297
Terminology and definition	6,532	6,532	459	459
Advanced pre-industrial regions	39	29,025	0	2,043
China	3,478	3,478	280	280
Western Europe	10,312	10,312	541	541
India	5,316	5,316	353	353
Middle East	3,356	3,356	286	286
Japan	2,157	2,157	114	114
Sub-Saharan Africa	4,367	4,367	469	469
Possible factors	109	77,994	12	6,289
Coal	3,007	3,007	303	303
New World	1,697	1,697	226	226
Slave trade	1,984	1,984	74	74
Political fragmentation	9,415	9,415	747	747
Other geographic factors	2,938	2,938	221	221
Efficiency of markets and state intervention	3,440	3,440	354	354
Wages and living standards	10,986	10,986	1,026	1,026
Luxury consumption	1,080	1,080	120	120
Property rights	4,684	4,684	453	453
High-level equilibrium trap	337	337	37	37
European colonialism	12,862	12,862	871	871
Culture	10,719	10,719	1,144	1,144
Representative government	2,317	2,317	108	108
Globalization	2,620	2,620	122	122
Chance	1,708	1,708	25	25
The Black Death	1,496	1,496	137	137
Guilds and journeymanship	888	888	67	67
The Catholic Church's Prohibition of Cousin Marriage	5,707	5,707	242	242
Economic effects	674	8,934	81	1,117
Productivity	742	742	92	92
Per capita income	1,718	1,718	192	192
Agriculture	1,553	1,553	186	186
Fuel and resources	1,539	1,539	217	217
Trade	2,708	2,708	349	349
See also	729	1,889	0	0
Books	1,160	1,160	0	0
References	16	8,600	0	0
Citations	34	34	0	0
Works cited	8,550	8,550	0	0
Further reading	2,163	2,163	0	0
External links	725	725	0	0
Total	138,839	138,839	10,205	10,205

A summary of this article appears in Modern history.

A summary of this article appears in Western world.

A summary of this article appears in History of Western civilization.

This article was the subject of an educational assignment that ended on 21 June 2010. Further details are available here.

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"pre" Great Divergence?

Latest comment: 5 months ago2 comments1 person in discussion

Resolved

I wonder if the "Conditions in pre–Great Divergence cores" section could benefit from a different name given the arguments between scholars about when, exactly, the Great Divergence really got going? Kirsten Jørgensdatter (talk) 13:47, 20 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Done I changed "Conditions in pre–Great Divergence cores" to "Advanced pre-industrial regions".
Kirsten Jørgensdatter (talk) 01:37, 21 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Sections that need to be condensed

Latest comment: 5 months ago2 comments1 person in discussion

The Culture section is the largest section in this article (over 1,100 words just for a single section) and needs to be condensed.
Kirsten Jørgensdatter (talk) 17:23, 27 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Wages and living standards is almost as bad (over 1,000 words).
Kirsten Jørgensdatter (talk) 17:24, 27 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Replace "Middle East"

Latest comment: 4 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

The current "Middle East" section should either be deleted or replaced by one or more of the following

(1) Koine Greek / Eastern Roman / Byzantine Empire
(2) Persianate society / Greater Iran / Greater Persia / Iranosphere
(3) Arab world
(4) Ottoman Empire

to capture some of the other advanced cultural/linguistic regions of pre-industrial Eurasia.

Kirsten Jørgensdatter (talk) 13:19, 15 March 2026 (UTC)Reply

"Western Europe" - > "Latin West"

Latest comment: 4 months ago8 comments2 people in discussion

I am proposing to replace "Western Europe" with "Latin West" for the relevant subsection title to convey the importance that though vernacular languages in Western Europe were increasing in diversity during the Middle Ages, there was nevertheless a shared elite/prestige language of government, culture and scholarship among the various countries of the "Latin" West (i.e. different countries speaking different vernacular languages nevertheless formed a unified sprachraum) which permits this region to be reasonably compared to other Eurasian cultural/linguistic areas also using a common language.

(User:Kanguole: can you please comment on your opposition?)
Kirsten Jørgensdatter (talk) 17:43, 15 March 2026 (UTC)Reply

The region is usually called Western Europe in the literature on the Great Divergence, which also doesn't place great weight on the use of Latin. The proposed renaming seems to be undue emphasis. Kanguole 20:06, 15 March 2026 (UTC)Reply

User:Kanguole: Are you looking for a historian who says that without Latin making Western Europe into a sprachraum, Western Europe would not have diverged?
Kirsten Jørgensdatter (talk) 20:11, 15 March 2026 (UTC)Reply

I'd be looking for a consensus among historians that it was a key factor in the GD. Kanguole 20:25, 15 March 2026 (UTC)Reply

It's not so much a "key factor" as a precondition for any comparisons of different regions. If the people and political units of "Western Europe" did not form a unified sprachraum, then it would not make any sense to compare them as a unit to China or any other Eurasian linguistic/cultural area. Kirsten Jørgensdatter (talk) 14:08, 19 March 2026 (UTC)Reply

I don't see a consensus among economic historians for this precondition of classification either. It certainly makes sense to compare geographical regions. Kanguole 17:22, 19 March 2026 (UTC)Reply

It does not make any sense to compare geographical regions. Geographical regions are not "diverging". Kirsten Jørgensdatter (talk) 00:26, 20 March 2026 (UTC)Reply

And yet that is what the sources do. For example, the only occurrences of "Latin" in Pomeranz's book are in the term "Latin America". Kanguole 09:39, 20 March 2026 (UTC)Reply