Before and Beyond Divergence读后感锦集

《Before and Beyond Divergence》是一本由Jean-Laurent Rosenthal / R. Bin 著作，Harvard University Press出版的Hardcover图书，本书定价：USD 45.00，页数：290，特精心收集的读后感，希望对大家能有帮助。

《Before and Beyond Divergence》读后感(一)：对中西比较文献的好综述

困死了……逻辑难免不清……明天醒过来慢慢改……

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已经放了两年，中间翻过几页。这次因为要present，三天读完——顺便解放出了一个美貌的书签，当时购于中央美院的乌菲齐博物馆画展。

读之前我心里其实是有点唧唧歪歪的——好容易讲点中国，结果又让我看中欧比较，老生常谈的“Why Euro, why not China？"，能不能有点新意。

觉得缺乏新意+自己的文献背景太差，是我上次没读下去的原因。

然而在读的过程中，我心中对这本书却升起了如同对待徐中约著名教科书一样的情感。虽然本书因为还是存在他们自己的观点因此和徐中约教科书的性质并不一样，但是除去作者自己的观点不看，其他部分却具有很好地clarification的作用。

和其他中西比较的书一样，本书试图回答”why did sustained economic growth arise in Europe rather than in China？"。作者提出，中国的大一统帝国和欧洲割据的政治结构是造成中国与欧洲现有制度和发展轨迹不同的主要原因（虽然没有明确论证两种spatial polity产生是如何产生的）。而与最近的中西比较趋势更符合的是，他们并没有强调欧洲制度的“如何优越”，而是认为中国与欧洲的制度安排是给定大一统帝国和割据之后的合理推演，并没有优劣之分。事实上，欧洲为自己的割据付出了很大代价，以至于在1500年之前始终落后于中国。

他们从市场组织、工业的选址、信贷市场、财政支出等方面论证了自己的结论，同时反驳了已有的从人口、文化、路径依赖等角度提出的解释。

我给本书打出五颗星不是因为结论，而是我认为本书对已有中西比较的文献作了非常清楚的综述——这是以往的同类文献很少做到的。

中西比较的学术研究大概开始于李约瑟之谜，随后林林总总，学派就诞生了不少。而中西比较文献的最大问题是——原问题的提出就基于西方视角，暗含”科学技术进步是人类发展必经之路“的假设，曾被哲学系的某老师评论为是“伪命题”。而在随后的研究中，虽然话题和原因从科学技术逐渐深入到制度与文化，但是以西方视角为标准看到中国也一直未能得到彻底的避免和澄清。特别海外中国研究由于受师承和学派的影响过于明显，很多作者在书中并不特别澄清的学派和观点，造成很多不必要的困扰。对读者如我，看读过不少混乱的中西比较和海外中国研究之后面对此类研究总会不免迟疑，因为里面不知道又隐含着什么假设和视角。目前读过的最统一的观点应该是市场和财政，而最庞杂的，应该是契约、产权、文化这些话题。

所以本书的最大贡献就在于对此类文献视角的澄清，和对以往文献中隐藏假设的澄清。尽管本书探讨的话题是传统的，基于工业革命的原因和由这些原因阐发出的中西比较文献（生育率转型、正式与非正式制度、城市兴起……），但视角却是相对干净的。作为读者，我们可以不接受两个作者提出的解释，但是对于这种澄清，却需要格外感激。

最后是本书的问题。我认为，在读书的时候需要特别注意以下几个方面。

1）很明显，作者挑选的领域大多数他们熟悉的……特别信贷市场，其实中国信贷市场的研究现在还是比较薄弱的，作者也承认做不出太多的结论。换句话说，中西比较的方面绝不限于书中提到的领域，可以做的更多。而使用简单模型抽离历史，中间抽出了百年甚至上千年动态的历史，中间的寥寥数语也需要我们进一步的填补。

2）当代中国部分还值得商榷。中国经济史的书要扯到现在才好卖……但是在generalize的时候还是需要小心。

Warning: 个人认为，本书由于信息量较大，不适合入门，不适合对所覆盖话题的背景一无所知（欧洲历史/中国历史/中西比较文献）的读者——比如两年前只知道粮食市场的我。一个测试方法：随便翻开一章，如果对其中50%以上的last name+年代都比较熟悉，知道原文大概在讲什么，那么就应该可以读。否则推荐Brandt, Rawski and Ma的JEL（chapter 2），以及徐中约的The Rise of Modern China.

《Before and Beyond Divergence》读后感(二)：Book review(Comparing the narration of divergence)

This week’s reading focuses on the study of divergence, which is adopted to describe the opposite economic performances between China and Europe during 19th century. Such divergence, once misunderstood as ‘to explain the stagnated and terrible economic development in China’, was regarded as the product of Eurocentrism which emphasized conditions in Europe more conductive to sustained growth comparing to Asia.As we all know, such research was of great weakness. To get rid of that, scholars spared no effort to introspect the economic history from 17th to 19th century by abandoning the assumption that ’Industrial revolution is an inevitable result of the superior economic institutions in western society and ‘using Chinese experience to examine Europe.’(p.p 425) Kenneth Pomeranz and R.Bin Wong, are the representatives.

Pomeranz’s paper, Political Economy and Ecology on the eve of Industrialization, is a brief summary of his famous book, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy. As I mentioned above, Pomeranz abandoned the assumption and regarded the divergence as discontinuous as well as partly exogenous development. By asking the question, ‘Why did sustained industrial growth begins in northwest Europe rather than in East Asia’, he made a explicit comparison between China and Europe to figure out factors leading to the divergence during the 19th century. In the essay, Pomeranz proposed discussions of consumption levels and analysis of labor markets as well as household labor allocation in both areas. Through comparison, similarities were observed and thus explained as “many important economic variabilities had similar values”. (p.p425) Therefore, Pomeranz concluded the divergence had ‘less to do with economic institutions, attitudes or demographic processes in these core regions themselves’(p.p427). After that, another comparison on the possible ecological ’limits to growth’ at both ends of eighteenth century Eurasia was proposed, showing that both China and Europe were facing the wood shortage and the Malthusian Trap in the 18th century. Only the fundamental discontinuous coal boom in Britain during 19th century, which required geographic fortune and technical innovation, could lead to the abrupt start of industrial revolution. In addition, by describing the geographic discovery of new land, Pomeranz argued that European’s relationship with peripherals was another important factor for the divergence which the new world was expanding as a source of land-intensive exports, allowing Europe to become ever more specializing in manufacturing. In a word, it is the location and the quality of coal, combining with the various political structured relationship between the core and the peripherals that leaded to the divergence in 19th century.

However, Conclanis proposed a mild critic on hisTen years After:Reflection on Kenneth Pomeranz’s the Great Divergence. After summarizing Pomeranz’s work as ‘Refraction, ReOrientation, Recalibration, Rejuvenation’, he pointed out that what Pomeranz explained for the British industrial surge in the late 18th and early 19th century was ‘weak or at least very incomplete’. From his perspective, Ponmeranz did not pay much attention to the ‘institutional, political-governmental, military,technological and cultural developments that did in fact distinguish England’s path’. (p.p12)To solve such weakness, introducing the work from the other representative from the California School, R. Bin Wong, together with Rosenthal Jean-Laurent, would be of great necessity.

By criticizing North’s work, Violence and Social Orders, which provided a framework of political economy, as could hardly fit Chinese experience in, Wong presented a sharp critic on the assumption regarding Western political and economic practices as ‘superior’, similar to Pomeranz’s. Nevertheless, differences between these two works are clear: 1. Wong was searching for an interior mechanism(the politics of economic change) that go beyond the circumstantial explanation provided by Pomeranz. 2.Wong observed differences that once considered by some to reflect cultural traits particular to one region and regard them as the product of social and political environmental conditions while Pomeranz treated them as natural and geographical ones. In a word, Wong was trying to explain economic changes in both areas using Economic Theories and figure out the political influential factors. Even such political influential factors to the industrial revolution is somehow, unintended.

Wong then retrospected the economic history related to the political institutions in both areas, through comparison, he figured out the fragment political structure in Europe was more likely to transit to modern economic growth by the late 18th century, even unrecognized. Chinese one, though very successful in creating political peace and social stability for the economic growth in early modern period, lost its advantages partly due to the political challenge from Japan and Western Society.(p.p 209) Apparently, it is hard to draw a conclusion that one institution is always better than the other, but these differences in political structures and political institutions could somehow explain the divergence in the 19th century.

《Before and Beyond Divergence》读后感(三)：a conscious combination of economics and history

had the honor of meeting with the two authors today, so it occurred to me that I should write a review for this book.

if you look at the literature, the cooperation between economics and history is way less successful than I once thought.To quote this book "too often economists consign the knowledge of historians to the bin of irrelevant details, while historians and area-studies scholars treat economic theory as a construct with little relevance". Given this situation, the effort made by this book is more appreciated.

They basically resort to very basic relative factor price theory to demonstrate how spacial scale of polities would effect economic outcomes through relative attractiveness of labor and capital. The main proposal is in Chapter 4, where the authors argue that political fragmentation and constant wars in Europe caused the urban biased distribution of manufactories because craftsmen would seek protection behind city walls despite lower cost of labor and easier access to food supply in the rural side. Consequently, Europe manufactories would be more likely to deploy capital compared to their Chinese counterparts. While in China, because the empire was able to maintain peace as a norm, manufactories tended to locate in rural areas to take advantage of cheaper labors, which is more profitable given the nature of manufacture before industrial revolution. this divergence of localities of manufactories was there as early as 1000 BCE, so early that institutional divergence such as credit market, new technologies, trades with new world and other popular explanations were simply not present to account for it. the causal link between polity scale and european manufacturing's urban bent relative to China is very neatly summarized in a model.

What is nice about this neatness is that it could be easily supported, qualified or proven against. The authors are quite proud about this advantage of their approach, too. I would be interested to look at whether there was a tendency for craftsman to shift to cities during fragmentation period in Chinese history, like in 南北朝/五代. I do have the impression that these periods, though notorious for political caos, witnessed noticeable urban development. If this impression is supported by further examination, the authors proposition would be strengthened.

Moreover, to examine the situation in "abnormal" moments in Chinese history, when the fragmentation and competition between states were more similar to Europe, we could bring in new evidence. After all, it is the authors' claim that they seek to provide a framework to account for differences not only between Europe and china, but also within them and across time.

Their proposal is that China and Europe set on different paths long before 1750s, when divergence in economic performance started to show up. Cultural, religious, environmental, and lucky availability of new world(as suggested by Kenneth Pomeranz) may have sustained the persistance and even enlargement of the divergence, but certainly did not cause it. In other chapters, the authors are ambitious to search for explanations beyond circumstantial as the work of Pomeranz and Allen, and to demonstrate that some "cultural" traits are actually products of rational choices. Also they reject the notion that some narrow institutional difference such as formal property rights protection and credit market setup are substantial and sufficient. Especially, they accuse the 2009 work of North et al on violence and social orders as "making the ideas and institutions of Europe and neo-Europe the normes with which they generalize about the world", and the case the China is far less easy to fit in their framework. (I will examine this accusation personally, as i have started to read that book). The thesis of Wong&Rosenthal is more in line with the work of Avner Greif, who argues the high substitutability of different institutions, formal or informal, to serve the same purpose.

I personally find chapter 3 on "formal and informal mechanisms for market development" more interesting.Although I do have some reservations about their definition of formal/informal institution. "Formal ways of enforcing agreements rely on government officials (e.g. judges) to decide disputed points and impose coercive or financial penalties when contracts are broken. informal mechanisms, in contrast, require that private parties decide when contracts have been broken and what penalties to exact, whether that means shunning offending parties or other sanctions" (chapter 3, pp69).Based on my impression, the distinction is not so nice and neat. For example, there were many cases where magistrates in China would judge commercial disputes according to local customs instead of written laws, even if when such laws were actually available. I suppose this should count as informal rather than formal as suggested by this definition.

In other situations, although merchants did solve the disputes privately, formal regulations actually played their roles by providing a benchmark. This is, I believe, very different from when there were no such regulations. I suppose we could observe that the result of dispute solving should not be very far from the expected result if they did go to the court, when such kind of court judgment is available. Because if one party suffered so much from private settlements compared to expected result from courtroom, then it would be profitable cost to go to the court even after taking account of legitimate fees and time. Of course, it also depends on the ability of the court to enforce its judgments. Anyway, my point is that when there is supply of court judgments with reasonable ability to enforce court decisions, even if people do not go to the court, formal regulations do provide the benchmark and common expectation so that the result form informal settlement does not deviate very much.

In Europe, the situation was different. Long-distance trade would largely be international trade. Although compared to China, Europe had less long-distance trade, but I expect international trade took up a larger proportion of trade in Europe than in China. I think international trade differs from pure long-distance trade in an important way that the authors failed to address: there is no unique set of regulations to resort to. Which state’s law should apply for the disputes between merchant from state A and merchant from state B doing business in state C？ Merchants would try to apply the regulations most favorable to themselves. This would call for clarification beforehand and thus give rise to formal contract, and even state-level common agreement. This is also an important basis for international relationship besides wars. I suspect that China lacked this kind of experiences, but I am not sure. I would be interested to see how disputes between Chinese and foreign merchants got settled in maritime trade.