| ID | 135948 |
| Title Proper | Reclaiming ground |
| Other Title Information | Japan’s great convergence |
| Language | ENG |
| Author | Thomas, Julia Adeney |
| Summary / Abstract (Note) | Kenneth Pomeranz’s Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy took the scholarly world by storm over ten years ago and still energizes debates in global history today.1 Pomeranz’s broad vision, clarity of analysis, careful research, and generous citations provincialized Europe on material grounds just as Dipesh Chakrabarty had provincialized Europe on intellectual grounds.2 The Great Divergence proposed that the economic productivity of northwestern Europe and core parts of China (especially the Yangzi Delta) had been roughly equivalent as late as 1800, followed by China’s swift economic decline in both relative and absolute terms. This argument weaned many adherents, though not all, from the older view of the West’s long-term, deep-rooted superiority.3 In subsequent discussions however, ‘China’ was often read as ‘Asia’, leaving Japan scholars relegated to the shadows, haunting the debate like hungry ghosts with no ground to stand on. Not only intellectually but also institutionally, The Great Divergence unintentionally helped obscure Japan from view because it appeared in 2001 just as the juggernaut of Chinese economic dominance rose above the horizon. University administrators, history departments, and global historians writing, as most do, from that perspective of Europe seemed to have found an ‘Asia’ sufficient to their wants, and many desired no other. Even though Japan remained the second and then the third largest economy in the world during the first decade of the twenty-first century, its historical and theoretical importance ebbed. In considering the rise of modern prosperity, it no longer seemed essential to think about Japan. At times Japan even appeared to be written out of world history and global consciousness. |
| `In' analytical Note | Japanese Studies Vol.34, No.3; Dec.2014: p.253-263 |
| Journal Source | Japanese Studies 2014-12 34, 3 |
| Standard Number | Europe |