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  • Essay / Understanding the Great Divergence based on the example of the Californian School

    In the article Peer Vries, professor of international economic history at the University of Vienna, aims to analyze the theme of the Great Divergence, that is, the financial gap between the richest and most developed countries and the poorest and most disadvantaged countries. To do this, he focuses his attention on the interpretations of the California School, a group of intellectuals working in the universities of the state of the same name, analyzing their arguments and criticizing their weaknesses. He chose to draw inspiration from the example of Great Britain and China to achieve his objective: saying no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayThe school actually argues that from the 15th century until the advent of the Industrial Revolution, there were no difference between Western Europe and Eastern Europe. Asia, but that there were indeed some similarities. Their view on the study of economic history differs from typically Eurocentric views, such as Weberian and Marxist views, as they place China as the heart of the modern global economy since, according to them, it was the cradle of numerous innovations. They viewed China as having the largest economy in the world, giving the example of what Vries defines as "the money sink thesis" and explaining that, with the large silver import surplus, the Chinese economic strength could be underlined. In their view, Britain, or Western Europe in general, developed at the expense of Asian countries and their colonies, exploiting their resources, and therefore cannot be considered the creator of the world economy. pure luck. However, Vries is keen to emphasize the fact that one cannot compare British development to that of China and vice versa since the general situations in which these countries evolved were completely different. The author would like to point out that, on the one hand, compared to China, even before industrialization, England was inclined to mechanical and technological innovations, its main goal being to achieve a strong economic system. China, on the other hand, placed a lot of emphasis on human labor. In fact, the most important production unit was the household itself. Keep in mind: this is just a sample. Get a personalized paper now from our expert writers. essayIn addition, there was also a huge difference in terms of military organization: England had indeed always been more militarily organized than China, which found it difficult to defeat even the weakest enemies. In conclusion, if it is true that the approach to this subject by the Californian school, with its innovative character, has influenced in many respects the way in which people look at the economic history of the world, the arguments presented are not not always congruent with each other. It would be really convenient to see and study the evolution of societies individually since they cannot be compared to each other...