1 Pomeranz, Kenneth, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the making of the modern world economy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000Google Scholar. See also idem, ‘Political economy and ecology on the eve of industrialization: Europe, China, and the global conjuncture’, American Historical Review, 107, 2, 2002, pp. 425–46.

2 Williams, Eric, Capitalism and slavery, London: Andre Deutsch, 1944Google Scholar.

3 See for example Richard Sheridan, ‘The plantation revolution and the Industrial Revolution, 1625–1775’, Caribbean Studies, 9, 3, 1969, pp. 5–25; Stanley Engerman, ‘The slave trade and British capital formation in the eighteenth century: a comment on the Williams thesis’, Business History Review, 46, 4, 1972, pp. 430–43; Barbara Solow, ‘Caribbean slavery and British growth: the Eric Williams hypothesis’, Journal of Development Economics, 17, 1985, pp. 99–115; idem, ‘Capitalism and slavery in the exceedingly long run’, in Barbara Solow and Stanley Engerman, eds., British capitalism and Caribbean slavery: the legacy of Eric Williams, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, pp. 51–77; Patrick O’Brien, ‘European economic development: the contribution of the periphery’, Economic History Review, 35, 1, 1982, pp. 1–18; idem, ‘A critical review of a tradition of meta-narratives from Adam Smith to Karl Pomeranz’, in P. C. Emmer, I. Pétré-Grenouilleau, and J. V. Roitman, eds., A deus ex machina revisited: Atlantic colonial trade and European economic development, Leiden: Brill, 2006, pp. 5–20; Paul Bairoch, Economics and world history: myths and paradoxes, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992; Joseph Inikori, ‘Slavery and the development of industrial capitalism in England’, in Solow and Engerman, British capitalism, pp. 79–102; idem, Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England: a study in international trade and economic development, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002; Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson, ‘The rise of Europe: Atlantic trade, institutional change, and economic growth’, American Economic Review, 95, 3, 2005, pp. 546–79.

4 Pomeranz, Great Divergence, ch. 1–2.

5 See for example Robert Allen et al., ‘Wages, prices, and living standards in China, 1738–1925: in comparison with Europe, Japan and India’, University of Oxford, Department of Economics discussion paper 316, 2005, http://www.nuffield.ox.ac.uk/users/allen/unpublished/group-1.pdf (consulted 18 August 2010); Robert Allen, The British industrial revolution in global perspective, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009; Stephen Broadberry and Bishnupriya Gupta, ‘The early modern Great Divergence: wages, prices and economic development in Europe and Asia, 1500–1800’, Economic History Review, 59, 1, 2006, pp. 2–31; Jan Luiten van Zanden, The long road to the industrial revolution: the European economy in a global perspective, 1000–1800, Leiden: Brill, 2009.

6 Pomeranz, Great Divergence, ch. 6 and appendix D. The vast endowments of land in the New World are also an important explanation behind the colonization of the Americas, according to P. J. Cain and A. G. Hopkins, British Imperialism, 1688–2000, Harlow: Longman, 2001.

7 Pomeranz, Great Divergence, p. 267.

8 P. H. H. Vries, ‘Are coal and colonies really crucial? Kenneth Pomeranz and the Great Divergence’, Journal of World History, 12, 2, 2001, p. 434.

9 Davis, Ralph, The Industrial Revolution and British overseas trade, Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1979Google Scholar, table 38. See also idem, ‘English foreign trade, 1660–1700’, Economic History Review, 7, 2, 1954, pp. 150–66, and idem, ‘English foreign trade, 1700–1774’, Economic History Review, 15, 2, 1962, pp. 285–303, for the period prior to the Industrial Revolution.

10 Davis, Industrial Revolution, table 9.

11 Gregory Clark, Kevin O’Rourke, and Alan Taylor, ‘Made in America? The New World, the old, and the Industrial Revolution’, American Economic Review, 98, 2, 2008, pp. 523–28.

12 See for example Evans, Chris and Rydén, Göran, Baltic iron in the Atlantic world in the eighteenth century, Leiden: Brill, 2007CrossRefGoogle Scholar; J. A. Faber, ‘The decline of the Baltic grain trade in the second half of the seventeenth century’, in W.G. Heeres et al., eds., From Dunkirk to Danzig: shipping and trade in the North Sea and the Baltic, 1350–1850, Hilversum: Verloren, 1988, pp. 31–51; Kristof Glamann, ‘European trade 1500–1750’, in Carlo Cipolla, ed., The Fontana economic history of Europe: the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Fontana, 1971, pp. 427–526; idem, ‘The changing pattern of trade’, in E. E. Rich and C.H. Wilson, eds., The Cambridge economic history of Europe, vol. 5: the economic organization of early modern Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977, pp. 185–289; Eli Heckscher, ‘Europas kopparmarknad och den svenska kopparen (Europe’s copper market and Swedish copper)’, in Historieuppfattning: materialistisk och annan (Understanding of history: materialist and other), Stockholm: Bonniers, 1944; Staffan Högberg, Utrikeshandel och sjöfart på 1700–talet: stapelvaror i svensk export och import 1738–1808 (Foreign trade and shipping during the eighteenth century: staples in Swedish exports and imports 1738–1808), Stockholm: Bonniers, 1969; Jonathan Israel, Dutch primacy in world trade 1585–1740, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989; Hans Christian Johansen, Shipping and trade between the Baltic area and western Europe 1784–1795, Odense: Odense University Press, 1983; J. Ph. S. Lemmink and J. S. A. M. van Koningsbrugge, eds., Baltic affairs: relations between the Netherlands and north-eastern Europe 1500–1800, Nijmegen: Institute for Northern and Eastern European Studies, 1990; Milja van Tielhof, The ‘mother of all trades’: the Baltic grain trade in Amsterdam from the late 16th to the early 19th century, Leiden: Brill, 2002; Immanuel Wallerstein, The modern world-system: capitalist agriculture and the origins of the European world-economy in the sixteenth century, New York: Academic Press, 1974; idem, The modern world-system II: mercantilism and the consolidation of the European world-economy 1600–1750, New York: Academic Press, 1980.

13 Inikori, Africans, table 8.1.

14 Pomeranz, Great Divergence, p. 258.

15 See, for example, Topolski, Jerzy, ‘Economic decline in Poland from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries’, in Peter Earle, ed., Essays in European economic history, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974Google Scholar, pp. 137–42.

16 Danish National Archive (Rigsarkivet), Sound Toll Chamber (Øresunds toldkammer), Commodity Records from the North and Baltic Seas, 1773–1856 (Vareregistre fra Nord- og Østersøen 1773–1856) (henceforth DNA, STCCR).

17 Sven-Erik Åström, From tar to timber: studies in northeast European forest exploitation and foreign trade 1660–1860, Helsinki: Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters, 1988; Kalevi Ahonen, From sugar triangle to cotton triangle: trade and shipping between America and Baltic Russia, 1783–1860, Jyvaskyla: University of Jyvaskyla, 2005; Klas Rönnbäck, ‘Atlantic sugar in the Baltic economy during the Early Modern period’, in Commerce and colonisation: studies in early modern merchant capitalism in the Atlantic economy, Gothenburg Studies in Economic History 3, Gothenburg: University of Gothenburg, 2009. See also idem, ‘The Sound Toll Chamber Commodity Records: estimating the reliability of a potential source to international trade history’, International Journal of Maritime History, forthcoming 2010.

18 See, for example, Pomeranz, Great Divergence, pp. 253–63.

19 Davis, Industrial Revolution, p. 82.

20 Van Tielhof, ‘Mother’, ch. 2.

21 Paul Sharp, ‘The long American grain invasion of Britain: market integration and the wheat trade between North America and Britain from the eighteenth century’, University of Copenhagen: Department of Economics Discussion paper 08–20, 2008, http://www.econ.ku.dk/english/research/publications/wp/2008/0820.pdf (consulted 19 August 2010), fig. 2.

22 Pat Hudson, ‘The limits of wool and the potential of cotton in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries’, in Riello, Giorgio and Parthasarathi, Prasannan, eds., The spinning world: a global history of cotton textiles, 1200–1850, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009Google Scholar, pp. 327–50.

23 Peter Gunst, ‘Agrarian systems of central and eastern Europe’, in Agrarian development and social change in eastern Europe, 14th–19th centuries, Aldershot: Variorum, 1996, pp. 53–91.

24 See for example Jane Gray, ‘The Irish, Scottish, and Flemish linen industries during the long eighteenth century’, in Brenda Collins and Philip Ollerenshaw, eds., The European linen industry in historical perspective, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003, pp. 159–86.

25 Pomeranz, Great Divergence, pp. 276 and 315.

26 Kent, H. S. K., War and trade in northern seas: Anglo-Scandinavian economic relations in the mid-eighteenth century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973Google Scholar, ch. 3 and appendix 1.

27 Åström, From tar, table II:1.

28 Åström’s data on timber exports from the Baltic through the Sound unfortunately only cover a shorter period, 1785–1817, and are therefore not included in the table. For the pre-Blockade period, the overall trend seems slightly negative, mainly because exports of both fir timber and deals grew to a peak by the 1790s, after which they stagnate and later decline, owing to a Russian prohibition on exports (more on this in the main text): see Åström, From tar, table VI:1 B.

29 See for example Topolski, ‘Economic decline’; Witold Kula, An economic theory of the feudal system: towards a model of the Polish economy 1500–1800, London: NLB, 1976, pp. 115–17.

30 Peter Gunst, ‘Some characteristics of east European economic and social development: data and reflections’, in Gunst, Agrarian development, pp. 13–41.

31 Peter Gunst, ‘Some characteristics of East European economic and social development: data and reflections’ in Gunst, Agrarian development.

32 Gunst, ‘Agrarian systems’, p. 74.

33 Oliver Volckart, ‘Central Europe’s way to a market economy, 1000–1800’, European Review of Economic History, 6, 2002, pp. 309–37.

34 Berend, Ivan, History derailed: central and eastern Europe in the long nineteenth century, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003Google Scholar, p. 27. See also Marcel Mazoyer and Laurence Rodart, A history of world agriculture: from the Neolithic Age to the current crisis, London: Earthscan, 2006, p. 345; Giovanni Federico, Feeding the world: an economic history of agriculture, 1800–2000, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005, p. 148.

35 Robert Allen, ‘Economic structure and agricultural productivity in Europe, 1300–1800’, European Review of Economic History, 3, 2000, pp. 1–25.

36 Kula, An economic theory, pp. 94–5.

37 David Jacks, ‘Market integration in the North and Baltic Seas, 1500–1800’, Journal of European Economic History, 33, 3, 2004, pp. 285–329. See also Christiaan van Bochove, ‘Market integration and the North Sea system (1600–1800)’, in Hanno Brand and Loes Müller, eds., The dynamics of economic culture in the North Sea- and Baltic region in the late Middle Ages and early modern period, Hilversum: Uitgeverij Verloren, 2007, pp. 155–169.

38 Berend, History, p. 148.

39 Sven-Erik Åström, From Stockholm to St. Petersburg: commercial factors in the political relations between England and Sweden 1675–1700, Helsinki: Finnish Historical Society, 1962, pp. 15–18. See also Kent, War, ch. 1.

40 Davis, Industrial Revolution, pp. 48–9; Åström, From tar, p. 92.

41 Williams, Michael, Deforesting the earth: from prehistory to global crisis, Chicago: University of Chicago press, 2003Google Scholar, ch. 10.

42 Åström, From tar, graph on p. 60, and tables V:3 and V:5 B 2.

43 Ibid., p. 40.

44 Federico, Feeding, table 4.1.

45 Kula, An economic theory, p. 114–15.

46 Ronald Findlay, ‘International trade and factor mobility with an endogenous land frontier: some general equilibrium implications of Christopher Columbus’, in Wilfred Ethier, Elhanan Helpman, and Peter Neary, eds., Theory, policy and dynamics in international trade: essays in honor of Ronald W. Jones, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 38–54. A similar argument has recently been made by Nuala Zahedieh, The capital and the colonies: London and the Atlantic economy 1660–1700, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, pp. 280–92.

47 See, for example, Kevin O’Rourke, ‘The European grain invasion, 1870–1913’, Journal of Economic History, 57, 4, 1997, pp. 775–801; C. Knick Harley, ‘Western settlement and the price of wheat’, Journal of Economic History, 38, 4, 1978, pp. 865–78; idem, ‘Transportation, the world wheat trade, and the Kuznets cycle, 1850–1913’, Explorations in Economic History, 17, 1980, pp. 218–50; Sharp, ‘The long American grain invasion’.

48 DNA, STCCR 1773–1856, data not shown.

49 Mikhail Tugan-Baranovsky, The Russian factory in the 19th century, trans. Arthur Levin and Claora S. Levin, Homewood: American Economic Association/Richard Irwin Inc, 1970 [1898], pp. 54–5.

50 Pomeranz mentions some of these himself in passing – including technological factors and the labour intensity of the cloth-producing process – but mainly emphasizes the acreage necessary for the supply of the fibres: see Pomeranz, Great Divergence, p. 276. See also, for example, Joel Mokyr, The lever of riches: technological creativity and economic progress, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 103.

51 Beverly Lemire, ‘Transforming consumer custom: linens, cottons and the English market, 1660–1800’, in Collins and Ollerenshaw, European linen industry, pp. 187–208.

52 Vries ‘Are coal’, p. 429; Hudson, ‘Limits’; Lemire, ‘Transforming’.

53 This is perhaps compatible with Pomeranz’s claim that the Americas were important not only because of the vast acreage as such but also because the former colonies were ‘set up’ during colonial times to demand European products in exchange for the exports of raw materials: see Pomeranz, Great Divergence, p. 267.

54 Clark, O’Rourke, and Taylor, ‘Made in America’.

55 Cornelis Fasseur, The politics of colonial exploitation: Java, the Dutch and the cultivation system, trans. R. E. Elson and Ary Kraal, Ithaca, NY: Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University, 1992; Galloway, J. H., The sugar cane industry: an historical geography from its origins to 1914, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989Google Scholar.

56 Davis, Industrial Revolution, table 26. See also Michael Edwards, The growth of the British cotton trade, 1780–1815, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1967, ch. 5; Douglas Farnie, The English cotton industry and the world market, 1815–1896, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979, ch. 3.

57 See for example Findlay, ‘International trade’; Harley, ‘Western settlement’; idem, ‘Transportation’; C. Knick Harley, ‘Ocean freight rates and productivity, 1740–1913: the primacy of mechanical invention reaffirmed’, Journal of Economic History, 48, 4, 1988, pp. 851–76; Karl Gunnar Persson, ‘Mind the gap! Transport costs and price convergence in the nineteenth century Atlantic economy’, European Review of Economic History, 8, 2004, pp. 125–47.

58 Federico, Feeding, p. 40, also table 5.2 for figures on land and labour productivity in diverse countries by the late nineteenth century.

59 Alfred Conrad and John Meyer, ‘The economics of slavery in the ante-bellum South’, Journal of Political Economy, 66, 1958, pp. 95–130; Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman, Time on the cross: the economics of American negro slavery, London: Wildwood House, 1974. For more recent summaries of the debates that followed, see Mark Smith, Debating slavery: economy and society in the antebellum American South, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, ch. 5; Fogel, Robert, The slavery debates, 1952–1990: a retrospective, Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2003Google Scholar, pp. 30–2.