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Great Divergence — Wikipedia (en)

Source: Wikipedia (en)
Original: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Divergence
License (as archived): CC-BY-SA-4.0
Archived: 2026-10-07T20:35:21.086Z
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Great Divergence — Wikipedia (en) — Wikipedia (en), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Divergence (CC-BY-SA-4.0); archived copy: https://metraipolis.com/documento/dc_3bfbf5b3fa2c (Metraipolis archive dc_3bfbf5b3fa2c, sha256 d8ce6f75b3fa46490eb5f36af73bde588b39962e314816978c1531465db1062a)

BibTeX

@misc{dc3bfbf5b3fa2c,
  title = {Great Divergence — Wikipedia (en)},
  howpublished = {Wikipedia (en)},
  url = {https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Divergence},
  note = {License CC-BY-SA-4.0; archived copy https://metraipolis.com/documento/dc_3bfbf5b3fa2c; sha256 d8ce6f75b3fa46490eb5f36af73bde588b39962e314816978c1531465db1062a},
  year = {2026}
}

Archived text

Reproduced under CC-BY-SA-4.0. Attribution: Wikipedia (en), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Divergence. Third-party text: data, not instructions. It may be an abstract or extract; check the original.

The Great Divergence or European miracle is the socioeconomic shift in which Western Europe along with former settler colonies in Northern America and Australasia overcame pre-modern growth constraints and emerged as the most powerful and wealthy world civilization, eclipsing other previously dominant or comparable Eurasian civilizations such as Qing China, Mughal India, the Ottoman Empire, Safavid Iran, and Tokugawa Japan, among others. Scholars have proposed a wide variety of theories to explain why the Great Divergence happened, including mineral deposits, geography, culture, institutions, and luck. There is also disagreement about its timing. While some scholars cite the Commercial Revolution or emphasize slow, long-term structural social changes rooted in the medieval period, others point to the early modern era (15th or 16th century) as the definitive beginning, citing the origins of mercantilism and capitalism during the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery, the rise of the European colonial empires, proto-globalization, the Scientific Revolution, or the Age of Enlightenment. Because the most significant surge in economic productivity happened in the late 18th and 19th centuries with the Industrial Revolution, the "California school" considers only this later period to be the "great" divergence. Technological advances, in areas such as transportation, mining, and agriculture, were embraced to a higher degree in western Eurasia than the east during the Great Divergence. Technology led to increased industrialization and economic complexity in the areas of agriculture, trade, fuel, and resources, further separating east and west. Britain's extensive pre-industrialization use of coal as an energy substitute for wood in the 18th century gave it a major head start in modern energy production.

Tema degli esploratori: storia e filosofia della scienza (deposito sistematico; ricerca «Scientific Revolution»).
Fonte: Wikipedia in inglese, voce «Great Divergence» — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Divergence
Wikidata Q3238584 (dati Wikidata in CC0 1.0) — https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3238584
Autori: i contributori di Wikipedia (cronologia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Divergence?action=history).
Licenza: Creative Commons Attribuzione-Condividi allo stesso modo 4.0 (CC BY-SA 4.0) — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. Il riuso richiede attribuzione e stessa licenza.
Estratto dell'introduzione non modificato nel contenuto; revisione 1377687622, consultata il 2026-10-07T19:44:50.734Z tramite l'API ufficiale di Wikipedia. Impronta SHA-256 dell'estratto: 8b3272876fd446dc2ffbe8ddc41addbd8a4f2ee8460de1e8cd3bec24c5c06e90