Provincializing Global History

In recent decades, the question of why Europe was able to embark on sustained growth in the late eighteenth century and spearhead nineteenth-century economic globalisation has been decidedly global in scope. Studies of the Great Divergence include numerous comparative studies of China, Britain and north-western Europe and their political institutions, scientific cultures and access to natural resources, labour and capital. In this book, James Livesey turns his back on this larger global theatre and list of factors to examine the context for European ascendency through the lens of knowledge culture. Following in the footsteps of scholars such as Joel Mokyr, Margaret Jacob and Jack Goldstone, who credit European-led globalisation to Europe’s scientific culture and technological innovation, Livesey nonetheless takes issue with their amplified focus on elites in Europe’s and particularly Britain’s commercial centres. Sustained growth, Livesey argues, became possible and systemic only once scientific and cultural innovation and an orientation

History · History of Science and Medicine