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The Great Divergence Debate and the Epistemological Framing of Historical Causality
大分流论争与历史因果关系的认识论建构
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The ‘Great Divergence’ debate—sparked by Kenneth Pomeranz’s 2000 thesis—reframed industrialization not as European inevitability but as contingent conjuncture.‘大分流’论战由彭慕兰2000年的论点引发，将工业化重新界定为偶然的历史交汇，而非欧洲注定的命运。
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It challenged Eurocentric narratives by comparing Yangzi Delta and Lancashire economies on parallel metrics: energy use, labor productivity, and ecological constraints.它通过在能源消耗、劳动生产率与生态约束等平行指标上比较长江三角洲与兰开夏郡的经济，挑战了欧洲中心主义叙事。
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Critics like Andre Gunder Frank emphasized silver flows and colonial surplus extraction as necessary preconditions, shifting causality offshore.安德烈·贡德·弗兰克等批评者强调白银流动与殖民剩余榨取是必要前提，将因果链条转向海外。
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Methodologically, the debate exposed how periodization itself encodes assumptions—‘early modern’ implies European temporal leadership before evidence warrants it.方法论上，这场论战揭示了分期本身即隐含预设——‘早期现代’一词暗指欧洲在实证支持之前已具时间领导地位。
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Quantitative historians responded with granular datasets on wages, caloric intake, and textile output, treating divergence as measurable threshold rather than civilizational essence.量化史学家以工资、热量摄入与纺织品产量等精细数据回应，将‘分流’视为可测量的临界点，而非文明本质。
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Meanwhile, scholars of South Asian and West African polities documented proto-industrial clusters that collapsed not from stagnation but from colonial market disarticulation.与此同时，南亚与西非政体研究者记录下一批原工业化集群，其衰落并非源于停滞，而是殖民市场解体所致。
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This reframing made ‘why Europe?’ obsolete, replacing it with ‘how did specific institutions interact with global commodity chains to enable scale-up?’这一重构使‘为何是欧洲？’的问题过时，代之以‘特定制度如何与全球商品链互动，从而实现规模化？’
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The controversy revealed historiography as epistemic infrastructure—where framing choices determine which variables count as causes versus background noise.这场争议揭示史学编纂本身即为认知基础设施——框架选择决定哪些变量被视为原因，哪些沦为背景噪音。
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Subsequent work on the ‘Little Divergence’ within China further complicated singularity, emphasizing regional divergence preceding continental convergence.后续关于中国内部‘小分流’的研究进一步消解了单一性，强调区域分化早于大陆层面的趋同。
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Today’s global history methods treat causality as networked, multi-scalar, and temporally non-linear—not hierarchical or monocausal.当今全球史方法将因果关系视作网络化、多尺度且时间非线性的过程，而非等级制或单因论。
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The debate’s legacy is less about settling origins than exposing how questions shape the evidence we permit ourselves to see.这场论战的遗产不在于厘清起源，而在于暴露问题本身如何塑造我们允许自己看见的证据。
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It taught historians that rigor begins not with data but with the humility to interrogate their own categorical assumptions.它让史学家明白：严谨始于对自身范畴预设的审慎质疑，而非数据本身。