[MUSIC] >> Hi, in this module, we're going to be talking about Divergence. That is, the big differences that we see between continents, countries, and regions within countries. If we look at this map of the world, which shows countries by color according to their GDP, that is, their level of average income, as we probably all know, there are big differences between countries, and indeed, regions of the world in terms of well being. Some countries, some regions are much better off than others. Nowadays, some of the best off regions of the world are in North America, Northwest Europe, and a few other place like Japan and Australia. Meanwhile, you have other parts of the world that are much poorer, and then many others that are still in between. Trying to understand why it is that nowadays there is so much difference between regions, countries and continents, is a central task of social science. And a lot of the discussion about where these modern differences come from ties back to an ongoing debate within social science about the original Great Divergence. In particular, why it is that the Industrial Revolution started in northwest Europe in the late 18th century and early 19th century? If you remember from the previous map, a lot of the countries there are the best off right now, are those places in northwest Europe and eventually north America, that experienced the Industrial Revolution earlier. And then unrelated question is trying to understand whether or not countries differed much before the Industrial Revolution. It used to be widely assumed that the countries that had experienced the Industrial Revolution first, England, northwest Europe and so forth, we're actually better off going back into history. Now there's a lot of argument and discussion about that topic, and people are examining the historical record to try to figure out whether the big differences that became very clear in the 19th century, and are so salient today, really existed before the 19th century, and if they existed, what they were? And as to why there may have been differences between countries, either in terms of when the Industrial Revolution took place, or in terms of whether they were better or worst of, before the Industrial Revolution? There's no shortage of theories. Thousands of books have been written about the topic. People attributing the occurrence of the Industrial Revolution, to all sorts of differences especially between East and West, between northwest Europe and China. People have argued for the importance of government, political institutions, legal institutions, the family, population dynamics, modes of agriculture, and any number of other factors. The debate will probably continue and it remains one of the biggest topics in social science today. A related question beyond the one that I just talked about, about why the Industrial Revolution got started in northwest Europe, and also to some extent, north America in the early 19th and late 18th century, is why there have been so many differences since the middle of the 20th century in the experiences of other countries around the world? Some countries since the 1950s have done extremely well, while others have not done as well, even though back in the 1950s they were at a roughly similar levels of development. So on the one hand, we have the example of China, which has done extremely well, especially in the last 30 or so years. And many parts of China are now regarded as modern cities and so forth. And yet, some other parts of the world that perhaps 50 or 60 years ago, back in the 1950s, were similar to China in terms of their level of economic development and other factors, haven't done as well. Again, there's no shortage of theories about why we may have had such divergences, not just between China and other countries, but between different regions in the world, Africa, the Middle East and so forth. Again, people have looked at the role of government, government policy, education, health policy, culture, religion, and any number of other factors. Again these debates will probably continue and they will remain a major issue in the study of social science. Another aspect of divergence, is the great differences in political and social organization that we see between continents, between countries and between regions, even within the same country nowadays. And in particular we're interested in why these differences occur, and we know that these differences exist. Think about the examples of the United States and China. The United States and China are very different nowadays and if we think back to the 18th century, when the late 18th century, the United States was founded and when the Emperor Qianlong was ruling China. At that time obviously, the politics and the society of these two places differed, and of course, other countries around the world differed as well. A big question related to this is understanding how far back these differences go. Do they go back to the middle ages? Do they go back to the time of the Roman Empire and the Han Dynasty and the other ancient empires? Or they do go back even further? And are they related to things like climate, agriculture, religion or other factors? And then, time back to what we've talked about just a few minutes ago, a big interest in social science is understanding how these difference in modes of political and social organization have influenced economic development. As a hint to that earlier, we've been a lot of arguments that political and social differences influence the timing of the Industrial Revolution in northwest Europe and perhaps, contributed to their not being an Industrial Revolution until later elsewhere. This topic, understanding the origins and the implications of political and social organization differences across continents and across countries, is a central topic of social science, and it is going to be remaining one for the forseeable future.
