Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-c9gpj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-08T20:44:31.818Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Escaping Malthus: a comparative look at Japan and the ‘Great Divergence’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 October 2014

Carmen Gruber
Carmen Gruber*
Affiliation:
Vienna University of Economics and Business, Institute for Economic and Social History, Welthandelsplatz 1, Building D4, 1020 Vienna, Austria E-mail: carmen.gruber@wu.ac.at
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The causes and consequences of the Industrial Revolution have led to a great deal of scholarship and debate within the field of economic history, from efforts to understand the internal dynamics of England and Europe to more recent revisionist literature that has sought to expand the debate by looking to Asia. This has enlivened and broadened the ‘Great Divergence’ debate through examining, by way of ecological factors, not only why China did not industrialize but also why England took a different path from that of China. This article expands the argument by looking at Japan, with a focus on coal mining as a foundation for escaping Malthusian constraints. As such, it will assess the extent of Malthusian pressure in pre-modern Japan and the importance of coal mining in alleviating these pressures relative to conditions in England and China.

Keywords

Chinacoal‘Great Divergence’industrializationJapanMalthusian pressure
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , November 2014 , pp. 403 - 424
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Pomeranz, Kenneth, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the making of the modern world economy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000Google Scholar.

2 Parthasarathi, Prasannan, Why Europe grew rich and Asia did not, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Studer, Roman, ‘India and the Great Divergence: assessing the efficiency of grain markets in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century India’, Journal of Economic History, 68, 2, 2008, pp. 393–437CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Riello, Giorgio and Roy, Tirthankar, eds., How India clothed the world: the world of South Asian textiles, 1500–1859, Leiden: Brill, 2009Google Scholar.

3 See, for example, Sugihara, Kaoru, ‘The east Asian path of economic development’, in Giovanni Arrighi, Takeshi Iamashita, and Mark Selden, eds., The resurgence of east Asia: 500, 150 and 50 year perspectives, London: Routledge, 2003, pp. 78–123Google Scholar; Osamu Saito, ‘Pre-modern economic growth revisited: Japan and the west’, LSE Working Paper no. 16/05, June 2005, http://www.lse.ac.uk/economichistory/research/gehn/gehnpdf/workingpaper16-os.pdf (consulted 15 July 2014); Saito, Osamu, ‘An industrious revolution in an East Asian market economy? Tokugawa Japan and implications for the Great Divergence’, Australian Economic History Review, 50, 3, 2010CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bassino, Jean-Pascalet al., ‘Japan and the Great Divergence, 725–1890’, September 2012Google Scholar, http://ahes.ier.hit-u.ac.jp/ahec_tokyo/papers/S3A-3_Bassino_et_al.pdf (consulted 15 July 2014).

4 Frank, Andre Gunder, ReOrient: global economy in the Asian age, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998Google Scholar.

5 Some of the material here has been drawn from my MA thesis, ‘At the edges of the Pacific: what the California School means for Japan’, University of Vienna, 2010.

6 P. H. H. Vries, ‘Are coal and colonies really crucial? Kenneth Pomeranz and the Great Divergence’, Journal of World History, 12, 2, 2001, pp. 407–446Google Scholar; Rönnbäck, Klas, ‘New and old peripheries: Britain, the Baltic, and the Americas in the Great Divergence’, Journal of Global History, 5, 3, 2012, pp. 373–394CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Hayami, Akira and Kitô, Hiroshi, ‘Demography and living standards’, in Akira Hayami, Osamu Saitō, and Ronald P. Toby, eds., The economic history of Japan, 1600–1990, vol. 1: emergence of economic society in Japan, 1600–1859, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004Google Scholar, p. 215.

8 Ibid., p. 216.

9 Yoshida, Togo, Ishinshi hakko (Eight lectures on the history of the Meiji restoration), Tokyo: Fuzanbo, 1910Google Scholar, p. 25.

10 Bassino, et al., ‘Japan’, p. 24Google Scholar.

11 Totman, Conrad, Early modern Japan, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995Google Scholar, p. 250.

12 Hayami, and Kitô, , ‘Demography’, p. 217Google Scholar.

13 Totman, , Early modern Japan, p. 251Google Scholar.

14 Wrigley, Edward and Schofield, R. S., The population history of England 1541–1871: a reconstruction, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981Google Scholar, p. 528.

15 Taeuber, Irene, The population of Japan, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1958Google Scholar, p. 22.

16 Ibid., p. 22.

17 Bassino, et al., ‘Japan’, p. 25Google Scholar. Figures given in that paper are computed in cho (see n. 45 below for an explanation of this unit).

18 Wrigley, and Schofield, , Population history, p. 577Google Scholar.

19 Frank, , ReOrient, p. 109Google Scholar.

20 Lavely, William and Wong, R. Bin, ‘Revising the Malthusian narrative: the comparative study of population dynamics in late imperial China’, Journal of Asian Studies, 57, 3, 1998CrossRefGoogle Scholar, pp. 717, 738.

21 Nakamura, James and Miyamoto, Matao, ‘Social structure and population change: a comparative study of Tokugawa Japan and Ch'ing China’, Economic Development and Cultural Change, 30, 2, 1982, p. 235CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Totman, , A history of Japan, Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2000, p. 328Google Scholar.

23 Kerr, George, Okinawa: the history of an island people, Boston, MA: Tuttle Publishing, 2000, p. 63Google Scholar.

24 Saito, Osamu, ‘Land, labour and market forces in Tokugawa Japan’, Continuity and Change, 24, 1, 2009, pp. 184–185CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Hayami, Akira, The historical demography of pre-modern Japan, Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 2001, p. 157Google Scholar.

26 Nakamura, and Miyamoto, , ‘Social structure’, p. 258Google Scholar.

27 Skinner, G. William, ‘Conjugal power in Tokugawa Japanese families: a matter of life or death’, in Barbara D. Miller, ed., Sex and gender hierarchies, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, p. 253Google Scholar.

28 Ibid., p. 259.

29 For more detailed discussion, see Smith, Thomas C., Nakahara: family farming and population in a Japanese village, 1717–1830, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1977Google Scholar, ch. 5; Drixler, Fabian, Mabiki: infanticide and population growth in eastern Japan, 1660–1950, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2013CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 Skinner, , ‘Conjugal power’, p. 259Google Scholar.

31 Lavely, and Wong, Bin, ‘Revising the Malthusian narrative’, p. 725Google Scholar.

32 Yasuba, Yasukichi, ‘Did Japan ever suffer from a shortage of natural resources before World War II?’, Journal of Economic History, 56, 3, 1996, pp. 543–544CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 Lavely, and Wong, Bin, ‘Revising the Malthusian narrative’, p. 738Google Scholar.

34 Honjo, Eijiro, The social and economic history of Japan, Kyoto: Institute for Research in Economic History of Japan, 1935, p. 154Google Scholar.

35 Borton, Hugh, Peasant uprisings in Japan of the Tokugawa period, New York: Paragon Book Reprint Corporation, 1968Google Scholar, p. 35.

36 Ibid., pp. 35–6.

37 Ibid., p. 22.

38 Nakane, Chie, Ōishi, Shinzaburo, and Totman, Conrad, Tokugawa Japan: The social and economic antecedents of modern Japan, Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1991Google Scholar, p. 59.

39 Saito, , ‘Pre-modern economic growth’, p. 40Google Scholar.

40 Yamamura, Kozo, ‘Toward a reexamination of the economic history of Tokugawa Japan, 1600–1867’, Journal of Economic History, 33, 3, 1973CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 545.

41 Saito, , ‘Pre-modern economic growth’, p. 24Google Scholar.

42 Miyamoto, Matao, ‘Quantitative aspects of Tokugawa economy’, in Hayami, Saitō, and Toby, Economic history, p. 38Google Scholar.

43 Totman, Conrad, Pre-industrial Korea and Japan in environmental perspective, Leiden: Brill, 2004, p. 127Google Scholar.

44 Nakane, Chie, Ōishi, Shinzaburō, and Totman, Conrad, Tokugawa Japan: the social and economic antecedents of modern Japan, Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1991, pp. 63–64Google Scholar.

45 A cho is a Japanese unit of area approximately equivalent to 1 hectare (in fact, 0.009917 square kilometres), which is equivalent to 2.47 acres.

46 Miyamoto, , ‘Quantitative aspects’, p. 39Google Scholar.

47 Ibid., p. 41.

48 Smitka, Michael, ed., The Japanese economy in the Tokugawa era, 1600–1868, Garland Publishing, 1998, p. 66Google Scholar.

49 Totman, , Pre-industrial Korea and Japan, p. 147Google Scholar.

50 Smitka, , Japanese economy, p. 66Google Scholar.

51 Nakane, , Ōishi, and Totman, Tokugawa Japan, p. 69Google Scholar.

52 Totman, , Pre-industrial Korea and Japan, p. 130Google Scholar.

53 Smith, Thomas Carlyle, The agrarian origins of modern Japan, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1959Google Scholar, p. 102.

54 Nakane, , Ōishi, and Totman, Tokugawa Japan, p. 69Google Scholar.

55 Smith, , Agrarian origins, p. 102Google Scholar.

56 Saito, Osamu, ‘Industrious revolution’, p. 245Google Scholar.

57 Totman, , Pre-industrial Korea and Japan, p. 145Google Scholar.

58 de Vries, Jan, ‘Industrious peasants in East and West: markets, technology, and family structure in Japanese and western European agriculture’, Australian Economic History Review, 51, 2, 2011, pp. 109–110CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59 Totman, Conrad, Pre-industrial Korea and Japan, p. 153Google Scholar.

60 Phrase taken from the title of Part 1 of Pomeranz, Great Divergence.

61 Ibid., p. 36.

62 Ibid., p. 37.

63 Lavely, and Wong, Bin, ‘Revising the Malthusian narrative’, p. 721Google Scholar.

64 Allen, Robertet al., ‘Wages, prices and living standards in China, 1738–1925: in comparison with Europe, Japan and India’, Economic History Review, 64, supplement 1, 2011, pp. 30–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

65 Jones, Eric, The European miracle: environments, economies and geopolitics in the history of Europe and Asia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

66 Hanley, Susan and Yamamura, Kozo, Economic and demographic change in preindustrial Japan, 1600–1868, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977, pp. 221–222Google Scholar.

67 Hanley, Susan, Everyday things in pre-modern Japan: the hidden legacy of material life, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997, p. 53Google Scholar.

68 Sugihara, Kaoru, ‘Agriculture and industrialization: the Japanese experience’, in Peter Mathias and John A. Davis, eds., Agriculture and industrialization: from the eighteenth century to the present day, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, p. 149Google Scholar.

69 Yasuba, Yasukichi, ‘Standard of living in Japan before industrialization: from what level did Japan begin? A comment’, Journal of Economic History, 46, 1, 1986, p. 224CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

70 Francks, Penelope, ‘Simple pleasures: food consumption in Japan and the global comparison of living standards’, Journal of Global History, 8, 1, 2013, pp. 100CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 106.

71 Ibid., pp. 107–11.

72 Sugihara, , ‘Agriculture and industrialization’, pp. 151–152Google Scholar.

73 Saito, , ‘Industrious revolution’, pp. 258–259Google Scholar.

74 Pomeranz, , Great Divergence, p. 13Google Scholar.

75 Ibid., p. 62.

76 Ibid., pp. 64–6.

77 Ibid., p. 62.

78 Ibid., p. 226.

79 Fairbank, John and Goldman, Merle, China: a new history, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006, p. 89Google Scholar.

80 Hartwell, Robert, ‘A cycle of economic change in imperial China: coal and iron in northeast China’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 10, 1, 1967, p. 125Google Scholar.

81 Fairbank, and Goldman, , China, p. 89Google Scholar.

82 Hartwell, , ‘Cycle of economic change’, p. 136Google Scholar.

83 Wagner, Donald, ‘Blast furnaces in Song-Yuan China’, East Asian Science, Technology and Medicine, 18, 2001, pp. 50–52Google Scholar.

84 Marco Polo, The travels of Marco Polo: the complete Yule–Cordier edition, tr. Henry Yule, rev. Henri Cordier, New York, Dover Publications, Book 2, ch. 30, ‘Concerning the black stones that are dug in Cathay, and are burnt for fuel’, pp. 442–3.

85 Hartwell, , ‘Cycle of economic change’, p. 149Google Scholar.

86 Ibid., p. 148.

87 Maddison, Angus, ‘Six transformations in China: 960–2030’, in D. S. P. Rao and B. Van Ark, eds., World economic performance: past, present and future, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2013Google Scholar, p. 7.

88 Zhang, David D.et al., ‘Climatic change, wars and dynastic cycles in China over the last millennium’, Climatic Change, 76, 2006, p. 472CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

89 Wright, Tim, ‘An economic cycle in imperial China? Revisiting Robert Hartwell on iron and coal’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 50, 4, 2007, p. 415CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

90 Hartwell, Robert, ‘Markets, technology, and the structure of enterprise in the development of the eleventh-century Chinese iron and steel industry’, Journal of Economic History, 26, 1, 1966, p. 48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

91 Wright, , ‘Economic cycle’, p. 415Google Scholar.

92 Totman, , Early modern Japan, pp. 270–279Google Scholar.

93 Murakushi, Nisaburo, ‘Coal mining’, Developing Economies, 17, 4, 1979, p. 461CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

94 Yutaka Kasuga, ‘Transfer and development of coal-mine technology in Hokkaido’, United Nations University HSDP-JE series 48, United Nations University, Tokyo, 1982, p. 1.

95 Murakushi, , ‘Coal mining’, p. 462Google Scholar.

96 Oba, Yoshio and Kodama, Kiyomi, ‘On the history of capital accumulation and technical revolution in Japanese coal mining’, Hokkai Gakuen University Collection, 150, 2011, p. 136Google Scholar.

97 Sugiyama, Shinya, Japan's industrialization in the world economy, 1859–1899: export, trade, and overseas competition, London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2012, p. 191Google Scholar.

98 Griffin, Emma, A short history of the British industrial revolution, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, pp. 109–110CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

99 Oba, and Kodama, , ‘Capital accumulation and technical revolution’, p. 135Google Scholar.

100 Totman, Conrad, ‘Land-use patterns and afforestation in the Edo period’, Monumenta Nipponica, 39, 1, 1984, p. 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

101 Hunter, Janet, ed., Japanese women working, New York: Routledge, 1993, p. 100Google Scholar.

102 Hanley, , Everyday things, pp. 62–63Google Scholar.

103 Totman, Conrad, ‘Forest products trade in pre-industrial Japan’, in John Dargavel and Richard Tucker, eds., Changing pacific forests: historical perspectives on the forest economy of the Pacific basin, Durham, NC: Forest History Society, 1992, p. 21Google Scholar.

104 Saito, Osamu, ‘Forest history and the Great Divergence: China, Japan, and the West compared’, Journal of Global History, 4, 3, 2009, p. 386CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

105 Sugiyama, , Japan's industrialization, p. 191Google Scholar.

106 Ibid., p. 141.

107 Nisaburo Murakushi, ‘The transfer of coal-mining technology from Japan to Manchuria and manpower problems: focusing on the development of the Fushun coal mines’, United Nations University HSDP-JE series 47, United Nations University, Tokyo, 1981, p. 4.

108 Murakushi, , ‘Coal mining’, p. 463Google Scholar.

109 Kasuga, , ‘Transfer and development’, p. 1Google Scholar.

110 Ibid., pp. 2–4.

111 Ibid., pp. 4–5.

112 Ibid., p. 5.

113 Pomeranz, , Great Divergence, p. 65Google Scholar.

114 Saito, , ‘Forest history’, p. 402Google Scholar.

115 Murakushi, , ‘Coal mining’, p. 474Google Scholar.

116 Akira Hayami, ‘Introduction: the emergence of “economic society”’, in Hayami, Saitō, and Toby, Economic history, pp. 4–5.

117 Vaporis, Constantine, Breaking barriers: travel and the state in early modern Japan, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 1994, pp. 36–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

118 Murakushi, , Technology and labour in Japanese coal mining, p. 5Google Scholar.