3. China and the Great Divergence

The splitting up of the development paths of the west and the rest of the world has been defined by economic historians as “the great divergence”. Pomeranz (The great divergence: China, Europe, and the making of the modern world economy. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2000) proposes another approach also based on the studies of Bin (China transformed: Historical change and the limits of European experience. Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London, 1997) who adopts a comparative approach to try and identify the terms of the divergence between the analysed phenomena instead of always assuming one of the two terms as the norm. In this chapter, in summary, the events arising from the politics of European imperialist powers (and some particularly poorly highlighted) in China will be analysed. Rebellions had multiplied, mainly due to the growing gap between the population and the extension of arable land. Among these, we focused on: the Taiping revolt (1851–1864), the Boxer revolt and the 1911 revolution. During the nineteenth century, the interest of the Western colonial powers grew, as well as that of Russia and subsequently of Japan: some countries considered the division of China into spheres of influence an inevitable event, even if each state pursued its own ambitions for different interests.