070359 KU Globalgeschichtliche Theorien, Quellen und Methoden (2010W)

In the literature that will be discussed, three approaches will function as points of departure.

Firstly, there is the literature in which the focus is on long-term, structural, internal causes that would have caused a Western Sonderweg and that are supposed to explain that the West in the end became so rich in contrast to ¿the Rest¿. Work by e.g. Douglass North, Eric Jones, David Landes, Gregory Clark, and, to a much lesser extent, Jack Goldstone can be regarded as exemplifying this approach and will be discussed, always including the most important reviews that have been published about their work. In this perspective the work by Max Weber is seminal. Therefore some texts by him and about him will also be read, as will be texts that have a quite Weberian perspective like those by John Hall, Michael Mann, Ernst Gellner and Alan Macfarlane.

Then there is the approach in which it is claimed that the West in one way or another became and stayed rich over the back of ¿the Rest¿. To get acquainted with this perspective, texts by dependencia-theorists, in this case Andre Gunder Frank, by Immanuel Wallerstein and Fernand Braudel, and Jim Blaut, will be read. Then there is the so-called California School, that claims that even in the early modern era the differences between the most advanced parts of the world, overall, were not as striking as the similarities and that the Great Divergence occurred quite late, basically only with industrialisation, was quite contingent and will prove to be transient. In this case texts by Pomeranz and Bin Wong will be read. Finally, there is the even stronger revisionism of e.g. Andre Gunder Frank, Robert Marks or John Hobson, who claim that until the very beginning of the Industrial Revolution the West was a rather backward part of the world as compared to certain parts of Asia.