The article by Jack Goldstone, Dating the Great Divergence, has the merit of discussing both the wide panorama of recent global history and the conclusions stemming from specific northEuropean long-term series of GDP.1 The article’s main target is the deeply rooted idea that Modern Growth was the continuation of previous trends of GDP growth. Goldstone’s opinion is that the rise of the West, in the frame of global history, occurred only from the late-eighteenth century or the beginning of the Nineteenth, not earlier. At the time, a true divergence among World economies did not exist. Modern Growth is different from previous periods of expansion not merely in the degree but also in the nature. Pre-modern examples of growth were episodic and not sustained; they represented temporary ‘efflorescences’ rather than long upward rises.2 It is apparent that, in such an approach to growth, problems of definition are crucial. Since the modern rise is deemed to be different from past ‘efflorescences’ of sporadic growth, what is, according to Goldstone, the primary feature of “modern” in comparison with ‘pre-modern’? The definition of Modern Growth adopted by Goldstone is the classical one put forward in economics and historical research primarily by Simon Kuznets:3 it is characterised both by strong increases in population and production; growth in production is, however, higher than in population. The result is then a rise in per capita product or intensive4 growth. This rise is sustained for long periods of time and primarily derives from modern technological growth. This definition of Modern Growth, rapidly recalled by Goldstone in his present article, had been more widely discussed in his previous article on efflorescences and economic growth in World history.5 In the following, I will deal with the differences between modern and pre-modern growth and later with the concept of technological progress in relation to the rise of the West. I will focus primarily on Europe and the Mediterranean and will include extra-European macroareas at the end.

中文翻译：

---

过去的成长：前现代和现代

杰克·戈德斯通 (Jack Goldstone) 的文章《大分流年代》(Dating the Great Divergence) 的优点是既讨论了近期全球历史的广阔全景，也讨论了从特定的北欧 GDP 长期系列得出的结论。 1 文章的主要目标是根深蒂固的观点，即现代增长是 GDP 增长先前趋势的延续。戈德斯通的观点是，在全球历史的框架下，西方的崛起只发生在 18 世纪末或 19 世纪初，而不是更早。当时，世界经济体之间并不存在真正的分歧。现代增长不同于以往的扩张时期，不仅在程度上，而且在性质上。前现代增长的例子是偶发的而不是持续的。它们代表暂时的“开花”，而不是长期的向上上升。2 显然，在这种增长方式中，定义问题至关重要。既然现代崛起被认为不同于过去的零星增长的“开花”，那么在戈德斯通看来，与“前现代”相比，“现代”的主要特征是什么？Goldstone 采用的现代增长定义是主要由 Simon Kuznets 在经济学和历史研究中提出的经典定义：3 它的特点是人口和生产的强劲增长；然而，生产增长高于人口增长。其结果是人均产品或集约型4 增长。这种增长会持续很长时间，主要源于现代技术的发展。戈德斯通在他的这篇文章中迅速回顾了现代增长的这个定义，在他之前关于世界历史上的风化和经济增长的文章中已经得到了更广泛的讨论。 5 在下文中，我将讨论现代增长和前现代增长之间的差异，稍后将讨论与技术进步相关的概念西部。我将主要关注欧洲和地中海，最后将包括欧洲以外的宏观区域。