Kenneth Pomeranz Explained

Birth Date:	4 November 1958
Alma Mater:	Cornell University Yale University
Main Interests:	Comparison of China to industrial Europe (Great Divergence) trade history
Major Works:	The Great Divergence

Kenneth Pomeranz, FBA (born November 4, 1958) is University Professor of History at the University of Chicago.^[1] He received his B.A. from Cornell University in 1980, where he was a Telluride Scholar,^[2] and his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1988, where he was a student of Jonathan Spence.^[3] He then taught at the University of California, Irvine, for more than 20 years. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2006.^[4] In 2013–2014 he was the president of the American Historical Association. Pomeranz has been described as a major figure in the California School of economic history.^[5]

Selected publications

Books

• The great divergence: China, Europe, and the making of the modern world economy. Princeton University Press, 2000. John K. Fairbank Prize 2001. Joint winner, World History Association Best book of 2000.
• The world that trade created: society, culture and the world economy, 1400 to the present. M. E. Sharpe: 1999.
• The making of a hinterland: state, society and economy in inland north China, 1853-1937. University of California Press, 1993. John K. Fairbank Prize 1994.

Edited volumes

• The Pacific in the Age of Early Industrialization. Farnham England: Ashgate/Variorum, 2009.
• with McNeill, J. R., (2015). The Cambridge world history: Production, destruction, and connection, 1750 to the present. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• with Barker, G., Benjamin, C., Bentley, J. H., Christian, D., Goucher, C., Kedar, B. Z., Mcneill, J. R., Yoffee, N. (2015). The Cambridge world history: Structures, spaces, and boundary making. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• China in 2008: A year of great significance. (co-ed.). Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2009.

Articles and chapters in edited volumes

• The environment and world history. (co-ed.) Berkeley : University of California Press, 2009.
• “Orthopraxy, orthodoxy, and the goddess(es) of Taishan [examination of the Bixia yuanjun cult].” Modern China 33.1 (2007) 22–46.
• “Region and world in economic history: the early modern / modern divide” Transactions of the International Conference of Eastern Studies 52 (2007) 41–55.
• “Standards of living in eighteenth-century China: regional differences, temporal trends, and incomplete evidence” In: Allen, Robert C.; Bengtsson, Tommy; Dribe, Martin, eds. Living standards in the past: new perspectives on well-being in Asia and Europe. (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2005): 23–54.
• “Women's work and the economics of respectability [boundaries]” In: Goodman, Bryna; Larson, Wendy, eds. Gender in motion: divisions of labor and cultural change in late imperial and modern China (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005): 239–263.
• “Women's work, family, and economic development in Europe and East Asia: long-term trajectories and contemporary comparisons” In: Arrighi, Giovanni; Hamashita, Takeshi; Selden, Mark, eds. The resurgence of East Asia: 500, 150 and 50 year perspectives (London; New York: Routledge, 2003): 124–172.
• “Facts are stubborn things: a response to Philip Huang” Journal of Asian Studies 62.1 (February 2003): 167–181.
• “Political economy and ecology on the eve of industrialization: Europe, China, and the global conjuncture” American Historical Review 107.2 (April 2002) 425–446.
• “Beyond the East-West binary: resituating development paths in the eighteenth-century world” Journal of Asian Studies 61.2 (May 2002) 539–590.
• “Is there an East Asian development path? Long-term comparisons, constraints, and continuities” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 44, pt.3 (Aug 2001) 322–362.
• “Re-thinking the late imperial Chinese economy: development, disaggregation and decline, circa 1730-1930” Itinerario 24.3-4 (2000) 29–74.
• "Ritual Imitation and Political Identity in North China: The late Imperial Legacy and the Chinese National State Revisited," Twentieth Century China 23:1 Fall, 1997.
• "Power, Gender and Pluralism in the cult of the Goddess of Taishan," in R. Bin Wong, Theodore Huters, and Pauline Yu, eds., Culture and State in Chinese History (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997).
• “"Traditional' Chinese business forms revisited: family, firm, and financing in the history of the Yutang Company of Jining, 1779-1956.” Late Imperial China 18.1 (June 1997): 1-38.
• “Local interest story: political power and regional differences in the Shandong capital market, 1900-1937” In: Rawski, Thomas G.; Li, Lillian M., eds. Chinese history in economic perspective(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992) 295–318.
• "Water to Iron, Widows to Warlords: the Handam Rain Shrine in Modern Chinese History," Late Imperial China 12.1 (June 1991) 62–99.

Awards and honors

• 1994 John K. Fairbank Prize for best book in East Asian history^[6]
• 1997 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship^[7]
• 2001 World History Association Book Prize^[8]
• 2001 John K. Fairbank Prize for best book in East Asian history^[9]
• 2011-12 Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey
• 2017, Elected Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences.^[10]
• 2019 Dan David Prize^[11]
• 2021 Toynbee Prize^[12]

External links

• China and Europe, 1500–2000 and beyond: What is modern? with Ken Pomeranz and Bin Wong
• Short video of Kenneth Pomeranz from the documentary "China's Century of Humiliation"
• Video of Kenneth Pomeranz speaking at the World Bank Group's 2006 Private Sector Development Forum on "Where is the World Going?"

Notes and References

1. Web site: 19 April 2012. Kenneth Pomeranz, leading expert on China, appointed University Professor of History. 20 December 2019.
2. Web site: Merkel-Hess . Kate . Kenneth Pomeranz Biography . American Historical Association . 27 May 2020 . 2014.
3. A Conversation with Kenneth Pomeranz. World History Connected . October 2007 . 5 . 1 . 20 December 2019. Laichas . Tom .
4. Web site: American Academy of Arts & Sciences. University of Chicago. 20 December 2019.
5. Frankema, E. (2024). From the Great Divergence to South–South Divergence: New comparative horizons in global economic history. Journal of Economic Surveys.
6. Web site: The John K. Fairbank Prize in East Asian History. 20 December 2019.
7. Web site: Kenneth Pomeranz. Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. 20 December 2019.
8. Web site: Book awards: World History Association Book Prize. Library Thing. 20 December 2019.
9. Web site: John K. Fairbank Prize Recipients. American Historical Association. 20 December 2019.
10. News: Elections to the British Academy celebrate the diversity of UK research. British Academy. 20 December 2019. 21 Jul 2017.
11. Web site: Prof. Kenneth Pomeranz. Dan David Prize. 20 December 2019.
12. Web site: Kenneth Pomeranz wins 2021 Toynbee Prize. History News Network. 29 May 2020.