I’m reading Walter Scheidel’s book “Escape from Rome” which posits that the reason for the “Great Divergence” is that Europe was reasonably Unique in not having once had a major empire taking up 80%+ of its population at one time, but then never again, unlike China, India, or the MENA, regions.
I am not finished with it yet, but in the macro sense it seems well researched and well reasoned without making any large leaps of reason or evidence, is there any significant concensus on this book? What do people here with relevant flairs think? It kind of seems a bit like guns germs and steel if that book weren’t, well…bad?
The academic reviews I read were mostly very positive, particularly regarding the evidentiary rigor of the work. One reviewer stated "It is without doubt one of the best examples of big history published in recent years, and a major contribution to the Great Divergence debate." John Hall calls it "An instant classic, one of the great books of the last quarter century."
Reviews praised the use of evidentiary methods more common in economics or other disciplines, engagement with existing alternative hypotheses such as Diamond's geographic determinism. The section on Rome itself was particularly praised, as Roman history not traditionally been prominent in the scholarship of 'the great divergence.' Praise of the depth and breadth of the scholarship was downright effusive, noting the competent and even masterful treatment of Rome, the industrial revolution, and China in the same volume.
In terms of criticism, there was some criticism of the use of counterfactuals. One reviewer noted how Scheidel stated the 'European marriage pattern' theory was incompatible with his own, but treatment of this theory was "brief and sketchy." One reviewer thought the author was not upfront enough with the limitations of much of the historical demography and population estimes. There were some critiques of the overall clarity of the work, and that elements of the Roman and post-Roman sections argued against eachother at times. The basic premise of the work, (explaining the industrial revolution with events more than a thousand years before) was callled into question.
But the conclusions on the whole were positive, and found the work a competent and satisfying survey work with much to offer even for those skeptical of the central thesis.
The core of Scheidels argument is an old one, which one reviewer notes goes back to Montesquieu. But Scheidel brings in many new lines of argument and fields of evidence for his thesis, and ultimately ends up making a novel argument more than he takes one of the existing sides of the great divergence debate. Most of the reviewers were largely digesting his claims, and I would expect major challenges to his thesis will come later rather than in the immediate reviews.
I was unable to access an apparently There is a scathing review from Richard Hodges, the tone and substance of which provoked a direct response from Scheidel. I found Scheidel's response reasonable and convincing, and Hodges review both disingenuous and rarely even directed at the substance of the book. But your reading may differ.
I'll share one of the long quoted passages from the hodges review because it borders on unhinged:
Its target readership is surely those who reluctantly take high-end vacations and head to Cape Cod, the Hamptons, or Tuscany and, forsaking their quotidian read, The Economist, opt for something “serious” and “historical” to keep their dinner companions exercised. At its heart is a “what-if” narrative, seeking ancient origins for modern circumstances. S. also aims to have written a book for our (pre-COVID pandemic) global age with its balancing of the West (essentially Europe) versus China. As the vacation dinner Chianti is passed and the primo is being consumed, one can picture the reader of this book opining on the now-proven merits of small, as opposed to big, political entities, of the significance of conflict rather than reason in historical process (see also my n.1) and, paradoxically, progress as opposed to stasis. Long before a digestivo arrives, the dinner party, we may assume, will be arguing about whether escape from the Roman world helps to explain the major political issues of the globe today. Is the end of the Roman Republic and its conquest by an emperor a metaphor for the end of American democracy? To be sure, Brexiteers might find heart-warming passages about competitive fragmentation. Unexpectedly, perhaps to keep the dinner-party companions on their toes, the author offers several shout-outs for Scandinavian democracies. Is “getting a Denmark,” [sic] as he phrases it, a provocation to his likely readers, who will instinctively have no time for Nordic “socialism?” His final conclusion is barely less provocative: could it be a tacit nod to the Vatican’s present principal, as he settles on the Church as the main legacy of the ancient world in modern times? The dinner party, one can safely assume, will have ended in confusion, puzzled as much by the pyramid of analyses, one leading to another, as by its conclusions. (1-2)
I cannot recall ever encountering something like it in a reputable historical journal. Sometimes reviewers let loose when they are dealing with a shoddy piece of pop history (a review of Gavin Menzies "1421: The Year China Discovered America" for instance), but Hodges goes on this tirade about a hypothetical readership.
edit: thanks to u/No-Heart-1454 for kindly providing me with a .pdf of the hodges review
Hodges critical review:
selection of other reviews