The latest special issue of TSEG is devoted to Peer Vries's Escaping Poverty. The Origins of Modern Economic Growth (2013). In this book, Vries engaged with the Great Divergence, one of the biggest debates in economic history. The explanandum is the emergence of longduring, sustained, substantial growth in one part of the world and its nonemergence at the time in the rest of the world. Vries exhaustively dissected all possible explanations regarding the divergent development of Great Britain and China in the eighteenth century.
Debaters in this TSEG special issue (vol 12, 2015, no 2) called Escaping the Great Divergence: Eric Vanhaute (Guest Editor), Jack A. Goldstone, Prasannan Parthasarathi, Jan de Vries, Marjolein 't Hart, Patrick O'Brien, Kent Deng, Eric L. Jones and Joel Mokyr. Peer Vries' replies to his commentators are of course included. TSEG is a quarterly magazine published on behalf of IISH and NEHA by Amsterdam University Press. The website is hosted by IISH.
The Canton (Guangzhou) area where the first foreign trade was allowed in the 18th century (from wikipedia, Old China Trade)