Why did Europe, not China, have the first Industrial Revolution?

Nobody has a single, agreed answer, and that is what makes the 'Great Divergence' one of history's biggest debates. The leading explanations combine luck of geography and resources (Britain's easy coal and Europe's access to the land of the Americas) with prices and institutions (high wages that made machines worth building, and many rival states where inventors and heretics could escape a hostile ruler). Each idea has serious critics.

The puzzle is sharp because China had long been ahead. From about 1100, under the Song dynasty, its economy was the most advanced in the world, and it had printing and movable type before Europe. Some estimates even put China's income per person in 1800 slightly above Western Europe's. Then, in the nineteenth century, Western Europe and its offshoots pulled away from Qing China, Mughal India and the Ottoman Empire.

Historians argue first about when it started. The 'California school', led by Kenneth Pomeranz, says the richest parts of Asia, like the Yangtze Delta, kept pace with Europe until about 1800. Others, like Stephen Broadberry, find English wages already well ahead by 1600.

Then they argue about why. Pomeranz points to coal and the Americas; Robert Allen to expensive labour and cheap energy; Joel Mokyr to Europe's patchwork of states; James Belich even to the Black Death. Some economists add a humbler factor: plain chance.