S8 Ep1123: Headline: The Great Divergence and Geopolitical Climate Shocks Guest: Professor Peter Frankopan Book Title: The Earth Transformed: An Untold History The "Great Divergence" explains why Europe accelerated in science and technology over Asia despite the lat

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John Batchelor

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🗓️ 13 July 2026

⏱️ 8 minutes

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Summary

Headline: The Great Divergence and Geopolitical Climate Shocks Guest: Professor Peter Frankopan Book Title:The Earth Transformed: An Untold History The "Great Divergence" explains why Europe accelerated in science and technology over Asia despite the latter's long history of learning. Frankopan suggests that geography played a crucial role; for example, England's coal fields were located near its capital and waterways, whereas China's were far from its population centers, making exploitation expensive. Additionally, while China's efficient bureaucracy stifled new ideas, European competition and the exploitation of colonial resources provided a "kickstart" for industrialization. Climate shocks also played a role; the Bengal famine in the 1770s shattered state revenues and destroyed families. A specific instance of climate impacting geopolitics occurred after the 1783 Laki eruption. As the Ottoman Empire struggled with internal disorder and crop failure in Egypt, Catherine the Great seized the opportunity to annex Crimea. This highlights how ecological pressures can distract major powers, allowing rivals to redraw global maps. (6)
1900 JULIAETTA IDAHO

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is CBSI in the world. I'm John Batchew with Peter Frankapan of Oxford University
0:09.4	Worcester College, Professor of Global History. The new book is The Earth transformed,
0:13.8	looking at climate, ecology, pandemic, volcanoes, all of that, and how humankind, especially the civilizations that reach back
0:23.9	the last 5,000 years, have responded. Now we come to a debate that is ongoing, whether or not
0:32.3	there is a way of explaining why Europe seems to accelerate in terms of science and technology over Asia,
0:40.3	where much of the innovation of the earlier thousand or two thousand years took place.
0:46.8	I know that having visited Central Asia, the city states of Tashkent, of Kabul, of Samarkhan. All of those city states were well established with
0:57.4	science and learning and education. Thousands of years before that came to Europe. I date European
1:05.3	universities remembering 1222, Padua. That is the period of time when universities and guilds are mixing
1:13.8	with what is known as the feudal revolution. And the professor teaches me that that is too
1:19.2	shorthand. There's a lot of complication that went on in the 13th century in Europe. But in any
1:25.1	event, Europe is said to accelerate.
1:28.9	Professor, the great divergence. Is there an explanation or are we too close to it?
1:34.3	Well, it's a great question. There are so many fantastic scholars to work on this question,
1:38.8	most notably Ken Bomerance at University of Chicago. And the question really is, how was it that Europe, as you say, a relative backwater,
1:49.3	you know, lots of pearls and individual moments of highlights before sort of 1500.
1:55.2	But how was it that Europe managed to take over the world?
1:58.1	And in the case of Africa, for example, every single part of Africa was colonized
2:02.3	by our European power, apart from Ethiopia and Liberia, by the start of the First World War. How was it
2:09.7	that so many European states had empires? Belgium had an empire, the Netherlands. Denmark had territories
2:15.6	in the Caribbean. How did that happen? And above all,
2:18.6	how did they take over great empires like India, the Mughal Empire, and China? And there are
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