Reddit mentions of The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy.

The short answer is crop yield. Rice has a very high yield and a much higher nutrient content than most other agricultural crops. An acre of planted rice produces much more food with a higher nutrient density than an equivalent acre of wheat or barley, resulting in a larger yearly surplus and therefore can sustain higher populations on an equal amount of land.

Rice also has the advantage over wheat and other grains in that it requires very little processing in order to obtain an edible product. With wheat, the chaff must be separated from the grains, which then must be ground into flour and only then can it be cooked and consumed. Rice, on the other hand, once separated from the chaff can be cooked directly without further steps. (Although further milling may be desired to remove excess bran from the rice, turning "brown rice" into "white rice".)

Rice does require more water to grow than wheat, but the monsoon rains of India and the fertile river valleys of China (fed by the monsoon rains falling in the Himalayas) have long been prime rice-growing areas that had plenty of water and as a result have been capable of supporting massive populations.

If you are interested more in this subject I would recommend Kenneth Pomeranz's The Great Divergence.

Thank-you so much for this post!

I started reading this book recently, and it made me realize how misleading and overly simplistic "Guns, Germs, and Steel" is. Diamond's prehistoric examples have little relevancy to how Europe's economic/industrial growth took off in the 19th century. He basically went from prehistory to today and skipped over the 18th and 19th centuries, which are the the most important time periods for explaining why Europe industrialized first.

Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson is seen as a sequel of sorts to Diamond's book. Why do some nations thrive while other fails? What breeds success?

The Great Divergence by Kenneth Pomeranz tries to answer the question Diamond wasn't able to fully answer in GGS: why Europe and not China?

http://www.amazon.com/The-Great-Divergence-Europe-Economy/dp/0691090106

well, being a doctor or an engineer or a lawyer is just job, a job that pays well and suffer very little discrimination. Interest has very little to do with it. Personally, I'm an engineer and has economics degree and very interested in history. If interest alone dedicate my career, I would be a historian which a specialization in historical economic development. (similar to the person that wrote this) However, as early as high school, I know this is a field where who you are and who you know matter way more than your abilities, and often times you don't write stuff or do research in things you actually like or want, but rather what has funding and what will make a splash. Since I'm not ready to spent my entire career ass kissing and write stuff that I really don't believe in, (who knows what Gordon Chang and Fracis Fukushima actually believes in their own mind), I went for engineering,a career in Engineering has none of this bullshit. It is a field I mildly interesting in, I'm pretty good at math and science, and I like to build computers, so why not. So far I like my choice, even though economic and history classes in college are the ones I enjoy the most (so much that I went for a degree that I know I'll never use).

Perhaps you are talking about becoming a jock and engage in the the anti-intellectualism BS mainstream media likes to promote. Just remember, even at height of your glory, you will only play second fiddle to white people in a popularity contest. When things fade, and you never made it as actor or sports star; the only career open to you is operating a restaurant, as most ther blue collar field are extremely racist either from you customers or your peers... (unless you like restaurants business, which is pretty much hell from my POV.)

Most historians currently don't really adhere to general theories in general. With Marxist historiography going out of favor, and Christian historiography already having been put into the corner before that, there is a reluctance to make any sweeping statements about all of history.

One situation in history in which technological change has been studied a lot is of course the Industrial Revolution. One text that attempts to explain this process in a way that might be generalized is Margaret Jacobs Scientific Culture and the Making of the Industrial West. But another book that makes a great case for why the Industrial Revolution really was the result of a number of strange coincidences and geographical luck is Kenneth Pomeranz' The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy.

Kenneth Pomeranz's The Great Divergence will answer a lot of these questions. There are lots of reasons, Path Dependency and Comparative Advantages are two important ones.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Great-Divergence-Europe-Economy/dp/0691090106