I wish the video showed his slides. Anyway, some striking parts:
English vs. Chinese coal: English coal mines were near major manufacturing centers, whereas China's coal was too far away (NW) to be useful. Chinese coal mines were in dry areas that had the problem of sudden gas explosions; England's mines had the problem of flooding, and it was pumping water out of mines that led to the development/improvement of early (and initially very inefficient) steam engines. In 1800, 80% of all steam engines were used in mining, where they were right at the source of fuel, making their inefficiencies less of an obstacle. Yangtze delta lacked sources of energy.
Europe's imports from the Americas: Manufacturing centers with growing populations needed to trade for land-intensive products -- food, fiber, building materials, and fuel (Malthus's four necessities). Meanwhile, in China, the richer places are becoming smaller as a proportion of the overall population as people moved to more peripheral regions and developed handicraft industries. (The richer the area, the slower the population growth.) What happened in 19C China is typical, rational, and would happen in *any* developing handicraft/agricultural economy. But the Americas caused a break in the pattern with a periphery hungry for imports (including slaves) that are paid for with growing land-intensive exports. Meanwhile, in east Asia, peripheries develop their own industries and don't need as many imports.
Pomeranz thesis basically flipped the usual script: Instead of seeing Europe's development as the norm and asking "Why not China?" we see that Europe experienced a "freak" development from the "good fortune" of the Americas.
So the basic picture here is one of "European and Chinese cores with much in common but with different peripheries. China's are filling up, turning to handicrafts, hitting ecological constraints, and exporting fewer primary products. Europe's are expanded, ecologically rich, and set up in ways that encourage export-orientation. New World trade shaped by smallpox and slavery was critical -- not because it was profitable -- but because it offered a special kind of trading partner, one that allowed European cores to change labor and capital into land-saving imports in a way that expanded trade closer to home couldn't."
How does the thesis look today, 20 years later?
The discovery of the New World impacted economic development just as much as all the other changes we associate with modernity put together (technology, education, legal systems, etc.).
State power was used in Britain to back industrial growth! (suppressing opposition, partnering with military/merchants, etc.). Ironically, China was more laissez-faire, which was not sufficient to launch a modern economy. The Chinese government did not force the peripheries to serve the core, unlike the British government.
China had a respectable level of pre-industrial prosperity (even without a New World)! "It wasn't just that the Chinese state didn't force the rest of the empire to serve the growth of the Yangtze-delta core, instead promoting the diffusion of cotton textile production throughout the empire. Their fundamental idea of what political economy was supposed to achieve was different.... it did help to produce a particular kind of relative pre-industrial prosperity that, we can now see in retrospect, worked against the likelihood of industrialization."
The socio-economic system and property rights in rural China: Most farmers in China were small-holding tenants with valuable, inheritable, and secure tenancies. Thus, they had a huge incentive to develop the land, which they did, which increased productivity and their bargaining power (to keep rents low). Tenant farmers earned more than wage-laborers in the Yangtze delta. What this means is that, unlike England, there was no PULL factor drawing rural agriculturalists to the city, and instead handicraft industries were diffused, staying in the countryside. This wasn't as conducive to mechanization. Urban concentration was more likely to lead to mechanization.
The high cost of energy/coal in China, c.f. England: The one big exception to everything being cheaper in Guanzhou was charcoal which cost over 500% more than in London. "Is it any wonder, then, that people in England were interested in finding alternatives to human/animal muscle, whereas in China they weren't?"
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