In this remarkably erudite, subtle, and temperate volume, Karel Davids tries to discern how far technological change is explained by one often-cited factor, religion. The arenas examined, over an immense spell between A.D. 700 and 1800, are the Great Divergence between China and Europe and the Little Divergence between southern and north-western countries within Europe. Davids tackles four themes: the role of religious values; of religion in human capital formation; in the circulation of technological knowledge; and in technological innovation. He engages each problem in exceptionally detailed fashion—deep and praiseworthy efforts. None of the topics, not China, not Europe, and definitely not religion, offers a tractable uniformity, and we should be aware that binary oppositions risk mirror-imaging where each side reflects only the other. In the case of Europe, Davids's attention to the Netherlands as well as to England or Britain does go a little way towards deflecting this shaft.

His approach is to assess evidence and opinion in the English-language literature, which means an analysis of historiography, spiced with notably thoughtful comment. Davids ridicules the scientism of attempts to measure religion's impact via any old proxy in favor of polite courtroom interrogations of his own. The ease of his prose would shame many a native English speaker. That said, the issues are tangled ones and the method involves a to-ing and fro-ing between China and Europe that obliges the reader to stay abnormally wide awake. Before describing the findings and pressing on some soft spots, let me reiterate that the book is outstandingly erudite, to be challenged at one's peril.

As to the first section, claims that technological change was primarily influenced by religious values are rejected. So much for Weber. Against Lynn White, Davids makes the familiar but commonly neglected point that there were no Western and no medieval monopolies on exploiting nature for human ends. He turns with palpable relief towards the more mundane influences of religious institutions and the condition of society, polity, and economy. With respect to human capital formation, his conclusion is that religion affected trends but not levels in both China and Europe. Evidence on literacy in China is thin; the meaning of age-heaping is uncertain; book production does not tell us who bought books or read them, let alone what difference it made; the skill premium may measure demand rather than supply; and indeed literacy overall may not guarantee that human capital was productive. Southern and north-western Europe did not diverge greatly in terms of human capital formation, even though technical education was supplied by governments and religious institutions in the former, and by the market in the latter. This finding follows much wrestling with rather difficult material.

Regarding the circulation of knowledge, Davids minimizes differences between China and Europe before 1500 but not afterwards. Europe saw an upsurge of increasingly secular public knowledge, although the technological spin-off from curiosity cabinets and botanic gardens is presumably unclear. So-called confessional migrations transferred knowledge. China after 1500 did not match these effects; its libraries were heaven for librarians busy amassing books without circulating them.

Coming at length to actual innovation, which is not however firmly distinguished from invention, the conclusion is that China and Europe certainly did diverge because of religious influences. China lacked a patent system, prizes for inventors, or strong intellectual interests in technology. Europe's religious institutions spent more and their efforts were reinforced by competition arising from secular activity in urban centers and the expanding market economy—though ought not market growth itself to be explained at this point? Canon law promoted propositional knowledge, for example in Italian work on fluvial hydraulics. The approach spread to the Netherlands and England, but in the former country science turned towards vindicating the Almighty more than to expanding useful knowledge. Ultimately, Davids concludes that the Little Divergence in economic performance within Europe did not depend on religion whereas religious differences mattered greatly for the Great Divergence between Europe and China.

Yet a few loose ends remain. It was unwise of the author to criticize Gaukroger, for instance, for neglecting certain authorities when, despite his own enormous learning, he has missed significant sources on the sociology of Protestantism, on European uses of textbooks, key work on the Chinese manipulation of nature, and differences in the independence of guilds. Likewise, while he hints that even in a religiously suffused setting technical change is triggered by changing factor prices, he never spells out how. Finally he seems to treat England and Britain as synonymous. They were not. He does not sufficiently disaggregate England. Had he done so, he might have granted more of a role in the economic development of advanced districts to sectarian ideology. Nevertheless, the labor devoted to preparing this volume has been outstanding and it truly marks an advance in comparative economic history.