History, Politics and Theory in the Great Divergence Debate

World history suffers from a paucity of clearly articulated, convincing explanations. While the rise of postmodernism and challenges to Eurocentrism did lead to some important correctives, the pendulum has swung too far the other direction, with a corresponding danger of ‘throwing the baby out with the bathwater’. We need careful, theoretically informed debates about ways of organizing world history. What constitutes a good historical explanation? What should guide historians to choose relevant