risk, and costly access to ports.6 If this is true, then it is quite likely that the great divergence owed to the failure of the poorest regions to overcome resource poverty. States, markets, and cultures are irrelevant variables, after all, these things cannot bring more water to the arid tropical Africa or Asia, not without serious costs. The question we should be asking is this: Did divergence owe to the distribution of geographical resources which made the poorest parts of the world fall behind, whereas the advanced regions in both East and West developed through trade, industrialization, and agricultural revolution? The test of this hypothesis should involve studying the poorer regions of the world, not the richer ones. No one in world economic history seems to be doing this yet.

中文翻译：

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全球视野中的奢侈品：对象和实践，1600-2000 版。作者：Bernd-Stefan Grewe 和 Karin Hofmeester

6 如果这是真的，那么巨大的差异很可能是由于最贫困地区未能克服资源贫困造成的。国家、市场和文化都是无关变量，毕竟这些东西不能给干旱的热带非洲或亚洲带来更多的水，这并非没有严重的代价。我们应该问的问题是：世界上最贫穷的地区落后了，而东西方先进地区则是通过贸易、工业化和农业革命而发展起来的，这是由于地理资源分布的差异吗？这个假设的检验应该包括研究世界上较贫穷的地区，而不是较富裕的地区。世界经济史上似乎还没有人这样做。