Links on the earliness of the Great Divergence
In the popular mind, the Great Divergence (or European growth miracle) is associated with Gutenberg’s 1440 invention of the printing press, Columbus’s 1492 voyage to the Americas, Luther’s 1517 initiation of the Protestant Reformation, Locke’s 1689 Essay Concerning Human Understanding, and Watt’s invention of the steam engine in 1769. However, the latest and best historical research has pushed the origins of the Great Divergence, both in terms of economic growth and social change, to the Middle Ages or earlier. More importantly, this line of research, pioneered especially by Joseph Henrich and Emmanuel Todd, inverts the causality of economic growth and social change, and the causality of macro-social change and the evolution in European family structure.
The following links offer an introduction to the subject. Notably, while Henrich and Todd agree that the late Medieval European absolute nuclear family structure preceded and caused the European growth miracle and Englightenment-era political liberalism, they disagree on its origins. Henrich’s theory attributes this development to the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, while Todd’s theory attributes it to the cultural practices of pre-Christian Germanic barbarians.
On the earliness of the North Sea growth miracle
The Rise of the West: Asking the Right Questions (Tanner Greer - The Scholar’s Stage)
Accounting for the great divergence (Stephen Broadberry)
On exogamy, psychology, and economic growth
Schulz, J. F., Bahrami-Rad, D., Beauchamp, J. P., & Henrich, J. (2019). The Church, intensive kinship, and global psychological variation. Science, 366(6466), eaau5141.
On the pre-modern origins of the absolute nuclear family
Emmanuel Todd’s L’invention de l’Europe: A critical summary (Craig Willy describes Emmanuel Todd’s theory of the absolute nuclear family, which combined inequality and liberalism.)
The Church's crusade against cousin-marriage did not create the Western nuclear family. (Anusar Farooqui argues against Henrich’s above paper which credits the Catholic Church for Western exogamy, and in favor of Emmanuel Todd’s theory.)
On the pre-modern origins of gender equality
McDougall, S. (2014). The opposite of the double standard: gender, marriage, and adultery prosecution in late medieval France. Journal of the History of Sexuality, 23(2), 206-225. (McDougall documents how most of those punished for adultery in late Medieval northern France were men, and most women who were punished were prostitutes who had taken on married men as clients. Thus, while prostitution was legal, it was not allowed for married men, but was more of a release valve for unmarried men, given the typical late marriage age.)
The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity by James C Russell (Thread by Uriah Crimkadid, describing the non-Christian origins of monogamy)
Marriage and Love in England, 1300 - 1840 by Alan MacFarlane (Thread by Uriah Crimkadid, describing how love marriages led to greater geographic mobility)