Kenneth Pomeranz is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His current projects include a history of Chinese political economy from the seventeenth century to the present. In this talk Pomeranz examines how and why contemporary China's huge land mass and population have wound up forming a single political unit.
**Kenneth Pomeranz** is a Professor of History at the University of Chicago. His work focuses mostly on China, though he is also very interested in comparative and world history. Most of his research is in social, economic, and environmental history, though he has also worked on state formation, imperialism, religion, gender, and other topics. Publications include \_The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy\_ (2000), which won the John K. Fairbank Prize from the AHA, and shared the World History Association book prize; \_The Making of a Hinterland: State, Society and Economy in Inland North China, 1853–1937\_ (1993), which also won the Fairbank Prize;\_ The World that Trade Created\_ (with Steven Topik, first edition 1999, 3rd edition 2012), and a collection of his essays, recently published in France. Pomeranz has also edited or co-edited five books, and was one of the founding editors of the [\_Journal of Global History\_](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-global-history ""). He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, American Council of Learned Societies, the Institute for Advanced Studies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and other sources. His current projects include a history of Chinese political economy from the seventeenth century to the present, and a book called Why Is China So Big? which tries to explain, from various perspectives, how and why contemporary China's huge land mass and population have wound up forming a single political unit.