This project builds on 2 quite distinct historiographical currents, which it seeks to bring together with a case study on Portugal between 1300 and 1900. The first arises from the study of economic growth during the last 2 centuries, a period of unparalleled expansion of population, output and productivity on a global scale. The prevailing view today is that the Industrial Revolution was a decisive break, but not as sudden and dramatic as claimed earlier. It occurred in Northwest Europe, which had experienced growth already for more than a century, along with urbanization, agricultural improvement and growth in traditional manufacturing. In the rest of Europe, from 1500 to 1750 income per capita declined or stagnated, and conditions for economic acceleration were therefore absent. This was the Great Divergence (Allen, 2001), one of the great debates in long term comparative economic history (van Zanden, 1999). Following a suggestion by J. G. Williamson (1995), it involves estimating income per capita from real over long intervals, using a purchasing power parity methodology based on extensive price information and a common basket of consumption goods. The goal is to map the intensity and timing of the divergence in order to understand which factors were its main determinants. At present, the literature is still concentrating on this 'map', and Portugal, a missing country until now, is an important 'counterweight' to recent findings on the Eastern Mediterranean (Pamuk, 2005; Prados, 2007). A second strand in this historiography has to do with income distribution (Hoffman et al, 2005). The Great Divergence has implied an increase in the inequality of this distribution among nations, but it was also accompanied by a similar movement within nations. The main reasons were the rise of population, a concentrated system of landownership, the Law of Engel and technical progress. This approach raises a crucial point: can we infer income per capita from real wages? Biases come from missing the more urban, service and manufacturing-oriented economic activities, which were expanding and pushing up income per capita, especially in the more advanced Northwest. Price and wage research dates back to the 1930s. In this new version, data is scarce, particularly on Asia. There is a need to 'regionalize' the analysis and cover individual countries better. The use of real wages as a proxy for national product per capita must be reconciled with the distributional issue. A consistent economic interpretation of the long run data in terms of convergence, divergence, stagnation and development is needed. A third strand of this historiography broadens the discussion to ask whether there was a Great Divergence between Europe and India and China. According to Pomerantz (2000) and others, between the 16th and the 18th centuries, the latter regions' real wages were on a par with Western Europe. Intercontinental per capita income divergence only happened upon industrialization. Before the 18th century, real wages in Europe could not have risen much therefore and this casts doubts on the idea of a Great Divergence there. This view has been criticised by Maddison (2001), who contrasts a stagnant Asia with a slowly growing Europe. Portugal, with its long presence in Asia, is a valuable addition to this debate. It can help answer the question, asked by Broadberry and Gupta (2006): was early modern Asia more like the backward parts of Europe (ii.e. Portugal?). Our 2nd historiographical current arises from Portuguese price history and the interpretations of economic performance it has stimulated. The former has a solid tradition (Godinho, 1955; Magalhães, 1993; Santos, 2003). It covers the country patchily and is weak on wages and rents. Not much effort has been made to gather these data into a single homogenous and consistent data base or produce weighted indices, except for the 19th century (Justino, 1990). Instead, prices have been used to study cycles but ignoring the trend line, in a static and Malthusian perspective (Oliveira, 2002). These cycles are not treated as part of a long run process and have not been linked to each other to obtain a fuller picture. The possibility of changes in the productivity of the economy or of technology-induced shifts has hardly been considered. Given the strong emphasis on the prices of agricultural goods, the part of the urban sector in the movements of the national economy has not been given much importance either. Despite the prevalence of the idea of 'decadence', the notion of systematic decline over centuries is unexplainably absent from the discipline's worries. For most authors, the colonies, the excessive weight of the state and the submission of Portugal to foreign interests have a central role in accounting for the behaviour of the Portuguese economy (Godinho, 1971). They mattered more than anything else, not only in the 16th century, but also in the crisis of the 17th century, during the reversals of the 18th century (Azevedo, 1929). Their impact in the 19th century has served to underscore this importance ( Pedreira, 1994). Yet price indicators have hardly been used as empirical proof for any of these relationships. The only macroeconomic model by Portuguese price historians is that which Godinho (1955) devised to explain the ebb and flow of industrialization over the centuries. The hypothesis is that manufacturing would only develop with official support and this was forthcoming only when falling or stagnant prices announced a recession in trade and agriculture or the colonies. Although this model would have difficulty today in meeting the exacting standards of the Cliometric school, it has provoked considerable and useful debate, and revealed that such approaches, based on solid evidence, may stir anew interest in the long term evolution of the Portuguese economy, which is the object of this project.