I enjoyed your review of Pomeranz in EH.net. Aside from being extremely erudite and thoughtful, you're right, I'd say -- it's not New World resources that matter. Politics, and a culture of scientific innovation, are crucial; although I'd say the distinctively powerful empirical science only arises in the 17th century, and only in Britain. Other scientific advances are either "catch-up" with the Arab world or China, or to a degree that most people underestimate, peter out or are suppressed. In a series of recent papers, I argue that it was science and technology, PLUS coal, PLUS an open and entrepreneurial society (Temin) that had to converge to produce the IR as it happened. All three elements were crucial, and the combination was found nowhere outside of UK.(posted 8749 days ago)I sympathize with your desire to have something better than Wallerstein or Goody to give students, and Ken's book is good on the "what" of the divergence, if weaker on the "why."
Maybe one of these [my] papers will work better for students (plus they're not book length). The first opens the question of the traditional narrative by pointing to "The Problem of the 'Early Modern' World." (This appeared in the Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient in 1998). The second asks more pointedly: "The Rise of the West -- or Not?" This essay is forthcoming in Sociological Theory, and takes off from Landes, Frank, Pomeranz, Wong, Flynn, and others who I think are developing a new approach.
Finally -- and perhaps the most fun -- is an essay for a forthcoming volume on counterfactuals in historical argument, edited at OSU by your former Berkeley colleague Phil Tetlock. Supposing that William III fails in his invasion of England, and that James II stays in power, it examines the consequences for the Royal Society, empirical science, the industrial revolution, democracy, and finds remarkable changes .....