Why Europe?

Why Europe? What made Western and Central Europe, long an economic and political backwater compared with the other great agrarian civilisations of Eurasia, the cradle of modernity? This short book argues that the crucial juncture occurred in backward medieval Europe when a reform movement within the Catholic Church challenged lay rulers’ hold over the appointment of bishops. This eleventh-century rupture sundered religious and lay power, and meant that European emperors, kings, and princes henceforth had to tread a fine line: caught between the opposition they encountered from strong social groups such as townsmen, nobles, and Catholic clergy and from other European rulers. What Karl Marx dismissively referred to as the “medieval rubbish” nurtured the seeds of modern Europe – the modern state, the modern market economy, and modern democracy – by creating power pluralism between and within political units.

Why Europe? What made Western and Central Europe, long an economic and political backwater compared with the other great agrarian civilisations of Eurasia, the cradle of modernity? This short book argues that the crucial juncture occurred in backward medieval Europe when a reform movement within the Catholic Church challenged lay rulers’ hold over the appointment of bishops. This eleventh-century rupture sundered religious and lay power, and meant that European emperors, kings, and princes henceforth had to tread a fine line: caught between the opposition they encountered from strong social groups such as townsmen, nobles, and Catholic clergy and from other European rulers. What Karl Marx dismissively referred to as the “medieval rubbish” nurtured the seeds of modern Europe – the modern state, the modern market economy, and modern democracy – by creating power pluralism between and within political units.

Economic growth transformed the world. It freed us from a world where nearly everyone was mired in poverty and half of all children died before reaching adulthood. However, these benefits have not been felt everywhere, nor by everyone. In this groundbreaking new account of the divergence between east and west, Philip T. Hoffman uncovers the ultimate causes of economic growth and the reasons why it originated in seventeenth-century western Europe. He examines the relative impacts of a wide range of economic, political, and social factors, from high wages, cheap capital, and financial institutions to political fragmentation, porous borders, and interstate warfare. Through accessible economic principles and fascinating case studies, he demonstrates why growth began in Britain, why it spread so unevenly elsewhere, and why inequality inhibits growth.