Creating a model of the West’s rise to wealth and power is a daunting task and one that is not likely to be completed any time soon. This does not mean, however, that we should not be working at it. Moreover, if the preceding analysis has any merit, many of the major elements of such a model can already be specified.
As Figure 9.1 indicates, the basic causal sequence appears to have been ini- tiated by (1) advances in the technologies of navigation and water transportation beginning late in the twelfth century, which stimulated the many voyages of ex- ploration in the fifteenth century and made the discovery of the New World pos- sible, and (2) subsequent advances in military technology, in combination with the tremendous impact of diseases brought to the Americas by Europeans, which made the conquest of these two vast continents possible; (3) this, in turn, pro- vided western European societies with a wealth of new resources that (4) vastly increased the money supply, stimulated trade and commerce, led to the rapid expansion of markets, and strengthened the merchant class while weakening the old landed aristocracy, thus (5) laying a foundation for revolutionary advances in agricultural and industrial technology in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twenti- eth centuries, which (6), in combination with the wealth of resources controlled by western societies, became the basis of their vastly expanded power, prestige, and wealth in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.3
2. In this connection, one is reminded of R. H. Tawney’s thesis that the Protestant Ethic itself was a product of changes that were already under way in western Europe.
3. Obviously, many factors beside those indicated in this paragraph or in Figure 9.1 have contributed to the rise of the West. A comprehensive model of the total process is the last thing that
In this process, the discovery and conquest of the New World appears to have
been the critical development, providing as it did the enormous surge of new resources on which all of the more important later developments depended. For the first time in
the whole of the agrarian era, wealth increased far more rapidly than population over a vast territory and for an extended period, thus leading to extraordinarily
should be attempted at this point. My aim here is much more modest, but more appropriate, I believe, under the circumstances. I simply want to draw attention to certain elements in the process that are too often overlooked or underestimated, but appear to have been critical.
Accumulating store of technological information late in the agrarian era, especially advances in navigation and ship-building and invention of gun powder Impact of European diseases on New World societies Discovery and conquest of the New World and its vast resources Vast increase in wealth of western European societies Revolutionary advances in agricultural and industrial technology Vastly expanded power, prestige, and wealth of western societies Vast increase in
money supply, trade, and commerce, growth in power and influence of merchant class, decline in power and influence of old landed aristocracy, and greatly strengthened work ethic
The Rise of the West 183 rapid growth in the economic surpluses of a small set of societies.4 Because of this,
all kinds of new developments occurred, including the tremendous growth in power and influence of the societies in western Europe.
It should be emphasized, however, that while the discovery and conquest of the New World were critical in the rise of the West, they were not some kind of uncaused source of all that followed. Rather, as Figure 9.1 indicates, the discovery and conquest of the New World would not have happened were it not for the significant advances in the technologies of navigation and ship-building that made trans-Atlantic shipping on a sustained basis reasonably safe and profitable, and had not advances in military technology and the scourge of European diseases made the conquest possible.
Figure 9.1 is not meant to be an exhaustive or comprehensive model of the causes of the West’s dramatic rise to power and influence, and the countless inter- relations among those causes. We are still far from that point in our understand- ing of all that was involved.
What can be done, however, and what I have attempted here, is the identi- fication of the most important of the causes and the specification of the more important relations among them. Obviously, the model is incomplete, and it may be flawed in other ways as well. New elements will have to be added and existing ones may have to be respecified. Yet despite its limitations and shortcomings, the model has, I believe, two redeeming features. First, it gives to the discovery and conquest of the New World the importance it deserves. And, second, the model, by virtue of its formal nature (i.e., the unambiguous specification of variables and their interrelations), stands as a challenge to those who can improve upon it. In short, it could provide a foundation for more sustained and cumulative attacks on a problem of enormous interest and importance.