Why Europe Conquered the World: A Modest Booklist

Trajectory of Innovation
https://blog.oup.com/2014/07/bioscience-flies-future-teleportation/

It was in Europe — and the extensions of Europe, above all, America — that human beings first achieved per capita economic growth over a long period of time. In this way, European society eluded the “Malthusian trap,” enabling new tens of millions to survive and the population as a whole to escape the hopeless misery that had been the lot of the great mass of the human race in earlier times. The question is: why Europe? __ The European Miracle

Look at the exponential growth of human population after 1500 – 1650 and ask yourself “Why was it Europe that pulled humanity out of the Malthusian trap?”

Each book in the following list answers this question in various ways. The explanations change, but it is the presented data and the substance of the arguments that matter.

• Walter Scheidel — Escape from Rome (2019)
• Stephen Davies — The Wealth Explosion (2019)
• Eric Jones — The European Miracle (1987)
• Ricardo Duchesne — The Uniqueness of Western Civilization (2012)
• Charles Murray — Human Accomplishment (2003)
• Adam Smith — The Wealth of Nations (1776)
• David Landes — The Wealth and Poverty of Nations (1998)
• Gregory Clark — A Farewell to Alms (2007)
• Lynn and Vanhanen — IQ and the Wealth of Nations (2002)
• John Kay — The Truth About Markets (2003)
• Jared Diamond — Guns Germs and Steel (1997)
• Robert Cooter — Law and the Poverty of Nations (2009)
• Peter Zeihan — The Accidental Superpower (2014)
• Matt Ridley — The Rational Optimist (2010)
• Acemoglu and Robinson — Why Nations Fail (2012)
  More
• Acemoglu and Robinson — The Narrow Corridor (2019)
• Hernan de Soto — The Mystery of Capital (2000)
• David Warsh — Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations (2006)
• Nathan Rosenberg — How the West Grew Rich (1985)
• William J. Bernstein — Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World (2008)
• William J. Bernstein — The Birth of Plenty (2004)
• Hans-Hermann Hoppe — A Short History of Man 2015
• Joel Mokyr — The Lever of Riches (1992)
• Ronald Findlay and Kevin H. O’Rourke — Power and Plenty (2009)
• Jan Luiten van Zanden — The Long Road to the Industrial Revolution (2009)
• Kenneth Clark — Civilisation (1980)
• Jacob Bronowski — The Ascent of Man (1976)
• Frances Gies, Joseph Gies — Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel (1994)
  More on medieval technology with more primary sources listed
• Kenneth Pomeranz — The Great Divergence (2000)
• Ian Morris — Why the West Rules for Now (2010)
• Niall Ferguson — Civilization The West and the Rest (2011)
• Paul Kennedy — The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (1987)
• Phillip T Hoffman — Why Did Europe Conquer the World 2015
  More
• Ruchir Sharma — The Rise and Fall of Nations (2016)
• Mancur Olson — The Rise and Decline of Nations (1982)
• Joseph Tainter — The Collapse of Complex Civilizations (1988)

For Children:

• M.B. Synge — The Awakening of Europe (1903)

China, India, Mesopotamia, and Egypt all had ancient empires and thriving societies long before western Europe was more than roving bands of hunter-gatherers and small settlements of subsistence farmers. The Greek city-state empire was productive in producing important knowledge and concepts, but “Greece” was absorbed by the Romans — and then the Roman empire was shattered by barbarian tribes. Most of the ancient knowledge of Greece was then lost to Europe until after the crusades, after the reconquista of Spain, and after the onset of direct trade between Europe and the east (including India and China).

False Dawns

The ancient Greeks were inventors and discoverers. Among their inventions were the water wheel, the odometer, the alarm clock, important contributions to map-making, geometry, modern philosophy, democracy, and applying systematic thought to early science and mathematics. More But the culture of ancient Greece was absorbed by the dynamism of Rome, and human history had to wait for a better opportunity to break the trap.

For a magical 300 years between AD 960 and AD 1279, China’s Song Dynasty promised to develop into a lasting renaissance. Many remarkable inventions — including the military use of gunpowder and the compass — were developed then. But even gunpowder weapons could not hold off the invading Mongols, and so the Song Dynasty became another false dawn for “modern civilisation.” Humans had to wait until more systematically thinking Europeans were reunited with ancient Greek knowledge — and got their first glimpses of ancient knowledge from China, India, and Islamic scholarship — before they would begin to escape the Malthusian trap.

Finally, once the systematic thinking of Europeans met the ancient knowledge of China, India, and scholarly Islam — and was re-united with the ancient knowledge of Greece — the growth of knowledge, technology, exploration, and the arts, grew unstoppable. Humans had escaped the Malthusian trap, for now.

From Charles Murray’s Human Accomplishment
Source

More books will be added to the above list as we become aware of their existence and relevance to this specialised topic.

It should be mentioned that part of ancient Greek knowledge was kept safe by European monastics through the dark ages after the collapse of the western Roman Empire. How the Irish Saved Civilization is one account of this monastic preservation of old, deep knowledge until the dawn of systematic thinking, and men like Bacon, Galileo, and the other giants who prepared the way for the revolutions that would sweep everything before them.

How the scientific revolution facilitated the technological and industrial revolutions:

Early inventions may not have been based directly on scientific theories, but they did require general literacy and knowledge of measurement and mathematics. The Scientific Revolution created a market for this kind of knowledge:

By the start of the eighteenth century … mechanics, artisans, and millwrights, who had been taught not only to read but to measure and calculate, started to apply the mathematical and experimental techniques of the sciences to their crafts.

… a market had emerged in which an English ironmonger could learn German forging techniques, and a surveyor could acquire the tools of descriptive geometry. …

The dominoes look something like this: A new enthusiasm for creating knowledge led to the public sharing of experimental methods and results; demand for those results built a network of communication channels among theoretical scientists; those channels eventually carried not just theoretical results but their real-world applications, which spread into the coffeehouses and inns where artisans could purchase access to the new knowledge.

Put another way, those dominoes knocked down walls between theory and practice that had stood for centuries.

__ Relationship between the Scientific and the Industrial Revolutions