And Some Thought It Had To Do With Christians Or the Enlightenment

TW: A rather cynical view of things. Cold hearted for sure and perhaps instructive for the future. Many folks forget that prior to about 1700 Asians, Turks, Persians et al. were at least equal to Europe in power and technological progress.

From Economist:
"BY THE year 1700, Europe was far better positioned than other regions of the world to launch itself on the path toward industrialisation and self-sustaining growth sufficient to raise incomes in perpetuity. European incomes were considerably higher than those in China and India—between two and five times higher, in fact. But how did that key advantage emerge in the first place? In a Malthusian world, excess income should rapidly be gobbled up by population growth.

Unless, of course, you live in Europe, where filth and war keep population in check. According to Nico Voigtländer and Hans-Joachim Voth, this was the key to Europe's developmental success.

The first lucky stroke was the arrival of the Black Death in the 14th century. Plague killed a huge share of the labour force, pushing incomes up to levels that wouldn't be seen again until Victorian times. This new wealth kicked off a wave of war-waging, which claimed additional lives, and it created a surplus that allowed for relatively high rates of urbanisation. This was also fortunate for Europe, since its cities were particularly deadly, for these reasons:

Europeans ate more meat, and hence kept more animals in close proximity,

European cities were protected by walls due to frequent wars, which could not be moved without major expense, and

Europeans dumped their chamber pots out of their windows, while human refuse was collected in Chinese cities and used as fertiliser in the countryside.

Take it all together and you have nearly four centuries of horrific death, sufficient to make labour scarce and incomes high right up until Europe was ready to finance the industrial revolution. Europe did its best to share the wealth by bringing death to the rest of the world, but success proved difficult to duplicate. "