How Europe Made the Modern World: Creating the Great Divergence

by Jonathan Daly

One thousand years ago, a traveler to Baghdad or the Chinese capital Kaifeng would have discovered a vast and flourishing city of broad streets, spacious gardens, and sophisticated urban amenities; meanwhile, Paris, Rome, and London were cramped and unhygienic collections of villages, and Europe was a backwater. How, then, did it rise to world preeminence over the next several centuries? This is the central historical conundrum of modern times.

How Europe Made the Modern World draws upon the latest scholarship dealing with the various aspects of the West's divergence, including geography, demography, technology, culture, institutions, science and economics. It avoids the twin dangers of Eurocentrism and anti-Westernism, strongly emphasizing the contributions of other cultures of the world to the West's rise while rejecting the claim that there was nothing distinctive about Europe in the premodern period. Daly provides a concise summary of the debate from both sides, whilst also presenting his own provocative arguments.

Drawing on a wide range of primary and secondary sources, and including maps and images to illuminate key evidence, this book will inspire students to think critically and engage in debates rather than accepting a single narrative of the rise of the West. It is an ideal primer for students studying Western Civilization and World History courses.

Genres: World History, History

246 pages, Paperback

Published October 3, 2019

Reviews

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

A brief but information-packed entry into the debate about why Europe became so powerful in the modern period. Daly argues that from the High Middle Ages through the early modern period Western European societies developed legal systems, robust economies, and formal and informal institutions to share and advance knowledge by building on Greco-Roman civilization as well as on culture and inventions from Islamic, Indian, and Chinese civilizations. Paradoxically, emerging in poverty and political fragmentation from the wreckage of the Western Roman Empire allowed Western Europeans to rebuild less rooted, more adaptable societies and gave them reason to adapt the products of past and present civilizations for their own needs. These developments allowed Europeans to take advantage of the geographic opportunities afforded by being close to the Americas and having large coal deposits.

Daly's argument is less triumphalistic and overly idealistic about the West than some arguments in this vein, so he offers a lot to think about.

[Seez]

not rating bc it was for school, but it was interesting to see how much influence Europe actually wielded. despite this, Daly definitely presents a VERY unrealistic image of Europe by completely discounting their brutal colonialism across the world.

[kestrel · Rating 3 out of 5]

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