Western Europe’s rise to sustained economic growth was not the result of an ancient, fixed advantage over the rest of the continent. The account instead traces a widening institutional divergence: small differences in political power and social organization shaped how the region responded to shocks, trade, and revolution. By the nineteenth century, much of Western Europe had moved away from feudal constraints and toward institutions that allowed industrialization to take root, while much of Eastern Europe remained under more extractive arrangements.

A divergence shaped by shocks

In the fourteenth century, Western and Eastern Europe were not yet worlds apart. The Black Death reached Europe in 1346, and its demographic effects and the resulting scarcity of labor were broadly similar across the continent. In both regions, workers sought greater freedom as their labor became more valuable. But the political balance differed. In England and Western Europe, workers had enough power to resist efforts to preserve the old labor order; in Eastern Europe, landlords were better positioned to restrict their freedom. They enlarged their holdings and tightened control over a rural population served by weaker, less populous towns. The divergence became sharper after 1500, as Western European demand for Eastern European grain and other agricultural goods grew. Eighty percent of Amsterdam’s rye imports came from the Elbe, Vistula, and Oder river valleys, and trade with Eastern Europe soon accounted for half of the Netherlands’ booming commerce. Rather than using this demand to free labor, eastern landlords strengthened their control over it. The resulting Second Serfdom tied agricultural production to coercion: in Korczyn, Poland, nearly half of the work owed to a lord was unpaid by 1600, while in Mecklenburg labor obligations rose from a few days a year in 1500 to three days a week by 1600. In Hungary, serfs eventually made up 90 percent of the rural population. Western and Eastern Europe thus participated in the same expanding market, but on sharply different terms: freer workers helped sustain the Western market economy, while coerced serfs supplied goods for it in the East. The book treats this transformation as an example of a critical juncture, when a disruptive event opens different institutional paths. In the West, the plague helped weaken feudal labor relations and contributed to the emergence of a more inclusive labor market. In the East, somewhat stronger landlords, more consolidated estates, weaker towns, and less organized peasants enabled elites to intensify extraction. Differences that had initially seemed small became consequential when the existing order was shaken.

Political institutions and Atlantic commerce

The same attention to political differences informs the comparison between Western European kingdoms. In 1588, England, Spain, and France were all ruled by relatively absolutist monarchs and faced assemblies seeking greater rights and influence. But those assemblies did not possess equal leverage. The English Parliament and Spanish Cortes had authority over taxation, while the French Estates-General did not. Spain’s American empire also gave its Crown access to gold and silver, making it less dependent on the Cortes. Elizabeth I, by contrast, needed Parliament to grant taxes and had to make concessions, including restrictions on royal monopolies. The English Parliament gradually gained ground in this conflict, while the Spanish Cortes lost it. Atlantic expansion magnified the importance of these differences. English colonization began at Roanoke in 1585; the English East India Company was formed in 1600; Jamestown was founded in 1607; and Barbados was occupied in 1627. France also expanded across the Atlantic, founding Quebec City in 1608. In England, the Crown could not monopolize trade with the Americas as other European monarchs could. Atlantic commerce therefore fostered a group of wealthy English traders with relatively few ties to the Crown. Resenting royal control, they pressed for changes to political institutions and limits on royal prerogative, and played an important role in the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution. Commercial expansion did not produce the same political effects everywhere. In Spain and France, monarchs retained greater control over trade, so prosperous traders were less likely to form an independent, numerous opposition to absolutism. France experienced the Fronde Rebellion between 1648 and 1652, but the book’s comparison emphasizes that England’s opponents to absolutism were relatively wealthy and numerous, making their victory more likely. Critical junctures did not operate on a blank slate: existing institutions determined who could benefit from new opportunities and organize against entrenched power.

Revolution and the spread of reform

A further path to inclusive institutions emerged through the French Revolution. For three centuries before 1789, France had been governed by an absolutist monarchy, and society was divided into three estates. The nobility and clergy enjoyed legal and fiscal privileges, while the Third Estate bore multiple taxes. The Revolution overturned absolutism in France and set off conflicts that carried institutional reform across much of Western Europe. French revolutionary armies and, later, Napoleon confronted territories where medieval institutions still empowered monarchs, princes, and nobles, restricted trade, and maintained feudal obligations. In some regions serfs remained tied to the land; elsewhere peasants owed lords a range of fees and services. In Nassau-Usingen, for example, peasants faced 230 different payments, dues, and services, including a charge on slaughtered animals. Guilds also restricted economic activity: in Cologne and Aachen, they blocked the adoption of textile machinery. French forces and administrations dismantled many of these arrangements, ending feudal land relations, abolishing guilds, and imposing equality before the law. Napoleon sought firm control over conquered territories, sometimes relying on local elites or placing relatives and associates in positions of authority. At the same time, he continued the Revolution’s legal reforms by codifying Roman law and equality before the law in the Code Napoleon, which he wanted imposed throughout his territories. The reforms were not uniformly permanent. In Hanover, old elites returned after Napoleon’s fall and many changes were lost. Elsewhere, however, feudalism, guild power, and noble privilege were permanently weakened or destroyed, and the Code Napoleon often remained in force after French rule ended.

Industrialization and an uneven legacy

French military rule brought suffering as well as institutional change, but its effects extended beyond France. By the middle of the nineteenth century, industrialization was rapidly under way in many areas that French armies had controlled. Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and parts of Germany and Italy were among the places where exported reforms helped clear institutional barriers to economic change. The French Revolution thus contributed not only to the end of absolutism in France but also to the spread of more inclusive economic institutions across much of Western Europe. The transformation remained uneven. Austria-Hungary and Russia, which French forces did not conquer, remained largely stagnant, as did Poland and Spain, where French control was temporary or limited. Farther east, absolutist monarchies endured until the First World War. Western Europe’s relative advantage was therefore neither automatic nor uniform: historical shocks and political conflict created opportunities for reform, while the reach and durability of institutional change varied from place to place. The region’s experience illustrates the book’s broader argument that trade and technological opportunity alone do not determine prosperity; political institutions shape who can seize those opportunities and whether growth can take root.