Medieval market– Nicole Oresme (15th century) (Wikicommons)
In terms of GDP per capita growth, northwest Europe began to surpass the rest of the world during the 14th century: before the conquest of the Americas, the invention of printing, the Atlantic slave trade, and the Protestant Reformation.
In a recent post, Steve Sailer asks why the European world pulled ahead of the non-European world between 1000 and 1500 AD:
[…] much of the non-European world entered a sort of cultural recession well before Europeans directly interfered with them. If you look at, say, Charles Murray’s 2003 book Human Achievement, several major non-European civilizations appear to have lost momentum in making progress in the arts and sciences over roughly the time period of 1000 or maybe 1250 to 1500. (Sailer 2022)
For Steve, the reason was the collapse of the Mongol Empire during the 14th century. That century was indeed a turning point for Europe, particularly for England and Holland:
These North Sea economies experienced sustained GDP per capita growth for six straight centuries. The North Sea begins to diverge from the rest of Europe long before the 'West' begins its more famous split from 'the rest.'
[...] we can pin point the beginning of this 'little divergence' with greater detail. In 1348 Holland's GDP per capita was $876. England's was $777. In less than 60 years time Holland's jumps to $1,245 and England's to 1090. The North Sea's revolutionary divergence started at this time. (Greer 2013b)
This process began before the European conquest of the Americas, the invention of printing, the creation of modern finance institutions, the Atlantic slave trade, or the Protestant Reformation. None of these can be proper explanations for this "little divergence." (Greer 2013a; see also Thompson 2012 and Hbd *chick 2013).
The divergence began within a part of Europe that was much less affected by the rise and fall of the Mongol Empire. Moreover, if we compare southern Europe with North Africa during the same period, we see the same divergence that we see more generally between Christian Europe and the rest of the world. Yet North Africa was never conquered by the Mongols.
It looks like internal causes were responsible for the divergence between Christian Europe and the rest of the world. Those causes seem to have their point of origin in northwest Europe during the long period from 500 to 1500 AD. In that region, the Western Church consolidated a pre-existing pattern of small, nuclear households, weak family ties, and residential mobility, thus strengthening a mindset of individualism and impersonal sociality (Frost 2020; Schulz et al. 2019). Then, from 1000 AD onward, the Western Church strove to pacify social relations (Frost and Harpending 2015). Those two factors—an individualistic mindset operating in a pacified social environment—allowed the market economy to expand into all areas of life and eventually replace kinship as the main organizing principle of society (Frost 2020; Macfarlane 1978; Weber 1930).
The expansion of the market economy went hand in hand with the expansion of the middle class. In England, this class began to expand in the twelfth century and would gradually replace the lower classes through downward mobility. By the 1800s, its lineages accounted for most of the English population. English society thus became more middle class in its values: "Thrift, prudence, negotiation, and hard work were becoming values for communities that previously had been spendthrift, impulsive, violent, and leisure loving" (Clark 2007, p. 166). The same process took place elsewhere in Western Europe and more generally throughout Europe to varying degrees and over different timescales (Frost 2019, p. 176).
In sum, between 500 and 1500 AD the Western Church created a system of social reproduction that would have far-reaching demographic, behavioral, and economic consequences. To understand that system, one must understand not only the Bible but also the writings of early and medieval Christianity, as well as the pagan Germanic elements it incorporated (Russell 1994). Finally, one must understand the preceding system, and its failings.
The pre-Christian world: demographic and cognitive decline
Ancient DNA from Greece suggests that mean cognitive ability began to decline at some point during Classical Antiquity (Woodley of Menie et al. 2019). A similar decline probably happened throughout the Mediterranean basin and the Middle East of that time.
There were three main causes:
· A decline in fertility and family formation, particularly among the upper classes (Caldwell 2004; Hopkins 1965; Roetzel 2000, p. 234);
· A corresponding increase in female hypergamy, often by freed slaves, which reduced the reproductive importance of upper-class women (Perry 2013);
· An increase in the slave population, particularly foreign slaves (Harris 1999). This ongoing influx disrupted the process of local cognitive evolution. Even if there had been demographic overflow from the upper classes, that overflow could not have replaced the lower classes, since those classes were being replaced from external sources.
Christianity and Islam both tried to correct the ruinous demographic state of the ancient world. Islam succeeded in reversing negative population growth but failed to restart cognitive evolution. In some ways, it made such evolution more difficult. Islam increased female hypergamy by permitting male polygamy, thus further reducing the reproductive importance of upper-class women (van den Berghe 1960). Foreign slaves were also imported on a larger-scale than in antiquity, thus further disrupting local cognitive evolution (Lewis 1990). Finally, the upper classes tended to congregate in urban areas, where the death rate was higher.
Before the 20th century, population growth had been sluggish in the Muslim world. Wherever Muslims coexisted with Christians, the latter community was often the one that grew at a faster pace. This was the case in the Balkans:
By the end of the eighteenth century the Muslim population had entered a period of comparative economic and moral decline. Several explanations have been offered for this development. Certainly the fact that the Muslim population provided the soldiers contributed to its ultimate weakening. Their concentration in towns also made them more susceptible to the ravages of plague and other diseases. Turkish customs, particularly the practice of polygamy, played a part. This process of decay was clearly illustrated in the eighteenth century in the changing demography of the Balkan towns where Christian and national elements formed an increasingly larger proportion of the population (Jelavich and Jelavich, 1977, pp. 6-7)
Christianity, especially Western Christianity, succeeded not only in promoting population growth but also in restarting cognitive evolution, specifically by supporting the formation of monogamous families, by discouraging slavery, at least during the long period from 500 to 1500 AD, and eventually by creating the peace, order, and stability that allowed the middle class to expand and become dominant. The rise of Christian Europe actually began before its expansion into the Americas and Asia. The latter was, in fact, a consequence of the former.
References
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