It makes for a great story, but I wanted to hear historians chime in on it:

The modern wealth of Europe and the Americas lies in the Fall of the Western Roman Empire. But to back track a bit further before exploring the fall.

Empires, kingdoms, and most political forms of governance since the beginning of agriculture is the rule of the tri-part elite; ruler (king, inca, pharaoh, emperor etc.), the military (sanctioned violence that can be used internally as well as externally) and the priesthood (controllers of information, scribes, administrators, and mediators between god(s) and the people in support of the status quo). One elite or another might be dominant at one time or another but they each needed the support of the others. The king needed the military to control the population and the priesthood to present the reasons that god wanted the people to support the king. The church needed the money that the king extracted (supported by sanctioned violence). The military needed focus and the administrative abilities of the priesthood.

The fall of Rome in the west created a unique situation. (Its uniqueness accounts for much that is cited as important to the development of wealth in the west.) The ruler, the emperor, was gone as was the military that supported the Empire. In their place was a host of petty rulers supported by their small cohort of military. These kept the local populace in control and mounted small wars against neighboring groups.

That left the church, the controller of information. The church had the right of direct taxation - the tithe. Therefore the church was set free of dependence on the other members of the tri-part elite. The church benefited from the wealth of the common folk because they took 10% of every crop and of every sale.

This created a unique situation where the information controller benefited from common folk using technology and thinking about how to improve production. Churches and especially monasteries taught wealthy common people to read and do sums. Monasteries functioned as agricultural outreach centers encouraging the use of the hard horse collar, horse shoes, and the three field rotation system.

The church’s message became, good works are good, technology allows people to make more, when people make more they can do more good works, therefore technology is good.

In China, in the Islamic lands technology was limited to the elite. In western Europe the use of technology by the common folk was encouraged.

When the printing press was first introduced the church was a huge supporter. It wasn’t until the Reformation that the Inquisition became to be anti-press. Printers in Catholic countries found they couldn’t make a living without church sponsorship so they “voted with their feet” moving to Holland (the Spanish Netherlands) and then to England.

There was a glut of printers who printed everything from broadsides to business books, pornography to primers, music, playing cards, how-to books, ledgers and books on double entry bookkeeping. Protestant countries became print intensive. The common people learned to read, do sums and to practice double entry bookkeeping. This gave them a new perspective on doing business. The first capitalists came from these literate members of the craft producing classes.

First in Holland and then in England some master craftspeople began to hire more and more apprentices because they could tract production so they didn’t need to live with their apprentices to know that they were working.

The rest, as they say, is history.

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