http://www.wilsonquarterly.com/article.cfm?AID=1613
The Enterprise of Nations
by David S. Landes
Critics have tried to explain away the West’s centuries- long economic domination of the globe; they would do better to study its lessons.
Western entrepreneurship and technological progress go back centuries and have changed the world for the better. That, at least, is one assessment of the historical record— one with which not everyone would agree. There are some scholars who, disapproving of Western triumphalism or solicitous of Asian (mostly Chi nese) pride and prowess, would date the Industrial Revolution as a late phenomenon in the history of entrepreneurship and treat it as lucky accident (or unlucky, depend ing on one’s sense of values). It could have happened anywhere, they say; it just fell to Europe or Britain, in large part owing to political fortune, reinforced by overseas dominion. And globalization, in the sense of worldwide diffusion of trade, industry, and technology, came even later, after World War II.