European Exceptionalism:
A Different Path
E
urope was lucky, but luck is only a beginning. Anyone who
looked at the world, say a thousand years ago, would never have
predicted great things for this protrusion at the western end of the
Eurasian landmass that we call the continent of Europe. In terms pop
ular among today's new economic historians, the probability at that
point of European global dominance was somewhere around zero.
Five hundred years later, it was getting close to one.
In the tenth century, Europe was just coming out of a long torment
of invasion, plunder, and rapine, by enemies from all sides. From what
we now know as Scandinavia, the Norsemen or Vikings, marine ban
dits whose light boats could handle the roughest seas and yet sail up
shallow rivers to raid and pillage far inland, struck along the Atlantic
coasts and into the Mediterranean as far as Italy and Sicily. Others went
east into Slavic lands, establishing themselves as a new ruling class (the
Rus, who gave their name to Russia and ruled that somber land for
some seven hundred years), and eventually penetrating almost to the
walls of Constantinople.
So terrifying were these marauders, so ruthless their tactics (taking
pleasure in tossing babes in the air and catching them on their lances,
or smashing their heads against the wall), that the very rumor of their