Commentary
It’s now been nearly 35 years since E.L. Jones first published his watershed book “The European Miracle.” Jones’s history of economic development examined the reasons why Europe—a comparatively poor and backward part of the world in the Middle Ages—somehow became the wealthiest and most productive place on earth in the 19th century. The fundamental question remains: Why did Europe surpass other civilizations that had once been much richer than the West?
