Kling on North on Adaptation
3rd July 2007
Item. I’ve got North’s book, and it’s quite good. I agree that the technology was only waiting for the proper institutional framework to take off; on the other hand, I’m prepared to argue that the needed framework was political, rather than social or intellectual (to the extent that those can be separated).
Consider that the Chinese invented so much of the stuff our modern world is based on, from paper and rockets to gunpowder. Yet the Europeans were the guys who used it to conquer the world. Why? I suggest it was the competition that arose from the fragmented nature of Christendom, as opposed to the unitary Chinese state (and, of course, using letters rather than ideograms had a lot to do with it, too.)