Rome and the Rise of the West

How the Roman empire shaped the West and the emergence of the modern economy

Most historians recounting the rise of the West begin their narratives somewhere in the Middle Ages. In this groundbreaking account, historian Taco Terpstra argues that if we want to understand how the rise of the West unfolded, we need to look further back—all the way to the Neolithic, when an upward trend in social development began.

For millennia after the Neolithic Revolution, the fastest rising part of the West was the area of Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Levant and the Aegean. Yet around 1400 CE, the highest levels of social development shifted from the southeastern corner of the Mediterranean to the northwestern parts of Europe—northern Italy, France, Germany, the Low Countries, and Britain. As Terpstra shows, it was the shock of the Roman occupation that created the unprecedented and anomalous shift. The post-Roman northwest built on the gains it had made during the imperial era to catch up in social development and achieve Western supremacy. Thus, it was imperial Rome that determined where the modern economy emerged.