Capitalist Origins, the Advent of Modernity, and Coherent Explanation: A Response to Joseph M. Bryant.

This article discusses the analysis of global economic development during the last thousand years provided by the historian Joseph M. Bryant. Bryant maintains that the West changed institutionally around 1500 and began the process of modernization and industrialization. The author responds from the perspective of the so-called California School, which maintains that economic and social differences between Europe and the rest of the world do not emerge until after 1700 and even then they originated in Great Britain rather than the West as a whole. Econometric data, forensic anthropological records and narrative accounts of the economies of Europe and Asia between 1500 and 1850 are considered.