Scott here at another episode of the History and Plug podcast.

Why did the West dominate all rivals on Earth?

How did a group of states that were nearly wiped out in the late Middle Ages by enemies

to the South and East grow to conquer the globe by the 16th century?

To answer that question, we need to go back to its beginning and see what made Europe Europe. As good as any point to start is the Battle of Marathon in 490

V.C when Athens preserved democracy from Persian conquest. It consolidated further in 146 BC when Rome began

continental integration, and more so under Charlemagne, when Europe became defined as wherever

Christian rulers governed, rather than by Hadrian's fixed borders six centuries earlier.

Overall, Europe is a mix of Greek political systems, Roman law, Christianity's moral architecture,

and what Nile Ferguson calls the killer app of competition, where states and merchants constantly

vied to outdo each other in ways that China's unified empire never experience.

Today's guest is Roderick Beaton, author of Europe, a new history.

We discussed why the scientific revolution happened to Europe and not the Ottoman Empire or China,

due to the reintroduction of Greek scholarship in the universities,

combined with the printing press allowing radical ideas to bypass censorship.

We also see how representative government emerged when Dutch and English merchant classes

traded tax revenue for permanent voices in state policy, and we see why the European Union's

vision of a system that crosses national borders didn't mark the end of history as America celebrated in 1991.

But as the post-World War II starts to unravel and we see nations start to attack other nations to claim sovereign territory like we see in the Russian-Ukraine war,

it's useful to look to Europe's past to understand what the future will be.

Hope we enjoy this discussion with Roderick Beaton.

And one more thing before we get started with this episode, a quick break for a word from our sponsors.

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