Abstract
Max Weber's explanation of the rise of Western progress remains the best available. It needs to be blended with an awareness that geographic coincidence and medieval class conflict were instrumental in allowing strong, bourgeois-dominated towns to emerge from feudalism. This, and the very long-lasting political stalemate between contending forces in the Middle Ages and early modern Europe were the key elements in the development of Western rationality. Proof comes from comparing Europe to other major agrarian civilizations, particularly China. Twentieth-century historical scholarship confirms Weber more than it supports some recent, fashionable sociological theories about the rise of the West such as world system
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