ABSTRACT
In a follow-up to his study on The Sources of Social Power, Michael Mann notes that western Europe3 (which he consistently refers to as “Europe”) “was often inferior, and never superior, in extensive powers until after 1500.”4 If we overlook the imprecision embedded in the synecdochic representation of “Europe,” ignore the missing clarification of what “Europe” was “often inferior, and never superior” to, and introduce the correction that, surely, in terms of the world history of large-scale public authorities, there has never existed a single, organizationally coherent and self-contained entity that could be labeled “Europe” (or even “western Europe”)—so that any reference to “(western) Europe” as a singular noun that could have overall characteristics such as inferiority or superiority is empirically quite problematic-we arrive at a potentially very productive insight. If correct, this observation may have serious implications for, and may occasion a systematic re-assessment of, the ways in which global historical sociology interprets both the ascent of western Europe and the emergence of capitalism.
