ABSTRACT
Modern social science was born as an attempt to account for the staggering modernization process that had propelled the West – or more particularly Western Europe and a number of European settler colonies – to world domination, and Western Europeans and North Americans to hitherto unknown levels of economic affluence, physical security, and intellectual accomplishments. This modernization process had three component parts: the advent of the modern state, modern democracy, and the modern market economy. This was the trinity that sociologists of the late nineteenth century grappled with (cf. Mills 1959, 152-153; Skocpol 1984a, 1; Goldstone 1998, 250; Pomeranz 2000, 3). Max Weber was but one among many to seek the roots of these astounding developments, which have been captured in formulas such as the question ‘Why Europe?’ and the phrase ‘The Rise of the West’ (Chirot 1985; Hall 2001).
