An understanding of Weber's theory of modernity is therefore an indispensable prerequisite for any analysis of his approach to social inequality. More importantly, however, the elevation of feudalism a particular period in the history of some parts of Western Europe to a universal stage in the history of world civilisations lends legitimacy to the search for structural absences outside the West and projects the postulated uniqueness further back in time. Apart from their objective impact on the social structures in their respective cultural contexts, Weber considered these distinct principles of social differentiation, linked to their corresponding religious background, to have decisively influenced the development of rational, industrial capitalism. That Weber's sociology should be so clearly indebted to narrowly defined and historically contingent cultural and political values underlying his notion of national identity has been alternatively seen as a reason for either discarding Weber as a classic.