The driving motivation of most rulers is not ideology or to do good, but to maintain and strengthen their hold on power: “to propagate their rule”. This requires “coercion” — the ability to enforce power — and, crucially, some form of “legitimacy”. In the medieval world, both Islamic and Christian rulers claimed part of their legitimacy from religious authorities, but after the Reformation, Rubin thinks that European governments had to turn away from religion as a source of political legitimacy.
By getting “religion out of politics”, Europe made space at the political “bargaining table” for economic interests, creating a virtuous cycle of “pro-growth” policy-making. Islamic rulers, by contrast, continued to rely on religious legitimation and economic interests were mostly excluded from politics, leading to governance that focused on the narrow interests of sultans, and the conservative religious and military elites who backed them.
The source of Europe’s success, then, lies in the Reformation, a revolution in ideas and authority spread by what Martin Luther called “God’s highest and ultimate gift of grace”: the printing press. Yet even though printers quickly discovered how to adapt movable type to Arabic lettering, there were almost no presses in the Middle East for nearly 300 years after Gutenberg’s invention. Conservative Islamic clerics did not want the press to undermine their power, and the state — still tied to religion not commerce — had no incentive to overrule them. Not until 1727 did the Ottoman state permit printing in Arabic script, with a decree that the device would finally be “unveiled like a bride and will not again be hidden”. The prohibition was “one of the great missed opportunities of economic and technological history”, a vivid example of the dead hand of religious conservatism.
By contrast, Europe was revolutionised. Rubin argues that the Dutch revolt against Catholic Spain and the English crown’s “search for alternative sources of legitimacy” after breaking with Rome empowered the Dutch and English parliaments: by the 1600s both countries were ruled by parliamentary governments that included economic elites. Their policies — such as promoting trade and protecting property rights — were conducive to broader economic progress. Decoupling religion from politics had created space for “pro-commerce” interests.