I’m asking in the context of the last say, 400 years or so, since that’s when Europe (and the US eventually) really started to take off.
In part I’m also asking, did imperialism give western nations a head start, or was it other factors such as economic freedom, trade, culture, etc.?
To tell you the blunt truth: this is a question that cannot be given any justice whatsoever in less than one hundred pages because there are just too many factors at play, and then substantiating one’s claims with historical evidence is quite the task as well.
Although there is a general dislike of the book, because Hernando de Soto defends the role of the State, the message of the book still has merit. One of the best books I’ve read on the topic is Hernando de Soto’s The Mystery of Capital. It explains the role of private property rights as the key to converting the accumulation of capital into a worthwhile and prosperous investment. The disagreement, I think, with many Austrians is that de Soto has is of the opinion that it is the State’s role to defend private property rights.
Advanced legal systems, namely Anglo-common law.
Yeah it’s a big question. 
So de Soto has a little minarchism in that book then, it sounds like. Still I think “private property rights as the key to converting the accumulation of capital” (which also ties into the ‘advanced legal systems’ idea above I think) does sound like it’s on target, though. The primary difference between 1st and 2/3rd world seems to boil down to capital.
So I’ll take it a step further-- why and how did 1st world nations build capital so fast? Were valuable resources taken via imperialism and by force a major catalyst for this progress? What was different that caused this trend in Europe? What caused a legal system of strong private property rights to develop in Europe first?
the short answer in my opinion - ‘classical liberalism’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_revolution#Causes_for_occurrence_in_Europe
The trend towards liberty.
I thought it might be this, plus an intelligent conception of property rights, but then I considered the Islamic countries, which have their own commercial legal systems (I’m not talking about Sharia) and an even better conception of property rights, and they didn’t take off like the west did.
I suspect it is a combination of law, property rights, culture, access to resources, access to land, military superiority etc.
Because they were populated by Western European peoples, among other factors.
Antal E. Fekete talks about “double-entry book-keeping” being a reason how Western Civilization advanced in his paper The Revisionist Theory and History of Depressions (recommended reading). Although it isn’t politically correct one has to consider Christianity and its effect on ethics. Also, maybe Europeans have just evolved at a faster pace than other nations due to their rich history and resources.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel this book makes a case.
i think its because of wester philosophy, science, and math. Western civilization is older that civilization from North and South America. Eastern civilization is older, but because of geography was able to intermingle, trade, and share valuable knowledge with the western empires- they fed off each other. Every other civilation outside the west did not have the advantages of centuries of trade and philosophy that was shared in the meditteranean and european/asian continent
Instead of concentrating on the internal consequences of the institution of a state, however, I will focus on its external consequences, i.e., foreign rather than domestic policy.
For one, as an agency that perverts justice and imposes taxes, every state is threatened with “exit.” Especially its most productive citizen may leave to escape taxation and the perversions of law. No state likes this. To the contrary, instead of seeing the range of control and tax base shrink, state agents prefer that they be expanded. Yet this brings them in conflict with other states. Unlike competition between “natural” persons and institutions, however, the competition between states is eliminative. That is, there can be only one monopolist of ultimate decision-making and taxation in any given area. Consequently, the competition between different states promotes a tendency toward political centralization and ultimately one single world state.
Further, as tax-funded monopolists of ultimate decision-making, states are inherently aggressive institutions. Whereas “natural” persons and institutions must bear the cost of aggressive behavior themselves (which may well induce them to abstain from such conduct), states can externalize this cost onto their taxpayers. Hence, state agents are prone to become provocateurs and aggressors and the process of centralization can be expected to proceed by means of violent clashes, i.e., interstate wars.
Moreover, given that states must begin small and assuming as the starting point a world composed of a multitude of independent territorial units, something rather specific about the requirement of success can be stated. Victory or defeat in interstate warfare depend on many factors, of course, but other things such as population size being the same, in the long run the decisive factor is the relative amount of economic resources at a state’s disposal. In taxing and regulating, states do not contribute to the creation of economic wealth. Instead, they parasitically draw on existing wealth. However, state governments can influence the amount of existing wealth negatively. Other things being equal, the lower the tax and regulation burden imposed on the domestic economy, the larger the population will tend to grow and the larger the amount of domestically produced wealth on which the state can draw in its conflicts with neighboring competitors. That is, states which tax and regulate their economies comparatively little — liberal states — tend to defeat and expand their territories or their range of hegemonic control at the expense of less-liberal ones.
This explains, for instance, why Western Europe came to dominate the rest of the world rather than the other way around. More specifically, it explains why it was first the Dutch, then the British and finally, in the 20th century, the United States, that became the dominant imperial power, and why the United States, internally one of the most liberal states, has conducted the most aggressive foreign policy, while the former Soviet Union, for instance, with its entirely illiberal (repressive) domestic policies has engaged in a comparatively peaceful and cautious foreign policy. The United States knew that it could militarily beat any other state; hence, it has been aggressive. In contrast, the Soviet Union knew that it was bound to lose a military confrontation with any state of substantial size unless it could win within a few days or weeks.
The Paradox of Imperialism by Hans Hermann Hoppe
To answer your question, “Europe” did not conquer the world. Instead Europe produced capitalist enterprise, and states that leveraged the benefits of capitalism were able to wipe out the others, in Europe and, eventually, the rest of the world. It was because of limited freedom and capitalism that the Italians could become sea-explorers. It was because the Spanish kings could buy ocean-going ships that they could send their Italian agents to conquer America. Had this capital not been available, they would have remained trapped in Spain.
Later it was the Spanish fiefdom of the Netherlands that decided to become more liberal by getting rid of feudalism, and the Dutch spread this sea-faring, capitalistic technology to even farther ends of the Earth. The Dutch became wealthy and powerful enough to conquer Britain, which then took on the task of developing global capitalism. And of course the United States came out of the British Empire to conquer the entire world.
What this has to do with “Europeans” is tenuous. European tribes, with their capitalistic technology, could easily wipe out inferior tribes and settle primitive countries, enslaving the locals. This is what happened in South Africa with the Boers, but as “Europeans” they did not enjoy any special rights, eventually the British came to enslave and destroy them as well.
The problem with this is that it doesn’t explain post WW2 Japanese economic expansion, nor does it explain the growth seen in Singapore and Hong Kong.
The end of slavery in the Europe proper must be one of the factors. The West might be the only civilization that mostly eliminated slavery (and later serfdom) on its territory. Think about the implications for freedom and capitalism.
Good points. I probably shouldn’t have answered, I haven’t given this topic a lot of thought.
@ the OP
I don’t think that Western imperialism can be considered a causal factor.
The reason why should become clear once you ask yourself the question why was it that the West came to conquer the rest of the world rather than the other way around? A state’s military power depends on the level of wealth it can draw from its domestic population. The fact that the West came to dominate the rest of the world is a consequence of the West becoming rich before the rest of the world.
There is a pretty good audio lecture on the subject by Ralph Raico here. Here are a few point form notes I made after while listening to it. I haven’t checked out any of the authors he referenced.
Authors on the subject
Douglas North (Nobel prize winner of economics)
Jean Baechler (University of Paris)
Nathan Rosenberg (Stanford)
Neil Jones (La Trobe, The European Miracle)
Davis Lambdas
William McNeill
It was in Europe alone that human beings achieved sustained per capita economic growth over time and escaped the Malthusian trap.
Why Europe?
The small size of states made it easy for subjects to escape their rulers which imposed restrictions on the tax and regulation burden they could place on their subjects i.e. decentralization.
Representative assemblies of taxpayers (non-democratic, Lambdas) had to agree to new taxes.
European nobles had contract status with rulers.
Laws that bound kings (magna carta for instance).
West had an independent international church. (Deepak Lal)
Middle ages
The taboo of envy. God being on your side. Christian prejudice against envy (Thou shalt not covet thy neighbours possessions).
Against the “spurious consensus.” (Peter Bouer)
Spurious Consensus = Agents of the state are Plutonic guardians which are only interested in the welfare and good of society. The role of the public economist is to develop policy for the Plutonic guardians. The state is not predatory in nature.
Also, the post by stranger was particularly good. Hoppe provides a simple explanation of why territorially smaller states tend to be less exploitive than larger ones, allowing for greater capital accumulation and higher standards of living. Any of his economics of political centralization lectures are pretty good, and go through in detail the effects of smaller territorial political units with respect to larger ones.
There is also a biological component to it as well.
There is a 0.7 correlation between IQ and per capita GDP. Also Hoppe gives some arguments to this effect at the beginning of his mises audio lecture, The Production of Law and Order. He also provides some more of this line of argument in his video lecture, From the Malthusian Trap to the Industrial Revolution.
So it is the combination of factors: political decentralization, genetic component of intelligence, cultural attitudes and tradition, legal structure, ect.
Just to clarify, I never had the opinion that imperialism and the pillaging of defenseless 3rd world nations were the (major) factor. I think it’s probably a combination of factors, with (classical) liberalism at the front.
Obviously this is an extremely complex subject, but I find the opinions and discussions here interesting.
Mises blames liberty.
I do remember in the Myth of National Defense a quote from Nicolas Gomez Davila that without Christianity and antiquity as their background, Europeans would be nothing but palefaced barbarians.
This isn’t capitalism…this is mercantilism.