Why did capitalism and colonialism arise in Europe and not elsewhere? Why were parliamentarian and democratic forms of government founded there? What factors led to Europe’s unique position in shaping the world? Thoroughly researched and persuasively argued, Why Europe? tackles these classic questions with illuminating results. Michael Mitterauer traces the roots of Europe’s singularity to the medieval era, specifically to developments in agriculture. While most historians have located the beginning of Europe’s special path in the rise of state power in the modern era, Mitterauer establishes its origins in rye and oats. These new crops played a decisive role in remaking the European family, he contends, spurring the rise of individualism and softening the constraints of patriarchy. Mitterauer reaches these conclusions by comparing Europe with other cultures, especially China and the Islamic world, while surveying the most important characteristics of European society as they took shape from the decline of the Roman empire to the invention of the printing press. Along the way, Why Europe? offers up a dazzling series of novel hypotheses to explain the unique evolution of European culture.

The Handbook of European History 1400-1600 brings together the best scholarship into an array of topical chapters that present current knowledge and thinking in ways useful to the specialist and accessible to students and to the educated non-specialist. Forty-one leading scholars in this field of history present the state of knowledge about the grand themes, main controversies and fruitful directions for research of European history in this era. Volume 1 (Structures and Assertions) described the people, lands, religions and political structures which define the setting for this historical period. Volume 2 (Visions, Programs, Outcomes) covers the early stages of the process by which newly established confessional structures began to work their way among the populace.

The sixteenth century in Europe was a period of vigorous economic expansion that led to social, political, religious, and cultural transformations and established the early modern age. This resource explores the emergence of monarchial nation-states and early Western capitalism during this period. Also examined in depth are the Protestant Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, which exacerbated tensions between states and contributed to the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648). Readers will come to understand how these events developed, how they led to the age of exploration, and how they inform modern European history.