14. Economic Conference
The Foundations of a Free Society – A Historical Perspective
Albrecht Ritschl
«Informal Institutions and the Rise of Efficient Markets»
Deepak Lal
«State, Church and the Competition of States: On the Rise of the West»
Events
«State, Church and the Competition of States: On the Rise of the West»
Speech by Deepak Lal
Economist and Author
The millennium just ended has seen the indisputable rise of the Westover its Eurasian civilizational cousins. In particular it has been the triumph of the English speaking peoples, first in the small off-shore island where they originated and then of their descendants in the New World. To put this triumph in perspective it is useful to compare the end previous millennium. In 1000 AD, Hindu civilization was well past its climacteric. But China was about to see extraordinary developments under the Sung. It had only one other competitor the civilization of Islam which stretched from the Atlantic to the Indian oceans. This dominance of Islamic civilization is well captured by the historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, describing the world surveyed by the Syrian geographer al-Mugaddasi at the turn of the first millennium.
The full text of the speech is available as a PDF here:
