INVENTION OF POWER

Sub-titled 'Popes, Kings, and the Birth of the West'. Western exceptionalism - the idea that European civilizations are freer, wealthier, and less violent - is a widespread and powerful political idea. It has been a source of peace and prosperity in some societies, and of ethnic cleansing and havoc in others. Yet in this book, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita draws on his expertise in political manoeuvring, deal-making, and game theory to present a revolutionary new theory of Western exceptionalism: that a single, rarely discussed event in the 12th century changed the course of European and world history. By creating a compromise between churches and nation-states that, in effect, traded money for power and power for money, the 1122 Concordat of Worms incentivised economic growth, facilitated secularization, and improved the lot of the citizenry, all of which set European countries on a course for prosperity. The territories covered by the Concordats were roughly the lands we now know as France, England, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, and Germany. In the short period between 1122 and 1207, three separate treaties were signed between the Papacy on the one side, and France, England, and the Holy Roman Empire on the other. The agreements, respectively known as the Concordats of Paris, London, and Worms, established a new framework for the relations between the Pope of Rome and some of the most powerful temporal rulers of the period. Under the influence of the Concordats, the church would continue to have the right to nominate bishops but was subjected to the veto power of the kings, who could reject nominees. In pursuit of its interests, the Papacy resorted to new strategies. It created monastic orders to divert income from the local bishop to the Pope and forbade usury to stymie economic growth. In the centuries since, countries that have had a similar dynamic of competition between church and state have been consistently better off than those that have not. The Invention of Power upends conventional thinking about European culture, religion, and race and presents a persuasive new vision of world history. Graphs, 402 pages.