and even banned the economic institutions that had
created the prosperity of the republic.
However notable the experience of Rome, it was not
Rome’s inheritance that led directly to the rise of inclusive
institutions in England and to the British Industrial
Revolution. Historical factors shape how institutions
develop, but this is not a simple, predetermined, cumulative
process. Rome and Venice illustrate how early steps
toward inclusivity were reversed. The economic and
institutional landscape that Rome created throughout
Europe and the Middle East did not inexorably lead to the
more firmly rooted inclusive institutions of later centuries. In
fact, these would emerge first and most strongly in England,
where the Roman hold was weakest and where it
disappeared most decisively, almost without a trace, during
the fifth century AD . Instead, as we discussed in chapter 4,
history plays a major role through institutional drift that
creates institutional differences, albeit sometimes small,
which then get amplified when they interact with critical
junctures. It is because these differences are often small
that they can be reversed easily and are not necessarily the
consequence of a simple cumulative process.
Of course, Rome had long-lasting effects on Europe.
Roman law and institutions influenced the laws and
institutions that the kingdoms of the barbarians set up after
the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. It was also
Rome’s fall that created the decentralized political
landscape that developed into the feudal order. The
disappearance of slavery and the emergence of
independent cities were long, drawn out (and, of course,
historically contingent) by-products of this process. These
would become particularly consequential when the Black
Death shook feudal society deeply. Out of the ashes of the
Black Death emerged stronger towns and cities, and a
peasantry no longer tied to the land and newly free of feudal
obligations. It was precisely these critical junctures
unleashed by the fall of the Roman Empire that led to a
strong institutional drift affecting all of Europe in a way that
has no parallel in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, or the
Americas.
By the sixteenth century, Europe was institutionally very
distinct from sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas. Though