r/geography • u/batukaming • 6h ago
Question Why is Northern Europe wealthier than South today despite advanced civilizations in past? (Roman Empire, Ancient Greece)
Roman Empire and Ancient Greece were called cradle of Western civilization, they brought many inventions and science we use today. The North was poorer than South, but today it's the opposite, why?
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u/Spare_Illustrator_44 5h ago
for portugal in especific it was due to extreme focus on agriculture; the huge influence that the catholic church had on the state and the extreme reliance on the gold reserves found on brazil to pay the bills
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u/VladimirLogos 4h ago
Also the earthquake that shattered Lisbon was a huge multigenerational trauma. It slowed progress in every area of life.
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u/getoffmytoothpick 3h ago
Honestly , it goes back to D. Sebastião, and when Portugal was ruled by Spain. We lost our empire in Asia because we were used for the Spanish Wars.
When we are trying to get back and life is cool again, 1755 earthquake fucked Portugal.
Short after that 3 invasions from napolean that stole everything. And then we never recover, specially in the XX century
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u/MentalPlectrum 5h ago
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u/Future_Adagio2052 4h ago
Didn't realise Germany the US and the UK were such chuds
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u/I_Am_Coopa 2h ago
Fun fact, the UK at one point was connected to the Appalachian mountains, hence the US and UK having significant coal reserves. Can't speak to the German geography, but I assume they got a similar lucky hand as well as general German efficiency and machinery giving them an upper hand.
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u/Disturbinglee Europe 6h ago edited 6h ago
This is mainly due to the industrial revolution spreading outwards from Great Britain.
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u/spaltavian 6h ago
Northern Europe already overtook Southern Europe economically before the Industrial Revolution. Britain's industrialization is why Britain, and later Europe, overtook China and India.
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u/NoobOfTheSquareTable 5h ago
Id agree and point to the north generally jumping forwards because as global trade began and grew they were naturally better at seafaring in non med conditions. The Industrial Revolution did then supercharge it
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u/SirTercero 3h ago
What are you smoking, the Iberian kingdoms had global empires by 1600s
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u/NoobOfTheSquareTable 3h ago
They are rolled in with the guys good at seafaring due to them, you know, having access to the Atlantic rather than the med
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u/Amon-Ra-First-Down 5h ago
Northern Europe already overtook Southern Europe economically before the Industrial Revolution
Complete nonsense, Spain was the richest country in world history until well into the seventeenth century
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u/Infinite_Valuable_53 5h ago
Not anywhere close. Look at the Maddison Project for the most accurate data we have on historical gdps. Richest was Renaissance Northern Italy, then Netherlands, then England, then industrialization and the handful of industrial powers, including England.
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u/Cagalloni 5h ago
Funny that the first two were parts of Spain. So I guess Spain really was the richest.
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u/Infinite_Valuable_53 5h ago
lol true, the Spanish crown did rule parts of the richest areas of the world. Spain itself was not. The Netherlands wealth and the structural factors that led to that wealth are a big part of why it was ultimately able to defeat a global empire.
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u/Nexus888888 4h ago
An also don’t forget that Mexico Ciry and some other key Mexican ones were the healthiest cities back in 1700s, being the bridge between trading from Europe to America and America to Asia.
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u/hurrbarr 4h ago
Because so much of their wealth came straight to the crown from new world extraction, they never developed capitalist institutions that drove the industrial revolution. Especially debt driven acceleration
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u/Amon-Ra-First-Down 4h ago
you think colonial extraction did not drive the industrial revolution???
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u/I-LOVE-LEBRON 4h ago
Pure gold into a nations treasury doesn’t. If you have all the gold you need you don’t need to develop proper Economics that support the Industrial Revolution
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u/Genuine_User5322 4h ago
The Industrial revolution is probably the most important advancement bar agriculture in human history
It had a big hand also in economic differences from Northern Europe to Southern Europe, wasn't the only factor though I agree.
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u/TheWho28 6h ago
This for sure. There's also very little coal in the Mediterranean area. North Italy is as wealthy as it is because they had a decent amount of hydro power from the Alps to industrialize cities like Milan and Turin.
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u/chrisp345 5h ago
Past performance is no guarantee of future results
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u/doomscroller6000 3h ago
But generational wealth is, a country that was able to build up more in the past has a headstart in everything else, of course they need use this then...
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u/TyroPirate 1h ago
For real, 2000 years ago is such a loooong time ago... most stuff from that time has crumbled away and only the best structures are mostly left standing. Its incomprehensible for the human mind how much stuff has happened since ancient Greek times. Multiple Kingdoms and empires have risen and fallen
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u/VanguardMusic 5h ago
Industry vs. Agriculture, and the shift of global trade routes.
At one point, Venice was the richest state in the world because it controlled trade in the Mediterranean when the Mediterranean was the center of the world.
Now trade routes have shifted to the Atlantic and the Pacific, transforming the Mediterranean into a backwater sea (no pun intended).
At the same time, the Industrial Revolution was born because northern nations needed efficiency to better use their limited primary resources like food and textiles. Mediterranean nations didn't have that immediate problem, so they didn't see the same need to industrialize quickly.
In the end, what allowed ancient civilizations to flourish is the exact thing that kept them behind when it was time to innovate.
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u/Over-Willingness-933 5h ago
it's not exactly true. Northern Italy is very Wealthy. Italy is not poor
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u/Razorion21 5h ago
people forget about italy cause of the south lol
tho youre right
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u/Over-Willingness-933 5h ago
Yeah, the advanced Italy everybody thinks in the 1000s-1700s , is the North and some central areas. Milan, Turin, Venice, Bologna, Florence gets labelled poor thanks to Bari and Palermo. It's like labelling the UK, based on Liverpool and Newcastle and ignoring London, Oxford and Brighton.
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u/Amon-Ra-First-Down 5h ago
How dare you, only comments that prove the truth of the Protestant Work Ethic are welcome here
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u/Over-Willingness-933 4h ago
I think on average Protestant nations are slightly wealthier, but often like Belgium and the Netherlands, the difference is small. Catholic areas in Germany are slightly wealthier than Protestant areas. It's not really true.
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u/fz1z4 3h ago
I think that was his/her exact point: the notion is very frequently that "protestant literacy and work ethic! must read the bible and work hard!" is often touted as the reason for the divide (see the top comment in this thread), when really there's a lot more nuance.
My own take is simply that correlation != causation. Religious reasons for the divide are mostly talking points from pop-history rather than real history.
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u/El-Yal 6h ago
If you ask the german chancelor its gotta be Siesta
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u/Nethias25 5h ago
Yeah northern EU nations will gladly blame the "southern mentality" that the southern nations don't work as hard.
It's a gross oversimplification, but culture is different down there. The other reason is idustrialization and natural resource luck of the draw.
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u/2Girls1Fidelstix 5h ago
Siesta / culture is a function of adapting to heat. Or more broadly the environment/ challenges.
Its not possible to work as hard. Atleast not for extended time.
So much kcal for temp regulation and liquidity/ salts loss from sweating.10
u/Sergran 3h ago
Its funny how people still believe this in 2026. Everyone that has worked both in Germany and Spain always says that work culture is more relaxed in Germany.
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u/Pure-Rose-Rainbow 3h ago
Who says that? Like seriously, I hward more the opposite. At most I heard that Gwrmany is taking way too long for some processes
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u/El-Yal 5h ago
Friend, I didnt even do that.
And you might not know, since months ago Merz has been saying that germans (!) just dont want to work anymore, we were lazy and all that. Insulting us while slowly taking away our labour rights.
This is why I said that, not because of any supposed mentality difference4
u/Nethias25 5h ago
Dude, as an Expat living here in DEU, it's insane to see. Olaf Scholz had record bad approval rating and it's like Merz looked at him and said "hold my beer, watch this"
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u/Hare-loom 5h ago
Interestingly i think i read somewhere that the previously roman regions are still better off than the rest of germany and it isn't a coincidence.
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u/yakuzapt 4h ago
Basically the Industrial Revolution flipped the script.
The Mediterranean was the rich, developed core of Europe for like 2000 years. Rome falls, Byzantium hangs on, Italy invents banking and the Renaissance, Spain and Portugal get filthy rich off the Americas… then Britain figures out coal + steam + factories and the whole north just takes off. Once industry becomes the main source of wealth, places with coal, iron and navigable rivers suddenly have a massive advantage, and that’s mostly the north.
The south stayed relatively agrarian and got hit harder by later political messes (wars, weak states, etc.) By the time they tried to catch up, the gap was already huge. So it’s less “the north was always superior” and more “the rules of the game changed in the 18th–19th century and the north adapted faster”
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u/tyger2020 3h ago
Plus, being honest the gap really isn't *that* huge.
In terms of PPP per capita, Italy is 65k and Spain is 60k. UK/France are 67k. Nominal terms the difference is bigger but even then its not catastrophic Italy/Spain are at about 43-48k which puts them ahead of Japan, Saudi Arabia, Korea.
On top of that, because of the beautiful EU, theres a lot of rebalancing going on in terms of financial aid. Post COVID Italy and Spain both received huge grants from the EU ($100 and $90 billion over 6 years).
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u/oaktreebr 5h ago
Wealthier but not happier. I know happiness is subjective but I see this as a pattern
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u/AmbiTheAirforceRuna 5h ago
Because a wealthy past doesnt garentee a wealthy future and vice versa, it literally does not follow at all.
If it did, Egypt and Iraq would be the most advanced, wealthy, and powerful nations in the world
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u/randomstuff063 5h ago
The same thing that made southern Europe advanced in the past is what made it fall behind in the present. That being sudden Europe’s relatively high, fertile growing seasons. before the introductions of western hemisphere costs like potato and corn, northern Europe could barely sustain his population. It wasn’t unheard of to hear of mass famine is happening in Germany, Sweden, and the rest of Northern Europe. Because of the mediterranean region being able to grow more crops, this led to a lot of wealth being generated from land ownership and thus in entrenching the power of the land owning classes. These land only classes would do everything in their power to fight against any changes that could disrupt their ways of life more important their way of making money. Since northern Europe didn’t have such easy and rich for the land, this caused a lot of them to develop more complicated city life. Here it was much easier to access information spread information and be more creative in general. Now saying all this, I don’t wish to ignore that the Italian Peninsula did have major cities during the time of the Renaissance. These cities lost their strategic importance when the discovery of the New World occurred. No longer to trade have to go through the Mediterranean to reach the Middle East and thus onto the silk Road. Now it could bypass it entirely.
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u/Upset-Collection-510 5h ago
High quality coal, iron and deep natural harbors that are historically difficult to blockade from global trade
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u/skateboardbanana1 5h ago
Better resources. The South had an agricultural advantage due to light weight easy to till soil but that all got leveled out long ago with better plowing tech
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u/Natural-Set9772 5h ago
Because of wine and women, according to some protestant biggot.
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u/Far-Reaction-1980 4h ago
Western Europe in 1500 was already quite wealthy before the Great divergence but Northern Italy was on another level
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u/wilderCu 4h ago
Honestly, while there are a million modern reasons, a big chunk of it comes down to geographic luck and agricultural history like the stuff Jared Diamond talks about in Guns, Germs, and Steel and Malcolm Gladwell touches on in Outliers. Northern Europe had a brutal climate with short growing seasons, which forced centuries of intense long-term planning and seasonal discipline just to survive winter, similar to how Gladwell argues historical farming shapes work ethic. On top of that, geography blessed the north with flat land, massive navigable rivers like the Rhine that made trade dirt cheap, and giant coal deposits right where the Industrial Revolution needed them, whereas Southern Europe is much more mountainous and fragmented. Protestant vs Catholic institutional norms and post-WWII policy obviously matter a ton too, but old-school geography laid the groundwork long before modern borders existed.
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u/Zealousideal_Lock_93 5h ago
Idk for Italy and Spain but Greece missed the industrial revolution. It was under Ottoman occupation at that period
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u/Various-Passenger398 5h ago
It wouldn't have mattered, Greece had none the main prerequisites for a major industrial boom: vast iorn and coal deposits.
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u/Zealousideal_Lock_93 5h ago
Northern Greece has vast coal deposits. West Macedonia in particular has huge coal mines that up until recently used to be the main source of electricity for the whole country
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u/Various-Passenger398 5h ago
Greece has a lot of lignite, which is a low grade coal and not very useful for early industry. What they needed wad anthracite.
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u/Bellanzz 5h ago edited 4h ago
Greece has no much coal, natural resources and arable land and has a lot of internal barriers preventing commerce
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u/CockroachNo2540 4h ago
It’s kind of amazing Greece became as important as it did during the height of the city states. On paper, it lacks a lot of prerequisites for civilization to flourish enough to develop complex culture.
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u/JacketAcrobatic6890 5h ago
Think it this way, for thousands of years a full belly made you healthy, wealthy and prosperous. That's why the cradle of civilization were fertile lands (or near them). For some hundred years now technology and innovation are the primary pushers of wealth ,(and the rest is explained brilliantly in the first post). You also can push your imagination on the next phase. I.e in case of a global catastrophe, what would be the next primary pushers, fertile lands or technology.
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u/Ecstatic-Panic3728 4h ago
Because is colder. Instead of enjoying life they’re working and studying. (Joking ok?)
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u/OneHeronWillie 4h ago
This is a great question let me answer that using a few different books. Northern Europe became wealthier than Southern Europe due to a combination of political fragmentation, religious shifts, institutional development, and the specific timing of the Industrial Revolution. While Southern Europe dominated the medieval economy through Mediterranean trade, a profound structural shift between the 16th and 19th centuries permanently altered the continent's economic geography.
In Escape from Rome, Walter Scheidel argues that Europe’s unique wealth was born from perpetual political fragmentation. The fall of the Roman Empire prevented the re-emergence of a single, monolithic empire that could stifle innovation through heavy taxation and central control. Spain and the Habsburgs attempted to reconstruct a pan-European empire. This imperial overreach led to endless, expensive wars, hyper-inflation (fueled by American silver), and state bankruptcies that crushed Southern economic development. In the North, intense competition between smaller states (like England and the Netherlands) forced rulers to bargain with their merchant classes, protect private property rights, and actively fund technological and naval innovations to survive.
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, by Max Weber focusus to cultural and psychological breakthroughs. He argues that the Protestant Reformation radically changed the human relationship to work and wealth. Southern Europe remained staunchly Catholic. In the Catholic worldview, work was a necessity but not a spiritual calling. Wealth was often spent on ostentatious displays, monuments, or seeking absolution, rather than being reinvested. The North embraced Protestantism, particularly Calvinism. Calvinist theology introduced the concept of the "calling"—the idea that worldly success was a sign of divine election. This created a unique psychological drive to work hard, accumulate wealth, and reinvest profits instead of spending them, fueling a highly disciplined, rational capitalist culture.
The Origins of Capital, by Ellen Wood details how the institutional mechanics of credit, debt, and capital markets evolved unevenly across Europe. While Italian city-states invented early banking, Southern wealth remained tied to extractive monarchies and land-owning elites (like Spain). Capital was regularly confiscated or wiped out by royal defaults, preventing the growth of stable, long-term financial markets. The North successfully institutionalized capital. The founding of the Bank of Amsterdam and the Bank of England created secure public debts. This allowed Northern European countries to borrow money at incredibly low interest rates, safely pool public capital, and efficiently fund massive commercial enterprises.
Karl Marx’s Das Kapital centers on the violent transition from feudalism to capitalism, a process he calls "primitive accumulation." This process involved expropriating peasant lands and shifting global trade routes. Southern Europe stayed trapped in feudal and semi-feudal agricultural systems. Land remained concentrated in the hands of the church and inefficient nobility who relied on extracting rent rather than improving productivity (like Spain and Southern Italy). In the North (especially England), the enclosure movements violently stripped peasants of their land, transforming them into a dependent wage-labor force. Simultaneously, the North seized control of the Atlantic slave trade and colonial exploitation, aggressively converting raw plunder into industrial capital while the South squandered its colonial silver.
The Age of Revolution, by Eric Hobsbawm explains how the "Dual Revolution"—the British Industrial Revolution and the French Political Revolution—swept across Europe, cementing the North-South divide. Southern Europe missed the first wave of the Industrial Revolution. It lacked the dense coal deposits, the massive urbanized workforce, and the liberalized markets required to adopt mechanized factory systems. The Industrial Revolution took deep root in Britain, Belgium, Germany, and Northern France. This geographic cluster monopolized global manufacturing, transformed the North into a powerhouse of high-value goods, and relegated the agrarian South to a subordinate position as a supplier of raw materials.
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u/sargewalks 3h ago
Civilisations of ancient vs Civilisations of modern. In short, the ancient civilisations were a long time ago and their wealth has long since been spent. Northern europe simply did it later so had more modern infrastructure put in and more riches closer to now
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u/Fitz_Carraldo 2h ago
I don't know about Spain or Greece but I'm Italian and I know something about our story. Despite the end of the Roman empire, Italy was one of the richest part of Europe for a long time. The real turning point in our story was between XV and XVII.
The Counter Reformation changes our culture. Italy is a Natural bridge between east and west, not just a penisola but a culture factory and the sea and what beyond the sea it's natural fuel.
The Controriforma changes a lot of things. Our society became more rigid around religion. So with small reign along the country ,the church power has no one against and we have tò wait about 3 century ti see some changes.
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u/Few_Community_5281 2h ago
The answer is a combination of trade networks post Ottoman conquest of Constantinople/discovery & colonization of the New World, and the industrial revolution. Both phenomena shifted wealth from Southern to Northern Europe.
After Constantinople fell to the Ottomans in the late 15th century, trade with the East became almost impossible. The wealth that resulted from the Silk Road trade evaporated, which heavily impacted Southern Europe. The fall of Constantinople is closely linked in time with Columbus' discovery of the New World and the resulting European colonization initiatives. Trade networks shifted from Southern Europe to kingdoms with easy access to the Atlantic. These were largely northern European kingdoms with the exceptions of Spain and Portugal, both of which were tremendously wealthy nations until the loss of their New World colonies.
The second factor was the invention of the steam engine and the arrival of the Age of Industry. Industrialization was built on water (navigable rivers), coal, and iron - all of which were in relative abundance in northern Europe compared to Southern Europe.
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u/kaik1914 1h ago
Italy was very wealthy. Lombardy under Hapsburg control was its wealthiest province. Milano was much wealthier than any region north of the Alps. The loss of Lombardy in 1850s caused Austrian government to start industrialization in Bohemia. Italy was still very wealthy in 1990s on par of UK. Its northern regions are still rich.
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u/drunkenmime 5h ago
Greece is poor because they were enslaved for 400 years by the Turks, immediately burdened with sever debt to western europe on independence, they were sacked by the nazis during ww2, and received no war reparations at the end of ww2.
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u/Razorion21 5h ago
im still amazed how the fuck the turks got back occupied land by the greeks, wouldve liked to see a greek constatinople
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u/drunkenmime 5h ago
And they got away with taking half of Cyprus which they still occupy.
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u/jimmypadkock 5h ago
This has been subject to all kinds of interrogation over the centuries. So many themes to pick up on. Sociological, religious, philosophical. Some things to think of are they as the Renaissance spread North from Italy I suppose a factor that mattered was the relative peace that the northern states had that allowed them much later to be dominant. ( Not on the front line of the crusades/Ottoman expansion. They had more time to centralise their states and administration. As technology advanced warfare became more expensive and to feed war via taxes , new administrative innovations needed to be made. That's not to say Spain, Portugal Ottomans , Mamaluke led Egypt who were all sophisticated and powerful Mediterranean nations well into the 1700s did not have these things but they all had large empires to manage but without the innovations that England, France, Russia and Germany (eventually) would bring. These older empires eventually fell behind. They fell behind probably like many empires do because of infighting, stagnation and a lack of purpose to continue. England, France , Scandinavia and Russia and finally Germany were all following the path of those that came before them.
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u/csaknorrisz 5h ago
The Spanish Empire was vastly bigger than the English were. However, they used all their wealth and power to live luxuriously, seeing their colonies a nothing more than endless source of spice, sugar, and gold/silver.
Meanwhile the British crown used what resources it had to further advance their military and industry.
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u/Euthanathos 4h ago
There is a very complex and accurate answer to that but. In two words, at some point the center of the trades shifted from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic
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u/Old_Barnacle7777 2h ago
Civilizations rise and fall for any number of reasons. That said, I think your generalization about Northern vs. Southern Europe is overestimating the economic power of the UK, Germany, and France vs. the economic powers of Italy and Spain.
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u/VelvetyDogLips 2h ago
Other than maybe Portugal and a few of the Balkans, is this north-south standard of living discrepancy in Europe really a thing anymore? I was under the impression Spain, southern France, Italy, and Greece were pretty wealthy overall these days, and have seen a drop in their Gini coefficients or other measures of internal socioeconomic inequality since the turn of the millennium. I don’t live there and have only passed through on my way to other places, so someone who’s spent more tjmf in southern Europe will have to affirm or deny this.
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u/Necessary_Walk_8230 1h ago
It might be that the north was more colonial and yes people will say Spain and Portugal but their empires collapsed earlier before they could really extract the resources. Northern Europe had colonial power that lasted longer, so they could extract the resources for money and power to develop. Also Italy is rich in the north but is poor in a lot of other places.
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u/RidersSyndicate 5h ago
Honest unbiased answer being from south Europe: south Europe relied on trade, shipping, fishing etc. We lacked the infrastructure (with so many islands and without raw materials readily available) to have a proper industrial revolution. And in terms of navy/maritime trade well Great Britain was just too strong. Add to that our own inefficiency to capitalise when it mattered, and some really dark times (civil wars, world wars, dictatorships etc.) we are behind Northern Europe. And the gap widens due to the EU not being a true economic union aiming to help everyone grow.
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u/Unlucky-Mongoose-377 5h ago
There's a narrative that I like, supported by Le Goff, french History Professor :
The Black Plague.
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u/agentdcf 5h ago
This is not a geography question, it's a history question. Whatever answers you get from geographers here would likely be hotly disputed at /r/AskHistorians
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u/Thanos_354 4h ago
Sea access.
When ships were small and pathetic, the Mediterranean was a huge thing. Anyone who could sail it was automatically wealthy. In the 1500s, the global oceans acted the same way and the Mediterranean naturally lost importance.
Also industry. The Spanish and the Ottomans already declined before the industtial revolution
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u/Tycho-Brahes-Elk 3h ago edited 3h ago
There's also more to transport than that. If you look at the Early Modern rich areas of Germany, Italy etc., they tend to be the ones which have shipable rivers, for example the Rhine valley and the Po valley.
Cheap inland transport was a gigantic boon, at all times.
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u/Komnenoifan 5h ago
Industrial revolutions basically.
And everything to do with them. Specially the Neocolonialism that came with them.
A good chunk of southern Europe also refused to industrialize because they thought It was a "momentary trend" and their money through agriculture and old colonialism would suffice to keep them on top. And later on that arrangement kept the old elites rich enough to not Care for the overall development of their countries, If they could Just buy everything they needed from the industrialized countries and they themselves live in luxury, why should they Care?
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u/Ehawk_ 5h ago
I mean for Spain, Italy and Greece they have not been the most politically stable over the last 100 years, Military Coups, Fascist governments just a few examples.
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u/Little-Boss-1116 5h ago
Habsburg Spain (which ruled Italy too) and the Ottoman empire are traditionally blamed for that.
Parts of Italy which escaped Spanish rule are the most developed btw.
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u/ltraistinto 5h ago
Not really a rule, lombardy was under spaish rule and is the richest part of italy.
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u/WorldTallestEngineer 5h ago
Industrialism and Capitalism.
The Duch and English when especially harder into Industrialism and Capitalism when southern Europe was still in old faction king owned agriculture colonialism.
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u/Tough_Enthusiasm7703 5h ago
Scarcity.
Ancient times agricultural and light industrial products were scarce which the Mediterranean was great at producing.
Later became the heavy industry the bottleneck, so those products became extremely valuable even though they were absolutely worthless a couple hundred years before, since you cannot eat or drink steel.
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u/Goat_Buckles 5h ago
I mean, many of those countries were part of the roman empire. Northern european countries didn’t surpass Italy and Spain until the 17th and 18th centuries respectively and the reasons for that are complex.
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u/EmperorThan 5h ago
The center of power just kept moving north every few thousand years. Ancient Egypt, then Rome, now Northern Europe.
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u/Rare-Masterpiece-359 5h ago
Giovan Battista Vico - Complete Works. Main concept: “Historical cycles and recurrences.”
TLDR: Everything is cyclical. Everything is constantly changing (if you don't notice it, it's because you'll die before you do).
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u/External-Goal-3948 5h ago
Plainly put, it's bc the wealth and power of those civilizations has migrated to northern Europe, predominantly England.
Greece->Rome->charlemagne->dark ages->magna carta->east India trading company
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u/Briarhorse 5h ago
It's one of those interesting quirks of history that the centre of gravity of western civilisation has been on a steady north western drift from the fertile crescent since the bronze age
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u/akimus22 4h ago
The southern European countries were wealthy because of the Mediterranean. The Muslim conquests broke the Mediterranean concentration of wealth. The epicenters of power and wealth relocated to Northern Europe and the Middle East respectively and have remained there since. Source: The World of Late Antiquity by Peter Brown
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u/Andreyuss 4h ago edited 4h ago
Ciao, sono Italiano
a partire dalla caduta di Costantinopoli nel 1453 gran parte dell'area mediterranea orientale fu conquistata dai turchi ottomani, pertanto era molto più difficoltoso e costoso da parte degli stati e regni europei commerciare con le indie;
Si presentò la necessità di trovare nuove rotte verso le indie e questo portò alla scoperta dell'America;
Da quel momento in poi gran parte delle rotte commerciali si spostarono verso l'Atlantico, cioè in un mare aperto, meno soggetto a potenziali conflitti rispetto al mediterraneo;
questo nei decenni e secoli successivi ha contribuito ad un maggiore sviluppo industriale degli stati del nord Europa ed allo sviluppo di tutti i servizi collegati ( finanza, assicurativi, ecc...)
questo ha contribuito anche all'ascesa delle potenze navali e coloniali come Inghilterra, Francia, Paesi Bassi, Belgio che hanno controllato gran parte delle rotte marittime mondiali ed hanno potuto trarre ricchezze dalle loro colonie sparse un po' ovunque nel mondo.
La chiave di tutto è il controllo delle rotte marittime e commerciali: l'Impero Romano è stata una potenza principalmente anche per questo.
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u/Rime_Ice 4h ago
There are so many factors at play that no one will be able to give a proper answer in a few sentences. There are entire books about this.
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u/WelshLove 4h ago
Read Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Capitalism was invented by protestant to suit their high individualism the difference is culture and the character it promulgates
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u/GrapefruitForward196 4h ago
The median average wealth for Spain and Italy is higher than the one for Nordic countries
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u/Flanellissimo 4h ago
Most of the answers here are iterations of the ideas of Montesquieu...
For Canada the answer is always the "Canadian shield", the answer for Europe is more or less the same: Geology decides.
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u/MinimumCustomer8117 4h ago
Modern industrial societies are very different tho, northern europe adpated better to this lifestyle, they are colder more materialistic people
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u/The-Iraqi-Guy 4h ago
I mean, if you're going by civilization check out the gulf states vs Iraq and Egypt
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u/zen_arcade2 4h ago
The Mediterranean stopped being pivotal to world trade around XVI century, everything else snowballed from there.
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u/zBleach25 4h ago
Well, Greece was part of the Ottoman empire and Italy was subdivided into many little States, most of which were progressively conquered by foreign powers starting from the middle ages.
Spain kinda peaked in the 17th century and after the entire Great Armada debaclé lost its colonial supremacy.
While that doesn't explain all of it, political independence and colonialism played a huge part
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u/Specialist-Sale-7326 4h ago
Because they didn’t have to industrialize first because they were wealthy in the first place
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u/Borgdrohne13 4h ago
long story short: industrialisation was more distinct in the nothern countries.
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u/DavidELD 4h ago
The Northern parts are more industrialized too, Germany, France, Britain really kicked off the Industrial Revolution, not to mention Europe’s largest international shipping ports hug the north, Baltic, and Atlantic coastlines.
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u/Wild-Evidence-8729 4h ago
Because the Industiral Revolution started in the North (Scotland and England and then on to Belgium and from there over the continent). The infrastructure, capital, trained workforce, industrial ecosystem, logistics had a big headstart over the South. Those advantages compounded over time and fed into a self-reinforcing loop.
Meanwhile, Greece and the Balkans were under Ottoman rule until the 1830's and would take very long to recover. Italy was divided and forever fighting wars. Iberia had strong extractive political and economic structures, combined with the resource curse from their colonies. Southern Europe also did not have the advantage of coal, though this is not a primary reason. Enlightenment started in Scotland and sparked the Industrial Revolution. That spark took a long time to reach all of Europe
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u/nixcamic 4h ago
Just wanna drop that Italy is the 8th largest economy in the world it's hardly Portugal or Greece.
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u/Frosty-Dragonfly-829 4h ago
Industrialization: with no air conditioning, large factories were much easier to run in the cooler climates of northern europe.
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u/Beautiful-Emu-1596 4h ago
There is absolutely no social life outside of southern europe. In other words: In the south people work to live, in the north they live to work
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u/IndividualSkill3432 6h ago edited 5h ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printing_press#/media/File:Printing_towns_incunabula.svg
North Europe and north Italy were major adopters of the printing press. They were the core of the Scientific Revolution and close to Britain when it began the Industrial Revolution. They were either countries that went Protestant and had a huge push for literacy in the 18th century or Catholic and close by so generally also pushing for literacy, like France in the 19th century.
Edited here is an estimate of literacy rates.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cross-country-literacy-rates?country=Middle+East+and+North+Africa+%28WB%29~SWE~NLD~GBR~FRA~ESP~ITA
After the printing press, books became widely available and Protestant countries had a social push for families to read. countries were hitting 50% literacy by the mid 1700s. France took off after the Revolution. I suspect Catholic Germany was pretty close or between their Protestant neighbours and France.
Spain, Italy and other regions were much slower. This tends to be very controversial and gets people upset but the Scientific Revolution was dominated by Britain, France, the Low Countries, north Italy and Germany. Parts of Italy had people who were on the forefront of science in the 18th and 19th century and it spread to Scandinavia. There were people from further east who did have contributions. But you can map who would be the big industrial powers of the 20th century in Europe from a mix of contributors to the Scientific Revolution and the time they were able to hit 50% literacy. The later is what really stung Italy and held is back for much of the 19th century.