Was plague a significant agent of global historical change within the last millennium? Belich argues that catastrophic human mortality from the Black Death (1346–1353) affected only western Eurasia and Mamluk Egypt, killing half or more of all humans in these regions before returning unpredictably in murderous local or interregional epidemic waves. “Why Europe?” he asks anew. His answer is Yersinia pestis (2). In the wake of Western Europe’s staggering population losses, survivors devised (or invested in) labor- and cost-saving ways to boost their new-found fortunes at home and abroad, even though population numbers remained well below pre-plague levels. By the 1400s, the reorganization of production and transportation technologies was well underway, and by the 1500s, maritime polities began a spider-like diaspora that led to the Industrial Revolution.
The upshot of Belich’s argument is that the swerve to Western European global dominance resulted not from cultural practices, governing institutions, or religious...