Economic growth boosted living standards after it first surfaced in Britain in the 1700s. Why did it not arise earlier or somewhere else? Why did it spread quickly to northwestern Europe, but take longer to reach much of the rest of the world? The answer is not slavery, colonialism, or capitalism. Rather, it lies with advantages shared by much of northwestern Europe: institutions that secured property rights with benefits beyond a narrow elite; states that could rearrange property rights with credible compensation to improve transportation and agricultural productivity; cities made possible by productive agriculture that spawned agglomeration effects like those at work in Silicon Valley; skilled workers who could implement new ideas; and access to the ideas themselves from the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. Northwestern Europe had these advantages for four reasons: its history, its religion, its intellectual heritage, and its distance from Eurasia’s steppes. Those four reasons are the ultimate causes for the onset of sustained economic growth in Britain in the 1700s and for its spread to northwestern Europe.