Jerrold Seigel opens his account of European distinctiveness with as big a “centrality claim” (Trevor Dean, “How Historians Begin: Openings in Historical Discourse,” History, 2010) as they get: “No issue in world history looms larger than coming to terms with the roles Europe has played in it” (1). Whether one agrees or disagrees with this statement, few will dispute that the debate about the “Great Divergence” (Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence, 2000) has prompted some of the most vibrant discussions in academic history—and beyond. In his Remaking the World: European Distinctiveness and the Transformation of Politics, Culture, and the Economy, Seigel challenges recent critiques of European exceptionalism put forward by global historians. Instead, the distinguished historian at New York University aims to provide an account that acknowledges the destructive effects of Europe's global influence without losing sight of its positive qualities. A guiding theme of the book is provided by a quote from The Communist Manifesto. Seigel does not share Marx' emphasis on the role of the bourgeoisie. But for Seigel, the German philosopher succinctly captured the unique character of the historical moment when he emphasized that the transformations during his lifetime revealed for the first time “what human activity can bring about” (1). Building on the work of Walter Scheidel and others, Seigel stresses the significance of medieval and modern Europe's divisions and diversity as a structural element stimulating competition in politics, culture, and science. The resulting principles of autonomy and the politics of liberty are what made Europe distinct, Seigel argues.

The book is structured around four main themes each of which forms the focus of one of its parts: one, the politics of liberty; two, religion and science; three, empire and imperialisms; four, modern industry. In the book's first part, “Liberty and Liberties,” Seigel delineates an evolution from a plethora of small liberties in the plural to a comprehensive “liberty” in the singular—a “collective singular,” as Seigel might have dubbed it had he built on Reinhart Koselleck's thinking. Seigel posits that, before the nineteenth century, it was only in Europe that the “idea that people are or should in some way be ‘free’ […] figured as a goal to which individuals and society should aspire, and a subject of sustained historical and political reflection” (17). When people from other world regions started turning “freedom” into a subject of their political thinking and action, this was only under Europe's influence, Seigel contends.

The chapters in the second part, “Autonomy and Teleocracy,” describe the emergence of “spaces of autonomy” in which scientific work could be promoted widely in autonomy from the influence of principals and powers external to it, i.e. rulers of the church or the state. Seigel understands this as a feature of European societies that he distinguishes from “teleocratic” (from the Greek words for “purpose” and “power”) modes of organization prevalent in non-European scientific cultures “governed by norms derived from religion, tradition, metaphysics, or common sense” (4). The latter tend to reaffirm existing political, social, and epistemic orders, while European “autonomy” allowed for paradigm-changing advancements.

The third part, “Openness and Domination,” investigates the history European imperialism. As Seigel concedes, this is to a substantial degree a history of racism, slavery, and exploitation. But this “history of ethnocentric debasements and aggressions constitutes only one side of […] this story.” The “shadow of colonialism and racism” would eclipse that “Europeans in many historical moments also displayed a singular openness to foreign peoples and places” (182), enabling substantial learning experiences. European imperialism, Seigel adds, also provided the means for its own undoing, building the material and mental structures subdued people could use to overcome European domination. Seigel thus devotes an entire chapter to European forms of anti-imperialism that, despite the limitations set by the realities of European imperial hegemony, did not simply disappear after the—in his reading rather unambiguously anti-imperial—European Enlightenment of the eighteenth century.

Part IV, “Making Industry Modern,” studies how the Industrial Revolution came about—or did not—on a country-by-country basis. Seigel explains why it happened in Britain, why it happened only a bit later, from the mid-nineteenth century onward, in Germany and France, and why it did not happen in India and China. While actual scientists played no major role in the era's key innovations, Seigel ascribes substantial significance to a “culture of science” (Margaret Jacob, Scientific Culture and the Making of the Industrial West, 1997) that inspired British “instrument makers” (256) like James Watt, and which, in his view, drove the process much more than global interconnections.

The ground that Seigel covers is impressive. However, for this reader, his account falls short of providing a better explanation for the “great divergence” than those presented by global historians like Pomeranz, Christopher Bayly, or Sven Beckert. While the latter, with different emphases, all stress the significance of global interconnections for the emergence of European hegemony, Seigel accentuates distinctiveness by comparing “Europe as a civilization” (6) with others. The global historians mentioned above all start their accounts in the late eighteenth century. I agree with Seigel that the preceding centuries need to be examined more closely to understand these processes better, but for different reasons. In A Fistful of Shells, a history of Atlantic Africa in the longue durée that Seigel does not draw on, Toby Green has highlighted the contingent process of unequal capital accumulation as a key driver of the unevenness of modern relations between Africans and Europeans. For centuries, Africans exported gold and humans in exchange for locally sought-after goods like South Asian textiles or objects used as currency, for instance manillas or cowrie shells. African actors pursued their trade interests rationally within their reference systems, but these transactions ended up depriving African societies of human and mineral capital of lasting value, receiving goods in return whose value rapidly declined or, in the case of the many weapons imported, contributed to the destabilization of African societies. Seigel shows little interest in such trade patterns. Overall, he mentions Galileo Galilei almost twice as much as slavery. He also leaves out Alfred Crosby's by now classic account of how the “Columbian Exchange” helped bring about Europeans' domination in the Americas, since the continent's Indigenous peoples died en masse of the diseases introduced from the old world. Yet despite these points of contention, Remaking the World, written with a wide view and firm grasp of large parts of the relevant literature, will make for valuable reading for anyone interested in the special place Europe occupied in the modern world.