Escape from Rome: The Failure of Empire and the Road to Prosperity advances the thesis that Rome was a one-time event made possible by a very particular demographic and geopolitical world. Once Rome fell, Europe’s geography made it difficult for another empire to reunify the continent.
Other parts of the world possess different levels of political gravitational pull. China, for example, tends toward concentration and reunification, while other regions tend toward fragmentation. Europe lies near the extreme end of that fragmentary spectrum. The book argues that this political fragmentation eventually helped Europe achieve its economic divergence.