
Making broad conclusions about one culture's "performance" vs another is a sensitive topic at best and David Landes is careful to strike a neutral tone when showing how various points in time India, China, England, Spain, Holland and Portugal dominated parts, if not all of trade. Yet all but Britain (and later America) let it slip. Weather, disease, free trade, religious tolerance, government control, greed... some or all were factors in great nations fall from prominence and most of the time the decline was self inflicted. Spain and Portugal only took, they never built. China was unified yet unable to tolerate progress and was passed by, while India was too hot and divided internally, the aristocracy preferring to make alliances with foreign powers than with each other.
The role of winter was new to me. Long cold spells of weather killed off disease annually and let the industry and merchant class work longer with higher output. Many countries see snow however so it is untrue to say "they only made it because of the weather." Other nations had the advantage, notably Spain, however once the economic needle of the world shifted to industrial output Britain had a well established model ready to take over the world, and did.