Watch The Odyssey of Western Civilization #6: From the Mediterranean to Northern Europe: Why Did Power Shift Northward in the 16th and 17th Centuries?

Western civilization was born in Greece and Rome, but today Greeks and Italians must defer to Europe's northern nations, especially Germany. Power shift northward because the south for centuries was locked in a life-or-death struggle with Islam, leaving the north free to develop cohesive nation-states - and to embrace the Protestant Reformation, which viewed capitalism with more enthusiasm than did the mostly Catholic south. And the north looked out on the Atlantic, the pathway to global trade, while the enclosed and embattled Mediterranean world ossified into a backwater.