what are the major explanations which have been put forward for the ‘rise of the west’, and which do you find more convincing?

The Rise of the West
In many ways, the emergence of the modern international order was bound up with the rise to global dominance of a particular group of societies – those we know collectively as ‘the West’. Western dominance not only shaped the political and economic structure of international relations over the last 250 years; it also – perhaps inevitably? – produced an intellectual distortion in History and the Social Sciences known as ‘Eurocentrism’. But in the 21st Century, with ‘the Western age’ weakening due to the belated rise of China, India and others, this Eurocentric worldview is increasingly under attack. And the original debate over the rise of the West – the founding debate of the modern social sciences – has been re-opened.

What then explains this phenomenon of Western ascent (and with it, the emergence of the modern international order)? Was it the result of social, cultural and technological innovations internal to European development? Or does the cause lie in early modern Europe’s relations with other parts of the world – relations which made possible the internal changes emphasized by Eurocentric accounts? Your answer to these questions will determine your basic understanding of what modern world history – and the place of international relations within it – is all about.