What made the 'Latin' or 'Catholic/Protestant' Europe different from the other cultural entities, including other Christian denominations was its individualism. The Catholic church from the 6st century not only learned that everybody was responsible for its deeds and had to take responsibilty before God instead of being part of a collective group but also stressed that individuals where owner of their movable and immovables. This was something that already existings embrionic in the Roman state and the Helenistic culture sphere (from whom the early church was a child) but was further pushed (so that p.e. individuals could donate to the church). Before, immovables where property of a group, clan, family, ... (p.e. the Scottish clan system) and although the right to use the ground was owned by indiviuals and passed to their children, the ownership was in the hands of the group. Already in Anglo-saxon England, individuals owned their land and could give it to people outside their family ! This made Europe different from the rest of the world and was a gigantic social revolution. Feodalism in europe was a bound between two men, not between two families. A courtier was representing his own interests instead that of the group who he was representing. The owner of land, a shop, ... was more interested to invest as he could give the investment to his heirs withoud the risk of seeing it lapse into the community, people where more interested into exploring new markets, ...
One of the problems with wich non European states where and are faced is the loyalty of their subjects and more important their (top) officials. Most people outside the European tradition are loyal to their clan, tribe, ethnic group and not to the state. Once they have a place in the administration, they are under enormous pression to give favors (money, jobs, sinecures, ...) to clan members risking, if they do not concede, to be placed outside their community. This was less the case in Europe where nepotisme and corruption was more limited to direct family. Several non European nations faced this problem on their own way - Eunuchs into top positions (p.e. Moslim states, China), state slavery (Mamelouks, Ottomans) - but on the long run, this gave other problems - of which stagnation was not the least.
This social revolution was what finally triggered the other European revolutions. When the Europeans swarmed over the world, destructing or subduing other civilisations, they didn't had much more technological advances over the other old world civilisations (the americas are an other chapter) but they had an other social system which was more adapted to change and was less sensitive to destruction if it wassn't suited to the circumstances (the individuals payed the price for errors while the system adapted itself). The other civilisations dissapeared or where forced into the direction of the Europeans. The rest is known history.
