[Cronos]

True, however, I meant to put the caveat that I was focussing purely on Europe (including European Russia and Turkey). In any case, the focus was on economic development, not political affiliations.

With respect to economic and scientific innovations in the Americans, how much percentage is due to Jews? Or Orthodox? yes, "Protestants" will be a large %, but how many are Anglicans, Baptists-Congregationalists, Lutherans-Reformed (clubbing them together in the US), Catholics? I don't know about the split by various branches of Western Christianity, but I can be sure that the Jewish representation in scientific discovery will be far larger than their population percentages.

This would signify my point that:

1. Religion played a role in the sense of whether it was a state-religion (most of Europe) or not (America) and whether the religion was flexible for different viewpoints (Anglicanism and maybe Judaism) or not (in Europe Catholicism, Calvinism, Lutheranism etc.)
2. Critical mass of "smart folks" and innovation breeds more scientific and economic discoveries. This is what happened in Sumeria, in Harappa, in Magadha, in ancient Greece, in the medieval Italian city-states, in the S-E of England and N-W of France and in the N-E of the US and Southern California

[Cronos]

In the larger historical sense, did the Reformation, "help" Europe? That's a moot point as most of what could have or not have happened is sheer speculation.

We cannot compare between two "nations" like say Denmark and Portugal as there are a number of other factors to consider (population, agriculture, empire, trade partners, peace etc.), but we can compare between two sections of one "nation" with the best cases being England and "Germania" i.e. the Holy Roman Empire.

in England, the developments were primarily in two places: S-E England and around Manchester-Liverpool. Yet there were few to no innovations in Cornwall, in York, in the areas bordering Wales or in the areas between York and Kent. What was the differentiating factor? Urbanization -- a concentrated mass of people in the London conglomeration (London was the most populated city in the world by 1800, and Manchester was close behind) and the momentum of scientific discoveries. The entire country was Anglican, more or less and mostly the same race (Cornwall being the exception as it was and is Celtic rather than Germanic)

Germany -- the scientific developments are evenly spread across the Catholic south, Bavaria, Schwabia and the Protestant north. In fact, the TRUE differentiator is on whether the Germanic state/kingdom/electoral province was ruled by a rigid elector/prince or had a far-off ruler. In fact, the prince-bishoprics of Cologne, Basel, Brandenburg, Constance etc. had a disproportionate development in comparison to the smaller Germanic states that had basically despots.

The secret seems to be a freer government -- which was NOT there in either Lutheran strong states like Hesse or Denmark or Catholic strong states like Spain or Portugal.

This is why the comparatively chaotic country of the USA started to dominate by the end of the 1800s