“In fact the bulk of the economic bases of the European ascendancy post 1600 were not Calvinist.
Check your industrial history.”
‘The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism’ is a book written by Max Weber, a German sociologist, economist, and politician. Begun as a series of essays, the original German text was composed in 1904 and 1905, and was translated into English for the first time by Talcott Parsons in 1930.[1] It is considered a founding text in economic sociology and sociology in general.
In the book, Weber wrote that capitalism in Northern Europe evolved when the Protestant (particularly Calvinist) ethic influenced large numbers of people to engage in work in the secular world, developing their own enterprises and engaging in trade and the accumulation of wealth for investment. In other words, the Protestant work ethic was an important force behind the unplanned and uncoordinated mass action that influenced the development of capitalism. This idea is also known as the “Protestant Ethic thesis.”[2]
In 1998 the International Sociological Association listed this work as the fourth most important sociological book of the 20th century.[3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_Spirit_of_Capitalism
A. Weber was wrong. He was influential but is no longer considered accurate, or at least overstated his case. Note that during the times of the peak influence, if any, of the Protestant ethic, the most highly developed parts of Europe were yes, the Netherlands, but the other was Northern Italy. No surprise why the great powers spent so much effort fighting to control both of them. And etc. On the counterfactuals. The English “ironmasters” who drove the literal nuts and bolts of the industrial revolution were COE for the most part, not Calvinists or Presbyterians. The richest most advanced parts of Germany from the reformation to this day, and the drivers of the German parts of the industrial revolution are Catholic.
B. And, most critically re Calvinists, the vast majority of the European Protestants whose work ethic he praises were not Calvinist but Lutherans, who have always dominated in Europe.