"If successful, the peasant revolts of the sixteenth century, as one historian has put it, might have 'clipped the wings of rural capitalism'" (Robert Brenner, "Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe," _The Brenner Debate: Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe_, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1987). That's _how_, which explains the difference between England and other areas. The _timing_ is explained by prior historical development (the growth of commerce, colonialism, the discovery of the so-called new world, demographics, climate, etc.) which did _not_ distinguish England from other areas decisively (in fact, the Portuguese embarked upon the slave trade much earlier than the English).
_Why_ did the species to which both of us belong emerge at all? Science answers how but not why. Those who do not understand the difference between how and why, or science's silence on why as to what _appears_ to be "crucial questions" in the untrained eyes, turn to God (or nowadays "creation science"), as Stephen Jay Gould explains.
It fascinates me that contingency leaves both you & Charles, Lou & Ricardo, etc., unhappy & unsatisfied, for all the differences in opinions on many other subjects.
Yoshie