Within sociology, Weber was a polymath. To begin with he wrote economic history, then made a survey of the agricultural depression in Prussia in the 1880s, before turning to a different aspect of history, the ancient religions of Israel, India and China, which provided him with a comparative perspective for (modern) Western economic development.32 This gave an added authority to his best-known work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, which appeared in 1904.
