Weber's thesis is now more than a century old and nearly all of the introductory sociology textbooks (but not mine) take it to be a settled fact that the rise of industrial capitalism took place initially in predominantly Protestant countries and that within nations having both Protestants and Catholics, the Protestants dominated the capitalist economy. Moreover, a number of sociologists have attempted to account for the modernization of various non-Western societies by 'finding' an equivalent of the Protestant Ethic in their local religions12 - Robert Bellah claimed that such an ethic existed in Japan's forms of Buddhism, Confucianism and Shinto during the Tokugawa era.13 Nevertheless, it's all a myth!