This article documents several key patterns in political and economic development in Europe and the Middle East from the beginning of the Late Medieval period up until the eve of the Industrial Revolution. Specifically, I present quantitative measurements of several salient characteristics of pre-modern states and analyze the political economy of historical political units, from tiny city-states to vast empires. Importantly, I go beyond the level of contemporary states and, accordingly, analyze and describe the geographic extent, economic development, political centralization, and internal dynamics of polities at the polity level. Combining a long range of statistical sources into a novel data set on historical political units, I trace the politico-economic history of Western Eurasia in the 800-year period associated with the formation of the European state system as well as the onset of the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions. Additionally, I put forward statistical evidence of key critical junctures and of both convergences and divergences within the greater Western Eurasian region.