Definition of "owing to"

It’s all owing to your precious caution that they got hold of it. If you had let me burn it, and taken my word that it was gone, it would have been a heap of ashes behind the fire, instead of being whole and sound, inside of my great-coat.

1839, Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby

Owing to the TB I connected breathing with joy, and owing to the gloom of the ward I connected joy with light, and owing to my irrationality I related light on the walls to light inside me.

1976 September, Saul Bellow, Humboldt’s Gift, New York, N.Y.: Avon Books, page 62