What factors enabled Europe to conquer almost the whole world? [closed]

Question

As we probably all know, after ancient and medieval times European countries traveled to almost every part of the Globe. Today's heritage are, among many others, Roman law and alphabet, Gregorian Calendar, English as international language, European fashion (like eg. ties), habits (see eg. my other question), science (measurements like SI, meridian 0 going through London, Latin names in biology...), etc.

It seems that in ancient times Greeks/Romans were on the same civilized level as other cultures. Then, during Medieval, which is (wrong in my opinion) called dark ages, lots of minor wars occurred, which should have led to total European destruction.

This however did not weaken European community; moreover, common enemies (like Mongols, Ottomans) led to military breakthrough.

But this does not need to be true. China is the same latitude as southern Europe. They invented gunpowder. They made first sailings and first discoveries. They had common enemies (Mongol, Japanese), they shared the same faith. They had the same resources (iron) as Europeans.

In America today's New York lies on the same latitude as Rome. Why where there no civilization? Why Inca did not invent wheel? Just bad luck?

Of course these are rhetorical questions. The main is: are there any commonly acceptable factors that were advantageous for European civilization (even if totally dispersed to hundreds of feudal states), that allowed them to take over other civilizations and rule them for a while? Or maybe these were just some good luck for Europeans?

(I have read this question but this does not fulfill the topic. It is native American-centered, and ok, there were no good resources in America. However, I think the Chinese had everything that Europe needed to advance but they did not make use of it. India also was not too advanced).

I've met an opinion, that combination of Greek philosophy, Roman law, and Jewish (or Christian) theocracy (one God) made European civilization focus on particular humans. So units were able to move the civilization further, while Eastern civilizations (religions) focused on people as a whole, so every independent thoughts were suppressed. However, this might be too broad clarification.

Answer 1

This is, in fact, the big question of history.

Subquestion 1 here: Why didn't Native North Americans (let's say the Mound Builders, for the sake of argument) conquer the world?

The problem here, by the very logic you go over in your own question, is that the MB's were inhabiting a continent that was relatively biologically deprived. By comparison to Eurasia, North America just did not have nearly the number of domesticable flora and fauna. Guns, Germs, and Steel goes over this in detail (including listing all the major domesticable plants and animals on both continents). Their best was maize, whose wild ancestor is native to the tropics. It took over a millenium for it to be hybridized into a form that could be cultivated in the larger latitudinal area of North America. By that time, the MB's were hopelessly far behind Eurasia.

Subquestion 2: OK, so why Europeans rather than Chinese or Persians?

This is a much more interesting question. However, its already been asked here.

One theory I've seen is something I'd call "cultural Darwinisim". The idea here is that China was most often ruled over by one entity. This caused society there to be conservative in the extreme. Europe, on the other hand, was a heaving morass of squabbling states. Thus any new innovation that makes a state stronger will get adopted everywhere quickly: The states that change will have more luck expanding, and those that refuse to change will be more likely to get conquered. Only the innovative survive. Jared Diamond suggests this as a possible reason in GG&S.

Longtime readers here know what my own theory is: Its all about the printing press. Europe was in fact a complete backwater until the late 15th Century. Then all sorts of things start happening at once that we wrap up into a big ball called The Renaissance. However, if you look closely, most of the new discoveries were not brand new things. Northern navigators had known about the "New World" for centuries. The Chinese had been using gunpowder for quite a while. What was different was the the effenciency of press-copying. After about 1450, Knowldege could now be spread around European society an entire order of magnitude greater than in societies stuck with hand-copying their writings. It is often said that knowledge is power. 19th Century world history shows this.

Of course this leads up to a followon question: "OK, but why did Europeans make full use of the movable-type printing press first?"^* I believe here the Chinese were laboring under one peculiar handicap: They have no alphabet. A European can make printing type blocks using only around 30 or so glyphs. Han Chinese however uses an ideogram setup. This makes "translating" to multiple languages (as exist in China) fairly simple, but it means someone trying to create type for a Chinese press has to deal with a vocabularly of 100,000 or more possible glyps (to this day, nobody is really sure). Thus a press, at its first point of introduction where its advantage over hand-copying will be the smallest it will ever be, was just not nearly as competitive a method over hand-copying in China as it was in Europe.

_{* - Yes, the Chinese actually had an earlier printing press. It wasn't an important invention in China though. Why is the interesting question}

Answer 2

Europe was pretty much a poor smelly underdeveloped backwater in global terms for most of history, although the culture and civilization of the middle east and Africa often reached across the Mediterranean and especially into the areas near the middle east.

The change from poor backwater to rulers of the world started with the conquering of the Americas, and especially the vast amounts of gold flowing in from South America. This gold was in large used to pay for an arms race and the building of several huge European fleets.

These armies and fleets in turn was used for trade. Both friendly trade with Asia, and unfriendly trade with Africa, which was shipped over and exploited in the Americas. This generated more wealth, more European arms races and even more fleets and more wealth.

However, this would probably in itself not have been enough, but then the industrial revolution happened, and it happened in Europe, especially Britain, and made Britain and Europe enormously wealthy, so much so that they now could do unfriendly trade with pretty much anyone.

Source, as always in these matters: Clive Ponting

T.E.D. has a point about the printing press. I don't believe it was instrumental in making Europe discover America or exploit it, but it would certainly have been impossible to have an industrial revolution without having a printing press, and this may in fact be the reason why the Chinese didn't have an industrial revolution a 1000 years before Britain. They certainly had highly developed industry as well as mechanical and economical knowledge.

The wide spread of printing technology in turn helped the Enlightenment happen, and the combination of money from the exploitation of the Americas and Africa (via the slave trade) together with the fast spread of ideas thanks to the printing press is likely the reason why the industrial revolution happened in Europe. This in turn was the reason behind the technical and economical superiority of Europe during the 19th century, enabling Europe to rule the world for a short period.

Answer 3

These are both good answers but I think I can offer some extra points not included in them (after I have +1ed them both)!

This is all cloaked in the wool of human history (there is always a counter example somewhere and a lot of this deals only in the general cases):

The driver seems to be (as stated previously) the multiple states of almost equal power causing a massive arms race which knocked on to races in pretty much everything else. Each nation was essentially a full time competitor so the incentive to trade, explore, research and develop was huge. Once this is in motion everything procedes at an exponential rate.

The climate allowing effective farming to be embraced, which included the following effects:

• Some people were freed up from gathering their own food which means they could become professionals in other things e.g. soldiers, scientists, etc.
• Europeans gradually built up immunities to diseses and infections caught from them.
• Population was no longer limited by the hunter gatherer lifestyle.

Freeing members of society up to research and develop like this with the incentives of the arms (and everything else) race allowed an exponential development advantage over other nations. For example over taking the Chinese once they had stopped their research was simply a matter of time.

The social conventions used in war were different in several ways.

• Europeans did not generally allow religious or social customs to hold back military progress. For example once guns were clearly better than spears guns were embraced, Incas did not allow their Emperor's chair to touch the floor and in a battle with Cortes would throw down their weapons and rush to support it when it started falling and this got them massacred. The closest Western Europeans would come to this is protecting a unit's colours but one would not be expected to be so suicidal.

• Generally Europeans fought to kill as many of the enemy as possible (apart from the Spartans). Unlike, for example, the Incas who fought to capture people to sacrifice to their gods Europeans just killed people on the field and allowed God to sort them out afterwards.

• In several Islamic states scholars were expected to spend most of their time studying the Koran and in prayer. In Christian Western Europe, whilst people were expected to worship they were not required to spend as much time and effort doing so hence they were simply able to get more done in a working week. Over years, decades etc the slight advantage becomes a massive one.

The printing press (as mentioned in a previous, very good, answere) allowed knowledge to be spread far and fast. People were able to learn from other's mistakes. For example the Aztecs sent their Emperor to meet Cortes and his soldiers because they believed he was unbeatable - any Western European soldier would have known that would result in his capture or death but even the most senior Aztecs did not because the Western Europeans knew from written history that between aggressive enemies who did not respect each other's Gods (even if they themselves could not read, that is how the knowledge was stored) that type of strategy would not work.

Updated in response to comment (sorry, I cannot post comments to reply for some reason):

The reason it was the European section of Euroasia who benefitted most from the above is a combinations of reasons:

• Climate: The further East you go (at the Northen edge) the more inhospitable the climate becomes until you begin heading into the far East. The less hospitable the land the more difficult it is to build populations and farm.

• Culture: The Chinese were streets ahead of everyone until the Emperor shut down their science and research programs. The Mongols were slicing through Europe until their leadership selection process required Genghis to return home etc.

• Geography: It is more difficult to colonise and expand when you have no access to the sea. France, Britain, Portugal, Spain were the main colonists and I would wager at least part of this is to do with the ready access they have to the oceans.

Although I am sure that there are probably slight exceptions to each rule and various subtleties and combinations as there always is when applying broad stroke justifications to real life.

Overall it takes one of the above to significantly reduce a countries potential to be a world power. If any of the climate, geography, culture etc factors are unsupporting then progress is hamstrung. Europe had the fewest of these issues and hence were able to race ahead, progress is exponential and the occasional breakthrough will provide massive boosts.

For example: China was the world leader but they developed social/theocratic issues when the Emperor shut down scientific research and closed the borders due to his insecurity (perhaps he knew that eventually academic and scientific research would begin to question if he really was a God).

For more info have a read of the following books:

Guns, germs and steel

Why the West has Won.

Answer 4

Europeans conquered "almost the whole world" (as we know it today), because the technology in use at the time of their ascendency (steamships and artillery), made it physically possible for them to do so.

The Mongolians conquered "almost the whole world" as THEY knew it (most of modern Asia), based on the physical limits of their "technology" (mounted warriors).

Under Alexander, the Macedonians and Greeks conquered "almost the whole world" of their time, using phalanx infantry, the technology of their time. The (slightly) earlier march of Xenophon and his 10,000 basically defined the limits of Greek phalanx infantry, and Alexander's troops marched only slightly further than Xenophon did.

Answer 5

Supreme energy and intelligence.

The best way to gauge a people's energy and intelligence is by looking at their intellectual achievements, not by testing what's-so-called IQ. One glimpse of art, science, literature text books will show who is extremely superior in terms of energy and intelligence. Why the Europeans acquired such supreme intelligence is still a mystery. It is possible that European geography favours merchant economy which in turn favours energy and intelligence, and centuries of evolution pushed their energy and intelligence upwards.

The following is a quote from Bertrand Russell:

There have been only a few very rare periods in human history, and a few very sparse regions, in which spontaneous progress has occurred. There must have been spontaneous progress in Egypt and Babylonia when they developed writing and agriculture; there was spontaneous progress in Greece for about 200 years; and there has been spontaneous progress in Western Europe since the Renaissance. But I do not think there has been anything in the general social conditions at these periods and places to distinguish them from various other periods and places in which no progress has occurred. I cannot escape from the conclusion that the great ages of progress have depended upon a small number of individuals of transcendent ability. Various social and political conditions were of course necessary for their effectiveness, but not sufficient, for the conditions have often existed without the individuals, and in such cases progress has not occurred. If Kepler, Galileo, and Newton had died in infancy, the world in which we live would be vastly less different than it is from the world of the sixteenth century. This carries with it the moral that we cannot regard progress as assured: if the supply of eminent individuals should happen to fail, we should no doubt lapse into a condition of Byzantine immobility.

Russell, Bertrand. “Western Civilization.” In Praise of Idleness. London and New York: Routledge, 2006

*For those who accuse me of politically incorrect, here is my reply: I look only and surely at what are the facts; whether the conclusion is useful or not is irrelevant. I hope nations will cherish whatever talents they have once they realize this.

Answer 6

I can give an answer from an Indian's point of view. India (the Indian continent i.e. modern India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka etc.) was conquered by British and ruled almost two hundreds of years. No doubt the British were a brave nation which is not the only reason.

One factor is in the Indian culture. Indians never attack any other nation in the historical age. They are very non-violent and patience. World has been flooded by Indian religious and cultural believe as well as the messages of peace many times. This was not bounded only in India but throughout the Asia and even Europe.

So when Europeans came to Asia to conquer the Indians as well as Asians could not stand against properly. So India was conquered by British, South Asia was conquered by French, China was divided into parts. This is the half of the glove where Human being were living of that time. Africa, Australia, North and South America had very less number of inhabitants and they were not build up as a nation.