Why did Europe conquer the world?

Why did the Europeans (including the North Americans) conquer the world? There is a long tradition in historiography, going back to the nineteenth century or even earlier, about European uniqueness, superior skills regarding technology, political and economic organization, culture and science which are said to have made the European supremacy inevitable.

The revisionists are clearly right in rejecting the idea of a permanent European superiority and, above all, its racist implications. However, hardly any serious his­torian will defend such ideas today.⁶² Attempting to find long-term or deep-rooted factors explaining European dominance does not imply that Europe is inherently superior and will remain so forever or that no other civilization can compete with or surpass it. Today, China and East Asia are modernizing rapidly and may well overtake the West in the near future.

Concerning the chronology of European dominance, it must be admitted that the most striking example, America, is less relevant.

The Muslim world had been a competitor as well as a source of inspiration for the Europeans since the early Middle Ages. Scientific and philosophical texts, partly translations from ancient Greek and partly original contributions by the Arabs, were an important impulse for the intellectual revival in Europe from the twelfth century onwards. Politically, the Muslim world had been in decline since the gradual dissolution of the Abbasid Caliphate, beginning in the tenth century. The Ottoman Empire represented a revival and formed an even greater threat to Europe than the Arab Empire had done, conquering most of the Balkan area and twice attacking Vienna (1529 and 1683). Although Europe was technologically superior already in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century, when the Ottomans used European experts to develop their artillery,⁶⁶ the Ottomans were well organized and had the advantage that the Europeans were divided.

Admittedly, the relationship between science and Christianity was not unpro­blematic either. As we have seen, however, religious persecution within Christen­dom was primarily directed at religious movements, whereas intellectuals had some freedom to draw their own conclusions. Moreover, the distinction between reli­gious and secular knowledge was clearer within Christianity. The Church did not try to monopolize all knowledge; Christianity had a long tradition of coming to terms with secular knowledge. Finally, the division of Europe is important in this respect as well; those who were persecuted in one country could move to another. Of course, the negative attitude to scientific speculation in Muslim countries did not directly extend to practical innovations, particularly not in the military field. However, the problem was that such innovations increasingly came to depend on scientific knowledge, which, as we have seen, can be illustrated by the develop­ment of artillery.

The Ottoman Empire was clearly not a serious competitor to Europe for world dominance. By contrast, another empire, the Chinese, was for a long time the most advanced civilization in the world and forms the main alternative to Europe in the ‘Why Europe’ discussion.⁶⁷ Marco Polo’s account of his experience of China in the late thirteenth century is full of admiration for the large and well-organized cities and the superior technology of the Chinese.

For a long time, China was also ahead of Europe technologically. The compass, gunpowder, the printing press, paper and the mechanical clock were invented in China and probably gradually made their way from there to Europe, where they were introduced during the last centuries of the Middle Ages.

Nevertheless, the picture of stagnation and despotism has been too negative; early modern China has in many respects an impressive record of efficient gov­ernment and, by pre-industrial standards, relatively good living conditions for the population.⁷² It was also fairly advanced regarding trade, industry and technology. No doubt, the Europeans made little impact on Chinese trade before 1800, and the European superiority was also far less by this time than it became later. A comparison between the populations of the two areas is also in favour of China, which had around 300 million inhabitants in 1800. The corresponding number for Western Europe was around half of this. Moreover, the two leading nations involved in Chinese trade at the time, Britain and the Dutch Republic, numbered only a fraction of this, around 15 million together. The number of merchants from these nations that actually visited China was negligible and they bought more from the Chinese than they sold, paying in silver. However, when we consider that trade outside Europe before the eighteenth century was only a fraction of the total volume of European trade, combined with the dominant position of the two leading trading nations, Britain and the Dutch Republic, the picture becomes dif­ferent. At least these two countries must have been commercialized to a far greater extent than China, well before 1800, whereas the political importance of the merchants was also greater. China was governed by bureaucrats, and merchants had little political influence. By contrast, they largely governed the Dutch Republic and had considerable political influence in Britain, partly directly through mem­bership of the House of Commons, partly indirectly through the fact that the landed aristocracy also had commercial interests. Whatever the exact chronology of the European dominance, the commercial development in Europe, particularly from the late sixteenth century onwards, has to be taken into account.⁷³

Moreover, a recent study of the problem, based on extensive statistics, directly contradicts the revisionist claims on most points.⁷⁴ Average real wages and living standards for workers were significantly higher in North-West Europe than in China and India already in the sixteenth century and throughout the eighteenth, while the difference increased sharply from the mid-nineteenth century. Here, however, it has been objected that salaried workers were far less numerous in China than in Europe and in addition belonged to the poorest sector of the population.⁷⁵ The difference in living standard is also reflected in similar differences regarding height. Although urbanization was considerable in both China and India, even the most urbanized parts of these countries were below England and the Netherlands around 1800. It is also likely that conditions for trade and business were better in Europe, because of formal contracts and court of laws that could be used to solve conflicts, while the Chinese equivalents were kin-based organizations and decisions by magistrates which largely took the form of mediation. However, the importance of this may be open to discussion; there are indications that the Chinese system actually worked quite well.⁷⁶ The two fields in which the Chinese may possibly have equalled the Europeans are literacy and numeracy. A study estimates the former at 30—45 per cent for men and 2—10 per cent for women in eighteenth-century China. As we shall see, this is far below the Dutch Republic at the same time and approximately similar to France for men, but lower for women. Of course, there are uncertainties in a comparison like this and it hardly gives a complete explanation of the European dominance but it does suggest that it goes further back than the period around 1800.

In the first half of the fifteenth century, the Chinese eunuch admiral Zheng He led an expedition to Africa. The Chinese had both the technology and the navi­gational skills necessary for such expeditions, which were nevertheless discontinued in the following period because the emperor banned them. He even forbade the building of ocean-going ships.⁷⁷ It did not occur to any European ruler to impose such a ban, not because they were more enlightened but because they were poorer. Nor would a ban have had any effect; there would always have been another ruler willing to try his luck in expeditions across the sea. Thus, Columbus approached various kings and princes until he was lucky enough to be on the spot when Granada surrendered to Ferdinand and Isabella. Admittedly, as Morris points out, the end of the Chinese expeditions can also be explained by the fact that they were unnecessary. The Chinese had no need for import from other continents. Moreover, the Ming emperors had no incentive to maintain a large and costly fleet; their main military power was directed against the nomadic peoples on the eastern border.⁷⁸ Here, however, it must be added that the same would probably have been the case in Europe as well, if this continent had been one empire; fighting the Ottomans in the east would certainly have had higher priority than crossing the Atlantic.

The discovery of America forms an important part of the revisionists’ argument. Europe was lucky enough to be closer to America than any other civilization and the conquest of this continent added vast amounts of land for cultivation, in addi­tion to gold, silver and various valuable commodities like sugar and cotton. The emigration to America prevented overpopulation in Europe and increased wages which in turn gave an incentive to technological innovation. However, this argu­ment has been rejected by a series of scholars. There is no evidence that high wages were one of the reasons for the Industrial Revolution.⁷⁹ Generally, the world would have been a better place if every need resulted in a new invention. Nor would it seem likely that the Industrial Revolution would have taken place if the Spaniards rather than the English had settled in North America. Admittedly, the examples of Argentina and Chile show that a Spanish conquest of North America might have resulted in a similar mode of settlement as the existing one. On the other hand, although America was a potential market for Spanish exports, it did not actually become one. There is no reason to believe that further emigration from Spain would have changed this. A Spanish America without interference from rival countries would in all likelihood have increased Spanish military power in Europe. Maybe it would have resulted in Europe becoming one Empire with the same conservative attitude as its counterpart on the other side of the Continent. In any case, nothing suggests that it would have developed in the way it actually did. The same applies to the Chinese conquest of a large part of Central Asia under the Qing dynasty in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,⁸⁰ which, like the European conquest of America, increased the amount of land available for culti­vation but otherwise had no effects similar to those the European expeditions. Consequently, the conquest of America was of limited importance in itself; its significance lies in its combination with the specific economic, political and cultural development in Northern Europe.

The development of trade and industry in England and the Dutch Republic, combined with the division of Europe, is therefore an important factor. As we have seen, the more or less constant wars between established states in Europe were an important stimulus to technological innovation, primarily in the military field but also in a number of others. In addition, the relative backwardness of Europe for a long time and the lack of attractive commodities like gold, silver and spices made the Europeans more willing to visit other peoples and learn from them — for good and for bad. On the one hand, this led to conquest and plun­dering of other continents, on the other to scientific and technological develop­ment which resulted in Europe surpassing China in these fields in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

In 1793, a British Embassy arrived in China in the hope of persuading the Chinese to reopen trade, bringing examples of the most advanced British technol­ogy at the time, a planetarium, advanced lenses and electrical machines, but the emperor was completely uninterested. Later, he replied to King George III: ‘There is nothing we lack. We have never set much store on strange or ingenious objects, nor do we need any more of your country’s manufactures.’⁸¹ Pomeranz points out that this example is not necessarily representative of early modern China, present­ing various examples of Chinese interest in European imports, although adding that Europeans were more interested in Chinese commodities that vice versa.⁸² How­ever, he does not address the main point, which is not to what extent the Chinese bought European commodities but their interest in science and technology. Here various Europeans, notably the Jesuits in the seventeenth century, introduced European inventions but met with little response.⁸³

Generally, when discussing the power relationship between the Europeans and the indigenous peoples, the revisionists tend to forget that the Europeans fought with small forces far from home, that they fought each other as much as the local rulers and that there was never any question of a Chinese or Indian invasion of Europe. Against this background, it is not surprising that it took time for the Eur­opeans to achieve a dominant position. Considering the distance between Europe and the Far East and the time it took to reach the colonies and trading posts from Europe — about half a year each way — the European expansion in this area was impressive already in the sixteenth century.

The eighteenth century saw a parallel to the Spanish conquest of America, namely, the British conquest of India.⁸⁴ Here there were no previously unknown diseases decimating the native population nor any shock of a completely unknown people nor a big technological gap. Still, the British conquerors were not more numerous than their Spanish predecessors — no more than around a thousand men were employed in the British civil service at any time in the period 1857—1947.

Moreover, their main competitors were not the Indians themselves but the French. The British army mainly consisted of Indian soldiers, commanded by British offi­cers. Admittedly, the Muslim Moguls who had conquered India in the sixteenth century were in decline and the British largely won by playing the various local princes off against one another, but they also mostly proved superior in direct military confrontation, even if greatly outnumbered. In the Battle ofPlassey (1757) which is usually regarded as the breakthrough for British power in India, a British army of 1,100 Europeans and 2,100 Hindu Sepoys defeated a Moghul army of 50,000. The military technology was the same on both sides but the British won because of their superior tactics and discipline.⁸⁵ They fought in tight units in which all soldiers fired at the same time and kept firing continuously by changing places. Their success was the result of systematic training and drilling according to principles developed since the early seventeenth century.

As there was no military confrontation between China and the West in the eighteenth century, we cannot directly compare the two at this time, but the first war between them in the nineteenth century gives a similar impression as the case of India. This was the Opium War with Britain (1839—42), fought in order to force the Chinese to cancel their ban on the profitable import of opium from the British colonies.⁸⁶ From a moral point of view, this is far from being Britain’s ‘finest hour’, but military and technologically, it shows the country’s astounding superiority. China at the time had around 400 million inhabitants, England 13.6 million, some million more if we include the rest of Britain. The British force consisted of 15 barrack ships, carrying British Indian army troops, 4 steam-powered gunboats and 25 smaller boats that reached Canton from Singapore. Nevertheless, this force sailed along the whole coast of China from south to north and won a series of devastating victories over the Chinese. The British suffered some defeats ashore, but were totally superior at sea, thanks to their better ships. During the war, they conquered Canton and Nanking, sailed up the Yangtze and captured the emperor’s tax barges, thus getting hold of most of the revenue of the imperial court of Beijing. When peace was concluded, the Chinese had to allow British trade with opium and other commodities and cede some ports, including Hong Kong for 155 years — it was returned in 1997. By contrast, a little more than a decade later, the performance of the British army and military organization in the Crimean War against Russia led to a devastating report by a Select Commission of Inquiry and a storm in the press, demanding an overhaul of the military as well as the civil service.⁸⁷ Britain thus did not enjoy the same superiority closer to home.

Here it may be objected that the main factor in the British success was the steam-powered gunboats which were a new invention at the time,⁸⁸ so that a similar success would not have been possible in the eighteenth century. On the other hand, the English victory initiated a period of long-term European super­iority over China; not until the mid-twentieth century were the Chinese able to compete. Moreover, the case of India shows the trend in the direction of European superiority in the East already in the mid-eighteenth century.

According to Hoffman, European military superiority was actually the main reason for its conquest of the world. As we have seen, he seeks the explanation for this in the division of Europe. Only on this continent did the rulers fight ‘tourna­ments’ against one another over centuries without anyone winning a decisive vic­tory. This led to a steady improvement in military organization and equipment, as has been pointed out by a number of scholars. As the example from India shows, the most important factor was better organization, drill and discipline and tactical leadership by competent and devoted officers but there was also a considerable technological development. By contrast, the typical military challenge for empires, such as China, were nomads along the borders who were technologically back­wards but dangerous because of their mobility. They thus offered no stimulus to technological or organizational improvement.⁸⁹ Admittedly, Europe was not the only place in the world where rival kingdoms fought one another; this also applies to Persia, the Ottoman Empire and others.⁹⁰ Nevertheless, both the permanence of the division in Europe and the cultural unity despite the political division may have made a difference.

Hoffman regards these improvements as the result of trial and error and the loser learning from the winner, without any scientific basis. However, the development of fortifications from the sixteenth century and artillery from the eighteenth had a scientific basis in mathematics. Many of the famous scientists, like Galileo and Newton, were active in the arms industry as was also the painter Leonardo da Vinci in the early sixteenth century.⁹¹ Generally, the improvement of arms was not only the result of trial and error in the field; there was an arms industry, located in specific areas, such as Liege in the Low Countries, where engineers competed to develop the best types which they sold for high prices to the warring parties. The development of a capitalist economy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was therefore also an important factor in military development.⁹² In addition, car­tography advanced greatly in the eighteenth century and was crucial for navigation at sea as well as military operations on land.⁹³

Science was particularly important in sea warfare. Mathematical principles were applied to the construction of warships from the sixteenth century onwards.⁹⁴ A further step was taken in England with the foundation of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich in 1675. The observatory was equipped with various instruments and served as the home of the royally appointed astronomer. The main reason for its foundation was the importance of astronomy for navigation, notably the problem of measuring longitude at sea, which might be a matter of life or death for sailors. A prize for solving this problem had been offered by the king of Spain in the early seventeenth century, which Galileo had aspired to win.⁹⁵ In the early eighteenth century, the British king promised £20,000 to the one who solved the problem. The solution was Harrison’s longitude-finding chronometer (1761), a far more exact clock than any previous one. The current division of meridians was also developed here, with the zero meridian going through the centre of the building. This was also a short step from Newton’s new understanding of the universe to Newcomen’s and Watt’s invention of the steam engine (1715 and 1764) and Arkwright’s water frame (1769). Scientific inventions were no longer the unex­pected results of the brilliant idea of some genius; they were encouraged and planned and expected to happen through systematic research. The British govern­ment at the time had vital interests at sea and was willing to support scientific progress that improved navigation. This suggests that there was indeed a close connection between the military development, on the one hand, and scientific and the technological inventions, the commercial economy and state formation, on the other.

Nor is Hoffman’s comparison between Europe and the Ottoman Empire entirely convincing.⁹⁶ Hoffman explains the continued predominance of cavalry in the Ottoman army with the need to fight nomads on the eastern borders of the empire, while at the same time admitting that the proportion of infantry to cavalry was the same as in the Austrian army along the border to this country. So why did the Ottomans not adapt the technology and organization of European infantry? Moreover, he explains the backwardness of the Ottoman navy by claiming that galleys were ideally suited to the Mediterranean. Admittedly, they were used longer in this area than in the North Sea and the Atlantic but they were no more superior there than elsewhere. The success of English and Dutch pirates in the Mediterranean in the sixteenth century was largely the result of their sailing-ships of the northern type. Although the Venetians were conservative, they eventually had to change to the new ship technology from the early seventeenth century onwards.⁹⁷ So why did the Ottomans not also change?

This finally raises the question of science.⁹⁸ Theoretically, the great break­through in European science came with the study of astronomy and the replace­ment of the geocentric world picture by the heliocentric one through a series of studies by scientists from Copernicus to Newton. The importance of this devel­opment lay not only in a new picture of the universe, reducing the Earth from its centre to one of more planets circling around the sun and later to a tiny spot cir­cling around one of many billions of stars in an enormous universe. Even more important was its implication for the nature of knowledge, based not on pure thought but on systematic observation and experiment. The logical next step from the study of nature and the universe was to apply a similar method to phenomena on Earth, chemistry, medicine, zoology, botany and not least humans themselves and their society, i.e. history and the social sciences.

How can we explain the European success in this field? One possibility is, as Morris claims,⁹⁹ that it was simply a side-effect of European development in other fields, notably the expeditions across the ocean which necessitated precise mea­surement of time and space and in turn made European authorities more tolerant of eccentric intellectuals. According to the same logic, Ottoman authorities should have embraced European inventions with enthusiasm, but they didn’t. Although intellectual development is not unconnected to social and material phenomena, there is still much to say in favour of it as an independent variable. Inventiveness is not a permanent characteristic of some peoples, in contrast to others, but certain inventions may nevertheless be more likely to occur under specific cultural and social conditions. Europe had the advantage over China that it had access to Greek science, probably the most advanced in antiquity, as well as the Muslim improve­ment of it in the early Middle Ages. Indirectly, the Europeans were probably also able to learn from China. By contrast, the Chinese were little influenced from the outside; they mostly regarded themselves as superior to all foreigners. When the Europeans surpassed the Muslims in the later Middle Ages, it was, as we have seen, mainly because of increasing distrust in science by Muslim rulers, notably the Ottomans.¹⁰⁰

Admittedly, intolerance was also increasing in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the period of the great breakthrough in science. When this did not lead to the same results as in China and the Muslim world, the explanation must partly be sought in stronger institutions, namely, the universities, and partly in the usual factor, the divided state system, which made it possible for people perse­cuted in one place to find refuge in another. Concerning the former, some scholars have traced the origins of the scientific discoveries back to the Middle Ages, when the universities had already received a considerable intellectual freedom despite general intolerance, while they were also able to preserve the progress that had been made. In addition, the study of law, logic and philosophy has been regarded as the theoretical foundation for the science that led to the heliocentric theory.¹⁰¹ The institutional factor seems stronger in this case than the intellectual one; it can at least be argued that the development of science from Copernicus to Newton represents a radical novelty.¹⁰² In addition to the universities, the relative intellec­tual freedom, open discussion and meeting of people from various parts of Europe in the Italian city republics and later in the Dutch Republic and England/Britain must have been an important factor.¹⁰³

These observations of course only explain why the new science became domi­nant in Europe once it had occurred, not why it occurred in the first place. The occurrence of genius and its development are both unpredictable and inexplicable, but different intellectual traditions and thought systems may nevertheless give some clue to the kind of discoveries that may be expected in a particular culture. The classical study of this is Joseph Needham’s great work, based on years of study of China and intimate knowledge of its language and culture as well as science in general.¹⁰⁴ Needham was full of admiration for Chinese science but was never­theless clear about the decisive superiority of Europe from around 1600, with Galileo. In the previous period, he finds no decisive European advantage but great differences in modes of thought as well as in the fields in which the two cultures excelled. Nevertheless, he hints at an explanation in the European concept of law: ‘We may ask perhaps whether the state of mind in which an egg-laying cock could be prosecuted at law was necessary in a culture which should later on have the property of producing a Kepler.’¹⁰⁵ In other words, the crucial difference does not necessarily consist in an obvious advantage, but might equally well be a mode of thought likely to lead to absurd consequences. The European notion of laws of nature by analogy to laws in society, given by a ruler, is totally alien to China. Although not more scientific, it might possibly have been more likely to have led to the scientific discoveries of Copernicus and his successors. In addition, as we have seen, increased knowledge of Greek science was a factor in Copernicus’ for­mulation of the new theory. In the next stages, its verification by Kepler and Galileo was the result of observations through the use of better instruments.

It may be objected to this explanation that it is based on permanent features of the two cultures and thus underestimates the revolutionary changes that took place in Europe in the early modern period, with the Reformation, the Great Dis­coveries and various technological inventions, civilian as well as military.¹⁰⁶ Like China, Europe had its cultural canon, based on the Bible and the Christian tradi­tion, on the one hand, and on the Greek and Roman classics, on the other. This canon was challenged from the sixteenth century onwards. The Reformation of course did not reject the Bible but, on the contrary, used it to attack the many dogmas and traditions introduced by the Catholic Church and restore what the Protestants regarded as original and authentic Christianity. The literary canon, based on the Greek and Roman Classics, was challenged during the debate between the Ancients and the Moderns in the late seventeenth century, in which the latter claimed that modern French literature, Racine, Corneille, Moliere and others, was better than the Greek and Roman Classics.¹⁰⁷ The Great Discoveries established an entirely new picture of the world, showing that Aristotle and other ancient authorities had been wrong. Of the new Christian movements resulting from the Reformation, the Puritans were particularly important, with a strong attachment to scientific research, partly the result of the idea that God’s works in the creation should be studied and known and partly because of the fact that many of them were active in business and practical activities. However, scientific research was not exclusive to the Puritans; despite the condemnation of Galileo, consider­able scientific research was undertaken in Catholic countries. In addition, the invention of printing made it easier to communicate and discuss the results of research — the number of printed books in early modern Europe by far exceeded that of China. This can largely be explained by the different script systems in the two cultures. European alphabetic script demanded only a small number of types, which made printing easy, whereas the numerous Chinese signs gave printing little advantage over handwriting, except for short texts to be issued in numerous copies.

The connection between the scientific discoveries and the various practical inventions, such as the steam engine, has often been discussed and it has been pointed out that most inventors had limited theoretical education while the great scientists rarely tried to apply their science to solve practical problems. However, the gap between the two was certainly less from the eighteenth century onwards than it had been previously and, in the long run, it is difficult to imagine the Industrial Revolution without a connection to advanced science. In a similar way, technology contributed to the scientific discoveries. Kepler’s and Galileo’s argu­ments in favour of the Heliocentric Theory were based on observations by better instruments than those previously available. Europe also differed from China in this respect. Chinese education was exclusively focused on literary skill and knowledge, taught in private as well as public institutions, and aimed at preparing for a career in the imperial bureaucracy, although only a small minority of the graduates achieved this.¹⁰⁸ Thus, although the discussion about the rise of Europe and the scientific and industrial revolution will continue, it seems unlikely that these phenomena can be explained as chance events.

Moreover, once Europe — or parts of Europe — had taken this decisive step, it becomes of subordinate importance exactly when it overtook China according to the normal criteria of economic and political success, education, standard of living, and so forth. Although Europe in some respects lagged behind China for a long time, perhaps even until around 1800, it underwent a series of great changes in the centuries before which indicate a particular dynamism, while China seems to have reached a peak in its scientific and technological development already in the tenth and eleventh centuries. To compare with a running competition: the decisive moment is not when the winner overtakes the loser but when he starts to run faster.

China had been in contact with Europeans since the sixteenth century and must have had many opportunities to adopt their technology, but failed to do so. Nor did the disaster of the Opium War lead to reform, but on the contrary to further western dominance. Further, because of their relative backwardness in the earlier period, the Europeans were much more interested in China and other parts of the world than the Chinese were in Europe, and learned from other cultures. Finally, when the Industrial Revolution had taken place in England, it gradually spread to the rest of Europe — to the extent that Germany was ahead of England already in the 1880s — but only to one country outside Europe, namely, Japan. If the Chinese were close to doing the same as the Europeans in the late eighteenth century, why did they not make use of European technological and institutional improvements instead of becoming a battlefield for competing Western powers, the Europeans and the USA?