I’ve recently read"The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World" and want to hear what all of you think the answer is, because I feel like the book was missing something in its thesis and I am not very sure what that is.
I’ve recently read"The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World" and want to hear what all of you think the answer is, because I feel like the book was missing something in its thesis and I am not very sure what that is.
more detailed explanation:
basically they were in the middle of a renaissance (which is nothing special tbh) but then they hit the mega giga trillions jackpot in the middle of that
bazingabrains always bleat about how only Spain colonized Americas initially, but they ignore that Spain losing their gold means England/France gaining it, and not China or Thailand
there’s also maps of European innovation which show that basically all of it took place in England Germany Northern Italy France and the places inbetween. Unsurprisingly these are all places that had Atlantic access or were close enough to those places to benefit from wealth diffusion
Also constant war necessitating more and more complicated systems of debt that both necessitate more war to pay of that debt but also allow financing large naval expeditions to loot not just the new world but the entire Indian ocean. Even after all this they are still in constant conflict with each other so the exploitation of the rest of the world accelerates to keep up.
I doubt it, India was also in constant war as was the Middle East
Europeans just had a giga shitload more money and more resources to finance the wars, so they won
You still need the permanent war though:
yea but that’s like air
Its cheaper than two continents of gold and silver but its not “like air”. Permanent war. Always on the home front, not the frontier. Western Europe ground on for like a millennia without any empire establishing itself.
same with every other place save China (but still sometimes even China)