"Yali's Question"

Why do you think that What Europeans came to control a large share of the modern world, while those inhabiting the Americas, Africa and Asia became subjects of colonization?

When I first saw this question I though a couple things. The first thing was that they colonized other, smaller, weaker country, tribes, etc... But then the question of why Europe was more powerful occurred to me. I think it may have to do with European lifestyle compared to how people lived in other areas. In Europe everyone was in closer proximity than elsewhere. Thus, people were fighting for their land all the time. Governments were fighting for territory and so on. So they had armies that were constantly striving to be more powerful than the other armies. They armies were able to take new technology from their enemies and so the armies were constantly improving. So when they went to a less developed place they were able to crush or dominate the locals.

One more thought I had was that someone could probably write a book on this... and in fact, someone has.



"Guns, Germs and Steel"