Why Did Europe Conquer the World?

by Philip T. Hoffman

Overview

The startling economic and political answers behind Europe's historical dominance

Between 1492 and 1914, Europeans conquered 84 percent of the globe. But why did Europe establish global dominance, when for centuries the Chinese, Japanese, Ottomans, and South Asians were far more advanced? In Why Did Europe Conquer the World?, Philip Hoffman demonstrates that conventional explanations—such as geography, epidemic disease, and the Industrial Revolution—fail to provide answers. Arguing instead for the pivotal role of economic and political history, Hoffman shows that if certain variables had been different, Europe would have been eclipsed, and another power could have become master of the world. Hoffman sheds light on the two millennia of economic, political, and historical changes that set European states on a distinctive path of development, military rivalry, and war. This resulted in astonishingly rapid growth in Europe's military sector, and produced an insurmountable lead in gunpowder technology. The consequences determined which states established colonial empires or ran the slave trade, and even which economies were the first to industrialize. Debunking traditional arguments, Why Did Europe Conquer the World? reveals the startling reasons behind Europe's historic global supremacy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691175843
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	01/24/2017
Series:	The Princeton Economic History of the Western World , #54
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	749,881
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.70(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Philip T. Hoffman is professor of business economics and professor of history at the California Institute of Technology.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction 1

Chapter 2 How the Tournament in Early Modern Europe Made Conquest Possible 19

Chapter 3 Why the Rest of Eurasia Fell Behind 67

Chapter 4 Ultimate Causes: Explaining the Difference between Western Europe and the Rest of Eurasia 104

Chapter 5 From the Gunpowder Technology to Private Expeditions 154

Chapter 6 Technological Change and Armed Peace in Nineteenth-Century Europe 179

Chapter 7 Conclusion: The Price of Conquest 205

Appendix A Model of War and Technical Change via Learning by Doing 215

Appendix B Using Prices to Measure Productivity Growth in the Military Sector 228

Appendix C Model of Political Learning 231

Appendix D Data for Tables 4.1 and 4.2 233

Appendix E Model of Armed Peace and Technical Change via Research 234

Acknowledgments 239

Bibliography 241

Index 263

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Phillip Hoffman's book answers a question that economic historians have neglected: Why did Europe conquer the world starting about five hundred years ago? Hoffman stresses how incentives made Europe's princes unusually bellicose and willing to promote improvements in war technology. Combining wide reading, the judicious use of data, and economic models that distinguish Hoffman's explanation from that of earlier historians, Why Did Europe Conquer the World? represents the very best in economic history."—Timothy Guinnane, Yale University

"Why did Europe conquer the world? Philip Hoffman offers striking new answers to this old question. Hoffman's short answer is gunpowder or military technology. His longer answer is more unsettling: the political and geographical forces that made Europe's precocious economic development possible were inseparable from the arms race which enabled European states to win wars."—Cormac Ó Gráda, author of Eating People is Wrong, and Other Essays on Famine, Its Past, and Its Future

"Philip Hoffman upends the traditional story of why western Europe conquered the world. His elegant econometric model shows that by fighting constant wars with each other and never allowing a single hegemon to emerge, Western polities had greater incentives and opportunities to improve their military technology than their counterparts elsewhere. Anyone wanting to understand how economic theories are changing the ways we look at the past needs to read this book."—Daniel Chirot, University of Washington

"Beginning with the Spanish and Portuguese in the late fifteenth century, technological military superiority appears to have been the proximate cause of Europe's ever-expanding military dominance for the next five centuries. Where did this technological superiority come from? The answer provided in this convincing and tightly argued book is interesting and as definitive as such answers get."—Stergios Skaperdas, University of California, Irvine

Editorial Reviews

"A powerful argument that resonates strongly with recent work in international political economy (Herman Schwartz) and political science (Ned Lebow)."

Survival

One of Bloomberg Businessweek's Best Books of 2015, chosen by Barry Eichengreen

"Brilliant."--Edward Rothstein, Wall Street Journal

"[Why Did Europe Conquer the World?] is a very interesting addition to the flourishing history of the world genre."--Diane Coyle, Enlightened Economist

"History and counterfactuals blend into a fluent thesis, underpinned by diverting tables of data."--Martin Vander Weyer, Daily Telegraph

"Fascinating."--G. John Ikenberry, Foreign Affairs

"A confident and sure-footed book."--Robert Fulford, National Post

"Big-picture economic history at its best. Hoffman's answer: chronic military conflict that gave European leaders incentives to harness widely known gunpowder technologies more effectively than leaders in other parts of the world. Also a good reminder of what economic history brings to today's economic and political table."--Barry Eichengreen, Bloomberg Businessweek

"A hugely ambitious book and one that no scholar analyzing transitions in global history can overlook. It is a daunting task to attempt such an endeavor, let alone succeed as Hoffman has. [How Did Europe Conquer the World?] will change interpretations of European warfare, the financing of conflicts, transitions in other regions of the world, the causes of the Industrial Revolution, and the Great Divergence--topics that are at the forefront of history, economics, and political science today. . . . Impressive and persuasive. . . . [T]his book is a classic of economic history, which should be required reading."--Jari Eloranta, EH.net

"Impressive."--Jan De Vries, American Historical Review

"A powerful argument that resonates strongly with recent work in international political economy (Herman Schwartz) and political science (Ned Lebow)."--Survival

From the Publisher

04/27/2015
Hoffman (Growth in a Traditional Society), a professor of economic history at CalTech, provides an intriguing but not fully satisfying answer to the titular question. He begins by pointing out that by 1914, 84 percent of the world was under the control of Europeans or their descendants. According to Hoffman, the Industrial Revolution alone cannot explain this phenomenon; instead, he dates it to a military revolution that swept through early modern Europe starting around 1500. Hoffman’s thesis is that a “tournament” model of constant competition between European nation states gave the region its edge. Hoffman cites four factors in particular: frequent wars; low political costs of financing wars through taxation and borrowing; heavy use of gunpowder over older military technologies; and fewer obstacles to adopting military innovations. Hoffman’s comparison to other potential competitors for world domination—China, India, Japan, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire—finds they all lacked one or more of these four factors. His analysis makes for a valuable addition to previous literature on this subject, such as historians Jared Diamond and Paul Kennedy’s emphasis on geography, environmental differences, and an individualist culture. Still, while Hoffman’s model may partially explain how Europe came to dominate much of the world, it falls short of explaining why. (July)

Publishers Weekly