Why Did Europe Conquer the World?

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This book put me in mind of Isaac Asimov's Foundation stories, where “psychohistorians” used the science of “psychohistory” model - and control - the development of galactic civilization after the fall of the first galactic empire. The difference here is that economic modeling replaces the fantastic science of psychohistory. Whether this economic modeling could ever be used prospectively or not, it does offer some insights into the intriguing question of “why did Europe end up conquering the world” despite starting out at the tail of the pack and being the unlikeliest candidate for that honor.

Philip T. Hoffman's answer is “political history,” which boils down to “luck of the cards.” Hoffman addresses a couple of perennial favorites, i.e., geography and constant warfare, to point out that these may be necessary conditions but they are not sufficient conditions since, inter alia, India experienced constant warfare and China had far more territorial diversity than Europe, but neither took the prize.

Hoffman's answer lies in developing a model of what it took to become the leader of the pack. He postulates a simple model based on two powers fighting for the “prize” of glory (or power or whatever). To win the prize, the power with the advantage of pouring the greatest resources into the military project at the the lowest cost (political or financial) will generally be the winner, inasmuch as resources largely determine who wins. The proximity of European states to each other tended to reduce the cost of war while raising the value of the “prize.” In addition, the history of Europe in creating small bands of warriors devoted to the lord, who dishonored shirkers, was a political necessity because of the close, warlike conditions of Europe, which had the effect of helping to develop a political culture with low political costs against going to war and was willing to tolerate a level of taxation that was inconceivable in India or China.

These factors tended to place Europe in the running for developing a gunpowder technology. What kept Europe in the running while other powers dropped out were things like: (a) Western Europe was able to devote its entire attention on gunpowder when other powers on the edge of the steppes had to deal with the ancient enemy of nomads with the ancient technology of archer cavalry; (b) there was no European hegemony, as there was in China and Japan and the Ottoman Empire, which in those areas had the tendency to reduce warfare, and reduce taxes, by the sheer fact that most powers were unwilling to attack such an overwhelming power; (c) European states were sufficiently close that technological advances could diffuse among the states, thereby stimulating the arms race; (d) correlated with the last fact was that the proximity and common culture of Europe meant that Europeans shared complimentary technology such that advances in one state could be appropriated by an already existing technological base in other countries, something which was largely not true when other states attempted to buy or appropriate Western technology.

Hoffman supports his points with economic mathematics - which is daunting and not particularly convincing - but provides the pay-off for the purchase of his book by offering a high level description of the historical facts that support his argument. I viewed the economic math as a useful way of compartmenting particular factors for analysis. I thought that this approach paid dividends.

From my perspective, Russia offers a nice substantiation of Hoffman's arguments. Why has Russia lagged behind so often? One reason is that Russia had to deal with Steppe nomads and therefore a large part of its economy went into the technology of horse archers, which while effective against nomads was never going to provide the asymptopic increase in power that gunpowder technologies developed. Consequently, since Russia had to compete with European powers, it found itself, under Peter the Great, importing Germans and others to provide the technological base for gunpowder technology. This importation was made more difficult because of the cultural/religious differences between Russia and the non-Orthodox West.

Hoffman has a nice discussion of how the Papacy seems to have played a role in the political history that led to European success by the fact that the papacy kept Europe fragmented and prevented the emergence of a hegemon. However, a flip of the cards in the other direction, perhaps a more enduring Carolingian Empire that turns the papacy into a department of the state, as occurred in Byzantium and Russia, and maybe there is a European hegemony that retards the development of technology. If that happens, would we now be enjoying technology at the level of pre-World War I Europe? Fascinating question.

Hoffman does not extrapolate his model to the nuclear age, but I wonder if there are features that apply. It seems that Russia and America acted as hegemons for the most part during the Cold War, which may have retarded nuclear proliferation. Likewise, the inability of a lot of countries to transition into nuclear powers is noteworthy, e.g., Iraq, Iran, Libya, which suggests a lack of complementarity. On the other hand, Pakistan and North Korea were successful. If Hoffman's view of history is correct, we might suspect that these countries purchased - or stole - the technology, rather than developing it natively.

This is an interesting book. Obviously, it bears pondering. It is also relatively short, so perfect for a diversion from the real world for the intellectually curious.