Synopses & Reviews
"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
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"[B]rilliant."--Edward Rothstein, Wall Street Journal
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"This book is a very interesting addition to the flourishing history of the world genre."--Diane Coyle, Enlightened Economist
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"History and counterfactuals blend into a fluent thesis, underpinned by diverting tables of data."--Martin Vander Weyer, Daily Telegraph
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"[F]ascinating."--G. John Ikenberry, Foreign Affairs
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"A confident and sure-footed book."--Robert Fulford, National Post
Synopsis
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.
Synopsis
Between 1492 and 1914, Europeans conquered 84 percent of the globe. But why did Europe rise to the top, when for centuries the Chinese, Japanese, Ottomans, and South Asians were far more advanced? Why didn't these powers establish global dominance? In
Why Did Europe Conquer the World?, distinguished economic historian 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 variables had been at all different, Europe would not have achieved critical military innovations, and another power could have become master of the world.
In vivid detail, Hoffman sheds light on the two millennia of economic, political, and historical changes that set European states on a distinctive path of development and military rivalry. Compared to their counterparts in China, Japan, South Asia, and the Middle East, European leaders--whether chiefs, lords, kings, emperors, or prime ministers--had radically different incentives, which drove them to make war. These incentives, which Hoffman explores using an economic model of political costs and financial resources, resulted in astonishingly rapid growth in Europe's military sector from the Middle Ages on, 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.
Synopsis
"Beginning with the Spanish and Portuguese in the late fifteenth century, technological military superiority appears to have been the proximate cause of Europes 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
About the Author
Philip T. Hoffman is the Rea A. and Lela G. Axline Professor of Business Economics and professor of history at the California Institute of Technology. His books include Growth in a Traditional Society (Princeton), Surviving Large Losses, and Priceless Markets.
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