this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2025
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History

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Why did Colonialism happen? (hexbear.net)
submitted 2 months ago by Redbolshevik2@hexbear.net to c/history@hexbear.net
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China and India were the most important places on Earth for almost all of history. The "Near East," the "Far East," Africa, and the Americas all had advanced empires at times, and most outstripped Europe technologically for most of history. The Ottomans famously made use of gunpowder before Europeans, but the Chinese were (of course) the first to weaponize it.

So what enabled Europeans to so successfully dominate the world? Obviously it wasn't their exceptional genetics or superior "culture," or even, I think, the massive experience in organized murder from Europeans all killing each other. Was it Capitalism? Industrialization? Agriculture? Did the massive trade network encompassing half the globe create a population with a huge array of immune disease carriers?

Notably, the "Scramble for Africa" happened much later than the settling of the Americas. Did the wealth sucked out of the Americas allow the Europeans to do something that would've been previously impossible (or at least not worth the effort)?

I know this is kind of a massive question to answer and I'm sure it's very contested, but I'd appreciate any responses and any book recommendations.

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[–] StinkySocialist@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 weeks ago

1.Germs, europeans were seemingly uniquely unsanitary and got some crazy immunity out of it. That lead to the americas being absorbed.

  1. Animal husbandry options: Another factor that contributed to the germs and its own separate advantage is all of the animals available to europeans for domestication. Gathering and breeding them in close proximity to population centers let more diseases cross into the european population as well.

  2. Boats: The aspiration to get resources from far away india and china also gave them a leg up in boats.

  3. Centralized political power?: I sometimes also wonder if the lower education in europe at the time aided centralization of political power too and gave them an advantage on that front.

It's a very weird under dog story in a way. Idk just my 2cents