Compare And Contrast The European Hegemony And The Military Revolution

Rise through Force: European Hegemony and the Military Revolution With the dawn of the second millennium (C.E.), the bulk of Europe existed as a relative backwater and there was little foreseeable evidence that this fragmented conglomerate of fiefdoms would eventually surge forth to control a better part of the known and unknown world. But surge forth it did, and by the twentieth-century the West , for better or worse, had come to dominate and influence societies around the globe. As the ubiquity of Western culture and influence stands as an unprecedented historical benchmark, the question naturally arises: How did it come to pass, that a relatively unsophisticated mass of warring polities should change the entire course of human history to a degree previously unimaginable and unforeseen? …show more content…
Namely this work argues that the rise of the West greatly fomented through Europe’s unique military innovations developed under centuries of continuous warfare. These innovations, in turn, secured tactical advantages during the Age of Exploration that allowed Europe to open routes of global trade and colonization by way of the sword (or rather gun, in the literal sense), and to greatly dominate the new world market. Although Europe certainly underwent other seminal revolutions in thought and industry, it is both plausible and likely that these innovations would have remained fairly insular had there been no system of global trade/colonization in place. Therefore, the story of the rise of the West is one that inherently rests upon force and armed