So, I put together an economic model of how this technology has advanced to come up with what I think is the real reason why the West conquered almost everyone else. The technology grew to include more than just guns: armed ships, fortifications that can resist artillery, and more, and the Europeans became the best at using these things. Gunpowder was really important for conquering territory it allows a small number of people to exercise a lot of influence. That was a really great question and it got me interested. I'd given it to him because the use of this technology is related to politics and fiscal systems and taxes, and as he was reading it, he noted that the book did not give the ultimate cause of why Europe in particular was so successful. It started after I gave an undergraduate here a book to read about gunpowder technology, how it was invented in China and used in Japan and Southeast Asia, and how the Europeans got very good at using it, which fed into their successful conquests. What made you turn to the idea of gunpowder technology as an explanation? So that's not the answer-it's something else. Disease can't explain, for example, the colonization of India, because people in southeast Asia had the same immunity to disease that the Europeans did. But something like the smallpox epidemic that ravaged Mexico when the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés overthrew the Aztec Empire just isn't the whole story of Cortés's victory or of Europe's successful colonization of other parts of the world. So as an explanation, industrialization doesn't work.Īnother explanation, described in Jared Diamond's famous book, is disease. The rest of Europe at that time was really no wealthier than China, the Middle East, or South Asia. Before 1800, Europe had already taken over at least 35 percent of the world, but Britain was just beginning to industrialize. Yes, there are lots of conventional explanations-industrialization, for example-but on closer inspection they all fall apart. Or, that when Europeans began to travel the world, people in other countries did not have the immunity to fight off the diseases they brought with them. For example, that Europe became industrialized more quickly and therefore became wealthier than the rest of the world. Many theories purport to explain how the West became dominant. The political dominance of western Europe was an unexpected outcome and had really big consequences, so I thought: let's explain it. It was politically weak, it was poor, and the major long-distance commerce was a slave trade led by Vikings. A thousand years ago, no one would have ever expected that result, for at that point western Europe was hopelessly backward. In 1914, really only China, Japan, and the Ottoman Empire had escaped becoming European colonies. What led you to investigate the global conquests of western Europe? For example, how did states get the ability to impose heavy taxes? What were the politics and the political context of the economy that resulted in this ability to tax? I've also been interested in the development of tax systems. I've looked at changes in technology that influence agriculture, and I've studied the development of financial markets, and in between those two, I was also studying why financial crises occur. Over the years I've been interested in a number of different things, and this new work puts together a lot of bits of my research. Are there any overarching themes to your work?
You have been on the Caltech faculty for more than 30 years. Hoffman's work is published in a new book titled Why Did Europe Conquer the World? We spoke with him recently about his research interests and what led him to study this particular topic. The Chinese invented gunpowder, but Hoffman, whose work applies economic theory to historical contexts, argues that certain political and economic circumstances allowed the Europeans to advance gunpowder technology at an unprecedented rate-allowing a relatively small number of people to quickly take over much of the rest of the globe. Axline Professor of Business Economics and professor of history, has a new explanation: the advancement of gunpowder technology.
There are many possible explanations for why history played out this way, but few can explain why the West was so powerful for so long.Ĭaltech's Philip Hoffman, the Rea A. Being dominated for centuries has led to lingering inequality and long-lasting effects in many formerly colonized countries, including poverty and slow economic growth. Although Europe represents only about 8 percent of the planet's landmass, from 1492 to 1914, Europeans conquered or colonized more than 80 percent of the entire world.