Description
Temporarily out of stock
Title: Empires of the Weak: The real story of European expansion & the creation of the new world order
Author: SHARMAN J C
Format: PAPERBACK
Publication date: 01/01/2021
Imprint: PRINCETON UNI PRESS
Price: $30.00
Publishing status: Active
What accounts for the rise of the state, the creation of the first global system, and the dominance of the West? The conventional answer asserts that superior technology, tactics, and institutions forged by Darwinian military competition gave Europeans a decisive advantage in war over other civilisations from 1500 onward. In contrast, Empires of the Weak argues that Europeans actually had no general military superiority in the early modern era. J. C. Sharman shows instead that European expansion from the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries is better explained by deference to strong Asian and African polities, disease in the Americas, and maritime supremacy earned by default because local land-oriented polities were largely indifferent to war and trade at sea. Empires of the Weak demonstrates that the rise of the West was an exception in the prevailing world order.
ISBN: 9780691210070
Dimension: 216mm X 140mm