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Why Did Europe Conquer the World?, by Philip T. Hoffman

2018; Oxford University Press; Volume: 133; Issue: 565 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/ehr/cey321

1477-4534

John Darwin,

Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East

In this book Philip Hoffman makes an exceptionally stimulating intervention in the long-running debate on the ‘great divergence’, launched (perhaps more accurately relaunched) by Kenneth Pomeranz nearly twenty years ago. Hoffman offers an intriguing new angle on why Europe was able to exert such global predominance for nearly two centuries. He first clears the ground by dismissing Europe’s industrialisation or its biological advantage (in disease) as primary causes. Europe’s expansion by conquest, he claims, reasonably enough, started long before its economic performance had been drastically enhanced by industrial technology. He emphasises instead Europe’s war-making capacity and, in particular, its remarkable lead from early modern times in gunpowder technology and its ancillary techniques. It was this, he insists, that, more than anything else, brought Europe and its North American annexe to a pinnacle of global supremacy by 1914. But why was Europe so successful in this centuries-long arms race? Why did the military techniques that emerged in one part of Eurasia not spread uniformly across the rest of its land mass—as gunpowder warfare had originally spread westward from China? Hoffman’s answer turns on the concept of the ‘tournament’—a contest in which the size of the prize, a fierce culture of rivalry and the relatively low costs of participation combined to produce an exceptional commitment to sustained competition. Translated into historical terms, this meant the willingness and ability of rulers, eager for glory or gain, to meet the huge costs of military preparedness on a scale sufficient to maximise the probability of innovation through learning-by-doing—the prime source of improvement in pre-industrial economies. It was the constant priority given to military innovation that would assure success in the Eurasian arms race. And, crucially, it was European rulers, addicted to glory, and able to carry their elite subjects with them, who were uniquely inclined to the tournament model of inter-state rivalry. The tournament syndrome was confined to Europe.