I’ve recently read"The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World" and want to hear what all of you think the answer is, because I feel like the book was missing something in its thesis and I am not very sure what that is.
I’ve recently read"The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World" and want to hear what all of you think the answer is, because I feel like the book was missing something in its thesis and I am not very sure what that is.
There’s also an element of luck. Gunpowder had been around for hundreds of years, but europeans were able to quickly develop it for military use and basically pulled off a timing attack.
carrying disease to the americas (in part due to lack of hygiene according to some) gave them a huge advantage against the indigenous people. even with the estimates that some 90% of the indigenous population died from disease, it still took a long time for european settlers to fully take hold of the americas. that said, i’m not aware of similar things happening in africa so who knows how much of a difference it would have made if disease had made less of an impact though the distance might have changed things.
well look what europe had in africa before 1880, if america hadn’t been fucked with disease the europeans would’ve been stuck with coastal forts, some islands probably. the europeans carved africa up with machine guns
Don’t forget advances in medicine like Euros learning quinine can treat malaria, before that they kept getting owned by diseases that they had no defence against
this is a popular misconception, malaria is not an african disease. it was almost everywhere, and eliminated in the first and second world in the 1950’s. Quinine was also known and produced for malaria in the 17th century. the big medical advances in the understanding and treatment of the disease were contemporary to the scramble for africa, and not implemented/efficacious at the time