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Why Was It Europeans Who Conquered the World?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 August 2012

PHILIP T. HOFFMAN
PHILIP T. HOFFMAN*
Affiliation:
Rea A. and Lela G. Axline Professor of Business Economics and Professor of History, Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125. E-mail: pth@hss.caltech.edu.
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Abstract

By the 1700s Europeans dominated the gunpowder technology, which was surprising, because it had originated in China and been used with expertise throughout Eurasia. To account for their dominance, historians have invoked competition, but it cannot explain why they pushed this technology further than anyone else. The answer lies with a simple tournament model of military competition that allows for learning by doing. Political incentives and military conditions then explain why the rest of Eurasia fell behind Europeans in developing the gunpowder technology. The consequences were huge, from colonialism to the slave trade and even the Industrial Revolution.

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ARTICLES
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 72 , Issue 3 , 22 August 2012 , pp. 601 - 633
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 2012

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