European domination

A few years ago, my Korean roommate and I had a solid discussion about the following topic: Why did the European civilization emerge as the dominant power in the world between 1492-1970? I found this discussion very enlightening and I'm going to shed some light on the subject.

First of all, let's drop all the nonsense about political correctness, because it is impossible to go into this discussion without offending somebody. I can just hear somebody whining: "Oh, but every culture is unique in its own way, and how can you say Europeans are better than others, wah wah wah, you're such a racist pig!"

While I concede that every culture and race is unique in its contribution to the world, with unique history, customs, technological developments, etc., it is also undeniable that Europeans and their descendants have slowly but surely emerged as a dominant power in the world in many aspects: military, economic, cultural, and technological. They have all but completely obliterated aboriginal civilizations in North America and Australia, established firm power structures controlling South America, with a European ruling class, enslaved the people of and used natural resources of Africa & Carribean, and established trading posts, and slowly creeped in with strong economic influence in South & East Asia.

But it all could have happened differently, according to one of the following fictional scenarios.

• The Africans conquer the world, starting with Christopher Culumba of the South African empire, taking a great historical voyage to Brazil in 1492. First he takes over the Inca empire, then they expand east conquering India, and after amassing wealth and weapons, they take on the useless Europeans in an unfair fight, enslaving the whole European continent.

• The Aztecs are way ahead of the game in their maritime technology and set off to conquer Europe. Inadvertently, they obliterate half of Europe's population by syphilis and nicotine, and the other half by brute force. At the same time, the rival civilization of Inca spread their empire to Africa, and go on to India. In the meantime the Aztecs travel northwest across the Pacific and enslave the good-for-nothing barbarian East Asian populations.

• The Japanese empire expands quickly and emperor Katsuhito sends off Karistoforo Karumbo on his voyage east on his great historical voyage, to conquer California in 1492. He discovers California is inhabited by complete savages with no technology whatsoever (historically true), and they're literally sitting on a goldmine. He tells the emperor of Japan of the enormous riches in the new continent, and the emperor sends more expeditions. Later on Japan enslaves the barbarian Aztecs, thus amassing great wealth. Koreans embark on a journey to Australia and Africa and claim those territories. To compete with the Japanese and the Koreans, the Chinese use their superiority on land to subjugate India, and the Arab World, after which they take on the Europeans. By the time the Chinese arrive to Europe by land, they realize Japanese have already made it around the world, and established trading posts with Spain, Portugal and England. England, being a protectionist and racist island, agrees to only deal with the Japanese, until they realize they cannot keep up the isolation, and open up to learn from the wise Easterners and adapt their superior technologies. In the year 2000, Japanese is the main language of international communication, and the second language for almost a quarter of the earth's population, followed closely by Chinese and Korean, which are mainly spoken in their former colonies.

So none of the above scenarios actually happened, and we have to ask why? Why did the other civilizations of the world not emerge as dominant? The answer is in the next post.