Why Europe colonized the world ?

It’s not unknown that Europeans were never the firsts of the colonizers and conquerors. In Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness, we come to know that before European (especially Western European) countries colonized Asia, Africa, and other regions of the world, they themselves were colonized by the Romans. And before Romans, it was Arabs who dominated the world trade, not Europeans.

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European countries, in fact, were backward, politically weak, and financially struggling in those times. So it’s really worth pondering which historical moment accounts for this unexpected turn of events in the world history.

Some historians think that there are three main reasons for Europe becoming politically dominant. First is industrialization, second is travel, and third lower immunity of the people of the colonized countries.

Industrialization saw a boom in not just political, but also in economic and technological front, especially in the Great Britain. Victorian era, when the industrialization was at its pinnacle in England, was the time when it was said that the Sun never sets in England. It was because England had so many imperial colonies under it, that it was always daytime in one or other of the country under its control.

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Second thing is travel, and exploration. Christopher Columbus found America and Vas co da Gama India might be coincidences, but the other colonial and imperial expeditions that happened at different places of the Earth later were well-planned and strategized. So travelling first happened for exploring new lands, and later new trade opportunities on those lands, which took no time to transform into territorial and administrative opportunities.

(Courtesy: global-ethic-now.de)

Third reason was the low immunity of the people of South Asia, Africa, and other continents and countries, due to which the colonizers were never able to offer a strong resistance to the diseases the colonized brought with them.

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All these reasons however, are rejected by various modern historians who maintain that the first and foremost reason of the conquest was the technology of gunpowder which was not even invented in Europe. It was a Chinese invention of violent warfare that was used better by the Europeans rather than Asian countries like India and Japan.

(Courtesy: www.history.org)

It helped European countries to keep their rivals away from their colonies and from fighting even the local people in the colonies. It is not a news that violent means were used for the dominance and gunpowder played a major role in that.