How Europe’s White Folks Came to Rule the World

In the Middle Ages, one might have referred to Europe as a rough and even uncivilized continent. For the majority of the last millennium, however, Europe has ruled the world. Many historians have searched for answers as to how this happened so fast, and many answers have been put on the table. Nevertheless, for now, the West has triumphed. Europe’s “white folks came to rule the world”, through geographical advantages, the export of their accomplishments, and the use of their resources.

Europe’s “white folks came to rule the world” through geographical advantages. “How White Folks Came to Rule the World: Geographical Determinism”, “The Limits Of Convergence: Nature, Nurture and Growth” by Jeffrey Sachs, and the introduction of To Rule the Waves by Arthur Herman, support this statement. “How White Folks Came to Rule the World: Geographical Determinism”, states that the reason Europeans progressed as much as they did, is because all the geographical advantages were on their side. Some of these advantages include the fact that “wheat originated in the fertile crescent”, they “had a lot of . . . animals that people could try to domesticate”, “there were no big natural barriers to the spread of the people”, and “technologies diffused through that expanse with relative ease”. Meanwhile, “in the Americas and Australasia almost all large animals that might have been domesticated became extinct at the end of the ice age”, and because of natural barriers, “ideas . . . have to be reinvented by every single culture”. Thus, Europe had geographical advantages on its side. This article could also be called biased. In a sense, the author is claiming that there is no way that Europe could have made such progress through manners of intelligence, but must have made the said progress only because they had geographical advantages on their side. “The Limits of Convergence: Nature, Nurture and Growth” by Jeffrey Sachs also states that Europe came across such power through the advantages of natural geography. It is stated that places far inland like inland Africa and “Asia . . . north of the Euxine and Caspian seas . . . seem in all ages of the world to have been in the same barbarous and uncivilised state in which we find them at present.” because “physical isolation . . . placed profound burdens on the region’s development”. Meanwhile, referring to Adam Smith, Sachs states that he “attributed England’s relatively high productivity to the advantages of natural geography” and that “England . . . had fertile soil, a long coastline and many navigable rivers.” that helped it gain such power through fast-paced development. Thus, once again, geographical advantages are what made Europe what it is. The introduction of To Rule the Waves by Arthur Herman has the same idea, that geographical advantages made Europe what it is. In the sixteenth century, “a handful of Elizabethan adventurers” realized that to rule the seas is to rule the world, and acted on it. Geographical advantages, made this easy for England. If this realization had taken place in inland Africa, for example, it would have been a hopeless one. Thus, John Hawkins, one of these adventurers, “remade the Royal Navy”. In 1588, the Royal Navy, was able to defeat the current sea, and thus world ruler, Philip II of Spain, and his Invincible Armada. In the eighteenth century, in the fight against France, the Royal Navy at last came out on top. “The navy made England’s trade boom and prosper; it sustained its colonies and reshaped its politics; it drew England, Scotland, and Ireland together into a single United Kingdom”. This was the “seagoing world system” that Napoleon failed to break. (It is stated here that “It was the Royal Navy . . . that stopped him [Napoleon] in his tracks”. This statements seems clearly biased. After all, other factors were involved.) The navy even wiped out slave trade. At last, Britain passed “its essential elements on to its successor, the United States and its navy”. Thus, geographical advantage, is one factor in how Europe came to rule the world.