Why Did Europe Conquer the World? (ebook)

Argumento de Why Did Europe Conquer the World? (ebook)

"A confident and sure-footed book."--Robert Fulford, National Post

"This book is a very interesting addition to the flourishing history of the world genre."--Diane Coyle, Enlightened Economist

"[An] impressive book."--Jane De Vries, American Historical Review

"History and counterfactuals blend into a fluent thesis, underpinned by diverting tables of data."--Martin Vander Weyer, Daily Telegraph

"Big-picture economic history at its best. Hoffmans answer: chronic military conflict that gave European leaders incentives to harness widely known gunpowder technologies more effectively than leaders in other parts of the world. Also a good reminder of what economic history brings to todays economic and political table."--Barry Eichengreen, one of Bloombergs Best Books of 2015

"[F]ascinating."--G. John Ikenberry, Foreign Affairs

One of Bloomberg Businessweeks Best Books of 2015, chosen by Barry Eichengreen

"Phillip Hoffman's book answers a question that economic historians have neglected: Why did Europe conquer the world starting about five hundred years ago? Hoffman stresses how incentives made Europe's princes unusually bellicose and willing to promote improvements in war technology. Combining wide reading, the judicious use of data, and economic models that distinguish Hoffman's explanation from that of earlier historians, Why Did Europe Conquer the World? represents the very best in economic history."--Timothy Guinnane, Yale University

"Why did Europe conquer the world? Philip Hoffman offers striking new answers to this old question. Hoffman's short answer is gunpowder or military technology. His longer answer is more unsettling: the political and geographical forces that made Europe's precocious economic development possible were inseparable from the arms race which enabled European states to win wars."--Cormac Ó Gráda, author of Eating People is Wrong, and Other Essays on Famine, Its Past, and Its Future

"Philip Hoffman upends the traditional story of why western Europe conquered the world. His elegant econometric model shows that by fighting constant wars with each other and never allowing a single hegemon to emerge, Western polities had greater incentives and opportunities to improve their military technology than their counterparts elsewhere. Anyone wanting to understand how economic theories are changing the ways we look at the past needs to read this book."--Daniel Chirot, University of Washington

"Beginning with the Spanish and Portuguese in the late fifteenth century, technological military superiority appears to have been the proximate cause of Europes ever-expanding military dominance for the next five centuries. Where did this technological superiority come from? The answer provided in this convincing and tightly argued book is interesting and as definitive as such answers get."--Stergios Skaperdas, University of California, Irvine

"[B]rilliant."--Edward Rothstein, Wall Street Journal

"A hugely ambitious book and one that no scholar analyzing transitions in global history can overlook. It is a daunting task to attempt such an endeavor, let alone succeed as Hoffman has. . . . A classic of economic history, which should be required reading by scholars everywhere."--Jari Eloranta, EH.net0Chapter 1 Introduction 1
Chapter 2 How the Tournament in Early Modern Europe Made Conquest Possible 19
Chapter 3 Why the Rest of Eurasia Fell Behind 67
Chapter 4 Ultimate Causes: Explaining the Difference between Western Europe and the Rest of Eurasia 104
Chapter 5 From the Gunpowder Technology to Private Expeditions 154
Chapter 6 Technological Change and Armed Peace in Nineteenth-Century Europe 179
Chapter 7 Conclusion: The Price of Conquest 205
Appendix A Model of War and Technical Change via Learning by Doing 215
Appendix B Using Prices to Measure Productivity Growth in the Military Sector 228
Appendix C Model of Political Learning 231
Appendix D Data for Tables 4.1 and 4.2 233
Appendix E Model of Armed Peace and Technical Change via Research 234
Acknowledgments 239
Bibliography 241
Index 263