Western empires, Christianity, and the inequalities between the west and the rest, 1500 - 2010

Abstract

Part I. Western Maritime empires divide the world into a rich Western world and a poor Restern world -- Reasons for the rise of the Western world in the centuries after 1500 -- Power configurations and the periodisation of Western empires (1500-2010) -- Profiling Western marine empires and understanding their unique characteristics -- Western empires and the dynamics of social and imperial power over the past 500 years -- Western industrialisation and the Great Divergence between the West and the Rest (1820-1950) -- Part II. The first pattern of Western Empires: empires of plunderers, slave traders and settlement colonialists 1530- 1830 -- The first period of deep systemic chaos: the Church in retreat, the yoke of feudalism breaks, two Europes -- The systemic period of the Iberian and the Catholic empires 1530- 1630 -- The systemic period of the Dutch Empire 1648- 1713 -- The systemic period of the first British Empire 1713- 1883