The Military Superiority Thesis and the Ascendancy of Western Eurasia in the World System
In: Journal of world history: official journal of the World History Association, Band 10, Heft 1, S. 143-178
ISSN: 1527-8050
The military superiority thesis contends that the key to the ascendancy of western
Europe as the world's predominant region was its edge in military technology. Thanks
to intensive regional warfare and a series of military revolutions, military superiority
enabled Europeans to subordinate the rest of the world between 1500 and 1900. At
best, this interpretation gives too much explanatory weight to military technology.
Other factors that were equally if not more important were the variable vulnerabilities
of Afro-Eurasian and American targets of expansion, the need for and availability of
allies, and the evolution of a global political economy in ways that favored increasing
European predominance. As explored in five cases, ranging from Mexico and Peru to
southeast Asia in the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries, none of these factors
worked entirely independently of the others. Rather, they interacted to promote the
ascendancy of some Europeans for a period of time. Military superiority, and especially
naval superiority, may have been most important for facilitating first the arrival and
then the survival of Portuguese, Dutch, and English forces along the maritime fringe of
Afro-Eurasia.