what desire drive japan to conquer new territories quizlet

Between 1492 and 1914, Europeans conquered 84 pct of the globe, establishing colonies and spreading their influence beyond every inhabited continent. This was not inevitable. In fact, for decades, historians, social scientists, and biologists accept wondered: Why and how did Europe rise to the pinnacle, even when societies in Asia and the Middle East were far more than avant-garde?

So far, satisfactory answers have been elusive. Only this question is of the utmost importance given that Europe's power determined everything from who ran the slave trade to who grew rich or remained mired in poverty.

One might recollect the reasons for Europe's dominance obvious: the Europeans were the first to industrialize, and they were immune to the diseases, such equally smallpox, that devastated indigenous populations. But the latter reason alone cannot explain the conquest of the Americas, since many immature Native American warriors survived the epidemics. And information technology fails to explain Europe'due south colonization of Republic of india, since the Indians had like amnesty. Industrialization likewise falls curt as an explanation: the Europeans had taken control of more than 35 percent of the planet even before they began to industrialize. Of grade, the pb Europeans took in developing the technology of guns, armed ships, and fortifications was critical. But all the other major civilizations in Asia had the same gunpowder engineering science, and many of them as well fought with guns.

So what did contribute to Europe'due south success? Mostly, it derived from the incentives that political leaders faced in Europe—incentives that collection them non simply to make war, but also to spend huge sums on it. Yes, the European monarchs built palaces, but even the huge Chateau at Versailles price Male monarch Louis Fourteen less than two percent of his tax revenue. The residuum went to fighting wars. He and the other kings in Europe had been raised since babyhood to pursue celebrity on the battlefield, nonetheless they bore none of the costs involved—not even the run a risk of losing their thrones later on a defeat. Leaders elsewhere faced radically different incentives,, which kept many of them militarily weak. In Red china, for example, emperors were encouraged to proceed taxes low and to attend to people's livelihoods rather than to pursue the sort of military glory that obsessed European kings.

A painting—Suppression of the Indian Revolt by the English, by Vasily Vereshchagin c. 1884—depicting the Indian Rebellion of 1857.

Wikimedia Commons

For this and a diversity of other reasons, leaders outside of Europe could non match Europe's innovations in warfare innovation. The huge sums of money showered on fighting in Europe gave military leaders the flexibility to buy new weapons and battleships and try out new tactics, fortifications, and methods of supply. In the procedure, they learned from their mistakes and improved their technologies. And because European countries were small and geographically shut, they could easily acquire from their rivals' errors and copy their improvements. When the Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus synthetic one of the earliest ii-decked gunships in 1628, for example, it sank before long subsequently setting sail. Merely the Swedish navy and other navies across Europe swiftly learned from this failure, and past the eighteenth century they were building warships with two or more than gun decks that were not just stable, but likewise had a longer range and were more maneuverable than seventeenth-century warships.

Without a single-minded focus on war and the boggling ability to taxation, there may never have been whatsoever European empires.

Outside of Europe, political and military conditions kept war innovations, specially new gunpowder engineering, from being avant-garde at the aforementioned relentless footstep. China, for example, had far less revenue enhancement acquirement to spend on the armed forces than the Europeans did. In the late eighteenth century, per-capita taxes were 15 times higher in French republic than in Prc, and xl times college in England, and much of the tax money China did collect went not toward new forms of fighting but to assistance archers on horseback, who were far more effective than musketeers in fighting the nomads who had long been China'due south major enemy. What's more, China was frequently the dominant power in East Asia, then fewer rivals dared to claiming it, which meant it had little incentive to spend heavily on its military. Equally a effect, at that place was merely less utilise for gunpowder weapons in Eastern asia.

Europe, past dissimilarity, had no such dominant ability. And once the Western Europeans took the lead in pushing gunpowder technology forward, it was hard for China to catch up; the center of progress was a continent away.

Europe's armed services pb continued into the nineteenth century. Tax revenues rose equally Europe industrialized, and the innovations from the Industrial Revolution—applied science and engineering—fabricated it possible for Europeans to meliorate their technology not just by waging war, but also past conducting enquiry, which magnified what the Europeans learned on the battlefield.

By 1914, Europe had not simply achieved global war machine dominance, it also had powerful states that could enhance huge sums of tax revenue to fund wars. In French republic and Germany, real per-capita tax revenue had increased 15 fold or more over the previous 2 centuries. That enormous capacity to tax went well beyond what can be explained past the higher per capita incomes that industrialization brought to Europe. Information technology was the outcome of the aforementioned kind of learning  that avant-garde the gunpowder technology. The just departure was that hither the learning involved economic science rather than military technology, and the rewards went to political leaders who successfully bargained with the elites to boost tax revenues. The leaders then used the added tax acquirement to expand and equip their armies and navies.

A map of world empires and colonies in 1920.

Wikimedia Commons

Europe's ability to revenue enhancement was no modest achievement. China could not enhance equivalent tax revenues, even in the nineteenth century. And countries in sub-Saharan Africa today however lack the basic chapters to tax, which keeps them from providing security and other basic public goods to their citizens.

So what did contribute to Europe's success? Mostly, information technology derived from the incentives that political leaders faced in Europe—incentives that drove them not just to brand state of war, but also to spend huge sums on it.

Europe had yet another advantage every bit well: its entrepreneurs were complimentary to use gunpowder technology to mountain expeditions of conquest, colonization, and militarized trade. Although they unremarkably needed official permission to launch a voyage, entrepreneurs were often encouraged by authorities eager to observe riches abroad. And they had no trouble acquiring weapons or finding battle-hardened veterans to train military novices who joined their undertakings. Past the seventeenth century, such individual expeditions had spawned gigantic enterprises that raised huge sums on Europe's burgeoning capital markets to finance ventures abroad, enterprises such as the Dutch East Republic of india Company, which was not just a private arm of Dutch foreign policy, but also the first business to issue tradable shares of stock.

A final deviation between Europe and the rest of the world lies in political history. From 221 B.C. onward, Mainland china, by and large, was unified in a large empire. The Chinese empire before long adult a centralized bureaucracy that drew local elites into government service and gave them a pale in the empire'due south survival. The rewards of government service helped hold the empire together, and as long as the empire was strong and unified, other East Asian powers hesitated to attack it. This meant that China had little incentive to seek out new enemies or opportunities.

Western Europe, past contrast, experienced no such lasting unification after the collapse of the Roman Empire. What it endured instead were centuries of warfare by bands of warriors whose leaders resembled modern-day warlords. The ceaseless fighting groomed leaders who were victorious in war. The disharmonize also generated enduring enmities betwixt leaders and their followers, enmities that eventually hardened into lasting political borders. It was such ill will—and not Europe's physical geography—that kept whatever unmarried leader from ever uniting Western Europe in the sort of durable empire that prevailed for centuries in China. In the long run, the winners in Western Europe were the military machine leaders who learned how to impose heavy taxes to fund their fighting, and equally a result, Europe ended upwards with kings who spent pharaonic sums on warfare and who had, in the words of Machiavelli, "no object, idea, or profession merely state of war."

Without a single-minded focus on war and the extraordinary ability to tax, there may never have been whatsoever European empires. The wars and the taxes lavished on them gave the Europeans an enormous pb in military technology. This enabled their conquests, and allowed them to keep native populations under control without stationing large numbers of European troops abroad. Without such advantages, the Europeans might take grown rich anyway—and perhaps even industrialized early—but they would not have dominated the world in 1914.

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Source: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/europe/2015-10-07/how-europe-conquered-world