Why were white europeans able to dominate the world?

Have you heard about 'necessity is the mother of invention'? IQ has little to do with it. If you are constantly in warfare then you invent stuff. Still today many inventions are the result of requirements in defence or space travel etc etc

Come on...tell us, don't hide your racism.

Are you talking about pre colonialism, during colonial control, Apartheid etc or post colonialist FU

Arnold J. Toynbee's 11-volume "A Study of History" takes on this subject. There is a 2-volume abridgment available, too. Toynbee's very erudite view is that some civilizations are not stimulated enough to produce breakthroughs whereas others are stimulated to the point of collapse by various challenges. There is an optimum level of stimulation which can produce helpful responses and innovations. It's a lot like training for running.

https://www.amazon.com/Study-History-Vol-Abridgement-Volumes/dp/0195050800/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3VJG8CKQO6GAD&keywords=arnold+j.+toynbee&qid=1669162703&sprefix=arnold+j.+toynbee%2Caps%2C261&sr=8-1

I would add religion, in particular Christianity to people that were searching for 'meaning'. Such a good job that Christianity thrives more in Africa, Pacific Islands etc today

Invade. Kill the resistors, wipe out some more with disease, convert the rest so they can follow you. Simples

Here's an excerpt from Merriam-Webster for "bank:"

"The literal meaning of Italian banca was “bench,” but the word was also used for the benchlike counter at which an early money changer transacted business, and later to describe the money changer’s shop itself—the bank. When the banking trade spread from Italy to France, and then to England, the Italian word went with it and became our English bank."

The banking trade certainly has a root in Catholic culture.

If you pick up an old book (say from the late 1800s or early 1900s) on Catholic moral theology and read about usury, you are likely to find page after page of nuances about what is just and what is unjust about charging interest in various circumstances.

You're right about NA having excellent geography, but for some reason, NA natives never developed serious interest in metallurgy. Lack of metal tools kept them from developing serious agriculture (since most of the farmland in NA is difficult to till) and lack of serious agriculture capped the size of their settlements. Europe and East Asia experimented with metallurgy for thousands of years before the industrial revolution and were agricultural masters.

Regarding the rise of the hospital, Eastern Orthodoxy deserves credit too as Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy were one until the eleventh century. St. Basil the Great (330-379) - venerated in both communions - established lasting care for the poor, the sick, and the dying in what was then Asia Minor.

Not any more than yours means that I don't.

Get some sleep. You look like you need it.

Interesting. Wonder how that “Christianity leads to enlightenment” mindset is holding up nowadays, with popular Christian leaders advocating for taking away human rights and demonizing/attacking entire groups of people for simply existing. Or maybe, just maybe, societies back then that had the highest levels of formal education and literacy (which would have been Europe) also happened to be Christian, so its spread was a by-product of the spread of people with the best technologies.

Oh, you never heard of the Aztecs or Maya...

Interesting.

The Enlightenment would be my answer if I had to choose one answer…

So you still have not backed up your original statement.

either you can’t or you refuse to at this point. Either way I’ll chalk it up as a win for me.

kinda creepy that you know what I look like.

The Christian leaders are not advocating for taking away anyone’s rights. Put your religious bigotry aside for once.

Your argument that the most educated places just happened to be Christian is weak and baseless to anyone with a history degree or even a modicum of common sense.

This thread is too long to comment on in its entirety. There are some really smart comments here (many about geography) and some... Er... poorly informed ones.

Here’s the gist of what I tell my college students:

1. The Jarod Diamond thesis is reductive, but not entirely wrong (Alfred Crosby did it first and better, so skip Diamond). For instance, microbes matter, especially in the history of the Americas post 1492. However, our current understanding of the major histocompatibility complex suggests that diseases decimated indigenous populations because they were accompanied by food shortages, social upheavals, and related changes caused by European conquest. So, it kind of is a guns, germs, steel story. Of course strong indigenous resistance lasted a lot later than most kids are taught in school.

2. China and India are key. Those two countries accounted for two-thirds of global GDP as late as 1800. By the mid-twentieth century, we called those nations part of the “third world.” So, why the rapid change in fortunes? For India it has a lot to do with the textile industry (cotton) and Britain’s systematic deindustrialization of India to transform it into a raw material producer (after the start of crown rule in the middle of the 19th c.). For China, the answer lies in the Opium Wars and free trade imperialism. Opening up China for trade with the rest of the world was a longstanding goal of Western Europe. The Opium Wars provided that opportunity.

3. From backwater to powerhouse. The rise of Europe can be attributed to a lot of factors. The demographic catastrophe of the Black Death spelled the beginning of the end for feudalism and a slow emergence of a new middle class. Long distance navigation (as someone else mentioned) was also key. Private property and capital accumulation also helped to facilitate the emergence of the modern fiscal-military state (think England during the Glorious Revolution and the Enclosure movement). European warfare (using Chinese inventions) was also brutal and probably helped sharpen the war-making skills of European countries. The wealth of the New World enriched many European nations. New World commodities like sugar were lucrative. Quinine was pretty transformative (since it is a fairly effective anti-malarial). It originated in Peru, but by the late 19th c. was being grown in the East Indies and consumed with gin as Europeans chugged along in steamships up rivers in sub-Saharan Africa to brutally claim territory. Lastly, England, in particular, was lucky enough to have easy access to coal so that it industrialized quickly and overcame the biological limits imposed by its denuded island landscape. Nations like China weren’t so lucky.

Geographical luck and colonialism is the shortest answer, but that’s clearly just scratching the surface.

Fair point.

However, North America is fairly isolated from the rest of the world, whereas Europe was able to benefit from contact with North Africa, Asia Minor and the Far East. This created a far bigger "idea pool" and trade network from which to draw. These factors behave like feedback loops, that eventually reach a tipping point, and achieve exponential growth.

Read this book "Guns, Germs and Steel." It completely answers this question. It was recommended to me by a Rhodes Scholar. Usually those people are not dumb. In a nutshell, just the right combination of sickness causing germs and plants at animals at the exact right point in history allowed Europeans to dominate the rest of the world. Basically it lead to them having guns and steel before everyone else. Also Europe was kind of a petri dish of conflict again due to the factors above and geography, e.g. the 100+ medieval shows currently on Netflix with battle after battle, so they were already primed and hardened for conquest once they began branching out to other regions. It's kind of a wild theory initially but makes more and more sense when you start thinking about the details.

Oh lol...just realized this is already being discussed in detail above. Disregard then. Just play the computer game Civilization and watch the computer's civilization wreak havoc against you and it will all make sense, lol.

And be the first to build the Wonders that enhance your boats, and you will win. You don't have to read more than the title "guns germs and steel" to know it's baloney. One word will do - boats.

There were seafaring people before, but not in reliable, fast, relatively large boats that could haul large cargo and fighting forces. That's how they found people with less powerful guns and steel. It's how they found people their germs could conquer. And it's how they managed to establish and control the first truly global trade routes. Boats made them rich and powerful.

They needed their colonies to save them from agricultural collapse. Their expansion was also made possible by the defeat of the Golden Horde by the Rus after centuries of war in eastern Europe.

If we're talking about IQ, Asians are on the top of the pyramid.