I read this article: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2…
and the following paragtaph was most striking.
“After all, China and India were the world’s two largest economies in 1700, and as late as 1820 China’s economy was larger than the combined economies of all of Europe. The question of why the West emerged as the world’s most powerful civilization beginning in the sixteenth century, and thus was able to impose its will on China and India, has been widely debated. Essentially, the answer is firepower. As the late Samuel P. Huntington put it, “The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion . . . but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.”
