Must-Read: Dietz Vollrath: Dumb Luck in Historical Development
: Dumb Luck in Historical Development: “Philip Hoffman’s Why Did Europe Conquer the World?…
…on its face is another entry in a long line of global history books that argue Western European economic and colonial dominance is, at its heart, due to a rather specific characteristic: disease tolerance, or cows, or a knobbly coastline…. Hoffman… attributes Europe’s dominance to gunpowder technology, and the ability to use it very efficiently… a model of learning-by-doing in gunpowder technology, but where learning-by-doing only occurs if you actually fight. Hence… four conditions for rapid development of gunpowder technology: frequent war, lots of resources expended on those wars, use of gunpowder specifically in those wars, and few barriers to adoption on new technology…. Europe happened to meet the four conditions because of contingent historical events. In other words, Europe randomly found itself with a political setting that encouraged many high-stakes wars that involved gunpowder. Its lead was not due to some unique European characteristic, but rather was luck of the draw….
If you want to argue for some kind of unique European characteristic that systematically led to their lead in firepower, then you have to first argue that Europe’s lead in firepower was larger than we could expect to arise by pure chance…. Only then should you start speculating about what the systematic advantage for Europe was. Most global history books or theories jump right to the “speculating about systematic advantages” part…. Are there any deep structural advantages that Europe had? Maybe. But my guess is that a good portion (over 50%?) of the reason Europe advanced ahead of other areas was dumb luck…. A tip of the hat to Hoffman for his effort in that direction…