The events of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic era changed the balance of forces between the different parts of the globe. This was not the outcome of some long-term process whereby Europe was becoming superior to other parts of the world in terms of competitiveness, religious dedication, or culture. Far-flung, pre-industrial empires were nothing unusual in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century world. The Chinese Empire in particular still dwarfed European empires in size. The Ottoman Empire, though it had reached its apogee by around 1700, following the failure of its siege of Vienna in
...more
