Wallace and Daly

Can other countries be bad? Yes, probably.

Probably? I'm surprised you even went that far.

But factually, Europeans can count amongst them the largest proportion of warmongers, tyrants, genocidist, and thieves in all of history, and this can't be whitewashed.

"Factually" as far as - and I fúcking hate to go here - some sections of the "liberal" mind are willing to travel, whether because of the ignorance of their politic, or the politic of their ignorance. The history of South East Asia is one of tyrants and butchers fighting over resources, of mini empires waxing and waning leaving misery in its wake. Just because you can't name the actors, doesn't mean the stage wasn't set and the script wasn't the same. Hell today in Thailand you can go to gaol for criticism of their royals and have to crawl around on the floor beneath the current throne holder as he parades around in his shiny shorts and bellytop with his coterie of whores.

Japan even though an island was a back and forth of conflict and misery between different warlords, where lopping off peasants heads was a national sport at times. And if you want to get closer to today, look at how the Japanese operated in their imperial push in the 1930's and 40's as far as genocide, mass rape, murder and human experimentation that even had the German nazis thought was a bit "ah here lads". Indeed it turned out that a German merchant and card carrying nazi party member, one Herr Rabe was one of the few to try and stop the Rape of Nankang and protect the local Chinese from the barbarous hordes of Japanese. It's estimated he saved hundreds of thousands of Chinese men women and children. Funny how things can go*.

The Chinese empire had her fair share of this too in her tooing and froing of her borders and within them too. The Mongols had the largest land empire in human history and they didn't get that by sending flowers and chocolates. The Khans pillaged and raped so many that even today a notable proportion of Asian men carry their genes on their Y chromosome. Though as usual it's not that simple and they also brought stability and law, even if it was on mountains of bodies.

The Muslim caliphate kicked off hard too, but also brought culture and innovation until it stopped and went backwards and inwards while still fighting within and without. India was a melee of back and forth conflict and despots. One reason it was easy enough for European powers to take over by exploiting that.

The Mesoamericans were at near constant war and some had the lovely idea of ripping the still beating hearts of thousands of their enemies and throwing them off temples to their sky fairies, or bludgeoning doped up little kids to death on top of mountains as sacrifices to same. Though they were only brilliant at inventing accurate calenders. If we point our nose at Africa we'd be here all bloody day, and I do mean bloody.

The EU has allowed us to focus on the good things Europe can do (as clearly referenced by you) and not repeat the dark and bloody acts that is so evidently in our nature, whether you admit it or not.

In "our nature" eh? Africa has been for much of human history a primitive and often bloody backwater with a few flourishes to her north and a few in the south. Is that in their "nature" too? I seriously doubt you'd consider that thought for even a second and if you did a strong course of self flagellation would be in play. But apparently it's OK to think same of Europeans, let's face it White people.

This is just another example of the post WW2, post 60's "left" counterculture moral and cultural equivalence and xenophilia, but only when and where it suits. And yet another European innovation as it happens.

*when he got home to Germany, he got short shrift from the Party, after the war he was denounced as a nazi and forgotten. The Chinese didn't forget though and after they heard what had befallen him their ambassador sought him out and brought food for him and his family who were starving. Chinese people raised money to support him and his family. After he died he was buried in Germany, but in the 90's his tombstone was brought to China and erected as a memorial to a man who against the odds saved hundreds of thousands of her people.

European powers had the upper hand in recent centuries so they colonised. Other powers also colonised and set up their own empires bu that was either further back in history, or else they were eventually overpowered. If European powers had not had the upper hand, it is not that there would have been no colonisation - more that they would have instead been colonised.

Much of that colonisation drive by European powers was down to them coming to terms with the fact they couldn't really do it within Europe and came to a vague agreement they wouldn't try(for the most part). Since Rome fell a goodly number tried to kick off a New Rome within Europe, but it rarely lasted long. Even Hitler's war was trying that for size, as was Napoleon's. The geopolitics didn't work so well, so instead they looked beyond Europe's shores to build empires.

China and the Caliphate were already empires so this was much less in play. The Chinese had their own brief age of exploration in their neck of the woods, but gave up on it very quickly. They had to defend their own borders rather than create new ones and more problems. The small in size European powers outsourced. Their age of exploration was hand in glove with empire building. When Europeans did fight each other they tended to do it more by proxy and overseas, because it was too damned destructive back home. Rome had been an empire of course and a very powerful and advanced one for many centuries, so they didn't really bother with much by way of exploration.

This internal competion also drove innovation like crazy. So when gunpowder rocked up in Europe from China, where it had been used as a weapon but in quite limited ways, the first European nation who got it built on it, then their neighbours got wind of it, copied and built on it again and you had a pan European arms race, which gives you advancements in chemistry, metallurgy and ballistics and all that comes from that. Same for other "foreign" innovations like the compass, the rudder, printing. The pressures to improve on stuff like that was far higher in Europe than pretty much anywhere else on the planet. That spilled into the sciences and arts too. That's where their upper hand largely came from.

Another aspect was Europe was much harder to invade and take over because of all these small states with well honed militaries within it. Empires are centralised so to take over you take over the heart of the empire, bump off the emperor and crown yourself. The rest of the empire will generally just continue on under new management. You attack Europe and lets say you take out the Poles, which will hurt, then the Hungarians, well you haven't taken Europe. You then have to deal with the Italians(avoid the Swiss like the plague) the Germans are in play, then the Poles will probably fight back seeing you have your hands full and then you have to deal with the French which for most of European history good luck with that sunshine. Never mind the Spanish and Portuguese, or the Russians at your back for that matter. The Islamic world at her peak had a damned good go, but even they realised feck this for a game of soldiers.

Other factors were things like greater social mobility that really kicked off after the plague also drove innovation. Gutenburg was a goldsmith and radically improved mechanical printing. In China it would be more likely that because he was a goldsmith he wouldn't have been listened to and his climb through the social orders would have been more difficult(state exams and sometimes the military were pretty much the only way to rise above one's station). The other factor was though Rome had fallen in the west, the Roman church hadn't so until the Reformation there had been a two tier rule across the continent. One the temporal that fought among different groups, the other a more binding force, though there was much back and forth. The Reformation just added to the internal competition and the powerbase moved northwards.

Even oddball things like the simple European alphabet had an impact. Printing was born in China but the old joke about a Chinese typewriter needing a two metre wide keyboard was in play. In the Islamic world the scribes were king and printing looked to take the bread from their mouths and the text is far more complex. In Europe with around thirty letters you could print pretty much anything in most of the languages. Another was glass. European ceramics were way behind Chinese and their porcelain, but we had glass instead. Porcelain is great, but you can't make lenses from it. Lenses which help people stay informed and useful as their eyes age, lenses that can build telescopes and microscopes etc and all that brings with it.

Add in easy and extensive sea routes and loads of navigable rivers and a temporate climate in most of Europe and it was pretty much inevitable that Europe would become a, if not the world superpower. The British had the largest empire in history, now on top of the pink of the maps back then add in the Dutch, the French, the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Belgian, even the Russian which is still the largest nation on Earth and outside of China(and even then for a time) the World was a European empire.

Then post WW2 that all faded away and America a European colony took over, alongside the Soviet Union, a European empire pointing armageddon at each other. While the Chinese looked on thinking oh FFS not these round eyed pricks again. Just mostly ignore them and maybe they'll feck off. 😁 A position they largely still work by, though are no doubt pinching themselves that the West made them their manufacturing base... Africa for the most part was WTF just happened? The Middle East was WTF is happening?

But I digress... 😊😁