Beyond Guns, Germs, and Steel

European Expansion and Maritime Asia, 1400-1750

Bibliographic Data

ID9311331
AuthorsTonio Andrade (1EMORY UNIVERSITY, corresponding author)
Year2010
Volume14
Issue1-2
Pages165-186
Publication date2010-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Early Modern History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1385-3783 • E-ISSN: 1570-0658
PublisherBrill (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1163/138537810x12632734397142
OpenAlexW2091513142
LanguageEN
Citations received10

Why did Europeans rather than other Eurasians build the world’s first global empires, extending a measure of control, however fragile and contingent, over the oceans of the world? This article suggests that the best place to find an answer to the question is not in Europe but in Asia. Europeans were not alone in creating overseas empires in the early modern period, but the Asian counterparts to the Portuguese, Dutch, and English Empires are little known. Focusing on two of those Asian examples—the Ya’rubi Dynasty of Oman and the Zheng maritime empire of China—the author suggests that although European technology did confer an advantage on European mariners, it was not an insuperable advantage. Asian powers could adopt and adapt European cannons, ships, and nautical charts and beat the Europeans at their own game. Indeed, he suggests, this intra-Eurasian borrowing is a key process of history over the longue durée

Ancient history · Archaeology · China · East Asia · Economic history · Economics · Economy · Empire · Linguistics · Portuguese · World history · Asian Studies and History · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub