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document updated 19 years ago, on Jun 18, 2005

"The Rise of the West" suggests that as important as the Columbian Exchange and the subsequent rise of European Imperialism/Colonialism was, that it was much more significant that the West embraced and benefit from the Industrial Revolution, because it gave the West actual power over the rest of the world (contrasted with China and Japan's isolation during the same time). This power difference became most evident in the occurance of gunboat diplomacy.

That covers asian comparisons to the West. For the middle east, it's seems somewhat reasonable that they were very powerful at one point, because before Christopher Columbus came along, they were literally at the center of the world, they were directly on the crossroads of international trade. After Columbus, they were not involved in international trade to any extent compared to before.

Perhipherally-related "big events" that came before and after, that tell the story of the slow rise of international communcations, from 1AD to present: