Europeans Abroad, 1450–1750 by David Ringrose, and: Empires of the Weak: The Real Story of European Expansion and the Creation of the New World Order by J. C. Sharman

In recent decades world historians and specialists in premodern Asian, African, and American history have produced a rich body of literature undermining the prevailing assumptions and orthodoxies of the field traditionally known as "the Age of European Expansion." These scholars eschew the Eurocentric perception that intrepid, enterprising early modern European sailors and soldiers sailed to unknown seas, forced open trade routes to European commerce using superior weaponry—gunpowder, improved ships, and steel—and created a global trade network and a set of European empires that by the nineteenth century had set the stage for Western global hegemony. A prevalent explanation for this "rise of Europe" is that Europe underwent a "military revolution" in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Europe developed not only innovative weaponry and tactics, but also a cultural dynamic, shaped by rivalries among European states that forced Europeans to learn, adapt, and improve their military and economic strategies and institutions at a quicker pace than other societies in Asia, Africa, or the New World. Thus, Europe was able, as Philip T. Hoffman puts it in Why Did Europeans Conquer the World? (2015), to become the dominant world power despite its lower population, smaller economy, and weaker institutions compared to many other polities in the premodern world. Both Ringrose and Sharman take aim at the assumptions that, first, Europe was anything other than a relatively minor player in Asian trade networks prior to the nineteenth century, and second, that Europe's "military revolution" gave Europeans a meaningful edge over Asian, African, or New World polities. They also doubt that the global dominance Europe achieved in the "Second Wave" of European conquest and colonization during the nineteenth century can endure, and Sharman posits that it has already ended. Ringrose and Sharman posit that Europe's hegemony is already at an end and that the locus of world power is shifting back to where it has lain for most of world history—in Asia.

Most of Empires of the Weak synthesizes the latest historical research on European expansion and imperialism during the early modern era (1500–1750), although the final chapter examines the "New Imperialism" of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Early modern European expansion, except for the Americas, took the form mostly of "trading post" colonies established with the sufferance of African and Asian polities that permitted Europeans to trade, but by no means considered them either a serious threat to their power or their principal commercial partners. Asia dominated the world and neither African nor Asian rulers had much to fear from Europeans, who deferred to the rulers of the territories in which they sought to establish colonies, most of them small settlements sponsored by companies of commerce and focused on trade rather than territorial expansion. Europe's conquest of territory in the New World was an anomaly, as was Europe's rise as a global power in the nineteenth century. Moreover, Sharman contends that Europe may have "won" in the period from 1850 until after World War II but has subsequently "lost" as postcolonial wars in the second half of the twentieth century denuded Europe of its colonial resources and the economic expansion of Asian nations in the twenty-first century has eroded Europe's economic and military dominance.

In Sharman's view, European "exceptionalism," in terms of military, institutional, or cultural superiority in the early modernera, is a chimera. Instead, political culture explains why Europeans were able to dominate certainmaritimetraderoutes. Asian and African states made the strategic choice to focus their energies on expanding their land empires while tolerating European trade—which often was little more than disguised piracy—and permitted Europeans to establish coastal enclaves, again mostly fortified trading posts, because it suited their purposes. China had the resources to patrol the Indian Ocean and South China Sea, and to eject Europeans had its rulers so wished, but the scholar-bureaucrats who ran the empire simply did not see this as a priority.

Sharman also refutes the argument that Europe's "military revolution" in the seventeenth century gave Europe a decisive advantage over competing powers in Asia, Africa, and the New World. Most scholars still agree that European military fortifications, weapons, and tactics changed considerably in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but Sharman shows why these changes by no means made Europe a serious military threat to Asian or African states. Rulers in Asia and Africa adopted European weapons—the Mughal, Ottoman, and Ming Empires are known as "gunpowder empires." African states sought to trade with Europeans precisely so that they could obtain European weapons. African and Asian states used firearms proficiently and many possessed navies well able to protect their coastal waters. Asians, who were quite capable of manufacturing their own firearms, sought primarily the silver, mostly from the Americas, that Europeans used to pay for their purchases, including spices, silks, and porcelain. Few other European wares much interested Africans or Asians prior to industrialization.

In the European "conquests" in the New World disease, and the political instability of the Aztec and Inca Empires, played a much larger role than the superiority of European weapons, which Indigenous peoples in the Western Hemisphere were also quick to adopt and turn against Europeans. Moreover, traditional weapons and methods of warfare were often quite effective against European firearms. Indigenous resistance to European domination continued, in many regions into the nineteenth century, and Indigenous peoples manipulated European rivalries and creatively adapted their own political structures to the opportunities and pressures the European presence created. Finally, as Sharman points out, even as Europeans were taking control of large swaths of the Americas, albeit often as a fragile suzerainty dependent on the co-optation of Indigenous leaders, Asians continued to encroach on what today is considered European territory in Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean (showing also why the whole idea of "Europe" as a geographical entity is a contingent and unstable concept).

In the final chapter Sharman briefly examines the "New Imperialism" of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He discusses the cultural factors explaining why Europeans during this period were so determined to conquer vast territorial empires. European imperialism between 1850 and 1950 resulted in short-lived empires that brought little advantage and significant liabilities to Europe. Sharman thus also rejects firmly the "rational choice theory" approach to political economy, by showing in the case of Europe's expansion that it was culture, not simply economic opportunity that prompted the choices of both Europeans and other global powers in the commercial, cultural, and political ties they developed with each other. Empires of the Weak also begins and ends with a discussion of the need for greater dialogue between "social scientists" and historians, many of whom of course consider themselves to be social scientists. Sharman is correct that historians have much they can learn from colleagues studying political economy, international relations, and sociology, and vice versa.

Europeans Abroad evinces the same perspective on Europe's role in the early modern world economy as Empires of the Weak. The style and approach of the two works are quite different, however. Sharman writes from the perspective of a social scientist—he is the Sir Patrick Sheehy Professor of International Relations at the University of Cambridge. Empires of the Weak is organized in a more analytical style, opening with a discussion of theory—the "military revolution" and "paradigm-diffusion" theories—that scholars such as Jeremy Black, Geoffrey Parker, Charles Tilly, and Philipp T. Hoffman have advanced to explain Europe's rise to global hegemony in the nineteenth century. Sharman discusses why these theories don't hold up, and then ably defends his own thesis, that political culture rather than Europe's economic or military might, explains Europe's short-lived, anomalous imperial power after 1850. Ringrose's book is more narrative in its approach, although it does contain a clear argument. Ringrose, like Sharman, seeks to explain why Europe's "rise" on the premodern global stage has been much exaggerated, and to put Europe in a more realistic perspective in relation to the powerful states and empires of Africa, Asia, and the New World. But as the title, Europeans Abroad, suggests, Ringrose's perspective is still that of Europe, albeit a Europe that ventured into Asia, Africa, and the New World from a much weaker position, economically, technologically, militarily, and institutionally, than historians have traditionally acknowledged.

Ringrose identifies four separate early modern European expansion narratives. The first is Europe's extension of its preexisting medieval trade with the Middle East as far as India, and the second narrative consists of Portugal's circumnavigation of Africa, establishing trading enclaves in Africa over time as well. This narrative also relates how first Portugal and then the Dutch and British began plying the Indian Ocean trade routes. The third narrative focuses on the Americas and the fourth relates how Europeans learned how to master the winds and currents of the Pacific, primarily to transport silver from the New World to the Philippines, from whence it reached China.

Although he by no means gives short shrift to the centrality of African slavery to the development of European plantation colonies, Ringrose contends that historians have underestimated two other important factors in premodern Europe's expansion, colonization, and global trade. First is the role of silver. It was access to the silver mines of Zacatecas in Mexico and Potosí in the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru that not only constituted the financial base of Habsburg power in Europe but enabled Europeans to purchase Asian wares and African slaves. The second factor was Europeans' willingness to blend into indigenous populations wherever they went. Ringrose emphasizes that Europe's expansion must also be understood as a migration of about four million people, most of them men, and most of whom never returned to Europe. Europeans needed to control their colonies, again even those in the Americas, through co-optation and cooperation, because they lacked the military power to impose themselves. Despite the devastation that European diseases caused in the Americas, both Cortés and Pizarro still needed Native allies to conquer the Aztec and Inca empires. After the conquest, the relatively small cadre of Spanish soldiers and administrators found that intermarriage with Native women, especially from the ruling elite, helped to cement their authority. In Africa and Asia, where Europeans had no choice but to defer to local rulers, marriage also helped integrate European men into preexisting networks of trade and mutual support, vital to the survival of the tiny numbers of Europeans who manned European forts and trading posts abroad. Moreover, their mixed-race children possessed the cross-cultural knowledge and biological immunities that made them indispensable mediators between Europe and local societies. Thus, Ringrose concludes, premodern European trade and colonization depended on disappearance, both of silver that vanished into Chinese hands, and of Europeans themselves, who vanished into the complex racial and cultural mix of African, Asian, and American port cities.

Empires of the Weak and Europeans Abroad are both excellent and accessible syntheses of the most recent scholarship on the premodern world and Europe's role in it, and both are suitable for students. Some of their arguments will come as no surprise to scholars of early modern European expansion, as many studies have shown Europe's relative weakness in relation to the Asian empires, and even those of the Aztecs and the Inca, and Renaissance scholars such as Jeremy Brotton have demonstrated the close economic and cultural ties between the Ottoman Empire and Europe. But Sharman and Ringrose both effectively refute the idea that there was a simple progression from Europe's premodern expansion to the colonial empires Europe conquered in the nineteenth century, and both posit that Europe's brief global hegemony is already at an end.