[monadINtop]

In that case it would be similarly be helpful if you focused your initial response on a key point of contention rather effusively and ineffectively allude to several. I will keep my reply as focused as possible.

You initially claimed that it was purely technological superiority that allowed Europeans to conquer America. This is not an understanding reflected in the literature. If it were the case, then why was it only much after the colonization of America, which began in the 16th century, that Asia and Africa were able to be colonized, in the middle of the 19th century? The difference between the technologies in the 16th century was not a huge jump, though its obviously true there was a discrepancy. Native Americans acquired horses after contact and incorporated them into their culture and by the 1700s some of the tribes in the great plains had fully transformed into a nomadic horse based life-style. Firearms are a similar story. One can imagine the difficulty 16th century europeans would have faced if they were to colonize an entire continent, without it being conveniently depopulated beforehand by plague.

You appear to recount that my claim was that American (US) slavery was a unique factor in the exceptional rise of Europe in the early modern period. This was a claim made by no-one. You'll recall that slavery in america refers to an entire continent - as I repeatedly pointed out - not an isolated group of states. My claim is that the depopulation and subsequent colonization of the entirety of the continent was a significant factor, along with the shift in political and economic structure that accompanied it.

Up to the 16th century you will find a wealth of european accounts of contacts with kingdoms in the Congo to East Asia, whereby they are described as equals in sophistication and size - most famously with Marco Polo's accounts though there exist many others. The change in perception of relative technological prowess in historical accounts occur much later, but certainly by the 1700s with the advent of the industrial revolution in the early modern period. This is well documented.

Why did the industrial revolution occur? It is a very large and open topic, though I lean towards the explanation that it was due in part to both the change in social structure during the reformation, as well as the colonization of america (the continent) and the development of economic networks with the extraction of resources (mercantilism, chartered trading companies etc.). This system was aided by and intensified by the trans-atlantic slave trade.

I'm sorry about the lack of "falsifiable content", or the lack of brevity. Unfortunately we are discussing history through the most sweeping lens possible, not science.

>unloading all of of our own biases

Again, what are you vaguely trying to allude to. Just say it.

[somenameforme]

The reason colonization spread to other places late is that there was real no demand for what it could offer. The Industrial Revolution changed that. It led to dramatic increase in the need of various supplies, not only from industrial processes, but also from urbanization and the rapid growth of richer middle and upper classes and their increasing consumption. The "Scramble for Africa" only really began in the 1880s, long after slavery had been banned in most places.

My description of the technological differences in the Americas was not off the cuff. Cortes' group was armed, literally, with guns (including handguns), cannons, longswords, and more. They were wearing steel cuirass for defense. And they were facing people wielding wooden clubs, primitive bows, and defending with wooden shields and basic padded armor, if that.

And the entire world, let alone the Americas, started out depopulated. In many ways it still is. Today if we spread out each person there'd be enough area for ~4 football fields per person. But back to the Americas nobody knows what the population was so there range estimates from 8 million to 53 million [1] (excluding one loony toon outlier), with an average estimate of just about 30 million. So if every person was spread out evenly, this would be an average of 273 football fields per person. But of course people, even back then, were packed into relatively densely packed settlements. So you're talking about seeing thousands of football fields of area, on average, without ever seeing a person. Clearly no major depopulation events were necessary.

And the reason the industrial revolution occurred is quite simply because technology reached a threshold enabling it. People had been trying to automate various processes for millennia, but lacked the prerequisites to succeed. It followed the development of a large number of technological breakthroughs - the steam engine, coke over coal, and so on.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_the_Indi...