Of Europe, Syria and Anthropogeographic Inversion
The immediate force behind the rapid and successful European overseas projection was actually the combination of two elements. Europe’s economic advancement (less the capacity to invent than the readiness to retake from others, the so-called superior adaptive capacity in technology, navigation, and transport) coupled with a demographic expansion – from early 16th century on. Still, is it credible to say that European history was enhanced by a progressive temporal linearity, whereas the rest of this planet was/is ruled by regressive temporal circles of stagnation? Or, is – on contrary – Gerard Delanty right when he claims that “Europe did not derive its identity from itself but from the formation of a set of global contrasts”?
West/Europe was not winning – frankly speaking by applying a Huntingtonian argument – over the rest of this planet by the supremacy of its views and ideas, by purity of its virtues or by clarity and sincerity of its religious thoughts and practices. For a small and rather insecure civilization from the anthropogeographic suburbia in a cold temperate zone (situated next to permafrost), it was just the superiority through efficiency in applying the rationalized violence and organized (legitimized) coercion that Europe successfully projected. That, of course, included the so-called open-seas for a free trade mantra, which was the other name for the powerful tool in acquiring might for Europeans. (It was primarily thanks to a forceful and rampant triangular transcontinental trade, brutally imposed by Europeans: Enslaved Africans shipped to America in exchange for gold and silver from there to Europe, in order to cover European deficits in importing the cutting-edge technologies, manufactured products, other goods and spices from a that-time superior Asia and Middle East.
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