Monday, 5 December 2011

What geographical advantages did Western Europe have in its encounters with the non-Western world in the 15th and 16th centuries?

Perhaps the
biggest geographical advantage that the Western Europeans had was the fact that they were a part
of the huge continent of Eurasia.  This continental mass was home to a number of epidemic
diseases that were not present in places like the Americas.  When the Europeans reached places
like the Americas, the diseases that they carried with them killed millions of the natives.  The
natives had no resistance to the diseases and huge percentages of them were killed by exposure
to them.

In this way, being geographically connected to a large area with a
huge population exposed Europeans to diseases that the Americans had not been exposed to.  This
was a major advantage for the Europeans.

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