Technology—Technology had determined the history of power as it flowed west from the Fertile Crescent to Greece to Rome and then to Europe.  Engines of conquest, ships carrying armies, roads allowing troops to move swiftly within conquered territories: technology had allowed the swift delivery of power to vulnerable flanks of rival, competing societies.  Technology, beginning as the inventions of artisans millennia before, had sparked trade and made the accumulation of wealth a locus of power.  Technological invention had continued to help re-locate power by overthrowing authority and by supplanting or re-organizing societies that had been powerful.

            The exercise of power by the sovereign European state had just begun in 1500 and was about to explode into the world that was new to them.  The history of the exercise of power has always been to expand into new territory—often through the exercise of superior technology—for economic or political advantage.  The history of Britain can serve as a good example.  First there were the Britons.  Then came the Romans whose siege-engine technology obliterated brave defenses of hill forts.  Society was largely re-ordered when Rome chose a very few Celtic chieftains to be their minions and collect their taxes.  When Rome collapsed partly from and partly simultaneous with the pressure of Germanic tribes throughout Europe (themselves pressured by Mongols), the Anglo-Saxons filled the void and drove the Celts north and west.  When the Scandanavians came and conquered half of England, half the Anglo-Saxons now lived in the Danelaw.  When the Normans came, more Anglo-Saxons lost their lands and became serfs to the Norman overlords.  Then for hundreds of years, the displaced British kings strove to re-conquer continental lands until finally they contented themselves with the British kingdom. 

            Guns and steel had been used for centuries to shift power and influence westward.  Now it was to combine with germs to deliver power even more dramatically westward, to the conquest of the Americas.

The Six Characteristics

Politics
Economics
Technology
Biology
Philosophy
Dominance