Why did Europe conquer the world?

Why did Europe conquer the world? By Hoffman Philip T. . Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press , 2017. Pp. 272. Hardback £25.95, ISBN: 978-0-691-13970-8; paperback £14.95, ISBN: 978-0-691-17584-3 . Hoffman provides a compelling and impressively expansive account of Europe's roughly five-hundred-year rise to global ascendancy. Given its lack of political, cultural, and economic development in relation to thriving societies in China, India, and the Middle East, medieval Europe's transition from a backwater to the conqueror of much of the world is a fruitful topic of research and debate. Hoffman argues that this dominance was far from inevitable and that a forecaster operating in the tenth century would almost certainly have been unable to predict the scope of European military conquests over the centuries that followed. Hoffman proposes that the key factor allowing western Europe to overtake its other Eurasian rivals and conquer most of the world was a tournament-style competition between Europe's fragmented rulers.