Far from imagining a common supremacy over the rest of Eurasia, European statecraft was obsessed with intramural conflicts. Symptomatically, the wealth of the New World was used to finance the dynastic ambitions of the Old.

by the sixteenth century, the dogmas and superstitions of the Middle Ages had begun to yield to critical thought, humanistic inquiry, and empirical experimentation. These intellectual trends had wide-ranging political effects all over Europe, plunging the continent into long and bloody conflicts over