Sublime

Perhaps any of the great Eurasian states would have enjoyed a similar success: Tamerlane would have made short work of Montezuma. It was the Occident’s good fortune that its geographical position – closest to the Caribbean antechamber of the pre-Columbian empires – gave it a decisive lead in the acquisition of new lands in the Outer World.

What excited Europeans was the belief that they had both the right and the means to ‘make’ or remake America in Europe’s image, or even as an improved version of the old continent.

Europe’s expansion amounted in part to a deliberate assault on the modernizing ventures of other peoples and states. Perhaps it was not Europe’s modernity that triumphed, but its superior capacity for organized violence.