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Notes -
My theory has always been that, putting aside motivation, the primary factor in Europe's success was being the first adopters of firearms, as firearms are what decisively gave more sophisticated, urbanized civilizations the edge over simpler, nomadic ones. Up until firearms, it didn't matter how awesome your empire was, it could still get ransacked by nomads with much more limited technologies.
When the Portuguese went after India; they had a decisive military advantage. The Muslim trading ships were, at the time, unarmed(!) and Pedro Alves Cabral was able to seize a ship and loot it. When there were riots in Calicut in response and a bunch of missionaries and other Portuguese were killed he bombarded the city into ruins, apparently without reprisal. When Ethiopia was at risk of falling to Muslim invaders, they famously beseeched the Portuguese for aid and convinced them to send a small force of riflemen, who turned the tide of the war.
Rifles and Cannons were game-changing.
Except they weren't the first.
It was the Chinese who invented gunpowder, and the first time firearms see wide-spread use as practical battlefield weapons is in the Middle East during the Byzantine–Ottoman wars of the 14th century.
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