China and a couple of other locations may have been close cases, but most of the peoples the West conquered had nowhere near the culture of violence that the Europeans did. By "culture of violence" I mean willingness to use violence in conquering _other_ peoples
In the original context of this thread, I mean more specifically violence _for colonizing and enslaving_ other peoples that the Europeans score high on the index or Violence Quotient. I don't mean that Europeans had higher domestic crime rates than other places. There is also that aspect of moving large settler populations to take over the land, occupy it. Looking at Lou's thread-original quote of Huntington: The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do." Samuel P. Huntington, "The Clash of Civilizations" CB: The West won the world, the whole world, by an _inferior_ aspect of its ideas or values or religion, by which ideas or culture ,they more readily than other peoples and cultures ( even China) used organized violence to do that "winning of the world". Also, the West leaped to _global_ conquest, rather than relatively and qualitatively lesser localized conquest by China, India , Aztecs , Incas and other archaic states. The "Globalized" conquest by capitalism is a qualitative leap in conquest contrasted with other cultures or societies. These ideas or values are not biologicially-genetically or "racially" based, but historically based. They seem especially an extension of the Roman historical tradition to a global scale. There is a reason "Rule Britannia !" is Latinized. In this sense, it was guns, steel,ships AND colonializing ideas, values, culture, historical tradition, charged with the new bourgeois ideology of wealth accumulation that were all "but for" or necessary causes of the West winning the whole globe. This attention to the specific _history_ of Europe makes this a _historical_ materialist explanation. Historical materialism looks simultaneously to both immediate class struggles and historical tradition for explanations. The reason man (sic) makes his own history but not just as he pleases is that he is always bound up in a specific historical tradition that shapes how the current generation's class struggle will make the present.
