Eric Hobsbawm - Age Of Revolution 1789 -1848

THE AGE OF REVOLUTIONtration. Except for small areas round the Cape of Good Hope, thewhites were confined to coastal trading posts.Yet already the rapid and increasingly massive expansion of Europeantrade and capitalist enterprise undermined their social order; inAfrica through the unprecedented intensity of the awful traffic inslaves, around the Indian Ocean through the penetration of the rivalcolonizing powers, in the Near and Middle East through trade andmilitary conflict. Already direct European conquest began to extendsignificantly beyond the area long since occupied by the pioneercolonization of the Spaniards and Portuguese in the sixteenth century,the white North American settlers in the seventeenth. The crucialadvance was made by the British, who had already established directterritorial control over part of India (notably Bengal), virtually overthrowingthe Mughal empire, a step which was to lead them in ourperiod to become the rulers and administrators of all India. Alreadythe relative feebleness of the non-European civilizations when confrontedwith the technological and military superiority of the westwas predictable. What has been called 'the age of Vasco da Gama', thefour centuries of world history in which a handful of European statesand the European force of capitalism established a complete, thoughas is now evident, a temporary, domination of the entire world, wasabout to reach its climax. The dual revolution was to make Europeanexpansion irresistible, though it was also to provide the non-Europeanworld with the conditions and equipment for its eventual counterattack.26