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Empires of the Weak: The Real Story of European Expansion and the Creation of the New World Order

de J. C. Sharman

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"What accounts for the rise of the state, the creation of the first global system, and the dominance of the West? The conventional answer asserts that superior technology, tactics, and institutions forged by Darwinian military competition gave Europeans a decisive advantage in war over other civilizations from 1500 onward. In contrast, Empires of the Weak argues that Europeans actually had no general military superiority in the early modern era. J.C. Sharman shows instead that European expansion from the late fifteenth to the late eighteenth centuries is better explained by deference to strong Asian and African polities, disease in the Americas, and maritime supremacy earned by default because local land-oriented polities were largely indifferent to war and trade at sea. Europeans were overawed by the mighty Eastern empires of the day, which pioneered key military innovations and were the greatest early modern conquerors. Against the view that the Europeans won for all time, Sharman contends that the imperialism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was a relatively transient and anomalous development in world politics that concluded with Western losses in various insurgencies. If the twenty-first century is to be dominated by non-Western powers like China, this represents a return to the norm for the modern era. Bringing a revisionist perspective to the idea that Europe ruled the world due to military dominance, Empires of the Weak demonstrates that the rise of the West was an exception in the prevailing world order."--Dust jacket.… (més)

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So long as you keep in mind that this is basically a polemic, and an introduction to a wider topic, there is nothing particularly wrong with this monograph. Where Sharman is on target is in calling out the tendency of projecting the Western power dominance of about 1850-1950 back in time, as though it sprung like Athena from the head of Zeus, when for much of the period of early Western maritime expansion, the precocious ocean-going nations were fortunate to carve out narrow areas of control, usually on the sufferance of the Eurasian great powers. The point being that a multi-polar world has been more the norm than the exception, and if contemporary China and India secure their rise to great power status, it will only be the return to a certain norm.

Further, Sharman also critiques the less-than-honest tendency to explain such successful European force projection as there was in terms of invoking the so-called "Military Revolution" post-1500, allied with bad Darwinian thinking (is there any other kind outside of the life sciences?), to create a certain sense of inevitability. Calling out such thinking is fine, but what you don't get from Sharman is any sense that the military historians don't actually believe in this theory categorically themselves, if they ever did, and its influence has certainly faded over the past twenty years or so. The modern trend amongst military historians is to focus as much on organizational culture as anything else, keeping in mind that fashions in tactics and weapons are going to be conditioned by the social and political dynamics within a given military force; not that different from the arguments made by Sharman. (

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Shrike58 | Oct 26, 2023 |

Interesting thesis that Europeans were far weaker internationally from 1500-1800 than western history gives them credit for. But the book is way too academic and detailed for me.

steve02476 | Jan 3, 2023 |

Appreciated the premise of the book but his presentation left much to be desired. Spent much of the book talking about what he was going to say. (

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snash | Aug 24, 2019 |

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"What accounts for the rise of the state, the creation of the first global system, and the dominance of the West? The conventional answer asserts that superior technology, tactics, and institutions forged by Darwinian military competition gave Europeans a decisive advantage in war over other civilizations from 1500 onward. In contrast, Empires of the Weak argues that Europeans actually had no general military superiority in the early modern era. J.C. Sharman shows instead that European expansion from the late fifteenth to the late eighteenth centuries is better explained by deference to strong Asian and African polities, disease in the Americas, and maritime supremacy earned by default because local land-oriented polities were largely indifferent to war and trade at sea. Europeans were overawed by the mighty Eastern empires of the day, which pioneered key military innovations and were the greatest early modern conquerors. Against the view that the Europeans won for all time, Sharman contends that the imperialism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was a relatively transient and anomalous development in world politics that concluded with Western losses in various insurgencies. If the twenty-first century is to be dominated by non-Western powers like China, this represents a return to the norm for the modern era. Bringing a revisionist perspective to the idea that Europe ruled the world due to military dominance, Empires of the Weak demonstrates that the rise of the West was an exception in the prevailing world order."--Dust jacket.

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