Why have nations of the West dominated the globe for the last five hundred years, when for centuries they lagged behind great civilizations in India, China and the Moslem world? Why were a few small countries on the western fringe of the great Eurasian continent able to spread their culture all around the world when other cultures did not? Why did a group of daring navigators from Western Europe—Columbus in 1492, Vasco de Gama in 1499, Ferdinand Magellan in the 1520s and others—launch the Age of Discovery with globe-girdling voyages in tiny ships, instead of men such as the great Chinese Admiral Zheng He, who sailed thousands of miles across the Indian Ocean in huge treasure ships nearly a century earlier?
