This is quite mind-boggling. There are many reasons for this, but clearly an important reason is that the conquered empires where themselves forged with violence (and did colonise neighbours), and internally divided, more so than the Europeans.
Divide-and-conquer
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_conquest_of_the_Inca_E...
Columbus stumbled upon the New World while looking for a new sea route to Asia. There were no Chinese or Indian traders looking for sea routes to Europe.
Before industrialization, there weren't that many things Europe had to offer that weren't already available elsewhere (Asia already had firearms and ships, maybe not as good, but good enough for the era). Whereas India had pepper and spices and China had silk, both of which were highly valued in Europe and could not be produced domestically.
> Let's remember that e.g. the Inca empire, one of the biggest empires the world had ever seen at the time, was essentially colonised by 168 men (with one canon) [1] ... There are many reasons for this, but clearly an important reason is that the conquered empires where themselves forged with violence
There were other reasons too. Pizarro's men had steel armor and weapons whereas the Incas had stone or bronze weapons and padded armor. They had horses (mounted lances can do stunning amounts of damage to unprepared infantry) and the Incas had no experience in dealing with horse-mounted troops when you're on foot (spear walls, spiked pits etc). Pizarro held the Incan emperor hostage. Smallpox and other diseases took their toll later on. etc. etc.
The key to the Spanish conquest was that the Inca empire was full of internal conflict, the most important of which was the lethal enmity between the sons of Huayna Capac. The Spanish never really had trouble finding native allies, who were only too happy to get some rival tribe to be 'wacked' by association with the conquistadores.
That's possibly not true. The author of this book makes a compelling case the Chinese had actually been exploring earlier:
https://www.amazon.com/1421-Year-China-Discovered-America/dp...
I'd never heard of this book (or theory before) but its Wikipedia page has lots of criticisms and claims that the book is basically nonsense (having said that, many of the references are to a site called 1421exposed.com so...¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ). The Wikipedia article about Zheng He's voyages (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_voyages#Seventh_voyag...) has substantially better references and makes no claims (even speculations) that he ever traveled to the New World.
Let's just admit that if such a voyage did in fact take place, it did not make anywhere near the impact as in Europe.
to mentally subjugate them.
It really doesn't work this way. If you don't believe me, try your scheme on your neighbours. Report back.
This was the platform from which the global colonisations of 1400 onwards sprung.
What were the peculiar conditions that caused these guys to take to sea in the first place and why didn't their Asian counterparts do likewise?
I think the Arab world can lay claim to some conquests - Spain for a while anyway ...
The sort of "why the west won" pop history makes experts cringe in the same way that articles on AI hysteria might make experts here cringe.
Perhaps because of the sheer size of Asia. Western Europe isn't exactly large.
Certainly the Arabs had boats and knew how to use them, but I'm not sure sea voyages held the same cultural cachet in the ancient Arab world as it did in the ancient European coastal civilizations.
The Turks conquered Constantinople, the capital of one of the most advanced civilizations in Europe, and they employed the new cannon technology to successfully besiege the city in 1453. The Mughal empire pretty much colonized India in the 1500s, and did it basically with gunpwder. [1]
Xinjiang, Tibet, and Vietnam were occupied by different Chinese dynasties several times. While it began in the XVII century, China pretty much colonized Taiwan, despite previous Spanish/Dutch. China had a significant commercial presence in the Indic Ocean and Southeast Asia by the 1400's, and substantion immigration to SE Asia - specially to Malaysia. Ming China had substantial naval technology, and they have repeatedly won naval battles against the Portuguese, one of the great naval powers of the time [2]. They invented fire-arrows, basically incendiary rockets, frequently used agrains ships. [3]
The Arabs, Turks and Chinese of the 1400-1600 were colonising/conquering other lands, making maritime commerce and exploration, and had gunpowder technology good enough to beat European powers at the time. The Arabs specially had a strong presence in Africa and did as much slaving as the Portuguese.
So in terms of technology, the civilizations in Asia where more or less equivalent to Europe. They did not fail at colonisation, they just had much less to colonise, and less interest to explore. The reasons are:
1- Of the advanced civilizations of the time, Europe was the closer to Americas, a large, a rich continent whose inhabitants did not use metals nor gunpowder as in the rest of Eurasia. Native Americans had no immunity to Old World diseases too. The Turkish or Chinese could very easily defeat the Incas and colonise portions of the Americas, had it been closer and they knew about it in time to do so. But Europe was closer, they discovered it first, and the countries of Europe stated competing to colonise it. By the time Asians realized the existence of America, it was probably totally colonized.
2- Europe was very interested in commerce with India, specially access to spices, and America was pretty much discovered by accident in an attempt to find a new route to it [4]. The Chinese and Arabs already had easy access to the Indic Ocean Commecial zone, so they had little incentive to expeditions. The Chinese, in particular, could simply grow their own spices, produced their own silk and porcelain and had little interest in foreign products, and even less interest in expading their religions (the Muslims did spread Islam as far as the Philipines and even to China) The Europeans sufferd from Turkish commercial blockades, and had to contour Africa to have access to Indian Continent, which was a long and dangerous route. So they eventually tried a new route.
tl;dr: Europe discovered and colonized the Americas because it was nearer and because of the lucrative spice trade. Asia did not because it is more distant and because they could grow their own spices.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mughal_Empire [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tunmen [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_arrow [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyages_of_Christopher_Columbu...
That's an important point. However, what was important over the long-term is what the West did with that new wealth, namely feed a significant portion of it into helping the self-propelling dynamics the article describes.
The other civilizations, in contrast, had self-perpetuating dynamics that prevented growth and technological progress beyond a certain level, as least for the most part.
There are other factors that may encourage artistic and scientific advancement. The peace of Edo era in Japan (1603-1868), and a Samurai class that had no wars to fight anymore brough many artistic, cultural and scientific inovations.
The Japanese of the era had relativelly high literacy rates, developed mathematics and astronomy (sometimes discovering principles slightly before Europe [1]). The Japenese were also fond of Dutch science books on mechanics and medicine, and were more adept in using firearms [2] than it is usually assumed.
When Europe and the US, now with industrial revolution technology levels, began to harass Asia, Japan was able to modernize quickly and even defeat Russia. But this was only possible because Japan had their own "mini Renaisance" of sorts in the Edo era.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinant#History In Japan, Seki Takakazu (関 孝和) is credited with the discovery of the resultant and the determinant (at first in 1683, the complete version no later than 1710).
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bo-hiya https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/cc/43/61/cc43... https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/0c/39/79/0c39...
???
Portugal might be struggling economically (as most of Southern Europe is), but it is by no stretch of the imagination a failed state:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Fragile_S...
The reality on the ground is that both societies are quite similar. I don't know much about Greece -- except that it's the cradle of western civilisation. When did we start being so nasty to each other?
Portugal is small and was quite poor until the colonization started. It did have quite a large maritime coast and tradition, though.