ABSTRACT
The power struggle inside Europe was not confined to that continent. The battlefield had extended across the globe in the sixteenth century. Ever since, European eruptions reverberated along political fault lines selectively devastating even the remotest corners. These domestic struggles fought in exotic lands, and the relations of European states with the wider world, were fundamentally different from the relations between princes and states at home. What little mutual respect existed there was virtually absent in dealings with other continents. Whenever Europeans had a clear advantage in sophistication and technology, and the incentive to use it, firm control was established. Vast colonial empires were created. The force behind them, imperialism, is as old as man’s history. But in modern times it assumed special prominence and affected in one way or another European relations with the rest of the world.
