The Dynamics of Global Dominance: European Overseas Empires, 1415–1980. By David B. Abernethy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001. 536p. $35.00

In The Dynamics of Global Dominance David Abernethy advances four main propositions concerning the rise and demise of European overseas empires over the last half-millennium. The first proposition is that the unprecedented and unparalleled success of European states in building overseas empires in the two long phases of expansion (dated with questionable precision from 1415 to 1773 and from 1824 to 1913) was due primarily to the cumulative, synergistic effects of the extended geographical reach, functional specialization, and ability to work in mutually reinforcing ways of European governmental, business, and religious institutions. In each sphere Europeans faced highly effective non-European competitors. But no such competitor could match the European combination of mutually reinforcing advances in all three spheres. This combination was critical in sustaining not just expansion but also colonial consolidation.