Taken together, the history in chap. 12 and Shafer’s essay “Southernization” provide us much t ...

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Taken together, the history in chap. 12 and Shafer’s essay “Southernization” provide us much to consider with respect to the Rise of the West, that is, from Europe’s marginal position in the globe in the fifteenth century to its transformation into the center of empires by the late nineteenth. Based on your reading of this history, what do you think are the most relevant factors that made this shift possible before the 1500s? One thing to consider as you write is how powerful, or weak, European civilization had been in comparison with China, India, the Mongols, the Caliphate, among others, in the centuries before 1500. You must contextualize the your analysis by relating it to specific categories (politics, economics, culture, etc.), themes, trends, people, events, transregional connections, parallels, and/or systems that you have learned from the course material up to this point.