Abstract (EN)

Philip Hoffman is professor at California Tech and has been a recent president of the Economic History Association and co-editor of the Journal of Economic History. His latest book is a masterful tackling of the question « why did Europe conquer the World? ». This is not the same question as « Why was Europe first? ». The conquest largely happened before the Industrial Revolution and, as chapter 7 makes clear, Hoffman does not argue that war, conquest and empire helped Europe become richer. Contra Allen and O’Brien, he argues that the conquest of the world was the sibling rather than the mother of modern economic growth: the institutions that allowed both events were the same.