How did the West rise in power and the Muslim World decline?

In a Nutshell: The West rose to power primarily due to a handful of elites, who through genocidal policies attempted to subjugate many nations, beginning with the Americas and culminating with the Ottoman Caliphate, driven by an insatiable greed that gave birth to Capitalism. Have you ever wondered how the West rose to power, from the dark ages of isolation, to global dominance? Or how the Muslim world from a position of power, prominence and dominance has sunk into a dark age, divided, impoverished, destitute and unstable? Did you know today's world can be traced back to the conquest of Constantinople by Ottoman Muslims in 1453? I've been thinking about this to make sense of the violence and conflict we are seeing globally, of terrorism and extremism, to make sense of why Islam is such a big issue that we hear about it almost every day in the media from politicians, rarely anything good, almost always something bad. This event created a series of unintended consequences that changed the world. It's an intriguing story... so let's begin. European Dark Ages In the 15th century, Europe was in its dark ages - Muslims in North Africa, Middle East, South Asia and Persia and the Chinese in the East were the dominant and prosperous civilisations. Constantinople sat on the silk trade route - the largest economic artery of the time. Ottoman control of the silk trade route after its conquest in 1453 led European monarchs to seek sea trade routes to the Far East avoiding Ottoman territory. In 1492 the Spanish monarchy funded Columbus to find a sea route to the Far East. Instead of finding India, Columbus discovered the Americas. I say discovered in the most loosest sense of the word as the Americas had already been discovered and indeed were teeming with people. The Incas, Mayans, Aztecs and the Arawaks. But Columbus had something else in mind. This is what he writes about the Arawaks. "They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features... They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance…" Adding: "With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want." (Howard Zinn - A people's history of the United States) Columbus' aim was clear: to enslave the people and force them to dig for gold. On his second expedition he was given seventeen ships and more than 1200 men for this purpose. An eyewitness, Bartolome de Las Casas, tells about the treatment of the natives at the hands of the Spaniards. "Our work was to exasperate, ravage, kill, mangle and destroy; small wonder, then, if they tried to kill one of us now and then…" Colonisation of the Americas Columbus provided an economic colonisation model followed by those who came after him - in effect a "get rich quick scheme". Cortes (1519) performed his march of death against the Aztecs in Mexico. Pizarro (1532) against the Incas of Peru and in North America. The English colonists (1607) used the same tactics, for the same reasons, against the native Indians. This frenzy in the early proto-capitalist states of Europe for gold, slaves, for commodities, spurred the growth of a new money economy rising out of feudalism; the genocide of the indigenous populations was a mere means to an end. Professor David Stannard of Hawaii University in his book "American Holocaust" estimates the number of natives killed at over 100 million. The biggest holocaust in human history - worsened by the fact it was sustained over four centuries. The economic model of colonisation that emerged from the discovery of resources and creation of plantations using the natives as slave labour was so profitable it was adopted in the colonisation of Australia, New Zealand, India, Africa and Asia. Only the Muslim heartlands avoided this fate with the Ottomans preventing colonialist powers entering. The birth of Capitalism Colonisation had two major effects in Europe. First it gave birth to a new wealthy class who found the feudal system did not serve their interests. Europe was ruled by absolute monarchies that were often at war with one another. Wars were expensive, funded through taxation. Political titles began being exchanged for the taxes allowing a new class to see the workings of power. This was the start of the problems... Imagine you have a lot of wealth but the king keeps wanting more for his religious wars as Europe went through reformation with kings and prices challenging the church's grip on power - what do you do? In England, the Tudor monarchs (1453-1603) had absolute power so the new elites sought to strip the monarchy of that power and acquire political power for themselves via a democratic parliament. Parliamentarians stood against the crown throughout the 17th century: the English civil war 1640; leading to the execution of King Charles I by Parliament in 1649 and the Glorious Revolution in 1688. By 1707 Parliament had fought its way to being recognised as part of the governing structure. The Whigs broadly represented the interests of the merchants, traders and bankers and the Tories represented the interests of the monarchy and gentry. Similar revolutions took place in the Americas in 1775, France in 1789 and across Europe bringing a new economic class to power, controlling lands, armies and populations. Now this new economic class had political power. Industrialisation Next, this wealthy class not only wanted to keep their money, but they wanted to increase their wealth. Searching for projects to invest in sparked and funded the industrial revolution (1760 - 1840). In Britain, with Parliament already in their pocket, the industrialists set about building factories and Parliament supplied them with a pool of labour (the prime minister William Pitt the younger) by passing the General Land Enclosure Act of 1801; which forced the peasants out of the countryside into the factories. The enclosures created an army of industrial labour that were reduced to working for starvation wages. A backlash of socialist and communist movements sprang up, seeking to remove the evil of capitalism - most famously Karl Marx writing his magnum opus Das Kapital and the Communist Manifesto critiquing capitalism. Across Europe writers critiqued social conditions of the working class from Charles Dickens in Britain, Victor Hugo in France and Dostoevsky and Tolstoy in Russia. The industrialists petitioned Parliament to pass the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 resulting in a mass of government subsidised wage dependant paupers whose capitalist employers were freed from the burden of paying subsistence wages. Now you can see the shift from feudal monarchical power structures to capitalism, from here it is but a hop and a skip to the postmodern era... By the end of the 19th century, Germany and the United States had begun to challenge Britain's economic lead. Germany had been a divided set of states, united under Bismarck in the late 19th century. Germany then started to seek a piece of the colonial pie, updating its armies and navies competing with the British. This led to military and economic tensions between Britain and Germany and were major causes of the First World War. Destruction of the Caliphate Although it was essentially a European war, it sucked in the Ottoman Caliphate on the side of Germany. Turkish nationalists had hijacked the Ottoman Caliphate in a coup in 1908 and formed an alliance with Germany with the onset of the war. It was subsequently attacked from all directions by the allies and their colonies with millions of troops before it was defeated. In 1924 the 1300-year institution of the Caliphate was dismantled. The Muslim territories were carved up between the European powers, Muslims finally falling from being a global power to dozens of fragmented third world states, economic arteries bleeding to death with Sykes Picot borders, resources extracted and looted by colonial powers, tyrant regimes and bloated governments imposed and expensive oversized militaries and security apparatus created to suppress the masses into subservience. All academic analyses show it went off a cliff edge. A century of decline and decadence set in, a new dark age. Anyone resisting these changes militarily were labelled terrorists, any activist speaking against them was termed an extremist, arrested and tortured. Western academics and nationalists propagated myths alleging the cause of decline was internal rather than external - unpicked and rejected by contemporary research. Even after nationalists sought and achieved "independence" from colonialism, little changed, as Europe retained control. Their treatment was little different to that received by previous colonies; the native American Indians depicted and stereotyped in Hollywood "Cowboy and Indian" movies as savages. Muslims are depicted as terrorists if they respond with violence, extremists is they speak up against oppression. Objections An alternative historic narrative is often presented by Western elites and nationalists known as Whig historiography where the past is presented as an inevitable progression towards ever greater liberty and enlightenment, culminating in modern forms of liberal democracy. The rise of the West is seen as the secularisation of state, removal of religion from power, enlightenment and modernity, with the rise of science and rationalism that allowed the West to prosper. Whilst this narrative has a grain of truth, it omits much of the historical narrative as to the discovery of the new world and its sources of capital that allowed the West to achieve the progress it has. Conclusion The global conflict today is about colonised nations that are trying to liberate themselves. Their nationalist struggle for independence never achieved true independence, colonialism merely morphing into neo-colonialism. A new style of colonialism where local elites operated on behalf of their colonial masters whilst the processes of extraction of resources, control of trade routes, profitable markets remained the same. In a fascinating account, Professor Sampie Terreblanche lists several fortuitous reasons for the rise of the West, enabling global colonialism and capitalism, key amongst them: Western Europe was fortunate the Americas were geographically nearer to them, with favourable wind conditions enabling European sailors to make use of both Easterly and Westerly winds on their trips. American natives not immune to common European diseases allowing most to be wiped out requiring low military effort by the conquerors supplemented with Catholic missionaries proselytising efforts organising and pacifying the natives allowing their labour to be economically exploited. Good fortune the silver mountain at Potosi was discovered in 1545 enabling the Spaniards to produce vast quantities of silver in the century, coupled with China's demand for silver when converting its monetary system to silver driving lucrative trade. As supply of native labour dwindled, Spaniards were fortunate African slaves could be shipped to the America's very cheaply to work on mines and plantations. I've presented a side of Western European history that can largely be seen as the exploitation and manipulation of the majority through a democratic Parliament that is engineered to hugely favour a small aggregate of elite capitalists. In sum, the West has become the cave of the 40 thieves, full of wealth, the rest of the planet is plundered and oppressed. References Blair Worden, The English Civil Wars David Stannard, American Holocaust Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States Edward Said, Orientalism Immanuel Wallerstein, Historical Capitalism Michael Braddick, God's Fury, England's Fire: A New History of the English Civil Wars Sampie Terreblanche, Western Empires Vali Nasr, An Oxford History of Islam Suraiya Faroqhi, The Ottoman Empire Suraiya Faroqhi, Approaching Ottoman History

The muslim powerful nations started deviating from islam e.g the ottoman commit systematic genocides of its people armenians, also their sea routes to the west made them in between WWI and had to choose sides, with their beef with Europe and Russian empire i.e stealing territories from each other , they chose the germans( the wrong side) and in doing so lose their empire after the incumbent emperor was killed in battle and declaration of Turkish independence .