Destination Europe
Journal: Manchester University Press eBooks
Year: 2018

On the other hand, it could hardly have happened before. European powers largely dominated the world in the eras of colonialism and, later, imperialism and competed fiercely with one another in what they saw as a 'zero-sum game' in the world at large and within Europe itself. Enemy images, and national histories, had been formed in centuries of warfare. Wealth was so scarce that the thought of sharing it with a rival, or trying to increase it through open trade, was virtually impossible.