Highly recommended: Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (Paul Kennedy) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_and_Fall_of_the_Great_Powers http://en.wikipedia.or

Highly recommended: Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (Paul Kennedy) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_and_Fall_of_the_Great_Powers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_and_Fall_of_the_Great_... You're absolutely right about the Spanish, but it would be more appropriate to say the Hapsburgs, because what we're really talking about here is Spain, Austria-Hungry, the Balkans, The Holy Roman Empire... a huge portion of Europe all controlled centrally. The French followed them, and for a period, the state of power was essentially France vs everyone else. England took off later, and that's the history most of us (Americans) are more familiar with. BUT... this is a very Eurocentric view of history. There was a tremendous amount of other stuff going on leading up to and during this period in China, India, and what was once the Ottoman empire. In hindsight there are many reasons why our planet eventually became Eurocentric, but in 1500 that was not at all apparent - if things in China had gone differently; if they had not closed out new, outside, innovative ideas, we could very well have a very Chinese world today.