The four centuries following 1500 would see the meteoric rise of Western Europe from a cultural backwater to the first culture to dominate the planet. Given Western Europe's tiny size, the question arises: what singled it out as the civilization to rise to global dominance? A century ago, Europeans would attribute their dominance to the moral and religious superiority of European and Christian culture. However, life and history are not quite so simple. Rather, there was a unique combination of forces that converged at the right time and place to make European civilization the culture that would largely define the modern world, especially in terms of its technology and political ideologies.
Spain, Portugal then England were in the right place at the right time to gain the wealth of the new world.