The reason colonization spread to other places late is that there was real no demand for what it could offer. The Industrial Revolution changed that. It led to dramatic increase in the need of various supplies, not only from industrial processes, but also from urbanization and the rapid growth of richer middle and upper classes and their increasing consumption. The "Scramble for Africa" only really began in the 1880s, long after slavery had been banned in most places.
My description of the technological differences in the Americas was not off the cuff. Cortes' group was armed, literally, with guns (including handguns), cannons, longswords, and more. They were wearing steel cuirass for defense. And they were facing people wielding wooden clubs, primitive bows, and defending with wooden shields and basic padded armor, if that.
And the entire world, let alone the Americas, started out depopulated. In many ways it still is. Today if we spread out each person there'd be enough area for ~4 football fields per person. But back to the Americas nobody knows what the population was so there range estimates from 8 million to 53 million [1] (excluding one loony toon outlier), with an average estimate of just about 30 million. So if every person was spread out evenly, this would be an average of 273 football fields per person. But of course people, even back then, were packed into relatively densely packed settlements. So you're talking about seeing thousands of football fields of area, on average, without ever seeing a person. Clearly no major depopulation events were necessary.
And the reason the industrial revolution occurred is quite simply because technology reached a threshold enabling it. People had been trying to automate various processes for millennia, but lacked the prerequisites to succeed. It followed the development of a large number of technological breakthroughs - the steam engine, coke over coal, and so on.
My description of the technological differences in the Americas was not off the cuff. Cortes' group was armed, literally, with guns (including handguns), cannons, longswords, and more. They were wearing steel cuirass for defense. And they were facing people wielding wooden clubs, primitive bows, and defending with wooden shields and basic padded armor, if that.
And the entire world, let alone the Americas, started out depopulated. In many ways it still is. Today if we spread out each person there'd be enough area for ~4 football fields per person. But back to the Americas nobody knows what the population was so there range estimates from 8 million to 53 million [1] (excluding one loony toon outlier), with an average estimate of just about 30 million. So if every person was spread out evenly, this would be an average of 273 football fields per person. But of course people, even back then, were packed into relatively densely packed settlements. So you're talking about seeing thousands of football fields of area, on average, without ever seeing a person. Clearly no major depopulation events were necessary.
And the reason the industrial revolution occurred is quite simply because technology reached a threshold enabling it. People had been trying to automate various processes for millennia, but lacked the prerequisites to succeed. It followed the development of a large number of technological breakthroughs - the steam engine, coke over coal, and so on.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_the_Indi...