The late J. M. Blaut, a geographer who passed away in November 2000, had a pet theory. Europe's political and economic domination of the rest of the world in the past four centuries or so was due to a single event: the almost happenstance discovery of America's treasures in 1492 by Europeans, who then used these resources to subjugate the rest of the world and to create a capitalist system that produced the Enlightenment, modern science, the Industrial Revolution, and all the rest.