What were the factors of European colonial expansion and how was it birthed?

When the Great Age of Sail came, Europe as the center of the Western world began to target the world outside Europe's colonial expansion, Africa, the Americas, Asia, Oceania, the colonizer's figure in the world ubiquitous, and achieved success. Said this not only have to ask, the world's earliest civilization did not appear in Europe, China's achievements in history is also incomparable, why Europe can be so successful in conquering the world?

First of all, the social organization of Europe, after the fall of the Roman Empire, the Germanic people to fill the vacancy of the Roman Empire in Europe on a large scale, the Franks, Anglo-Saxons and so on continue to pour into Europe. The traditional Germanic rural commune that is, marc became the most important grass-roots organizations in Europe, marc village community organization than the traditional eastern society, did not form a strict patriarchal authority, relatively democratic, the property belongs to the collective ownership of the village community, these traditions became the basis of the feudal system in Europe later, the cognac system, the feudal monarchs and feudal ministers, the king's power is relatively weak, the rule of law and the spirit of contract, and so on. The backward system, without the burden of the Eastern society to bear the weight of the late reconstruction of the system, on the contrary, became the advantage of Europe's foreign conquests, bending the road to overtake the car, is the so-called backward leading the law of the advanced in historiography.

In the late Middle Ages, Europe's commodity economy developed, the germ of capitalism, the importance of money came to the fore, gold worship, the traditional ethical relations by the impact of the commodity economy, a typical example is the Marco Polo Travels, the development of capitalist relations of production, the spirit of contract by the protection of state law, the status of merchants to enhance the impact on the traditional feudal economy, and did not form a large amount of capital like that of China which was y immersed in land trading and could not extricate itself from it, which provided the capital for the later colonial expansion.

What cannot be ignored in the colonial expansion is the Renaissance and the Reformation, both of which fall under the category of humanism, the essence of which is the liberation of man, the liberation of human nature and the emphasis on freedom. The task of the Renaissance was to liberate man from the feudal system, and the task of the Reformation was to liberate man from the bondage of the church. From the point of view of individual thought, the Western world's reverence for freedom and the spirit of daring to take risks gradually manifested itself.

Christianity's ecumenical spirit, ecumenical spirit is the original spirit of religion, each religion at the beginning of its emergence, considered the superiority of self-religion, that the pagans are living in ignorance and uncivilized, Christianity, especially Catholicism, which ruled over Europe, believed that the liberation of the pagans from barbarism is the mission given to them by Jesus, this spirit constantly inspired countless missionaries to the the world to preach, and many colonizers went around the world to engage in conquest in the name of religion.

The last is that Europe's resources are relatively scarce, there are not many resources to feed a larger population, from ancient Greece, Europeans have a tradition of foreign colonization, only at that time between the colonies and the mother gang is an equal relationship. When there is overpopulation, Europeans, in addition to the medieval Black Death period of self-digestion, more forms of foreign colonization, many sources show that the crusades in Europe is due to overpopulation. In addition, through the transfer of population, there can be more resources to lay the foundation for the economic development of their own country, thus promoting the development of capitalism and preparing for colonial expansion.