There is no one answer, as this is a topic that is still heavily debated. Answers may range from geographical determinism to simple timing and luck. Additionally some people might even see the question as being a bit loaded, as the colonial period is still the battlefield for a number of ideologies.

In short this question will likely never be answered because it is unanswerable.

Commenters: Please stop saying "Guns Germs & Steel". It's not taken seriously by historians. Jared Diamond himself is not a historian. Answers giving Guns Germs & Steel as part of their explanation are just going to get removed.

This has been discussed extensively here in the past. We've even devoted a whole section of the FAQ to him. He's not a credible source.

Luck, germs, and compounding gains. Luck and germs have been elaborated on ad nauseam, so lets talk about compounding gains. It is the one topic matter that I find my fellow historians to be bizarrely silent about, to the point where it is almost amusing. About a month ago I was driving out for a survey and was listening to one of the Hardcore Histories - Dan Carlin is talking about how the decline of the Roman Empire impacted Western European societies. He went on about how the centralization of much of Europe in Roman hands reduced economic barriers and facilitated substantial economic, scientific, and cultural development but when Imperial Rome began to decline, wealth flowed less freely, there was less investment in infrastructure, and a severe political shock which disrupted the tempo of European development. He does the usual song and dance about how the Dark Ages as a historical epoch is really misleading and talks a bit about the 12th century Renaissance but eventually gets around to observing that Europe doesn't really begin to start taking off again... until the 15th century.

Perhaps its not too surprising that the economic impact of the discovery of the Americas is downplayed, as intellectual history is easier for Historians to grapple with and there was certainly some intellectual momentum prior to the discovery of the Americas which allows one to conceptualize the flourishing of European cultures as a result of internal developments and not external ones. Likewise, there are scarcely any great thinkers of those eras which explicitly deal with the Americas as a source of new intellectual thought. Still, the fact that there is still this sort of mystique and ambiguity surrounding Europe's sudden and unexpected blossoming speaks to the limitations of that internally-focused approach. The reality of the matter is that scientific development and military apparatuses don't appear out of thin air - they cost money. Whereas Roman Expansionism fueled European development in antiquity, the conquest of the Americas fueled its development starting in the 15th century.

In 1492, the net value of all of the gold in Europe was about 200 million dollars. Compared to the Middle East, Africa and China of that time period, Europe was quite simply impoverished and its comparative military and intellectual stagnation reflected that economic poverty. In contrast, by 1600 Europe had access to an equivalent of 1.6 billion dollars in precious metals, essentially all of which came from mines in the former Aztec and Inca Empires. The immediate effect of this wealth would be monumental growth of Spanish military but its long term effects cannot be stated enough. For centuries Europe had been strangled by Muslim control over lucrative trade routes and precious metals but within a span of a few decades the influx of American wealth decimated the economic power of Muslim Empires and all but ensured their eventual collapse. As time went on, this new found wealth would cripple China with out of control inflation too. Most importantly this give the peasants of Europe something that had never been really accessible to them for centuries: money. Suddenly you had a peasant class that could start businesses and accumulate great fortunes. It is from the emergence of this new found social mobility that a little thing we today call "Capitalism" was born, a system which would eventually lead to the overthrow of Feudalism in Europe altogether.

When you narrow in on the details of the two early conquests made by the Spanish and realize how little it had to do with European culture or technologies and how pivotal good time and disease were and then recognize how those victories started a chain reaction which granted Europeans unparalleled wealth, it isn't surprising that said wealth eventually lead to exceptional technological and military improvements. Conversely, if you take every major change to Europe following the discovery of the Americas and then ask "How would this have played out had the Americas not been discovered" it becomes exceedingly difficult to outline a way for Europeans to become dominate, much less exceptional.

It seems maybe I should do some tuning up of the question and some acknowledgement of some of the assumptions and possible misconceptions in my question.

Two mistakes I have made is using the heavily value loaded word 'dominate' which has rightly sparked the discussion of if Europeans had ever 'dominated' and when. The second is giving arbitrary dates such as 'after the 1500s.

I may still frustrate some of you as I am asking an inherently broad and general question, not related to a specific event in time as such. Rather what I am picking up on and trying to understand is this.

Throughout history various groups of people have at various times colonised or influenced other areas. There were the Egyptians, Phoenicians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Chinese, Indian, Mongol, Arabian so on, (I am only picking up on ones that came into my head at the time). Granted also I am saying 'European' rather than 'British, or 'Spanish' or 'American' (from the outset of this question I view America as European due to their cultural and ethnic heritage. But you could say that at a particular time the Islamic world was more culturally, economically or intellectually influential in its sphere.

I am simply acknowledging that beginning with Spanish and Portuguese exploration, Europeans began to spread out across the world. People such as the Phoenicians, Arabians or Chinese had previously done similar, and you could arbitrarily said that they were in some way economically, culturally, ideologically (etc) influential or dominant. However, I don't think you can say that the Arabians or Chinese explored and colonised to the same extent as the Europeans. Im sure that maybe in certain areas they had more deeply ingrained influence than Europeans had perhaps. But, I think Europeans have colonised to an unprecedented extent, fundamentally altering and influencing the Americas, and Australasia, and at various times holding dominance over different parts of the world.

As some of you rightly pointed out, Europeans were by no means 'dominant' during the 1500s onwards. I agree not until the 1800s could Europeans be said to have in some aspect had dominance in the world. They had colonised North America, and altered the ethnicity and culture of South America, there was the Scramble for Africa and the subjugation or influence over many parts of Asia and the Middle-East. If they didn't have cultural or ideological influence, in military terms they dominated large regions

So in that sense, was it just a matter of timing, where Europe's rise coincided with technology allowing for a greater scope? Where in the past, cultures or groups of people could only spread so far, Europeans were able to spread much further thanks to better technology (an early, vague form or globalisation)

Or, was it also a matter of ideology where Europeans were more aggressive? Perhaps the Arabians and Chinese could have to an extent done the same but chose not to

So, sorry for some or many of you as I am asking an inherently broad and general question, not looking necessarily at specific events, but am asking if there were any broad historical trends that led to Europeans having dominance over large areas of the world

I read a interesting article about this by Philip T. Hoffman called "Why Is It That Europeans Ended Up Conquering the Rest of the Globe? Prices, the Military Revolution, and Western Europe’s Comparative Advantage in Violence". In it he argues that the reason Europe managed to conquer the rest of the World, was because of military innovations that Europe developed because of a sort of military tournament. By this he means that, at least after the medieval period, kings of Europe (that is Habsburgs, Bourbons etc) fought small wars all the time because they faced a small risk of loosing their throne in these wars, as wars to depose a king was rare in this period (1500-1799s). Because of this small risk of losing their throne combined with the need to gain prestige, the kings really had no reason not to fight, which meant that war was quite common in Europe. With this proliferation of war in Europe, the need to innovate became large, and thus European armies became quite advanced (they developed firearms), which in turn made it easy for them to conquer other countries.

He compares this style of tournament war in Europe with the Chinese, Japanese and Ottomans to show how their form of warfare differs from the Europen form. In short, the Chinese have been a stable country for so long, that they really did not need to innovate their military, and thus stagnated militarily compared to European countries. Japan had some form of tournament style of war during their civil war period, but the need to innovate then disappeared when Japan was united under the Shogun and Emperor. The Ottomans also fought a lot of wars, but he argues that because a lot of this was against, what he refers to as "nomads", they did not face the need to innovate as much as Europe.

Source: (Why Is It That Europeans Ended Up Conquering the Rest of the Globe, Philip T. Hoffman)

So in short: Europe, at least according to the argument by Hoffman, managed to dominate the World because they had fought enough wars with themselves before moving on to the rest of the World, and thus invented good enough firearms to conquer the world. Stable countries then had no chance, as they simply lacked the guns to defend themselves.

So European world domination is actually a very limited time frame of the 19th and 20th century in my opinion, and it was predicated on many factors, but I'll briefly discuss what are some of the important ones, i dont have the time, or expertise to go indepth in these, but ill give some general pointers to what made world domination a possiblity.

To set the stage, the European powers did have empires before this time, but asia and Africa were still not completely dominated by Europe at this point. In Africa the extent of colonization where a myriad of coastal forts built to ensure a european nation's trade in that area, these where limited to the coastal regions, but would later form one of the justifications for colonizing Africa.

In Asia there where more tangible holdings, and the trading companies did exert huge political influence, especially in India and in some of the East Indies where the Dutch had huge influence over the trade. But in many ways the policies were focused on the interests of private enterprise, huge corporations were interested in bringing asian products to Europe, there was really not much demand for European products in Asia, so the priority was to secure trade routs and therefore the huge trade ports over completely dominating the territory as a whole.

Now to the world domination of the 19th century, we see the beginning of a massive technological advantage in the war between the british and Burma, where the introduction of steampowered ships made a huge difference for the british. Here is a quote from Thomas Misa's book Leonardo to the Internet.

An early indication of the value of steamers in imperial India came in the first Anglo-Burmese war (1824-26). at first the war went badly for the British, who hoped to claim valuable tea-growing lands recently annexed by Burma. Britain's hope for a quick victory literally bogged down--in the narrow twisted channels of the lower irrawaddy River. Britain's majestic sailing vessels were no match for the Burmese prau, a speedy wooden craft of around 90 feet in lenght proppeled by up to seventy oarsmen and armed with heavy guns fixed to its bow. The British lost three-quarters of their force, mostly to disease, in the swamps of the Irrawaddy. The tide turned abruptly, however, when the British ordered up three steam vessels whose shallow draft and rapid maneuverability worked wonders.

This allowed the british to reinforce a diminshed force with ease, and one can argue that this war also saw the first iteration of the gunboat that allowed the british to run down the man-powered praus and threaten the capitol forcing a surrender.

The impressive showing of the British steamships ensured that the British invested heavily in this new technology and it became one of three technological linchpins for later European domination of the continent with it's ability to both transport people and goods over longer distances with less risks and cost, as well as it's military capabilities, both of which gave Britain and the western powers a huge advantage over other nations.

The second linchpin was the telegraph. This allowed the governments in Europe to be much more involved in the goings-on in their territories outside Europe. This accelerated the bridging of the gap of information started by the introduction of the steamboat, but maybe even more important it allowed for huge territories such as india to be controlled by a relatively small force, because they could respond swiftly to any threat both external and internet because they no longer had to rely on information being carried by vessels. One example from India that I would like to mention is the Indian rebellion of 1857, when the telegraph allowed the british to disarm many potential rebels before they got word of the rebellion, as well as allow them to reinforce in time and plan massive troop movements against the Indian rebels. I believe this illustrates the importance of the telegraph in this era which gave the european powers a huge advantage in information at any given time.

The third linchpin was the railroads, now im only going to mention it because it's important, but the raildroad allowed troops to be moved inland in a way never before seen, and again gave the European powers a massive military advantage in that they could easily move troops between hotspots and could supply and reinforce troops over greater distances than ever before. Another thing railroads did was give incentive to conquer areas further inland, with the ability to transport goods from greater distances came the desire to control these areas.

There where many reasons that it was a political necessity for expansion into new areas, the emergence of nationalism is noted as one important piece in the puzzle, that along with a wave of democratization is Europe throughout the 19th century created a new political landscape which created increasing pressure from industry to provide new avenues for exports for the booming economies in europe. There was also a need to ensure your own countries political, economic and military power relative to the other great powers, so you had to join in on the idea of empire, or watch the other powers reap all the benefits and eclipse you.

I kinda planned to write more, and i may write more indepth if there is anyone who wants it, but i was cut short and had to hurry this up, so if someone wants me to return and expound upon any of these very general points ill do it later.