Are the Times a'Changin'?

 It was in the 11th century that the Normans started using sailing ships.

Before that, ships were galleys, with lots of oarsmen. The ships had sails, but the sails could only be used when the ship was sailing in the same direction that the wind was blowing. With an East wind, the ship could sail West. If the ship wanted to sail west and the wind was not an East wind, they used the oarsmen.

But the Norman ships were full of knights, with all their armour, and their horses, and no room for oarsmen (who have to be fed and given potable water, which takes a lot of space). So, in 1066, the Normans had to wait until they had an East wind and could sail West to England. While they were waiting, the English Army ran out of food, so a lot of the soldiers went back to their farms to tend their crops and livestock and replenish the English munitions. And then the winds shifted, and the Normans sailed across the channel and defeated the English.

Of course, when Richard Coeur de Lion sailed to Palestine to fight the Saracens, he eventually ran out of munitions and tried to sail back, but the winds were unfavourable, and he never made it (except in some Disney movies where he got back just in time to save Robin Hood from the Sheriff of Nottingham).

But then, in the 15th century, the Italians figured out how to make the first sailing ships that could sail into the wind. One cannot sail due East into an East wind, but one can sail northeast by north or southeast by south and tack to make it to one's destination. No need for oarsmen, so lots room for passengers and cargo.

So Europe managed to conquer just about the entire world and became the richest, most advanced continent (since they managed to destroy the civilisations that had been doing OK before the Europeans arrived with their ships and marines and armies and canons, and generally defeated most of Asia, Africa, the Antipodes, and the Americas.

But then in 1914, a Serb shot an Archduke, and the only thing the Europeans could think of was to have a massive War of Attrition. The US knew England and France, and not much more about Europe, so they loaned Britain and France a lot of money to pursue the war. Britain and France were losing, and the US banks were faced with bankruptcy, so the US declared war on the side of Britain and France, and they managed to win and take every gram of gold from Germany, and also a lot from the Austrian-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire.

Britain and France didn't really recover from the war, and Russia had become the Soviet Union. Britain and France didn't care much about Russia, but the Soviet Union was terrifying, so they let Germany re-arm to help them stop the USSR. Only, after 5 years, Germany looked too strong, so France and Britain decided to destroy Germany, which had allied with the Soviet Union.

The war pretty much finished off all the European countries, and the US forced them to decolonise, so almost all the world's colonies were gradually freed and some became neo-colonies of their former Imperial powers, while other became neo-colonies of the US.

Only now, a lot of those neo-colonies are revolting against neo-colonialism. And the US intend to put a stop to this: the US intend for the world to remain a bunch of US neo-colonies, only that might be a teeny bit more difficult than it was just a few years ago.