"Europe can be described as the monstrous shaper of world history. By incorporating overseas regions in their dependent empires and implanting their institutions and ideologies in alien cultures, Europeans inducted most of humanity into the international society of sovereign states. By promoting intercontinental trade, and coercing native labour into the productive enterprises they controlled abroad, Europeans disseminated Western market capitalism throughout the world." "In Europe and the Third World, Bernard Waites has written a stimulating analysis of Europe's role in world history that focuses on Western economic expansion into the regions loosely known as the 'Third World'."--BOOK JACKET.