Western empires, Christianity, and the inequalities between the West and the Rest, 1500-2010 / Sampie Terreblanche.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 553-562)and indexes.

Part I. Western Maritime empires divide the world into a rich Western world and a poor Restern world -- Reasons for the rise of the Western world in the centuries after 1500 -- Power configurations and the periodisation of Western empires (1500-2010) -- Profiling Western marine empires and understanding their unique characteristics -- Western empires and the dynamics of social and imperial power over the past 500 years -- Western industrialisation and the Great Divergence between the West and the Rest (1820-1950) -- Part II. The first pattern of Western Empires: empires of plunderers, slave traders and settlement colonialists 1530- 1830 -- The first period of deep systemic chaos: the Church in retreat, the yoke of feudalism breaks, two Europes -- The systemic period of the Iberian and the Catholic empires 1530- 1630 -- The systemic period of the Dutch Empire 1648- 1713 -- The systemic period of the first British Empire 1713- 1883.

Part 111. The second pattern of Western empires: empires of exploitation and labour repression -- The second period of deep systemic chaos: revolutionary upheavals against the ancién regime (1775-1820) -- The systemic period of the second British Empire (1846-1914/31) -- The origins of the third world during the second pattern of Western empires (1820-1945) -- Part 1V. The third pattern of Western empires: the pernicious draining of the Restern world by multiple American-led empires after the Second World War -- The third period of deep systemic chaos during the Thirty-One Years War (1914-1945) -- Anti-systemic revolts against Western empires and decolonisation in the twentieth century -- The multiple American post-colonial empires that inconspicuously disrupted, exploited and drained the Rest of the world after the Second World War -- Part V. Capitalism and growing domestic inequalities during the past 500 years -- Successive politico-economic systems and the almost uninterrupted dominanc of 'capitalisms' over 'democracies' since 1500.