[estaseuropano]

Europe was a backwater of global affairs for millennia, with essentially all wealth moving through different steps further east to China. Then advances in weaponry and shipbuilding enabled it to subject others and extract vast amounts of wealth for ca 150 years (colonialism/imperialism/slavery and mercantilism), which ended about 80-100 years ago. Nothing has managed to fully destroy the advantage since then as technology builds cumulatively, but the traditional superpower china is on the way back up.