After a crazed gunman murdered 50 people in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, he told police that his motive was to avenge "the hundreds of thousands of deaths caused by foreign invaders in European lands throughout history, [and] the enslavement of millions of Europeans taken from their lands by the Islamic slavers." This statement was an attempt to justify his homicidal attack.  But are his words consistent with the history of the last 500 years?  The record shows that it was population dynamics and intra-European conflicts that played the key roles in the struggle between the West and the rest. Between 1492 and 1915, Europe — despite constant warfare, epidemics, and emigration — increased from 50 million people to 500 million, growing to 27 percent of the world's population.  This skyrocketing birth rate provided the millions of soldiers and settlers who made it possible for the Occident to conquer quite a lot of...(Read Full Article)