Vasco da Gama

Evolution is a privilege reserved for the underdogs.

In the 15th century, the Ottoman Empire kicked the Portuguese out of the Red Sea and blocked most of the overland trade between Europe and Asia. They created a world empire, one of the largest the world had ever seen, with the vision of restoring the Roman Empire under Islamic rule. They even used Rome's second capital, Constantinople. (Which of course you know was re-branded as Istanbul thanks to They Might Be Giants.) They got in power the way everyone had for the past two thousand years before them - conquering, subjugating, and culturally dominating.

Now the people on the Iberian Peninsula weren't too happy about this. They were blocked from the overland trade routes which had connected them with India and China since the Pax Romana. And they figured they would prosper because they controlled these trade routes. They would sit on the established patterns to success which they had commandeered and rake in the gold bullion. They had the Afro-Eurasian trade networks by the balls and thought that things would always be that way.

The Spaniards and the Portuguese now had the privilege of being the underdogs. Instead of looking at the world and assuming that it must continue as it always had, they were forced to find new ways to gain power and wealth. So the Portuguese did what no one else had done before and sailed strait to India, all the way around the Cape of Good Hope. The Spaniards made an even greater leap, attempting to sail to India by going west, something no one had ever dreamed of before. And it would have worked, were there not a whole hemisphere in their way. So instead of the traditional land-based empire, extracting tribute and coming in with the imperial army once a decade or so to trash the native population, they opted for a maritime-based, mercantile states.

Western Europe went on to write the next chapter of world history, doing all kinds of horrible things to the native peoples they encountered. And the Ottoman Empire would enter into a slow decline for 400 years until Britain and France, who were the runts of the litter at the time of Ottoman Turkey's ascendancy, carved up the Middle East according to their own designs.

Maybe the cycle has started over. Maybe the empire of trade is over. I wouldn't know, I'm an American (partially). I don't have the perspective of the underdog. I can't evolve.