600 year blip in human history is finally coming to an end. One of the great historical ironies is watching people in former European colonial powers lament the hollowing out of their nation-states, the erosion of monetary sovereignty, and the growing influence of unelected bureaucratic institutions like the European Commission and the European Central Bank over their economic and political lives. Then there's the hysteria surrounding immigration, with people insisting that their national identities, cultures, and ways of life are being fundamentally transformed by outsiders. Yet these are precisely the kinds of transformations European colonial powers imposed on much of the world for centuries: the destruction of indigenous political sovereignty, the subordination of local economies to external institutions, the imposition of foreign monetary and administrative systems, and the deliberate restructuring of colonized societies. The historical irony is that many Europeans now invoke the sanctity of national sovereignty and cultural preservation without recognizing how systematically their own states denied those very principles to the rest of the world.