too many words

I wrote this paragraph and I don't want to delete it, but it does not belong in the essay I'm currently composing, so I figured I'd post it here...

The Europeans were by far the more technologically advanced society when they came into contact with the natives of Western Africa and the Americas, which put the Europeans at an advantage in obtaining and maintaining cultural dominance in the face of such severe culture shock as these groups encountered. That the Europeans were, by the seventeenth century, actively out to colonize the world speaks to their imperial ambitions. And this empire-building enterprise was literally fueled by the technological prowess of the Europeans. Those technological innovations, in turn, created unique socio-cultural institutions that were peculiar to Europe at the time of the convergence of the Old, New, and African worlds.