Within a couple of hundred years the coming of sea power, and with it the means to create empires across the oceans, resulted in large tracts of land in South America and the Caribbean being seized.
He found the means to create this effect with a machine and a manufacturer not too far from Paris.
Share them with the masses and you end up, suggests both Saussure and the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, with the linguistic means to create a society of equals, which is exactly what the hoarders of social and cultural capital don't want.
I think Burroughs got a kick out of that and the demonstration of how easy it was, even with primitive means, to create a televised witch's brew of, say, Nixon's face superimposed on Mao's, speaking with the voice of Hitler or Stalin, or even FDR.
They've achieved a rate of growth not possible from aid or oil and combined bold vision with smart means to create a virtuous, self-fulfilling cycle of rapid development.
Trust in power, Mr Makarenko says, will only come when they are given the unencumbered means to create those inputs, beginning with credible and legitimate elections.
In the decade since its introduction, the traceless Staudinger ligation has provided synthetic chemists and chemical biologists with a chemoselective means to create an amide bond.
With so little means to create cinema, Kurosawa seems to have decided to create theater instead: based on two traditional plays about a feudal lord who must cross into enemy territory to escape his treacherous brother, the film is played with the stylized acting and musical commentary of a Noh drama.
It is his great motivational weapon, part of what Mourinho calls "confrontational leadership", his means to "create some conflict, with the intention to bring out the best from them".
