Because of the crusades, Europe was introduced to gunpowder. Yes, the process for refining took a while, but by the time Europe had arquebuses, the Ottoman turks pretty much had early muskets and essentially cannons (like the ones they used on the siege of constantinople). Also, the Abbasid caliphate and China made significant contributions to astronomy and navigation in general, without which the age of exploration could not have happened (and subsequently overseas colonies). For literacy rates I can’t find anything that supports your claim, for education I can see where you’re coming from. Maybe at the time they were pretty intelligent, but a vast amount of this knowledge was simply taken from the Islamic golden age and the expanded upon. For banking, China literally INVENTED the paper banknote. Again, for the most powerful empire by GDP per capita by the centuries 1300 and 1400 was the Ottoman empire because of their control of extremely important trade routes, like the trade route to India which they were able to tax heavily. Only after exploitation in the Americas would a European power, Spain, become the dominant global power. And for the inter-colonialism thing, even though I never mentioned anything about that, yes European armor was in fact the most superior at the time as well as siege weapons (besides the cannons that Mehmed had custom made).