It's a long story, anon, and hard to explain in a linear fashion what is a fundamentally … "Covariant" development.
For example, why is it that English is a Latinized German? To understand this, you have to look back to the conquering of Briton by external forces. The French were the predominant power in Europe for centuries and to be considered "literate", you had to know either Latin or French.
To understand where much of this came from, you have to go back to what I call the hamburgers and brambleberries (hapsburgs and babenburgs) and the warring of the germanic tribes when the catholic church decided to begin backing various nobles or lords as divinely right.
Thus, the sun may never set… But all roads lead to….
Rome, where we get the formation of the catholic church, "I am the Senate" and all kinds of other fun events from history that are hotly debated by historians of all eras.
Of course, this is the beast mentioned in Revelation. Congratulations, you survived the rapture - or your great great G35 grandparents did when the Roman armies were roflstomping everything and burning churches down.
Now, this isn't to say that all catholics are bad or that all popes were - you work with what you were born into - but Q does mention some things that imply a financial bailout of sorts that occurred.
The Gates of Vienna - there was a time when the Muslim marauders were laying siege to Vienna and the Pope literally begged and threw open the coffers to get the funding to send the King of Poland out to intercept. The whole thing was a gambit as most European powers used the opportunity to shuffle the cards and make their power plays for territory. Most of my studies paid little attention to the church afterward - but I would suggest starting there.
Because …
There is a long term financial relationship between Europe and the Ottoman Empire. Basically, after being rebuffed at Vienna a third time, the Caliphate fell into decline and where the European bankers had welcomed them, they were now turned away and assets beginning to be seized. This is how the Sun came to never set - or a huge part of it. The Saudis and many others were put in charge over the lands of the former Caliphate as part of the debt collection on the Ottoman Empire.
As best I can figure. There's not exactly a "this is why the world looked the way it did in 1900" book as far as I know, or it's not commonly advocated.
I started by studying the history of Yugoslavia. Some real life game of thrones going on in their history - full of outstanding characters, villains, external meddling… Go back far enough, and some suggest that it was Yugoslavia where our story as humans began - or parts of it.
Regardless of whether that is true - Anastasia of the Romanov family was of a Yugoslavian matriarchal line that is very well interconnected with all western european rulers.
But… That's enough of that part of the talk.