Sure, if you look at the narrativized version of European human history the way we first conceived of it in the early Renaissance period, there's no other way to see it. It's called living at "the imperial core" for a reason.

World history just tends to be a bit more complicated than that and looking at history as a combination of "overcoming monarchy", "increased technical complexity" and "line goes up" might leave you with a limited view feeding into your pre-existing biases.