How do they explain western dominance in other world regions?

[VetLegion]

I was browsing through a list of significant inventions and discoveries of the last millenium and as we all know - the west is responsible for the majority of them.

As a result the west really dominated the last 500 years or so.

I'm not suggesting Europeans are superior or anything like that, but when they teach about world history say in China, how do they explain that?

[Saint Marcus]

they don't.

[Spec]

Western invents it, east makes it better.

Example:

US invented cars, Japan made them better.



Spec.

[Lonestar]

They omit them, or talk about how they invented gunpowder in 700 AD but for some damn reason didn't devolpe it.

[Bereta_Eder]

Or also east invents, west abuses.

example:

China invented gunpowder, europe made it into a weapon.

[Dauphin]

Do they need to explain it?

[Inverse Icarus]

or west invents, went abuses.

example:

America developed the nuke, OH MY GOD, GODZILLA!

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Uber KruX
or west invents, went abuses.

example:

America developed the nuke, OH MY GOD, GODZILLA!

Stupid French blowing up those Pacific atolls.

[Saras]

Originally posted by Spec
Western invents it, east makes it better.

Example:

US invented cars, Japan made them better.



Spec.

Cars were not invented in the US. And the Enigma machine was captured by the Brits

[Harry Tuttle]

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
by Jared Diamond

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0393317552/ref=pd_bxgy_img_2/102-5208769-1152955?v=glance&s=books

Check it out. It's a decent explanantion as to why the West has become so dominant. It doesn't specifically cover the last 500 years, but it does lay the groundwork as to why the last 500 years happened as they did.

[debeest]

Guns, Germs, and Steel. Possibly the most informative book I've ever read. Anyone who thinks that one group achieved dominance because of its own innate superiority rather than because of its geographic inheritance really should read it. The reasons for specific groups' dominance are largely biological, but the reasons lie in the biology of local biomes, not inside the human species in all its modest variation.

And any Civilization player really should read it too, if only to understand what a good simulation of human history Civ really is.

[debeest]

Moreover, it's completely fallacious to state that most of the achievements of the last millennium have come from the West. But as they say, the winners write the history. Here in the West, ruling the world, we claim the achievements regardless of who actually achieved them. Think we'd be anywhere without the Arabic numeral system? Want to back up a second and consider whether you'd consider Arabs part of the Western world?

[DaShi]

Love thy country, not thy race!

[DaShi]

Originally posted by debeest
Moreover, it's completely fallacious to state that most of the achievements of the last millennium have come from the West. But as they say, the winners write the history. Here in the West, ruling the world, we claim the achievements regardless of who actually achieved them. Think we'd be anywhere without the Arabic numeral system? Want to back up a second and consider whether you'd consider Arabs part of the Western world?

[JohnT]

Because we use arabic numerals we didn't invent the scientific method, the industrial revolution, the modern nation state (and the various ideologies that guide them) and all that follows? Hell, even China officially follows the doctrines of a German Jew who developed an ideology based upon his observances of British working conditions, never went East of Prussia his entire life, and didn't have much to say about Asiatic peoples.

But, yeah, whatever.