How do they explain western dominance in other world regions?

[GePap]

Originally posted by Sikander


I find myself unconvinced of this argument's validity on a number of counts. Spain and Portugal were the first colonial powers but contributed little to the technological explosion of the early modern era, or the renaissance before that. Nations and states that had no colonial presence contributed much more in fact, especially in Italy, Germany / Central Europe. The Dutch had a major impact on seafaring technologies long before they set out on a colonialist's path. I'm not at all convinced that the voyages of discovery were not the result to some extent of a revolution in technology and thought in Europe rather than the other way around.

I don't mean to completely diminish the impact that the New World had on the Old, particularly in regard to new crops and cash, but the impact on the first states to receive these bounties seemed to offer them only a temporary relative benefit, while those states which were more suited to take advantage of these developments as well as those that followed seemed to reap the vast majority of the relative benefit over time. Diamond exceeds his own competence IMO the closer to modern times his opinions reach. Geography does not explain the difference between the advantages gained by Germans to new crops and technologies and those gained by Spain.

What you leave out is that when Spain gained the riches of MesoAmerica and the Andes Charles I was king, he also happened to be Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, and the entirety of the netherlands was his to rule- there is a reason Belgium is known for Chocolate and the great Aztec Calendar and Moctezuma's headdress lie in Vienna, not Madrid. All of Europe gained from the discovery of the Americas. Beside, Europe got to the Americas on the back on Chinese inventions, imporved by the Arabs, imporved by the Europeans. Europeans did NOT invent the lateen sail, the rudder, or compasses. Any way to porve that they would have, given the chance, if others in Eurasia had not done it?

You can not separate the success of one group of Eurasians from the larger Eurasian contributions. The basic culture question becomes this:

Imagine Europeans of 1000 ad had magically all been transported to the new world- their culture and heritage intact- though not their material goods, or pack animals. If they had resettled in the Americas, would they, on their own, based simply on their culture and belief systems, being able to build the tech to cross the oceans and cross colonized a now empty Europe, perhaops slowly filling up?

Personally I think not.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Ned
skywalker -- I have no idea what you are talking about. The question is why did Europe and later the United States in particular dominate? Explaining the collapse of civilization through geography does not demonstrate why European geography caused Europe to dominate. It proves the opposite.

European geography also does not explain why Germany, England, the US and Japan are the leading technological countries in the world.

The geography of Europe combined with the collapse of the Roman empire (itself caused by geography) resulted in many competing groups, which caused technological progress (though delayed, because they had to consolidate and organise themselves).

[GePap]

Actually, the Dark ages would be explained by Diamond by the fact that people had become dependent on a centralized state for the redistibution of wealth, contorl of violence and so forth- when this central control falls, the whole system goes out of whack.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Ned
The question is why did Europe and later the United States in particular dominate? Explaining the collapse of civilization through geography does not demonstrate why European geography caused Europe to dominate. It proves the opposite.

European geography also does not explain why Germany, England, the US and Japan are the leading technological countries in the world.

Ned- for how long do you think the United States has been a/the dominant power?

Compare it with centuries of Islamic military and intellectual dominance, with centuries of Chinese dominance, of Indian dominance.

The reasons for the collapse of power in Europe/the Mediterranean/Islamic/Chinese/Indian worlds are clearly many and complex. You can't simply go, 'bing! geography!' or 'plague' or 'trade' or 'depopulation' or 'lack of usury'.

The rise of Islam, for instance, had much to do with geography, much to do with religious conflict and war and trade. Islam offered tolerance to Monophysite Arabs in Syria, Iraq, Palestine and Egypt- Byzantium offered suppression and extermination to fellow Christians.

Islam began in an area culturally rich, with trading links overland and overseas with India, China, Indonesia, Central Asia, Africa, Northern Europe (through the Caucasus) and Western Europe.

Byzantium and the Sassanid Empire were like champion boxers at the end of a prizefight, punchdrunk from slugging it out in a seemingly endless bout. Sassanid policies were, like Byzantium's, anti-tolerance and a chauvinist variety of Zoroastrianism was being enforced.

Add to this potent mixture a new 'pure' creed based at first on five basic points, a unifying language and a charismatic series of leaders, and you have a recipe for success.

As for the fall from pre-eminence of Islam, or China, again, the reasons would be as varied and complex. Certainly an Ottoman proscription on printed books would not have helped, and the growth of mysticism and its replacement of scientific enquiry in both Safavid and Ottoman empires would mean that both states would fall behind Western empires (especially given the supplanting of Muslim traders by the colonial trading powers of the Dutch, Portuguese and British and the Russians in Central Asia).

[debeest]

Originally posted by Sikander


Spain and Portugal were the first colonial powers but contributed little to the technological explosion of the early modern era, or the renaissance before that. Nations and states that had no colonial presence contributed much more in fact, especially in Italy, Germany / Central Europe. The Dutch had a major impact on seafaring technologies long before they set out on a colonialist's path. I'm not at all convinced that the voyages of discovery were not the result to some extent of a revolution in technology and thought in Europe rather than the other way around.

I don't mean to completely diminish the impact that the New World had on the Old, particularly in regard to new crops and cash, but the impact on the first states to receive these bounties seemed to offer them only a temporary relative benefit, while those states which were more suited to take advantage of these developments as well as those that followed seemed to reap the vast majority of the relative benefit over time. Diamond exceeds his own competence IMO the closer to modern times his opinions reach. Geography does not explain the difference between the advantages gained by Germans to new crops and technologies and those gained by Spain.

Precisely as GePap said, all of Europe gained from the colonization of the New World. Since then, distinctions among European-derived powers are less important in some ways than the distinctions between European v. African or South Asian powers. It's impossible to separate their contributions clearly, because by then trade and travel and communication had improved to a point where cross-fertilization could really speed learning. In any case, who's going to argue that the Spanish and Portuguese were not part of Western civilization, but the Germans were?

I fully agree that the voyages of discovery depended on prior technological developments. That's one reason that China and India and Persia didn't make them. But one those technological developments arose, the voyages of colonization became a dominant factor.

I fully agree that Diamond's analysis breaks down in modern times; but I think it holds through the initial colonization of the Americas, and that's far enough to explain Western dominance.

[debeest]

Originally posted by Ned
The geographical theory also does not work because it does not explain the complete collapse of civilization in Western Europe during the Dark Ages, and the rather backward civilization during the Middle Ages.

Actually, germs explain a great deal of it, and the germs' effects were heavily based on geography. Right now I'm reading "Plagues and Peoples," a book from 1975 that must have greatly influenced Jared Diamond's thinking. For basically geographical reasons, bubonic plague and other new epidemic diseases crashed European populations repeatedly from roughly 200 AD to 1500 AD. We're talking about more than decimation: losses of a quarter, a third, even a half of the population over very large areas. Some of the same germs that wiped out the American populations also helped drive Europe into the Dark Ages. Middle Eastern and Indian populations were not similarly affected, and partly for that reason were able to carry and advance the light of knowledge.

[JohnT]

Right now I'm reading "Plagues and Peoples," a book from 1975 that must have greatly influenced Jared Diamond's thinking.

That's a pretty good book.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by debeest


I fully agree that the voyages of discovery depended on prior technological developments. That's one reason that China and India and Persia didn't make them.

But the Muslim Chinese admiral Zheng He/Cheng Ho did make an epic series of voyages, landing at Sri Lanka, East Africa, South East Asia and the Indonesian archipelago. Admittedly this was a voyage along or close to coastal areas, rather than a hopeful journey across the Atlantic. Unfortunately having an emperor who decides to ban further voyages of discovery and allows the fleet to rot, tends to cramp any possible development of those voyages. It's one of the great what ifs- the African kingdoms south of the Equator had spices, gold, ivory, feathers, and clearly as seen by archaeological evidence (ceramics, etc.) were eager for Chinese goods. Who knows what might have become of such a trading network?

[Berzerker]

For basically geographical reasons, bubonic plague and other new epidemic diseases crashed European populations repeatedly from roughly 200 AD to 1500 AD. We're talking about more than decimation: losses of a quarter, a third, even a half of the population over very large areas. Some of the same germs that wiped out the American populations also helped drive Europe into the Dark Ages. Middle Eastern and Indian populations were not similarly affected, and partly for that reason were able to carry and advance the light of knowledge.

Didn't the Black Death come from the Silk Road region? I read somewhere trade along the Silk Road eventually brought the plague to Europe from a region where people had been subjected to it for eons and had built up a resistance...

It's pretty clear peoples geographically situated in the "center" have greater access to technology, better resistance to disease, but more prone to wars of conquest. And Egypt, Asia Minor, and Fertile Crescent was that center. Technology spread out from there... Samuel Noah Kramer wrote a book on the catalyst of this technology - "History Begins At Sumer" and all of it's "firsts" - although there now appears to be evidence of agriculture originating further east in IndoChina. Another author around the 1910's identified many similarities between the Sumerian and Chinese writing systems.

[debeest]

Yes, the plague apparently came from somewhere in Asia, maybe India, by way of the Middle East. But due to a combination of geographic factors and timing, it didn't devastate those regions the same way as it did Europe (and China); or if so, it happened earlier, at a much less technologically advanced time. By the time it reached Europe, Europe had more or less caught up technologically with Asian powers, and thus was in a position to go into a Dark Age when its population was dramatically reduced.

[debeest]

Originally posted by molly bloom


But the Muslim Chinese admiral Zheng He/Cheng Ho did make an epic series of voyages, landing at Sri Lanka, East Africa, South East Asia and the Indonesian archipelago. Admittedly this was a voyage along or close to coastal areas, rather than a hopeful journey across the Atlantic. Unfortunately having an emperor who decides to ban further voyages of discovery and allows the fleet to rot, tends to cramp any possible development of those voyages. It's one of the great what ifs- the African kingdoms south of the Equator had spices, gold, ivory, feathers, and clearly as seen by archaeological evidence (ceramics, etc.) were eager for Chinese goods. Who knows what might have become of such a trading network?

Yes, Eastern Civilization was still pretty much at the cutting edge of technology right up to that point. But they didn't get to cash in on the New World, partly because the technology (worldwide) to exploit it wasn't quite ripe when they made their trips, and partly because the New World was so far away.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by debeest
Yes, the plague apparently came from somewhere in Asia, maybe India, by way of the Middle East. But due to a combination of geographic factors and timing, it didn't devastate those regions the same way as it did Europe (and China); or if so, it happened earlier, at a much less technologically advanced time. By the time it reached Europe, Europe had more or less caught up technologically with Asian powers, and thus was in a position to go into a Dark Age when its population was dramatically reduced.

Current thinking has the Black Death reaching Europe via the Silk Road as far as the Crimea, from thence on Genoese galleys to Constantinople, from there to the Peloponnese and Italy. Combined with the outbreaks of the Black Death were outbreaks of murrain/anthrax, which given the proximity of peasant farmers to their cattle was more easily spread in those days than in the industrialized United States, even with air conditioning and an efficient postal system.

Along with the outbreaks of the Black Death were several other factors combining to make it a more effective killing machine in Western Europe than in its Central Asian reservoir- poor harvests over several years had increased the populace of towns in Europe, which were already insanitary, and able to feed only a limited number of mouths, and now found themselves coping with an even greater number of indigents in distinctly unhygienic conditions.

Also, quarantine was not readily thought of, and the pervading religious beliefs inculcated a sense of fatalism and an acceptance of the epidemic as a righteous punishment.

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by LDiCesare
The dominance really came out quite late. The Muslims had a great era of domination from Spain to India in the Middle Ages and provided lots of discoveries in mathematics (algorithm is a mispronounciation of the name of the Arab mathematician Al Kwarizmi for instance) and astronomy for instance.
The real domination of the West came from their being adventurous enough to explore the New World, when China, the only other power which was geographically in a position to do so, was land clad because of petty internal politics centuries ago. Japan was too busy internally and with Korea to do something else.

The biggest factor, as pointed out in GGS was probably the diversity of Europe: Many princes, many lands. So when Colombus request was rejected by a pronce, he could go and meet another one. The competition between the various countries/kings in Europe helped them become stronger. This can in turn be explained by geography (Italy, Spain, England, Scotland, Ireland, Switzerland for instance all have natural borders which make unification of these dificult). China on the other hand has no internal barriers to movement/conquest. Thus the Far East only had a few cultures which could have made progress, instead of many in the West.

reason why EU is a bad idea

Jon Miller

[Sikander]

Originally posted by GePap
Actually, the Dark ages would be explained by Diamond by the fact that people had become dependent on a centralized state for the redistibution of wealth, contorl of violence and so forth- when this central control falls, the whole system goes out of whack.

You can see why I find him underwhelming the further he strays from his scientific roots. I mean, duh. I'm sure the first theory of this type still survives, despite having been itself written in the dark ages.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by GePap
What you leave out is that when Spain gained the riches of MesoAmerica and the Andes Charles I was king, he also happened to be Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, and the entirety of the netherlands was his to rule- there is a reason Belgium is known for Chocolate and the great Aztec Calendar and Moctezuma's headdress lie in Vienna, not Madrid. All of Europe gained from the discovery of the Americas. Beside, Europe got to the Americas on the back on Chinese inventions, imporved by the Arabs, imporved by the Europeans. Europeans did NOT invent the lateen sail, the rudder, or compasses. Any way to porve that they would have, given the chance, if others in Eurasia had not done it?

And what I'm saying is not that there was no impact of the New World on the Old, but that the momentum for change had already begun in Europe, while many impacts from the trans-Atlantic exchange in Europe did not kick in until later. Europe was simultaneously beginning to digest the lost inheritance of its Classical knowledge and receiving technical knowledge from the East in larger and larger gulps as it managed to continually improve its contacts. This made Europe more used to adapting to technological change at a faster pace, and when Europe had caught up to the several centuries of innovation it missed out on it began to supply innovations itself at an ever increasing pace. This last bit is certainly in part a product of such things as scientific method, which are considered hallmarks of Western Civilization.

Originally posted by GePap
You can not separate the success of one group of Eurasians from the larger Eurasian contributions. The basic culture question becomes this:

Imagine Europeans of 1000 ad had magically all been transported to the new world- their culture and heritage intact- though not their material goods, or pack animals. If they had resettled in the Americas, would they, on their own, based simply on their culture and belief systems, being able to build the tech to cross the oceans and cross colonized a now empty Europe, perhaops slowly filling up?

Personally I think not.

I find your thought experiment to be pretty unfair. Drop any civilization into a wilderness without any possessions and I can guarantee that the first thing you will see is a die off that makes the dark ages look like a stroll in the park. Like the dark ages, there will be no food surplus to maintain the technicians, and thus much knowledge and huge chunk of the culture will die out in a generation.

Pushing further along, there will be very little pressure for the much smaller population to do anything but attempt to improve their local physical situation. No farms, crops, roads etc. will have the Europeans rooting in the mud for more than the 500 years that it took the historical Europeans to undertake a trans-atlantic voyage of discovery. If they managed to do anything more than become a strange hunter-gatherer group in America, I would imagine that they would focus their efforts on the almost empty North American continent before turning their attentions to Central and South America eventually.