Native American Empire

[Imran Siddiqui]

The same thing that was their weakness was their strength (the disunity you speak of).

Before the 1600s, Europe was a backwater of the world. But the disunity created a competitive urge, propelling them.

The pressures of densely-populated urban life, continuing social complexity due to economic growth and the impetus of warfare would have spurred industrialization in other cultures.

Doubtfully. You forget that India and China were very unlike Europe. Their densely populated centers were MASSIVE. They had cities with a million inhabitants, which Europe would not have until the 1800s.

Also their respect for nature would have precluded any industrialization that would have involved destroying natural resources. Remember of all the empires that were colonized, only the Japanese adopted the European model of industrialization. Everywhere else, it was mostly resisted.

[chequita guevara]

It wasn't so much the idea as it was the market. Supply and demand in the commodity of human labor power meant that it was necessary to turn to machine power, where as in both India and China, humans were so cheap there was no point in building expensive machines.

[KrazyHorse]

You've got that bass-ackwards, Imran. Until Peary forcibly opened up Japan it was the Asian country which had least adopted Western technology; and not out of any respect for nature, but out of respect for the warrior tradition.

China, the most thoroughly modified and irrigated land in the world in 1500 respected nature more than Europe? Bull****.

Mesoamericans, practitioners of slash-and-burn horticulture and terracing respected nature?

The Caliphate, urbanised to a degree Europe could only dream of in 1500 respected nature?

Europe hit a flurry of development at just the right time, when technology fed industry which fed science etc. They crested a peak that had never been surpassed before, and rode the wave all the way down.

Christianity was as much or more of a cage than any other religion of the world. When men broke free of that cage they grew brave enough to peek at what the world looked like without preconceptions, and they did it at a time when the universe lay open to any with eyes to see and a mind to guide. The early renaissance was enough to drive the sum total of human knowledge to a high enough level to jump Europe to the next level. It has nothing to do with some rapaciousness peculiar to Christianity...

[Imran Siddiqui]

Well there are labor intensive machines .

Machines do require certain materials that do require people to rip up things to get to certain resources. They weren't going to engage in wholesale destruction of land, because their beliefs (religious and social) involved a oneness with nature (especially India with Hinduism).

[KrazyHorse]

India possibly...but not China, not the ME+north africa, and not Mesoamerica.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Actually it was the beliefs peculiar to Christianity that men existed apart and above from nature.

Irrigating land does not mean that there is a lack of respect for nature. The Chinese were very respectful of nature and kept it as much as they could.

Mesoamericans had to feed themselves and did so as best they could without destroying the land.

The Caliphate had two different threads running through them. The respect for nature vs. the Muslim belief that men were above nature (as in Christianity). They didn't go as far as Christians but were close, I'll admit.

People have to live somehow. That doesn't mean they were disrespectful of nature. The Europeans, on the other hand, didn't give a flying **** about nature at all. Didn't try to preserve anything.

And while the Japanese were least developed, when they were forcibly opened they industrialized amazingly quick didn't they? Did the Indians do that after Plassey? Did the Chinese do that after 'Chinese Gordon' made the Manchus submit to his will? No and no. They didn't adopt western industrialism, but tried to stick to their social mores as long as they could.

[chequita guevara]

The Chinese did a lot of environmentally destructive things. They built a thousand mile canal.

The raping of nature that came as a result of industrialism wasn't a precurser to it. While Christianity did have a belief in supremacy of man over nature, they weren't really able to act upon it until the industrial age. Up until that point, much of Europe was still "unimproved." Chainces gave Euope power of nature. Power of nature didn't give Europe machines.

In fact, Euope had invented the steam engine in the Hellanistic period. It wasn't until they developed a practical use for it that industrialism changed the world.

What are new inventions almost always called? Labor saving devices, you can do more work with less people. In labor starved Europe, this is a necessity (which is the mother of invention). In labor glutted China, what's the point, even today?

[Fiera]

I always thought it was the scientific or rational revolution or the Enlightenment or whatever you want to call it that led to Industrialization.

That didn't happen in non-European countries, mostly because of religious intolerance. In fact, most hard-line catholic European countries (like Spain or Ireland) weren't able to catch up with the most developed countries, even until today.

[Ethelred]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
It may be odd, but it is also the truth.

Its dubious oppinion at best. False in many ways.

It ain't just my position though. It's the position of the professor I had the most respect for at University. Oh, and btw, he's a biiiig leftist (in case you were wondering).

Big surprise. Its typical and ignorant as well. MANY cultures have destroyed the environment. Few cultures have some mystical ideas like you are proposing about harmony with nature. China certainly didn't. They had insustrial level iron and porcelin works on top of it. They just never developed mechanization plus they had at least one IDIOT emperor that squashed the burgeoning
Chinese sea trade.

Some non-christian cultures that did destroy their environmen that come to mind imediatly

Easter Island and many other pacific island groups

Anasazi in the American Southwest

Mayans

Various Sub-Saharan cultures that destroyed the land through overgrazing.

Many Eurasian cultures collapsed after their over farmed land failed to produce enough food. The only reason Egypt survived so long was the Nile as a source of new fertile soil on a nearly yearly basis.

Your professor was just propagandizing against the West and christianity in particular. Its utter rubbish. Industrialization is not about raping the environment and that claim about animals is ludicrous given the way many cultures practice animal sacrifice.

Idustrialization had nothing to do with the Spanish taking over most of the New World either.

[Ethelred]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Before the 1600s, Europe was a backwater of the world. But the disunity created a competitive urge, propelling them.

Nonsense. Before the late 1500s maybe. Europe ended that when the Spaniards, Portugeuese, English and Dutch expanded their trade networks by sea. It was sea trade not industrialization that changed Europe into an economic dynamo.

[chequita guevara]

The Anasazi didn't destroy their environment, the global climate changed. They disappeared at the same time that Europe's crops began to fail and the plague came. World wide things got bad anywhere that agriculture had been pushed to its limits right around the begining of the 14th Century.

[Ethelred]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
The Anasazi didn't destroy their environment, the global climate changed.

Both were involved. The Anasazi had allready used up all the timber in their area and the land was damaged by irrigation. There is still a hard alkaline layer under more recent soil all over the areas where the Anasazi were. This is a normal result of irrigation with the crap water available in the Southwest.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Your professor was just propagandizing against the West and christianity in particular.

Seeing as he is fairly pro-Western, I doubt it.

As for overgrazing, if you don't know that that is going to cause problems (because the idea that grass will always be there), then it isn't really because you have no respect for nature, you just don't know any better.

It was sea trade not industrialization that changed Europe into an economic dynamo.

Now you are being ignorant. The sea trade made Europe a little better, but they were still nothing to the Arabs, Chinese, and Indians. It wasn't until pre-Industrial economics that Europe shined vis-a-vis the East, which was MUCH more advanced until the 1700s.

[TheStinger]

Sea trading gave European nations the surplus capital to invest at home which in turn led to the deveopment of industry.

Also as both economies until the ind revolution were by definition pre industirla they were about the same level of development. China may have been richer due to sheer size however it wasn't due to having a more advanced or enlightened economy

[TheStinger]

double post