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The article overlooks a very important factor, that only Europe had colonies in the Americas, and that brought massive wealth to the continent since the XVI cen

The article overlooks a very important factor, that only Europe had colonies in the Americas, and that brought massive wealth to the continent since the XVI century. Before that, the Middle-East, India and China were , in general, more technologically and scientifically advanced than Europe.

jcranmer 10y ago
Well, the key question is why did the Arab World and Asian civilizations fail to do the colonization that the Europeans did. Also, the parity between Europe and the rest of Eurasia was largely achieved around the 1400s, which is to say, prior to the first wave of colonization.
- bluedino 10y ago
  >> why did the Arab World and Asian civilizations fail to do the colonization that the Europeans did Perhaps because of the sheer size of Asia. Western Europe isn't exactly large.
  - clort 10y ago
    Western Europe? Do you mean the landmass that extends all the way from the Atlantic ocean to the Pacific? You can walk all the way from the Bering strait to the Atlantic Ocean, and down to the tip of Africa.. thats a pretty large landmass and there was no gulf between Asia and Europe. (its pretty inhospitable in parts I agree, but the Mongol Empire reached the Mediterranean)
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - oh_sigh 10y ago
    Also, perhaps, because the Arabs who were conquering were generally a land-based civilization, whereas the English, Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese, were all sea faring civilizations. Certainly the Arabs had boats and knew how to use them, but I'm not sure sea voyages held the same cultural cachet in the ancient Arab world as it did in the ancient European coastal civilizations.
- rusk 10y ago
  I think the key to this question is ocean going vessels. The big colonisers the English, French, Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese were all seafaring nations. This was the platform from which the global colonisations of 1400 onwards sprung. What were the peculiar conditions that caused these guys to take to sea in the first place and why didn't their Asian counterparts do likewise? I think the Arab world can lay claim to some conquests - Spain for a while anyway ...
  - throwaway29292 10y ago
    I think this is an important question, why did the European nations have more success in colonization? Was it something inherent in the nature of Arab/Asian cultures that made them less willing to travel oceans and capture new territories? They have coastlines and trade routes too. Can it be explained by history/climate/geography/religion?
- dagpiker 10y ago
  All of the Middle East, North Africa and parts of Spain were "colonized" by the Arab world during the conquests after Mohammed's death, much before the first wave of European colonization. It was not in a seafaring fashion but it was no less monumental and likely resulted in vital knowledge in math and the sciences being passed on during a time when Europe was one of the most backwards places on earth.
- ttsubotai 10y ago
  The Arabs conquered North Africa (which speaks Arab to this day), Persia, Spain (from the 700 to the 1400, a fairly big ammount of time) and they where able, by means of maritime commerce and the spead of Islam, to influence lands as far as Malaysia and the Philipines. The Turks conquered Constantinople, the capital of one of the most advanced civilizations in Europe, and they employed the new cannon technology to successfully besiege the city in 1453. The Mughal empire pretty much colonized India in the 1500s, and did it basically with gunpwder. [1] Xinjiang, Tibet, and Vietnam were occupied by different Chinese dynasties several times. While it began in the XVII century, China pretty much colonized Taiwan, despite previous Spanish/Dutch. China had a significant commercial presence in the Indic Ocean and Southeast Asia by the 1400's, and substantion immigration to SE Asia - specially to Malaysia. Ming China had substantial naval technology, and they have repeatedly won naval battles against the Portuguese, one of the great naval powers of the time [2]. They invented fire-arrows, basically incendiary rockets, frequently used agrains ships. [3] The Arabs, Turks and Chinese of the 1400-1600 were colonising/conquering other lands, making maritime commerce and exploration, and had gunpowder technology good enough to beat European powers at the time. The Arabs specially had a strong presence in Africa and did as much slaving as the Portuguese. So in terms of technology, the civilizations in Asia where more or less equivalent to Europe. They did not fail at colonisation, they just had much less to colonise, and less interest to explore. The reasons are: 1- Of the advanced civilizations of the time, Europe was the closer to Americas, a large, a rich continent whose inhabitants did not use metals nor gunpowder as in the rest of Eurasia. Native Americans had no immunity to Old World diseases too. The Turkish or Chinese could very easily defeat the Incas and colonise portions of the Americas, had it been closer and they knew about it in time to do so. But Europe was closer, they discovered it first, and the countries of Europe stated competing to colonise it. By the time Asians realized the existence of America, it was probably totally colonized. 2- Europe was very interested in commerce with India, specially access to spices, and America was pretty much discovered by accident in an attempt to find a new route to it [4]. The Chinese and Arabs already had easy access to the Indic Ocean Commecial zone, so they had little incentive to expeditions. The Chinese, in particular, could simply grow their own spices, produced their own silk and porcelain and had little interest in foreign products, and even less interest in expading their religions (the Muslims did spread Islam as far as the Philipines and even to China) The Europeans sufferd from Turkish commercial blockades, and had to contour Africa to have access to Indian Continent, which was a long and dangerous route. So they eventually tried a new route. tl;dr: Europe discovered and colonized the Americas because it was nearer and because of the lucrative spice trade. Asia did not because it is more distant and because they could grow their own spices. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mughal_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mughal_Empire [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tunmen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tunmen [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_arrow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_arrow [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyages_of_Christopher_Columbus#Funding_campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyages_of_Christopher_Columbu...
- UncleMeat 10y ago
  This sort of question is itself poor history. We cannot cleanly use today's popular cultural boundaries like "europe" and "arab world" to describe people 600 years ago. The assumption that we can bake all european nations into one civilization that has coherent and universal cause-effect relationships is not really solid.
  - woodandsteel 10y ago
    So what is your explanation as to why the West charged ahead, but the Middle East stagnated?
    - UncleMeat 10y ago
      Its the wrong question, which is why you don't tend to find a lot of respected historians writing books that seek to answer this question. A lot of assumptions are baked into this question that historians do not think are valid. The sort of "why the west won" pop history makes experts cringe in the same way that articles on AI hysteria might make experts here cringe.
- woodandsteel 10y ago
  I guess the answer is complicated, but clearly one factor is the Arab golden age of science ended when it was suppressed by islamic conservatives, but modern science was then adopted by the West.
  - jcranmer 10y ago
    The Islamic Golden Age is usually considered to end after the Mongol sack of Baghdad, back in 1258. The main rise of Islamic conservatism doesn't really start until after the Ottoman Empire starts to decline, about the loss of the Battle of Vienna in 1683. Even then, it should be noted that the Islamic fundamentalism doesn't really arise until the 20th century.
    - fallingfrog 10y ago
      Right. I think one important factor is that western europe was spared from the mongol conquest and genocide- china and the Middle East were not.
mafribe 10y ago
This overlooks why Europeans were able to achieve colonisation. Let's remember that e.g. the Inca empire, one of the biggest empires the world had ever seen at the time, was essentially colonised by 168 men (with one canon) [1]! And in a territory (Andes) that was inhospitable to the Spanish. This is quite mind-boggling. There are many reasons for this, but clearly an important reason is that the conquered empires where themselves forged with violence (and did colonise neighbours), and internally divided, more so than the Europeans. Divide-and-conquer [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_conquest_of_the_Inca_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_conquest_of_the_Inca_E...
- jogjayr 10y ago
  > This overlooks why Europeans were able to achieve colonisation. Columbus stumbled upon the New World while looking for a new sea route to Asia. There were no Chinese or Indian traders looking for sea routes to Europe. Before industrialization, there weren't that many things Europe had to offer that weren't already available elsewhere (Asia already had firearms and ships, maybe not as good, but good enough for the era). Whereas India had pepper and spices and China had silk, both of which were highly valued in Europe and could not be produced domestically. > Let's remember that e.g. the Inca empire, one of the biggest empires the world had ever seen at the time, was essentially colonised by 168 men (with one canon) [1] ... There are many reasons for this, but clearly an important reason is that the conquered empires where themselves forged with violence There were other reasons too. Pizarro's men had steel armor and weapons whereas the Incas had stone or bronze weapons and padded armor. They had horses (mounted lances can do stunning amounts of damage to unprepared infantry) and the Incas had no experience in dealing with horse-mounted troops when you're on foot (spear walls, spiked pits etc). Pizarro held the Incan emperor hostage. Smallpox and other diseases took their toll later on. etc. etc.
  - david927 10y ago
    >There were no Chinese or Indian traders looking for sea routes to Europe. That's possibly not true. The author of this book makes a compelling case the Chinese had actually been exploring earlier: https://www.amazon.com/1421-Year-China-Discovered-America/dp/0061564893 https://www.amazon.com/1421-Year-China-Discovered-America/dp...
dep_b 10y ago
That's why Germany, Switzerland, Italy and all the other countries that didn't have any significant share in colonization did just as well anyway. And Portugal is almost a failed state while they did have huge colonies.
- mafribe 10y ago
  I'd venture a different theory: Germany and Italy were not unified and pacified states at the time (and Switzerland is tiny and doesn't have a coast). In contrast, the European empire builders, Portugal, Spain, Netherlands, and the UK were unified, pacified, reasonably large/wealthy and sea-faring.
  - icebraining 10y ago
    reasonably large/wealthy Portugal is small and was quite poor until the colonization started. It did have quite a large maritime coast and tradition, though.
  - dep_b 10y ago
    The Netherlands are tiny and a very young country at that time surrounded by much stronger neighbors. With a good fleet defensible though since a lot of parts can be flooded to prevent invasion.
- TelmoMenezes 10y ago
  > Portugal is almost a failed state ??? Portugal might be struggling economically (as most of Southern Europe is), but it is by no stretch of the imagination a failed state: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Fragile_States_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Fragile_S...
  - dep_b 10y ago
    The average income in Portugal is almost half of what people earn in neighboring Spain and still there's a ton of people without a job. It's not a failed state but it's more like Greece than Spain for sure.
woodandsteel 10y ago
>The article overlooks a very important factor, that only Europe had colonies in the Americas, and that brought massive wealth to the continent since the XVI century. Before that, the Middle-East, India and China were , in general, more technologically and scientifically advanced than Europe. That's an important point. However, what was important over the long-term is what the West did with that new wealth, namely feed a significant portion of it into helping the self-propelling dynamics the article describes. The other civilizations, in contrast, had self-perpetuating dynamics that prevented growth and technological progress beyond a certain level, as least for the most part.
- ttsubotai 10y ago
  That's the central point of the article. But I still feel it should have mentioned America's colonisation and the wealth it brought to Europe. Italy did not had access to American colonies, but was very important for the Renaisance. Yet some historians say it beneffited from absorbing Greek scholars the fled the fall of Constantinople. There are other factors that may encourage artistic and scientific advancement. The peace of Edo era in Japan (1603-1868), and a Samurai class that had no wars to fight anymore brough many artistic, cultural and scientific inovations. The Japanese of the era had relativelly high literacy rates, developed mathematics and astronomy (sometimes discovering principles slightly before Europe [1]). The Japenese were also fond of Dutch science books on mechanics and medicine, and were more adept in using firearms [2] than it is usually assumed. When Europe and the US, now with industrial revolution technology levels, began to harass Asia, Japan was able to modernize quickly and even defeat Russia. But this was only possible because Japan had their own "mini Renaisance" of sorts in the Edo era. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinant#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinant#History In Japan, Seki Takakazu (関孝和) is credited with the discovery of the resultant and the determinant (at first in 1683, the complete version no later than 1710). [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bo-hiya https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bo-hiya https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/cc/43/61/cc4361f849fd154741ff8bf19e3f3380.jpg https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/cc/43/61/cc43... https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/0c/39/79/0c39794e8aedd43413ee10ba4045c97e.png https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/0c/39/79/0c39...

jcranmer 10y ago

Well, the key question is why did the Arab World and Asian civilizations fail to do the colonization that the Europeans did. Also, the parity between Europe and the rest of Eurasia was largely achieved around the 1400s, which is to say, prior to the first wave of colonization.

bluedino 10y ago
>> why did the Arab World and Asian civilizations fail to do the colonization that the Europeans did Perhaps because of the sheer size of Asia. Western Europe isn't exactly large.
- clort 10y ago
  Western Europe? Do you mean the landmass that extends all the way from the Atlantic ocean to the Pacific? You can walk all the way from the Bering strait to the Atlantic Ocean, and down to the tip of Africa.. thats a pretty large landmass and there was no gulf between Asia and Europe. (its pretty inhospitable in parts I agree, but the Mongol Empire reached the Mediterranean)
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- oh_sigh 10y ago
  Also, perhaps, because the Arabs who were conquering were generally a land-based civilization, whereas the English, Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese, were all sea faring civilizations. Certainly the Arabs had boats and knew how to use them, but I'm not sure sea voyages held the same cultural cachet in the ancient Arab world as it did in the ancient European coastal civilizations.
rusk 10y ago
I think the key to this question is ocean going vessels. The big colonisers the English, French, Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese were all seafaring nations. This was the platform from which the global colonisations of 1400 onwards sprung. What were the peculiar conditions that caused these guys to take to sea in the first place and why didn't their Asian counterparts do likewise? I think the Arab world can lay claim to some conquests - Spain for a while anyway ...
- throwaway29292 10y ago
  I think this is an important question, why did the European nations have more success in colonization? Was it something inherent in the nature of Arab/Asian cultures that made them less willing to travel oceans and capture new territories? They have coastlines and trade routes too. Can it be explained by history/climate/geography/religion?
dagpiker 10y ago
All of the Middle East, North Africa and parts of Spain were "colonized" by the Arab world during the conquests after Mohammed's death, much before the first wave of European colonization. It was not in a seafaring fashion but it was no less monumental and likely resulted in vital knowledge in math and the sciences being passed on during a time when Europe was one of the most backwards places on earth.
ttsubotai 10y ago
The Arabs conquered North Africa (which speaks Arab to this day), Persia, Spain (from the 700 to the 1400, a fairly big ammount of time) and they where able, by means of maritime commerce and the spead of Islam, to influence lands as far as Malaysia and the Philipines. The Turks conquered Constantinople, the capital of one of the most advanced civilizations in Europe, and they employed the new cannon technology to successfully besiege the city in 1453. The Mughal empire pretty much colonized India in the 1500s, and did it basically with gunpwder. [1] Xinjiang, Tibet, and Vietnam were occupied by different Chinese dynasties several times. While it began in the XVII century, China pretty much colonized Taiwan, despite previous Spanish/Dutch. China had a significant commercial presence in the Indic Ocean and Southeast Asia by the 1400's, and substantion immigration to SE Asia - specially to Malaysia. Ming China had substantial naval technology, and they have repeatedly won naval battles against the Portuguese, one of the great naval powers of the time [2]. They invented fire-arrows, basically incendiary rockets, frequently used agrains ships. [3] The Arabs, Turks and Chinese of the 1400-1600 were colonising/conquering other lands, making maritime commerce and exploration, and had gunpowder technology good enough to beat European powers at the time. The Arabs specially had a strong presence in Africa and did as much slaving as the Portuguese. So in terms of technology, the civilizations in Asia where more or less equivalent to Europe. They did not fail at colonisation, they just had much less to colonise, and less interest to explore. The reasons are: 1- Of the advanced civilizations of the time, Europe was the closer to Americas, a large, a rich continent whose inhabitants did not use metals nor gunpowder as in the rest of Eurasia. Native Americans had no immunity to Old World diseases too. The Turkish or Chinese could very easily defeat the Incas and colonise portions of the Americas, had it been closer and they knew about it in time to do so. But Europe was closer, they discovered it first, and the countries of Europe stated competing to colonise it. By the time Asians realized the existence of America, it was probably totally colonized. 2- Europe was very interested in commerce with India, specially access to spices, and America was pretty much discovered by accident in an attempt to find a new route to it [4]. The Chinese and Arabs already had easy access to the Indic Ocean Commecial zone, so they had little incentive to expeditions. The Chinese, in particular, could simply grow their own spices, produced their own silk and porcelain and had little interest in foreign products, and even less interest in expading their religions (the Muslims did spread Islam as far as the Philipines and even to China) The Europeans sufferd from Turkish commercial blockades, and had to contour Africa to have access to Indian Continent, which was a long and dangerous route. So they eventually tried a new route. tl;dr: Europe discovered and colonized the Americas because it was nearer and because of the lucrative spice trade. Asia did not because it is more distant and because they could grow their own spices. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mughal_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mughal_Empire [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tunmen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tunmen [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_arrow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_arrow [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyages_of_Christopher_Columbus#Funding_campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyages_of_Christopher_Columbu...
UncleMeat 10y ago
This sort of question is itself poor history. We cannot cleanly use today's popular cultural boundaries like "europe" and "arab world" to describe people 600 years ago. The assumption that we can bake all european nations into one civilization that has coherent and universal cause-effect relationships is not really solid.
- woodandsteel 10y ago
  So what is your explanation as to why the West charged ahead, but the Middle East stagnated?
  - UncleMeat 10y ago
    Its the wrong question, which is why you don't tend to find a lot of respected historians writing books that seek to answer this question. A lot of assumptions are baked into this question that historians do not think are valid. The sort of "why the west won" pop history makes experts cringe in the same way that articles on AI hysteria might make experts here cringe.
woodandsteel 10y ago
I guess the answer is complicated, but clearly one factor is the Arab golden age of science ended when it was suppressed by islamic conservatives, but modern science was then adopted by the West.
- jcranmer 10y ago
  The Islamic Golden Age is usually considered to end after the Mongol sack of Baghdad, back in 1258. The main rise of Islamic conservatism doesn't really start until after the Ottoman Empire starts to decline, about the loss of the Battle of Vienna in 1683. Even then, it should be noted that the Islamic fundamentalism doesn't really arise until the 20th century.
  - fallingfrog 10y ago
    Right. I think one important factor is that western europe was spared from the mongol conquest and genocide- china and the Middle East were not.

mafribe 10y ago

This overlooks why Europeans were able to achieve colonisation. Let's remember that e.g. the Inca empire, one of the biggest empires the world had ever seen at the time, was essentially colonised by 168 men (with one canon) [1]! And in a territory (Andes) that was inhospitable to the Spanish. This is quite mind-boggling. There are many reasons for this, but clearly an important reason is that the conquered empires where themselves forged with violence (and did colonise neighbours), and internally divided, more so than the Europeans. Divide-and-conquer [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_conquest_of_the_Inca_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_conquest_of_the_Inca_E...

jogjayr 10y ago
> This overlooks why Europeans were able to achieve colonisation. Columbus stumbled upon the New World while looking for a new sea route to Asia. There were no Chinese or Indian traders looking for sea routes to Europe. Before industrialization, there weren't that many things Europe had to offer that weren't already available elsewhere (Asia already had firearms and ships, maybe not as good, but good enough for the era). Whereas India had pepper and spices and China had silk, both of which were highly valued in Europe and could not be produced domestically. > Let's remember that e.g. the Inca empire, one of the biggest empires the world had ever seen at the time, was essentially colonised by 168 men (with one canon) [1] ... There are many reasons for this, but clearly an important reason is that the conquered empires where themselves forged with violence There were other reasons too. Pizarro's men had steel armor and weapons whereas the Incas had stone or bronze weapons and padded armor. They had horses (mounted lances can do stunning amounts of damage to unprepared infantry) and the Incas had no experience in dealing with horse-mounted troops when you're on foot (spear walls, spiked pits etc). Pizarro held the Incan emperor hostage. Smallpox and other diseases took their toll later on. etc. etc.
- david927 10y ago
  >There were no Chinese or Indian traders looking for sea routes to Europe. That's possibly not true. The author of this book makes a compelling case the Chinese had actually been exploring earlier: https://www.amazon.com/1421-Year-China-Discovered-America/dp/0061564893 https://www.amazon.com/1421-Year-China-Discovered-America/dp...

dep_b 10y ago

That's why Germany, Switzerland, Italy and all the other countries that didn't have any significant share in colonization did just as well anyway. And Portugal is almost a failed state while they did have huge colonies.

mafribe 10y ago
I'd venture a different theory: Germany and Italy were not unified and pacified states at the time (and Switzerland is tiny and doesn't have a coast). In contrast, the European empire builders, Portugal, Spain, Netherlands, and the UK were unified, pacified, reasonably large/wealthy and sea-faring.
- icebraining 10y ago
  reasonably large/wealthy Portugal is small and was quite poor until the colonization started. It did have quite a large maritime coast and tradition, though.
- dep_b 10y ago
  The Netherlands are tiny and a very young country at that time surrounded by much stronger neighbors. With a good fleet defensible though since a lot of parts can be flooded to prevent invasion.
TelmoMenezes 10y ago
> Portugal is almost a failed state ??? Portugal might be struggling economically (as most of Southern Europe is), but it is by no stretch of the imagination a failed state: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Fragile_States_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Fragile_S...
- dep_b 10y ago
  The average income in Portugal is almost half of what people earn in neighboring Spain and still there's a ton of people without a job. It's not a failed state but it's more like Greece than Spain for sure.

woodandsteel 10y ago

>The article overlooks a very important factor, that only Europe had colonies in the Americas, and that brought massive wealth to the continent since the XVI century. Before that, the Middle-East, India and China were , in general, more technologically and scientifically advanced than Europe. That's an important point. However, what was important over the long-term is what the West did with that new wealth, namely feed a significant portion of it into helping the self-propelling dynamics the article describes. The other civilizations, in contrast, had self-perpetuating dynamics that prevented growth and technological progress beyond a certain level, as least for the most part.

ttsubotai 10y ago
That's the central point of the article. But I still feel it should have mentioned America's colonisation and the wealth it brought to Europe. Italy did not had access to American colonies, but was very important for the Renaisance. Yet some historians say it beneffited from absorbing Greek scholars the fled the fall of Constantinople. There are other factors that may encourage artistic and scientific advancement. The peace of Edo era in Japan (1603-1868), and a Samurai class that had no wars to fight anymore brough many artistic, cultural and scientific inovations. The Japanese of the era had relativelly high literacy rates, developed mathematics and astronomy (sometimes discovering principles slightly before Europe [1]). The Japenese were also fond of Dutch science books on mechanics and medicine, and were more adept in using firearms [2] than it is usually assumed. When Europe and the US, now with industrial revolution technology levels, began to harass Asia, Japan was able to modernize quickly and even defeat Russia. But this was only possible because Japan had their own "mini Renaisance" of sorts in the Edo era. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinant#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinant#History In Japan, Seki Takakazu (関孝和) is credited with the discovery of the resultant and the determinant (at first in 1683, the complete version no later than 1710). [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bo-hiya https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bo-hiya https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/cc/43/61/cc4361f849fd154741ff8bf19e3f3380.jpg https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/cc/43/61/cc43... https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/0c/39/79/0c39794e8aedd43413ee10ba4045c97e.png https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/0c/39/79/0c39...