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How did Europe become the richest part of the world?
- dan12ha 5y agoHas anyone in here read Sapiens? That book argues imagination was the differentiating factor. Basically the limited liability company unleashed people’s ambition and that started in Europe. And lead to the Dutch and British war funding
- rayiner 5y agoI think about this question a lot. I’m from a third world country (my dad was born in a village in Bangladesh). I think it’s tremendously important for academia to study what factors have allowed certain countries to develop stable, prosperous democracies. Unfortunately, I think we will see no progress in this area for political reasons. I was browsing the “racial literacy” curriculum used by my daughter’s school. Most of it is fluff, but the fourth grade unit is a doozy: https://secureservercdn.net/50.62.198.70/b51.f3f.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Racial-Literacy-%E2%80%93-Final-Lessons-Grade-4.pdf https://secureservercdn.net/50.62.198.70/b51.f3f.myftpupload.... It chalks up the differences in development between countries to “geography” giving some countries a “head start.” This is absurd to anyone who has studied a little history. Countries like Bangladesh had a huge head start. In Bangladesh, food just jumps into your basket. Meanwhile Europeans were hacking away at soil that freezes for large parts of the year. And that doesn’t explain why certain countries became rich in the 20th century. How about a unit on how Singapore went from poor to rich in a single generation? The effect of colonialism, etc., can’t be ignored. But Bangladesh had been rich relative to Britain in the past. Yet by the time the British East India company came to India, Britain was more than twice as rich per capita as India, and the Netherlands more than four times as rich. I want to know how that happened. The British will never write a $42 trillion check for what they allegedly siphoned off from India. But understanding how the British (themselves the victims of repeated invasions) came to have the economic and military advantage that allowed them to do that would be valuable. Unfortunately, there is no politically correct answer to this question that allows study of what Bangladeshis could have done or could do differently. We’re raising an entire generation of kids who will be socialized to believe that the challenges facing the third world are due to factors outside the control of those people, and that the only route to development is paternalistic aid from the first world.
- ionwake 5y agoI have read a factor is populations that depend on yearly planning, were successful, so areas where winters will kill you was a requirement for this process. However I dont understand why civilisation thus started and grew in Egypt / Babylon and not in say Norway. If someone has any any ideas as to why specifically do let me know, I havent hard time to read the rest of the comments so please take this with a pinch of salt.
- bluefirebrand 5y agoEgypt required yearly planning based on the flooding of the nile I believe. Very hard to farm on floodplains if you aren't really planning ahead.
- Gwypaas 5y agoTaking the "yearly planing track". What about the yearly flooding of the Nile? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flooding_of_the_Nile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flooding_of_the_Nile
- anovikov 5y agoCivilisation started there because they had, however limited by area, places with extremely good soil fertility that allowed agriculture to appear there first. Agriculture meant excess production, excess production meant possibility to have organised society by using that byproduct to feed priests/military/bosses, that in turn organised system of laws and their enforcement, and jumpstarted development. Quickly they realised that flood control on rivers greatly increases availability of fertile land further improving their returns, and that required centralised control - so they had both ability, and incentives to build centralised states.
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- rwj 5y agoThat fact is certainly a stain on history, but sidesteps the observation that European powers were able to militarily overpower so many other regions because they were already richer and technologically advanced compared to other regions.
- zouhair 5y agoSo the Mongols were richer and more technologically advanced than all the countries they grabbed?
- BobbyJo 5y agowhy can't there be two different ways of accomplishing the same thing?
- cellis 5y agoMilitarily, the mongols were FAR more advanced. The best analogy is, imo, modern US air supremacy in the middle east. They were simply untouchable until the advent of long range gunpowder. It was their political structure that prevented them from conquering the entire world. Dan Carlin has a good podcast series called Wrath of the Khans that goes into this in depth, in a very entertaining way.
- panick21_ 5y agoNot really. China had their own nomadic allies. And so did the Qara Khitai. The Mongols also destroyed the Cumans. And many Turkish Empires that were still connected to the steppe and had the same technology as the mongols.
- cellis 5y agobut previously they squabbled bitterly and thus reduced each other to nothing more than nomadic tribes. The “upside” of ceaseless internecine conflict served to sharpen their tactics to a mental ferocity and lethality that hadn’t been encountered anywhere in the more “Pax catholica” European areas or Pax-Jin empires. And as far as weaponry: Steppe warfare / Persian horse archer tactics weren’t new obviously, but the mongols employer recurved bows and multiple mounts exclusively whereas the Jin empire relied more on spear warriors and some archery which was helpless against Mongolian siege tactics and again —- once the walls were breached —- horse archers who could shoot by some estimates further, with more accuracy and with a shorter draw than the British longbow ( another nearly untouchable weapon (when massed) of the same period ). Europeans relied on their heavy cavalry which was basically like Putins tanks today vs Javelin missiles.
- VariableStar 5y agoThis is a very simplistic article. Having a region with competing states is a recognized dimension in the development of Europe and China, but there are others as well which are presumably more important. As F.Fukuyama writes: rule of law, accountability, a state. And as Acemoglu and Robinson write: clear and stable laws that encourage people to invest and develop businesses. Conquering and pillaging colonies, and selling and buying slaves, must be accounted for as well.
- qznc 5y agoCreating wealth requires peace and stability. Capturing wealth requires war and violence. The fastest way is to do both. The most ethical way is to do the first while appearing strong and aggressive enough to deter others from attacking you.
- raldi 5y agoBut why were tiny countries like the Netherlands able to conquer distant lands? Portugal was sailing around Asia trading goods from other Asian countries! Why is Brazil speaking their language and not the other way around? Ditto India and English, or Niger and French.
- ashwagary 5y agoMany of the countries you mention did not have far reaching imperialist tendencies, that's in my view due to lack of scarcity, and somewhat strong moral/civilizational/religious foundations that many in Europe lacked. It is why things like chattel slavery, non-cooperation, and extreme levels of greed were not as concentrated elsewhere but heavily relied upon in European development. The abundance of resources, good weather, lack of famines, and access to open uninhabited land probably also played a defining role in the development of these less hostile civilizations. When the Chinese visited Africa on trade missions, the idea of mass theft of resources never crossed their minds. The idea of selling drugs and destroying a society for profit was a confusing concept to the leaders of many groups. A great example of this is in the correspondences between the Chinese leadership and Queen Victoria. I doubt many of these groups expected the people they traded with in good faith to turn around and attempt to destroy these relationships through force and theft. In my opinion, this is why the last 200 years of western development was so fruitful. If Europeans had stayed in Europe they would not have been as prosperous. It is the wealth taken, industries destroyed in other countries, and trade flows re-routed that created this boom. Much of it done to fuel conflicting war machines in Europe. We are now at a new stage of development on this planet where smash and grab is no longer as possible (due to nukes). The idea of win-win relationships still seems alien to Europeans dealing with outsiders. This is where a group like the Chinese will outperform tremendously and re-secure their position as global economic leaders in a large portion of this planet. In many scenarios, the Chinese would rather be poor than suffer reputational damage from this kind of uncivilized activity. We are entering a world where long term reputation and thinking matters, and the Chinese approach will be heavily rewarded. I'm not sure how long the reputational damage incurred by Europeans will affect their ability to do business around the world but I strongly believe this history will be detrimental to future European development. We can see the beginning of it with the recent rapid movement towards de-dollarization and de-euroization where energy trading and some other commodities are concerned. I know this can be an uncomfortable truth for some in the west but I expect 90% of planet will be in agreement here, so the message should probably not be ignored.
- MrRiddle 5y agoEvery rich nation on earth became rich through exploitation and genocide.
- eesmith 5y agoProbably "and/or". Iceland has one of the highest GDPs per capita (in the top 12 says https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi... ) and high median wealth (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_per_adult#By_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_pe... ). That was through exploitation (power generation and fishing), but not genocide.
- 6d6b73 5y agoEvery country on the planet is a byproduct of exploitation and genocide. Some countries where just "better" at it.
- morceauxdebois 5y agoWho did Estonia exploit to get rich?
- thriftwy 5y agoThe core EU countries?
- adventured 5y agoYou're merely describing the history of nearly all nations (at one point or another), which doesn't properly explain why some nations develop to a radical degree when it comes to the formation of industry, wealth, high productivity, innovation, technology, etc. Vietnam - as one prominent example - has had repeated bouts of internal exploitation and genocide throughout its history, including in the post Vietnam War era by the ruling CPV dictatorship. That treatment didn't make them richer or more developed, the opposite did: liberalized markets, increased protections for property rights, global trade, manufacturing, paid labor with rapidly increasing wages, rapidly increasing productivity, and so on. The approach of exploitation and genocide destroyed potential and held them back, as it similarly did to numerous other Communist nations. You have to pretend that all worker wages are inherently exploitation (that the business to worker relationship is always structured on worker exploitation), to believe that every rich nation primarily got there via exploitation.
- causality0 5y agoSocietal wealth is more delicate than you'd expect. For example, China has gone from the richest, most capable nation on earth to one of the poorest multiple times in its long history. I think it takes a special reason for a region to not be subject to the boom/bust cycle.
- estaseuropano 5y agoNote that was china the region and the reason was most of the time war - either internal between different kingdoms or with the various steppe people and ultimately the Europeans.
- ethbr0 5y agoThe reasons given seem fairly compelling: (1) multiple, competitive peer states, (2) freedom of travel for intellectuals, and (3) a shared intellectual tradition creating a marketplace of ideas, propelled by high literacy and the printing press. My read would be that pre-Enlightenment examples are fundamentally different in that the Enlightenment wasn't a momentary advancement, as previous regional jostlings were, but a growth hack. It permanently increased the growth rate of knowledge in Europe, which then outscaled everyone else. I'd be curious about opinions more knowledgeable than mine opining on the above conditions vis certain periods in Chinese and Middle Eastern history. They would seem to equally qualify. And if they were equally possessed there, then the conditions must be incorrect or incomplete.
- Gareth321 5y agoI fully agree. It seems self evident that Enlightenment principles are superior to the alternatives. Free speech, democracy, the right to dissent and disagree, separation of religion and state. These principles keep the West prosperous as compared to competing ideologies. Totalitarianism, communism, monarchy, etc.; these do not maximise the wellbeing of the population - demonstrably. It astounds me when I encounter people decrying Western values. Have they not travelled the world? Do they not understand how much worse it can be? No one argues that Enlightenment values are perfect; just that they’re the best we’ve found so far.
- zouhair 5y agoNot once the word "colonization" appeared in that text.
- rayiner 5y agoEurope was able to colonize because it was already rich and technologically advanced. By 1700, more than 50 years before the British East India company came to control India, the UK had more than double the per capita GDP of India, and the Netherlands had more than quadrupled the per capita GDP of India. Note of course that India was already a colony at the time. The origin of Arabs is 8,000 miles away from where I was born, but I have an Arabic last name. Guess how that happened.
- jean_tta 5y agoIs it fair to compare the very small region that is England to the very large region that is India? A fairer comparison would be Europe vs India at the time, or England vs the most advanced region of India at the time. "The most advanced region of Europe" vs "the average region of India" is nitpicking.
- pepperonipizza 5y agoFrance mostly lost money with colonisation. Sure, there were some people getting rich from it. This is was more for the prestige than money. I can't say the same for the UK, not having read much on the economic of colonisation for them.
- realusername 5y agoWhat people don't get is at the time, the state power mattered more than companies, territorial expansion and reach was one of the prime goal.
- eesmith 5y agoBritish and Dutch colonialism were public-private joint affairs. The VOC was the first company to raise capital by selling stocks. Jamestown (first permanent English settlement in the Americas) was settled by the London Company, under Crown charter. Compare that to the Spanish colonialism, where state power indeed mattered more than companies.
- flatiron 5y agoAll I know on the subject is my college reading of guns germs and steel. Has there been any changes in common knowledge since I read that in 20 years. I think they really explained this fairly well without the usual racism.
- colechristensen 5y agoThere has always been a substantial doubt about that book, not that it is entirely wrong but a bit… stretched to fit.
- walkhour 5y agoThere have been a few books attempting to justify geography it's not as fundamental as Guns germs and steels tries to prove it is. For example: The wealth of nations defends the institutions of a country play an important role and they can be independent of geography. There's a sequence to this book: The narrow corridor that further defends this thesis. A 10,000 year explosion makes the case genes are also important. For example being able to digest milk made the people that could wealthy and powerful and allowed them to terrorize their neighbors.
- Gareth321 5y agoPeople try very hard to pretend genes have zero impact on societal success, despite a century of hard data to indicate that intelligence is inherited and intelligence makes the single greatest impact to individual success. Notable examples include lactose tolerance, melanin differences, and resistance to malaria in the form of sickle cell disease. Of course certain traits result in success in different regions, and of course those traits extend past the physical.
- boppo1 5y agoHow did milk digestion help people become more wealthy and powerful?
- tombh 5y agor/AskHistorians seems to prefer Why The West Rules: For Now by Ian Morris. https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004ASNG04 https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004ASNG04
- tn890 5y agoFor anyone interested in topics like this, I have a couple of books recommendations: A classic: Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Dimond (1997) A more modern take: The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow (2021)
- newacc9 5y agoI found this video very interesting, on the same wavelength as Dimond Facts about Africa's Geography https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fof9xZA7dpg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fof9xZA7dpg
- haunter 5y agoMore like how did Western Europe become the richest part of the world? I read the article but most of those things doesn't apply to the Balkan and East Europe. And you still have the wealth difference to this day. Treating Europe as one is kinda simplistic.
- beebeepka 5y agoI've heard some don't even consider these parts Europe. Maybe don't think about our corner at all, or not in this context. The ottomans really did a number on us. 400-500 years of nothing while the rest of the continent was booming, more or less
- ethbr0 5y agoAs someone from across the pond, is the territory of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth not considered Eastern Europe? It seems to have competed well from 1385 - 1772, until the forced partitioning by surrounding states.
- hld 5y agoI'd say it is more complex than this. I can recommend the book written by Marie-Janin Calic [0] which goes over the complicated history of Yugoslavia and makes it a bit clearer why the Balkans is the way it is these days. But regarding your first sentence: definitely. If you listen closely you will often notice how Europeans mentally exclude the Balkans from whatever it is they are talking about. I think this sentiment has been especially felt when the EU was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize given that apparently there have been no wars in Europe after WWII. [0] https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/24993 https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/24993
- franciscop 5y agoWhat the article basically comes to say is exponential growth, where Europe had a slightly larger base number due to the constant wars so over the decades and centuries the difference showed up.
- AniseAbyss 5y agoI have read an argument once that China was too peaceful. While every European king or duke spent considerable amount of time on the battlefield China's armies grew weak. Very few Chinese emperors ever died in battle. The Chinese court was maintaining the status quo. They were running an empire. Countries like Portugal and the Netherlands were creating one.
- Synaesthesia 5y agoBest book on this subject may be Year 501 by Noam Chomsky. It's a history of western colonisation. The west was able to control most of the globe due to their advances in weapons, and their brutal tactics, which many indigenous people decried as "too furious". Remember the colonial wars were considered small wars by the standards of the west.
- walkhour 5y ago> The west was able to control most of the globe due to their advances in weapons How did they secure these advanced weapons without being rich in the first place? Like the other comments defending this you're confusing cause and effect. Note there are two other top comments making the same case as this one, so this is not adding much to the discussion and it's forcing it to be in different places.
- yunohn 5y ago> How did they secure these advanced weapons without being rich in the first place? What do you mean by “rich” exactly? This was pre-globalisation - countries would invest in building infrastructure and military by creating it for themselves, with slaves and colonisation at scale.
- mypastself 5y agoMoreover, the notion that their tactics were more “furious” and “brutal” than those employed by other societies seems to be based solely on claims made by those other societies.
- throw__away7391 5y agoChomsky is a demagogue, he has a particular worldview he wants to push and any discussion of history is secondary to that. If some historical facts support his narrative he'll happily report them, but if not he freely misstates, mischaracterizes, and selectively reports. In particular he has one (IMHO unforgivable for any serious author) habit of citing a source but stating the opposite of what the actual source says. He has received wide criticism for his denial and excusing of multiple genocides when the aggressors were from regimes he ideologically agreed with (socialist/communist), but repeatedly refused in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary to retract his previous statements.
- nextstep 5y agoTheft, colonialism, an international legal system that supports this and never made them pay back the nations they stole resources and labor from for hundreds of years.
- daneel_w 5y agoSome of the richest countries in Europe never engaged in colonialism or slavery.
- yunohn 5y agoThey traded with, were allied and supported by, and now mutually benefitted by the economic and military union of Europe.
- daneel_w 5y agoAh, right, the proxy spoils of colonialism... I presume these nations' scientific, industrial and engineering prowess - of which none was built with slavery - had no bearing on anything. I don't understand how you can attribute so much guilt to not just the conquerors themselves but also to their neighbours, while at the same time discounting the creations and driving force of the great European minds of the past. It's a tiresome dichotomy and a sad, narrow perspective to view the world as nothing but oppressors and victims, and to always insist that the rich are rich only because they stole from the poor, and that all poor nations had been rich "if only history had been a tiny bit different".
- yunohn 5y agoI see that you’re taking personal offence, while disregarding simple research and common sense. > the proxy spoils of colonialism Yes, that’s a thing. Here’s an essay that I found with one Google search. It clearly illustrates exactly the kind of disillusionment in your stance. > The Swedish Crown, merchants, and political leadership shared a Eurocentric worldview and supported the right to conquer, dominate, and civilize in the name of superiority and technological advancement. But there was also a specifically Swedish twist to colonial ideology: Swedish neutrality turned out to be a strategic position and to offer competitive advantages in relation to colonial superpowers at war. When Britain and the Netherlands were fighting, Sweden exported cannons to the Dutch and iron for weaponry to the Brits. France could, when fighting Britain, rely on Swedish shipping of smuggled slaves, weaponry and other goods in the Caribbean. Also, hundreds of US trade ships managed to avoid customs by sailing under Swedish flag—and thus Sweden could maintain the lucrative Saint Barthélemy trade traffic. (https://unevenearth.org/2020/01/swedish-colonialist-neutrality/ https://unevenearth.org/2020/01/swedish-colonialist-neutrali...)
- KingOfCoders 5y agoGood weather, seasons (e.g. also cold enough for dairy products with genetic adaptations) and the Gulf Stream. And stealing and plundering the rest of the world of course.
- throw0101a 5y ago> And stealing and plundering the rest of the world of course. The Europeans were supplicants to the courts of Mughal Indian and Imperial China in the 1600s. By the late 1700s and 1800s the Europeans were stomping on everyone due to their advances in weapons. The question that is being asked is: what caused the change in those 150-200 years?
- pvaldes 5y agoStealing, plundering... trading and sharing. Is unfair to ignore the cross-pollination and technology transference between Europe and the rest of the planet. Relationships based on stealing are ephemeral, not durable or stable enough to transfer knowledge. Trade relationships are. There is a huge work of civil infrastructures developed by Europeans. India without a railway system would be much more difficult to keep united as a single country for example. A French opened a pass connecting the Mediterranean and Indian Oceans and later Europe and US work together to connect the Atlantic and Pacific, blessing the economies of India, China and Japan forever.
- ashwagary 5y agoOn the contrary, Europe imported the world's knowledge, weaponized it, then used it to enslave the knowledge sources. Most European infrastracture development and knowledge transfer outside of Europe was done due to necessity not voluntary altruism. The labor being exploited needed certain knowledge to be more useful and the desired resources needed certain infrastructure to be easily and efficiently exfiltrated.
- bannedbybros 5y ago
- throw0101a 5y agoLiteracy, individualism, lack of tribalism/clans, a 'mechanistic'/logical/Aristotelian view of reality (which led to the development of science), a 'general' of separation spiritual and civil powers (Matthew 22:15–22, Mark 12:13–17, Luke 20:20–26). Max Weber (1864-1920) was one of the first people to ask this question: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Weber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Weber For more recent thoughts, see The WEIRDest People in the World by Heinrich: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_WEIRDest_People_in_the_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_WEIRDest_People_in_the_Wor... And Toby Huff (The Rise of Early Modern Science, Intellectual Curiosity and the Scientific Revolution): * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toby_Huff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toby_Huff Intellectual Curiosity makes some interesting observations from the historical record: the telescope was invented in 1608 (where it ended up revolutionizing things), and the Europeans brought the technology to Imperial China and Mughal India. They brought it as 'supplicants' to the court to try to grant greater access to each nation; the Jesuits in China used it to show that their 'superior' knowledge of the universe and reality to help with converting folks to Christianity/Catholicism (e.g., by better predicting eclipses). Neither country was interesting and continued, through a top-down decree, to simply do things the way they always did them. The telescope arrived in the the Ottoman Empire by osmosis, and they didn't do much with it either. Fast forward 100+ years and the scientific/technological advances made through curious minds allowed by a different worldview allowed the Europeans to develop more efficient (product output per energy input) economies and then walk all over the rest of the planet. The Indians and Chinese were arguable equally (if not more) advanced in the 1600s, but by the 1700s and later they were 'primitive' in comparison to the Europeans.
- anovikov 5y agoHow about rule of law? Romans invented it and the idea of rule of law rather that just rule by force, lived through Middle Ages and once conditions became right, resulted in explosion of development. There is no economic development without private property, and there is no private property without rule of law because otherwise, you can't own what you don't control, and minority stakes are impossible.
- adrian_b 5y agoI believe that the main reason why the science and technology advanced much faster in Europe than in the rest of the World, leaving the others behind and vulnerable to be conquered and exploited, was the wide availability of cheap printed books after 1450. This coincided with the spread of the ideas that reading the Bible is not enough for who wants to acquire valuable knowledge. So initially the surviving manuscripts with the writings preserved from the Ancient Rome and Greece were printed and became known by a large number of people and then a flood of new writings was produced, diffusing quickly over Europe every advance in science and technology. Before this method of publishing became technically possible and also fashionable, most technical advances were known only in small communities and they were frequently lost when for some reason they were not taught to some apprentices who would continue the techniques of their masters.
- scyzoryk_xyz 5y agoThere is a lot in there, but my own personal view is that shape of the land has the biggest influence on what civilizations do over the long term and what they’re like in general as people. Europe is countless rivers and coastlines. Europeans learned how to do boats, how to do sailing, and learned how to float goods all over the place. This accelerated movement of ideas, production and development of technologies. Even if it was disjointed and ridden with conflict, it was just a matter of probability. This is what enabled the colonialism - after accelerating ahead of the rest of the world in technology, Europeans found it easier to just use that technology for slavery, conquest etc.
- ip26 5y agoSomewhat to your point, European explorers had a thing for exploring the rivers wherever they went…
- sandGorgon 5y agoyeah its called the Great Bengal Famine - 3 million dead (across the territories of what is now India, Pakistan and Bangladesh). That's how the second world war was funded. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943 The financing of military escalation led to war-time inflation, as land was appropriated from thousands of peasants. Many workers received monetary wages rather than payment in kind with a portion of the harvest.[14] When prices rose sharply, their wages failed to follow suit; this drop in real wages left them less able to purchase food.[15] During the Japanese occupation of Burma, many rice imports were lost as the region's market supplies and transport systems were disrupted by British "denial policies" for rice and boats (a "scorched earth" response to the occupation). The Bengal Chamber of Commerce (composed mainly of British-owned firms),[16] with the approval of the Government of Bengal, devised a Foodstuffs Scheme to provide preferential distribution of goods and services to workers in high-priority roles such as armed forces, war industries, civil servants and other "priority classes", to prevent them from leaving their positions.[17] These factors were compounded by restricted access to grain: domestic sources were constrained by emergency inter-provincial trade barriers, while aid from Churchill's War Cabinet was limited, ostensibly due to a wartime shortage of shipping.[18] More proximate causes included large-scale natural disasters in south-western Bengal (a cyclone, tidal waves and flooding, and rice crop disease). The relative impact of each of these factors on the death toll is a matter of debate.
- sofixa 5y agoThe Bengal famine was, as the name suggests, in Bengal ( modern day India and Bangladesh, not Pakistan). > That's how the second world war was funded. That's just a propostreous claim. It's a tragedy that claimed many lives and could have been averted, but it's absolutely not how the war was funded.
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoIt's also really irrelevant to the claim at hand. Europe was the richest part of the world long before 1943.
- ashwagary 5y ago
- dboreham 5y agoI believe it's reported in the book 1491 the the Chinese government abruptly changed policy to forbid global exploration. That may have something to do with it.
- polski-g 5y agoIQ and lack of tribalism (ie: the Hajnal line theory)
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- lifeplusplus 5y agoI didn't read the article but I firmly believe it's definitely colonialism but not just colonialism. EU had the luxury of being first to industrialize. World wars that led to efforts to create a new society and abandon old power structures. Stability. Decent amount of farmland. Dominance in sea based trading. Rail roads. Focus on meritocracy. Unfair foreign policies and wars. Copy right system that hurts developing nations. Using fiat currency and managing everyone else to use yours. Spirit of innovation. Abscense of class structure i.e middle class is idealized vs noblity or as in India your born in fixed class. Basically having semi functioning government and electricity goes a long way.
- lifeplusplus 5y agoAlso Mongols not fully reaching to EU
- lifeplusplus 5y agoNot getting destroyed by Mongols