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Good 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

• 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 ago
  Stealing, 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 ago
    On 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.