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Many 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/civiliz
by ashwagary 5y ago
Many 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.
- ptsneves 5y agoI accept the analysis that the Chinese approach will likely be superior to the olden ways of Europe, but I believe you are mixing old Europe with modern China. Xxi century Europe is not fueling wars in Europe nor ruled by unbridled rulers greed like in the 1700s. Last 200 years of Europe are gone in modern Europe. For better and worse. Europe is an elderly continent. Also even the assertion that there was a reputation loss on Europe, while plausible is actually not true. Most of the colonies still prefer to trade with their old colonial masters. This is true for the portuguese, the Spanish and the French and English. For example Portugal(ex colonial master) goes toe to toe with China as the importer source of Angola. If reputation is so important it has an inverse correlation to what you assert. No way the portuguese can have a negative reputation and still compete with the Chinese. Its the other way around. The only way the portuguese can compete is because there is a past connection and perhaps reputation. The reason the Chinese thrive in Africa is the same why they thrive every where else: they have boatloads of goods and personnel and provide it cheaper than anyone. No reputation there, pure economics. On the contrary, local communities are distrustful of the chinese(which is amazing and defies reason but so the human societies go). How weird are we humans that we privilege relations with our previous oppressor rather than someone who can be better but we know nothing about. https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Country/AGO/Year/2017/TradeFlow/Import https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Country/AGO/Yea...
- raldi 5y agoCould a big part of it be simply that people prefer to trade with others who speak their language?
- ashwagary 5y agoAfter WW2 there seemed to be a lull in unbridled greed on the surface but it is only because financialization of the world was version 2 of colonialism. Europeans still harvest the wealth of a large majority of the world and where it can't there will be wars, assassinations, and coups. The return of fuel to conflicting European war machines is also starting to occur as the harvesting of Asian and African wealth has started to marginally slow down mainly due to Chinese and some Indian activity. This greed was never really dealt with on a civilizational level in Europe, it just changed forms and still needs to be addressed. The reason the Chinese thrive in Africa is because they have been an honest trading partner for over 1000 years. Many of China's non-western trading partners trust them more than any other group with close to similar economic scale. This is not a popular truth in western media because the ruling capital class that funds those orgs understand what this trend means in the long term. >How weird are we humans that we privilege relations with our previous oppressor On the contrary, on the surface it seems trade between colonized countries and their oppressors is voluntary but it's not the case. Central and South Americans violating European harvesting of wealth will still be sanctioned, couped and/or assassinated, the same is true for most African countries (For example, France by itself assassinated 22 African presidents in the last 40 or so years, they still harvest the wealth of 1/3rd of all African countries). This is the continuation through financialization I spoke of earlier and the arrangement is obviously not enjoyed by the majority of the people that regularly lose their popular liberative leaders and are kept in poverty to continue satisfying European greed. This activity is only recently being interrupted by Chinese trade expansion... De-dollarization/de-euroization and attempted re-routing of global trade are just the beginning of the chains being removed from the rest of the world.