[Rich]

The great tragedy of China was that it was unified. Europe rose to world dominance because it was not unified.

[fuser]

^ Nonsense. This theory of an unified China meant lack of incentive for innovation (mostly because of lack of wars) is not very sound one. China has relatively been unified for most of her history and yet had seen many innovations and was more or less on parity with Europe until 16th century.

Then there is the case of South Asia divided in many numerous kingdoms and ravaged by warfare similar in scale to European wars ad yet it started to lag behind Europe again 16th century onward like China.

There is more to why China lagged behind than simplistic nonsense that it grew complacent because of stability and size and no incentive for innovation because of lack of warfare.

[Harmattan]

^ Nonsense. This theory of an unified China meant lack of incentive for innovation (mostly because of lack of wars) is not very sound one.

The setback of China was first and foremost the result of a military defeat and being often at war is of course essential to be good at war.

During the decades before your fall, China suffered a streak of defeats. First of all because you were technologically backward on the military side, which is different from the general technological level. After many defeats you finally bought us some weapons and replicated them. However technology is not everything. Military assets, experience, strategies, preparation, etc. All of this is necessary. A war does not last long, you need to be prepared to win at any time, you can't adapt during a war no matter how capable your civilization.

If you had been at war more often against stronger and more diverse opponents you would have realized your obvious weakness: your ridiculous naval forces. You were defeated by mobility, you found yourself wasting weeks moving troops through China and three days before you arrived your enemies had left and were occupying another city you left undefended. You had larger armies, you were on your ground, you copied our weapons, even some strategies, but the battlefield was always elsewhere.


Now there is another reason behind your naval weakness: China always struggled with its own territory and resorted to isolationism to maintain civil order. You explicitly discouraged colonization and exploration, limited foreign trade, and let others grab the low-hanging colonial fruits that let them rival the Chinese territory. Ironically isolationism is still something you do today, to a lesser extent, for the same political reasons.

[fuser]

First of all I am not Chinese, if you are mistaking me for one. Then again as I previously mentioned with my Indian/South Asian example, being at war doesn't necessarily means getting better at war technologically or otherwise. Indian subcontinent was experiencing constant warfare and yet was lagging far behind when Europeans arrived, the gap started appearing in 16th century. Take another example, celtic tribes and Germanic tribes were also fighting constant wars among themselves and with Romans but they were actually left very far behind Romans when it came to innovations or warcraft.

There are simply too many variables to innovations, development than simplistic; more wars = competition = progress. I for one can't believe that people still think that this was the cause for China's lag i.e. it being a big and stable country, it was so for most of the time in history without lagging behind in terms of innovations, progress etc.

[QatzelOk]

The setback of China was first and foremost the result of a military defeat and being often at war is of course essential to be good at war.

And Europe's setback is that it has never known peace, so it's only really good at war and all that comes with it (violence, inequality, racism, status seeking, and superficial ideological dummy-hood).

I think China's drawback (not good at mass murder of other races) might actually be an asset in most non-Western eyes.

[neopagan]

Chinese influence advanced as far as certain natural boundaries allowed it. And the Chinese were not any more pleasant as overlords than any other culture/nationality. Western European business interests came to prominence parallel to the development of seamanship, navigation, naval gunnery, and ultimately the ability to put ashore a phalanx trained in close order cutlass and musket drill which proved devastating.

European naval supremacy began with the Portuguese Caravel of Vasco Da Gama's time; a vessel that could make a few degrees to windward. By the time the British came to the China Sea, they could literally sail rings around the Chinese whose naval architecture had not developed technically in a thousand years. Without naval supremacy, European colonialism would never have happened, and the world would be much the poorer if left to the crumbling, decadent primitives we now, in retrospect, anoint equal by cultural relativism.

[Rich]

And Europe's setback is that it has never known peace,

Europe is fantastically peaceful. We have never known such levels of peace. Even if you find some marginalised group like the Inuit whose culture just could not support organised warfare, they were still incredibly violent compared to say modern America. Its not just war, modern western societies are incredibly un-violent. We take it as normal that a teacher can not use violence against school pupils. Its not normal at all.

You Qatz are very much the modern Liberal Westerner. The fact that you see injustice and violence every where is a testament to your Liberal modernity. You judge everything by the highest Liberal standards (I know some people say you are biased towards the Quebecois and give them a free pass, but I don't doubt your objective impartiality on the matter for a moment). Your romanisation of the pre Agrarian past, particularly speaks to your and cutting edge, fashionable modernity.

[Syph]

I response to the OP, if the world is anti-Western because of our foreign policy why would so any want to immigrate here?

The West espouses the cultural and social cutting edge. It is the forefront of high technology, hedonism and free expression. The societies of much of the non-Western world haven't shaken the shackles of tribalism which limits the individual.

Our failed intervention have been well intentioned but poorly executed. I want everyone to enjoy Western values but more are willing to reject it.

[Crantag]

^ Nonsense. This theory of an unified China meant lack of incentive for innovation (mostly because of lack of wars) is not very sound one. China has relatively been unified for most of her history and yet had seen many innovations and was more or less on parity with Europe until 16th century.

Then there is the case of South Asia divided in many numerous kingdoms and ravaged by warfare similar in scale to European wars ad yet it started to lag behind Europe again 16th century onward like China.

There is more to why China lagged behind than simplistic nonsense that it grew complacent because of stability and size and no incentive for innovation because of lack of warfare.

The leading theory I'm aware of, proposed by Angus Madison as well as a certain colleague of his and former professor of mine, is that a number of crises occurred which retarded growth and led to mass death and destruction. This includes things like the Black Death, the Mongol invasions, internal warfare, the Taiping Rebellion, the opium wars, the Japanese invasions, the Great Leap Forward, etc.

They have a lot of data which purportedly corroborates this viewpoint.

China's present growth is seen as an emergence out of the chaos and reclaiming of its place.

Partly a Sinophilic angle, but has a bit of explanatory power.

[Crantag]

The setback of China was first and foremost the result of a military defeat and being often at war is of course essential to be good at war.

During the decades before your fall, China suffered a streak of defeats. First of all because you were technologically backward on the military side, which is different from the general technological level. After many defeats you finally bought us some weapons and replicated them. However technology is not everything. Military assets, experience, strategies, preparation, etc. All of this is necessary. A war does not last long, you need to be prepared to win at any time, you can't adapt during a war no matter how capable your civilization.

If you had been at war more often against stronger and more diverse opponents you would have realized your obvious weakness: your ridiculous naval forces. You were defeated by mobility, you found yourself wasting weeks moving troops through China and three days before you arrived your enemies had left and were occupying another city you left undefended. You had larger armies, you were on your ground, you copied our weapons, even some strategies, but the battlefield was always elsewhere.


Now there is another reason behind your naval weakness: China always struggled with its own territory and resorted to isolationism to maintain civil order. You explicitly discouraged colonization and exploration, limited foreign trade, and let others grab the low-hanging colonial fruits that let them rival the Chinese territory. Ironically isolationism is still something you do today, to a lesser extent, for the same political reasons.

There is certainly something to the historical notion that China became bogged down by its bureaucracy (something which had formerly been a major strength) which prevented China from adapting in a rapidly changing world.

The idea that Europe was presented with an historical situation which caused it to conquer the world more or less is largely attributable to Immanuel Wallerstein. He basically states that a number of historical accidents facilitated it, more or less. It started with Portugal, which would not exactly have seemed a likely thing, absent the hindsight of history.

Historiography is obviously always imprecise, but the reading I have of this vein of history is that it is said that European expansionism was driven by the lack of resources in Europe, and also opportunistic technological developments, especially in seafaring (partly owing to the geographical factors, which required development of tacking against the wind and other methods), and also weapons technology, including cannons mounted on ships. Also, the extent of Europe's 'internal expansion' led to an impetus to seek colonies abroad.

I'm a little rusty on Wallerstein, but he does indeed argue that China, as a large incorporated empire ultimately worked against it, whereas Europe's relative cultural connectedness, divided among not-necessarily congenial states ultimately worked in Europe's advantage.

I think it is a misreading of history to presume there was anything inevitable in it, though.

[Dagoth Ur]

@syph: Uh duh? If you can just move to the hated beast and become a part of it that makes much more sense than continuing to be that beast's victim.

[Syph]

Uh duh? If you can just move to the hated beast and become a part of it that makes much more sense than continuing to be that beast's victim.

The Palestinians obviously didn't get the memo. Israel offers a far superior quality of life to Syria, Egypt etc. but very few flock to that particular "beast".

[Dagoth Ur]

lol yeah it is just a treat to be an Israeli arab. Not racist or anything.

[Syph]

lol yeah it is just a treat to be an Israeli arab. Not racist or anything.

They certainly enjoy more freedom in Israel than they do in other Arab countries or Palestine, depends if you value negative liberty over the positive liberty of Sharia. I'm not saying an Arab in Israel enjoys as good a life as the USA, UK or Canada, just better than the rest of the Middle East.

[QatzelOk]

...it is said that European expansionism was driven by the lack of resources in Europe, and also opportunistic technological developments, especially in seafaring (partly owing to the geographical factors, which required development of tacking against the wind and other methods), and also weapons technology, including cannons mounted on ships. Also, the extent of Europe's 'internal expansion' led to an impetus to seek colonies abroad...

Your quote frames the violence of European racist mass-murderers as being the result of gadgets.

What about the mentality of Europeans - forced to become Christians by Rome in the 4th Century - that go on to over-populate their continent with violent, ideologically castrated Christian slaves? You forgot all the brainwashing and violence it took Rome (working with banksters) to modify the people of Europe by forcing them to believe in a God who resembles Santa-Claus mixed with the Terminator.

[Crantag]

[
Your quote frames the violence of European racist mass-murderers as being the result of gadgets.

What about the mentality of Europeans - forced to become Christians by Rome in the 4th Century - that go on to over-populate their continent with violent, ideologically castrated Christian slaves? You forgot all the brainwashing and violence it took Rome (working with banksters) to modify the people of Europe by forcing them to believe in a God who resembles Santa-Claus mixed with the Terminator.

I was basically paraphrasing famous sources on the subject.

I never really shared my own opinion, and I don't really have any entrenched opinions on this subject.

[QatzelOk]

I was basically paraphrasing famous sources on the subject.

I never really shared my own opinion, and I don't really have any entrenched opinions on this subject.

Well, Tom Cruise and Lindsay Lohan are famous. What do they think about stuff?

Obviously, if they're famous, their opinions must be super-opinions. Not boring opinions of our own, made up of only our limited experiences watching famous people do famous things on TV and in movies.

[Crantag]

Well, Tom Cruise and Lindsay Lohan are famous. What do they think about stuff?

Obviously, if they're famous, their opinions must be super-opinions. Not boring opinions of our own, made up of only our limited experiences watching famous people do famous things on TV and in movies.

Tom Cruise and Lindsay Lohan are not world renowned scholars with specializations on these topics.

[QatzelOk]

Tom Cruise and Lindsay Lohan are not world renowned scholars with specializations on these topics.

But then again, neither you or I are in a position to judge the credentials (or motivations) of the text-producers that you quoted unquestionably.

[Crantag]

But then again, neither you or I are in a position to judge the credentials (or motivations) of the text-producers that you quoted unquestionably.

Actually I am in such a position.

It is called academic methodology.

I have studied these materials, and found them to have explanatory power, hence my paraphrasing them (not quoting).

They are also highly regarded scholars by experts in their field.

Wallerstein in particular is one of the greatest social scientists of the past 50 years.

It is worth taking such people seriously, when dealing with academic topics.