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... a sort of licensed troubleshooter.
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Originally Posted by Infinite_Loser
Ummm... No. Even though I shouldn't, I'm gonna' quote Wikipedia here.
So, assuming what you say is true, then why isn't Europe under Chinese rule? As I said in my earlier post, Guns, Germs, and Steel can't answer this question, because it over-simplifies human interaction by arguing that European dominance is a result of favorable environmental factors.
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From Guns, Germs and Steel (pp 411-412), by Jared Diamond:
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Its falling behind is initially surprising, because China enjoyed undoubted advantages: a rise of food production nearly as early as the Fertile Crescent [an area in the Middle East once forested but now mostly desert]; ecological diversity from North to South China and from the coast to the high mountains of the Tibetan plateau, giving rise to a diverse set of crops, animals, and technology; a large and productive expanse, nourishing the largest regional human population in the world; and an environment less dry or ecologically fragile than the Fertile Crescent's, allowing China still to support productive intensive agriculture after nearly 10,000 years, though its environmental problems are increasing today and are more serious than western Europe's.
These advantages and head start had enabled medieval China to lead the world in technology. The long list of its major technological firsts includes cast iron, the compass, gun powder, paper, printing, and many others mentioned earlier [in the book]. it also led the world in political power, navigation, and control of the seas. In the early 15th century it sent treasure fleets, each of up to 28,000, across the Indian Ocean as far as the east coast of Africa, decades before Columbus's three puny ships crossed the narrow Atlantic Ocean to the Americas' east coast. Why didn't Chinese ships proceed around Africa's southern cape westward and colonize Europe, before Vasco da Gama's own three puny ships rounded the Cape of Good Hope eastward and launched Europe's colonization of East Asia? Why didn't Chinese ships cross the Pacific to colonize the Americas' west coast? Why, in brief, did China lose its technological lead to the formerly so backward Europe?
The end of China's treasure fleets gives us a clue. Seven of those fleets sailed between AD 1405 and 1433. They were then suspended as a result of typical aberration of local politics that could happen anywhere in the world: a power struggle between two factions at the Chinese court (the eunuchs and their opponents). The former faction had been identified with sending and captaining the fleets. Hence when the latter faction gained the upper hand in a power struggle, it stopped sending fleets, eventually dismantled the shipyards, and forbade oceangoing shipping. The episode is reminiscent of the legislation that strangled development of public electric lighting in London in the 1880s, the isolationism of the United States between the First and Second World Wars, and any number of backward steps in any number of countries, all motivated by local political issues. But in China there was a difference, because the entire region was politically unified. One decision stopped fleets over the whole of China. That one temporary decision became irreversible, because no shipyards remained to turn out ships that would prove the folly of that temporary decision, and to serve as a focus for rebuilding other shipyards.
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At this same time, Europe was expanding navally at an exponential rate. Fleets from Europe spread everywhere.
BTW, when I said Guns, Germs, and Steel, I meant the book.
Last edited by Willravel; 10-17-2007 at 06:21 PM..
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