▲ 75 points
back
110 comments
The article overlooks a very important factor, that only Europe had colonies in the Americas, and that brought massive wealth to the continent since the XVI century. Before that, the Middle-East, India and China were , in general, more technologically and scientifically advanced than Europe.
This overlooks why Europeans were able to achieve colonisation. Let's remember that e.g. the Inca empire, one of the biggest empires the world had ever seen at the time, was essentially colonised by 168 men (with one canon) [1]! And in a territory (Andes) that was inhospitable to the Spanish.
This is quite mind-boggling. There are many reasons for this, but clearly an important reason is that the conquered empires where themselves forged with violence (and did colonise neighbours), and internally divided, more so than the Europeans.
Divide-and-conquer
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_conquest_of_the_Inca_E...
> This overlooks why Europeans were able to achieve colonisation.
Columbus stumbled upon the New World while looking for a new sea route to Asia. There were no Chinese or Indian traders looking for sea routes to Europe.
Before industrialization, there weren't that many things Europe had to offer that weren't already available elsewhere (Asia already had firearms and ships, maybe not as good, but good enough for the era). Whereas India had pepper and spices and China had silk, both of which were highly valued in Europe and could not be produced domestically.
> Let's remember that e.g. the Inca empire, one of the biggest empires the world had ever seen at the time, was essentially colonised by 168 men (with one canon) [1] ... There are many reasons for this, but clearly an important reason is that the conquered empires where themselves forged with violence
There were other reasons too. Pizarro's men had steel armor and weapons whereas the Incas had stone or bronze weapons and padded armor. They had horses (mounted lances can do stunning amounts of damage to unprepared infantry) and the Incas had no experience in dealing with horse-mounted troops when you're on foot (spear walls, spiked pits etc). Pizarro held the Incan emperor hostage. Smallpox and other diseases took their toll later on. etc. etc.
Europe became rich through brute military conquest/colonization of the Asia, Africa and South America. They capitalized on free labour, free flow of ideas and goods from their colonies.
Well, the key question is why did the Arab World and Asian civilizations fail to do the colonization that the Europeans did. Also, the parity between Europe and the rest of Eurasia was largely achieved around the 1400s, which is to say, prior to the first wave of colonization.
All of the Middle East, North Africa and parts of Spain were "colonized" by the Arab world during the conquests after Mohammed's death, much before the first wave of European colonization. It was not in a seafaring fashion but it was no less monumental and likely resulted in vital knowledge in math and the sciences being passed on during a time when Europe was one of the most backwards places on earth.
>The article overlooks a very important factor, that only Europe had colonies in the Americas, and that brought massive wealth to the continent since the XVI century. Before that, the Middle-East, India and China were , in general, more technologically and scientifically advanced than Europe.
That's an important point. However, what was important over the long-term is what the West did with that new wealth, namely feed a significant portion of it into helping the self-propelling dynamics the article describes.
The other civilizations, in contrast, had self-perpetuating dynamics that prevented growth and technological progress beyond a certain level, as least for the most part.
That's why Germany, Switzerland, Italy and all the other countries that didn't have any significant share in colonization did just as well anyway. And Portugal is almost a failed state while they did have huge colonies.
> The costs of European political division into multiple competing states were substantial: they included almost incessant warfare, protectionism, and other coordination failures. Many scholars now believe, however, that in the long run the benefits of competing states might have been larger than the costs. In particular, the existence of multiple competing states encouraged scientific and technological innovation.
I wonder if this is still true today and if globalism will ultimately make us worse off?
That quote doesn't say that "political competition" was the best approach to innovation, nor that globalism would be worse. Merely that the proverbial ROI of competing states wasn't negative.
More importantly, it seems that the fragmentation in Europe allowed "peer pressure" to avoid descents into authoritarianism that would have limited intellectual innovation.
And that fragmentation did not fragment "the market". ("Political fragmentation existed alongside a remarkable intellectual and cultural unity.")
So: as long as globalization doesn't limit individual intellectual innovation, it might be a good think because of global unification. Competition helps drive innovation, but it doesn't have to be state competition and political division.
I wouldn't say globalism means uniformal activity and communication without competition as you would suggest, quite the contrary. Competition is far more bigger today but with much less violence.
So, should we give up on relative peace for the sake of scientific and technological innovation?
Not an attack, but an actual question.
While I only just got started, there's a Cousera course named "The Modern World"[1] that, based on the introduction, explores this topic (among others).
There is an interesting documentary series by Naill Ferguson on this subject. In his series he discuses the "6 killer applications" that made the West dominate the rest:
Seriously, Naill Ferguson is a poor historian.
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/before-european-hege...
I remember coming up a book one time(maybe reviewed by Razib Khan) that made this exact point that much of Europe's progress came from it's internal conflict but I have not been able to find it again... does anyone have a clue what I may be thinking of?
You might be thinking of "Guns, Germs, and Steel"
Europe was great before she had any colonies. Living in Africa my entire life I can see that Europe and the countries where her children settled(USA, Canada, Aus, Nz) are the light of the world.
Simple, because they stole from the rest of the world.
The amount of wealth they ended up with was far, far in excess of the total wealth that existed in the world when they started. You can't steal what doesn't exist.
Like everyone else. Difference: Success.
Not that simple, I'm afraid.
The article does not even mention geography, which is extraordinarily important for generating wealth. You need to feed people and ship goods in order to make stuff, and it's way cheaper and easier to use navigable rivers through arable farmland than any alternatives. This represents a huge chunk of free capital, and the network in Northern Europe is one of the largest ones (iirc, second to the Mississippi River).
The author mentions that there were a great many lucky accidents involved in the rise of the West. That is a factor that I think helps explain the Fermi Paradox. It is not enough to have an intelligent species, what they produce over the long term would seem to be civilizations that lack the sort of self-perpetuating technology dynamics that we have had in the West.
Interestingly, they completely ignored the Hanseatic League, one of the most powerful economic and political entities for centuries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanseatic_League
Perhaps it was one of the most important contributing factors to Europe's success.
Simply, the quest to kill your enemies or paranoia of getting killed by them. Internet, GPS, Drugs etc to have an advantage in warfare
I have a feeling you didn't read the article.
No. War is not progress. War has cost a lot to European countries, being WWII one of the major loses in history in human lives and resources.
I have hear other, more plausible, explanations. Weather is one. The fact that Eurasia is wide means that it has similar conditions in large portions of land, so you can reuse technology for agriculture across all of it.
In Australia and Africa weather is not so good for agriculture. America is rich, but being narrow you need to create new agriculture techniques as you move south or north, as the landscape, weather and other factors are changing.
War is present in all cultures. So some more unique qualities should be looked for. And luck can't be discarded.
The article didn't specifically say war, just multiple competing states. This drove up trade, but also division.
European history has had more conflict that any other region.
Also, War has undeniably driven technological advances throughout history.
Conflict does not create riches, you are correct. Competition does create riches ( and sometimes conflict)
"The state makes war and war makes the state." - Charles Tilly
I'd agree that war is not progress, but war (at least a very specific type of war found in Pre-Westphalian Europe) created the conditions for progress. Tilly's predatory or bellicose theory of state building[1] asserts that war was crucial in spurring the development of modern nation-states. A stronger centralized state expanded the rule of law and reduced violence, providing a foundation for positive sum economic activity. Furthermore, this type of proto-state can, more or less, be viewed as a protection racket. The state could extract resources from those under its protection. This encouraged the state to incentive economic activity and innovation as the state captured some of the benefit through taxation.
Violence is present in all cultures. But the type of war that Tilly describes is somewhat unique to Europe. A confluence of geographic factors - arable land enabling higher population densities and a network of rivers that allowed for the projection of force - created the conditions for territorial war. If you look at South America or Africa there is much of a history of territorial wars because the area of these continents is so large that territory wasn't a limiting factor.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-building#Application_of_...
'In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.'
-Harry Lime, 'the third man'
>> I have hear other, more plausible, explanations. Weather is one.
LOL, this is exactly what corrupted officials in a Country-I-Woudn't-Call say when they're asked about billions being spent on building of roads that cannot survive a single season (so they have to be rebuilt every year). "That's because of our weather", - they say.
While war itself is destructive and did exact a great cost to Europe (it arguably ended European colonialism as it made Europe unable to maintain presence in their colonies), preparation in the case of war is arguably constructive and lead to innovations.
The Internet for one started as a DARPA project (ARPANET). The Interstate Highway was made for troop transport. Military contracts kept some aerospace companies afloat (basically subsidizing them) and enabled innovation that otherwise wouldn't be possible.
The word war doesn't appear once in the article, what are you talking about ?
Vast areas of Africa are perfect for agriculture... it's a big place.
> The Indian subcontinent and the Middle East were fragmented for much of their history, and Africa even more so, yet they did not experience a Great Enrichment.
eh what? The Indian subcontinent was one of the most productive regions of the world, accounting for almost 25% of the world GDP right before being colonized and having its creative/artisan class decimated. If no deliberate effort had been expounded to destroy its artisan/merchant class, Enlightenment ideas might have spread faster and created a much more dynamic economy.
This sounds like little more than pure speculation.
Based on the exact same factors the article very selectively chooses to highlight, you could just as well claim that it wasn't competition but a very high degree of integration that has made Europe so successful and that all the competition and war between states has just obscured this fact.
You could then go on and invoke the example of the United States to show that even deeper integration without too much internal warfare resulted in an even better outcome in terms of wealth.
This is nothing but fluff. You could pick and choose your variables to prove anything and its exact opposite based on that sort of reasoning.
What's the empirical basis for any of this? Why should we believe this theory and not some other theory? I don't see it.
History is like that sometimes. The root causes are tangled and we have to do the best with what we have. That said, I don't think this article is framing the question well.
If you focus just on one part of the wealth, namely industrialization, it's clear that different countries have done this in different ways. For example if you compare England (first mover) vs. Japan (catch up driven in large part by defense) the outcome was still quite similar in that both countries successfully mastered mass production with corresponding economic benefits to the country as a whole. Yet the details of the societies at the start could hardly be more different.
It's hard to escape the conclusion that many regions would sooner or later would have met the conditions for rapid economic growth. The question of why it happened in Europe is not necessarily the most interesting one.
By defining "rich" in such a way as to put themselves at the top.
Welcome to the social sciences
Please don't post snarky dismissals to HN. The comment you replied to was fairly substantive, so your reply takes the thread in the opposite of the desired direction.
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13670932 and marked it off-topic.
Go to any major European city. Look at all the loot in the museums. Figure it out.
Mea culpa - too snarky. But there is a lot of research in this field and way too much self congratulatory material. A look at the Opium Wars should be enough to convince that more guns goes a long way to an explanation. Also Graeber's "Debt" gives some sense of how Europe managed to construct an economy that produced a desperation for loot that was quite remarkable.
This begs the question: why didn't nobody else succeed in looting the Europeans.
It's not like the other Empires around the world were Gandhian paradises of peaceful coexistence. They were waging war on each other, looting, and going on slavery raids just like Europeans. Go and look at Aztect ruins in Mesoamerica sometimes and marvel the the monuments where the prists were sacrificing humans.
Yet, despite the experience with war and violence, they (almost) never managed to beat Europeans, and certainly never colonised Europe (after the Muslims were thrown out of Europe ... Well ... depending whom you ask, the (descendants of the) Ottoman Empire are still colonising parts of Europe today ... Just ponder why Constantinople is no longer called Constantinople).
Why? What did Europe have they didn't?
Please don't post unsubstantive comments to HN, especially not with snark on top. It degrades the level of discussion below what we're hoping for here.
I'm sure you can make your substantive point informatively if you want to. If you don't want to (or don't have time), posting nothing is also an option.
One explanation is the book "Triumph of the West" by Roberts. He makes the case for it being the culture.
Looking at the comments in this thread, I'm really starting to get sick of the stupidity and ignorance of the hn community. I hope you're all just paid provacateurs.
War isn't some special attribute of european history or success. While some people (mostly on the narc spectrum) are motivated by competition, many aren't
Historical Counterexamples:
Chinese warring states periods, Japanese warring states periods, post gupta and mughal empires in India, west African pre colonial history, and there's many more.