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By Ian Morris Professor, Stanford University
On his current visit to Beijing, UK Prime Minister David Cameron has said China
will soon reclaim its position as the world's biggest economy - a role it has
held for 18 of the past 20 centuries. But how did the US, Britain and the rest
of Europe interrupt this reign of supremacy? It comes down to location.
Why does the West dominate the world?
Europeans have been asking this question since the 18th Century, and Africans
and Asians since the 19th. But there is still not much agreement on the
answers.
People once claimed Westerners were simply biologically superior. Others have
argued Western religion, culture, ethics, or institutions are uniquely
excellent, or that the West has had better leaders. Others still reject all
these ideas, insisting that Western domination is just an accident.
But in the last few years, a new kind of theory has gained ground.
Distinctive ways of life began emerging in different parts of the world 11,000
years ago, when the first farmers created more complex societies. Great
civilizations grew out of the original agricultural cores (in what we now call
southwest Asia, China, Pakistan, Mexico, and Peru), all of which steadily
expanded as population grew.
The westernmost of the Old World's agricultural cores, in southwest Asia, was
the foundation of what we now call Western Civilization. By 500 BC, the Western
core had expanded across Europe, its centre of gravity shifting to the
Mediterranean cultures of Greece and Rome. By 1500 AD it had expanded still
further, and its centre was shifting into Western Europe. By 1900 AD it had
expanded across the oceans, and its centre was shifting to North America.
People, it suggests, are much the same all over the world. The reason why some
groups stuck with hunting and gathering while others built empires and had
industrial revolutions has nothing to do with genetics, beliefs, attitudes, or
great men: it was simply a matter of geography.
China and India are, of course poised to pick up the baton of global
superpowers, but to explain why the West rules, we have to plunge back 15,000
years to the point when the world warmed up at the end of the last ice age.
Geography then dictated that there were only a few regions on the planet where
farming was possible, because only they had the kinds of climate and landscape
which allowed the evolution of wild plants and animals that could potentially
be domesticated.
The densest concentrations of these plants and animals lay towards the western
end of Eurasia, around the headwaters of the Euphrates, Tigris, and Jordan
Rivers in what we now call south-west Asia. It was therefore here, around 9000
BC, that farming began, spreading outwards across Europe.
Farming also started independently in other areas, from China to Mexico; but
because plants and animals that could be domesticated were somewhat less common
in these zones than in the West, the process took thousands of years longer to
get going. These other zones of complex agricultural societies also expanded,
but the West long retained its early lead, producing the world's first cities,
states, and empires.
But if this were all that there was to the story - that the West got an early
lead and held onto it - there would be no controversy over why the West rules.
In reality, when we look back across history, we see that things were more
complicated. Geography determined how societies developed; but how societies
developed simultaneously determined what geography meant.
The ancient Greeks called it Mesopotamia, the land between two rivers - Tigris
and Euphrates. But it is also the land between two seas - the Mediterranean Sea
and Persia Gulf. It is also the land between mountain and desert, lagoon and
salt marsh. All these geographical features have to be borne in mind when
considering the birthplace of the first civilisations.
Geography v history - it's impossible to know which takes precedence. There's
no getting away from the brutal facts of nature - rivers that flood will dry
up, rainfall that's intermittent, mountains that are impassable, deserts that
are hostile.
Applying this kind of analysis to Mesopotamia, where summers are hot, winters
are cold and rainfall is low, I'd sum it up like this: difficult but not
impossible. No garden of Eden, but no howling wilderness either.
In the earliest days of agriculture, having the right temperatures, rainfall,
and topography was all-important. But as villages grew into cities, these
geographical facts became less important than living on a great river like the
Nile, which made irrigation possible.
As states turned into empires, being on a river began mattering less than
access to a navigable sea like the Mediterranean, which was what allowed Rome
to move its food, armies, and taxes around.
As the ancient world's empires expanded further, though, they changed the
meanings of geography again. The long bands of steppes from Mongolia to Hungary
turned into a kind of highway along which nomads moved at will, undermining the
empires themselves.
In the first five centuries AD, the Old World's great empires - from Rome in
the West to Han China in the East - all came apart; but the political changes
transformed geography once again. China recreated a unified empire in the 6th
Century AD, while the West never did so.
For more than a millennium, until at least 1700, China was the richest,
strongest, and most inventive place on earth, and the East pulled ahead of the
West.
East Asian inventors came up with one breakthrough after another. By 1300 their
ships could cross the oceans and their crude guns could shoot the people on the
other side. But then, in the kind of paradox that fills human history, the
East's breakthroughs changed the meaning of geography once again.
Richard Miles at Tell Brak - a city first excavated by Agatha Christie's
husband Max Mallowan
Western Europe - sticking out into the cold North Atlantic, far from the
centres of action - had always been a backwater. But when Europeans learned of
the East's ocean-going ships and guns, their location on the Atlantic abruptly
became a huge geographical plus.
Before people could cross the oceans, it had not mattered that Europe was twice
as close as China to the vast, rich lands of the Americas. But now that people
could cross the oceans, this became the most important geographical fact in the
world.
The Atlantic, 3,000 miles across, became a kind of Goldilocks Ocean, neither
too big nor too small. It was just big enough that very different kinds of
goods were produced around its shores in Europe, Africa, and America; and just
small enough that the ships of Shakespeare's age could cross it quite easily.
The Pacific, by contrast, was much too big. Following the prevailing tides and
winds, it was an 8,000-mile trip from China to California - just about possible
500 years ago, but too far to make trade profitable.
Geography determined that it was western Europeans, rather than the 15th
Century's finest sailors - the Chinese - who discovered, plundered, and
colonised the Americas. Chinese sailors were just as daring as Spaniards;
Chinese settlers just as intrepid as Britons; but Europeans, not Chinese,
seized the Americas because Europeans only had to go half as far.
Europeans went on in the 17th Century to create a new market economy around the
shores of the Atlantic, exploiting comparative advantages between continents.
This forced European thinkers to confront new questions about how the winds and
tides worked. They learned to measure and count in better ways, and cracked the
codes of physics, chemistry, and biology.
As a result, Europe, not China, had a scientific revolution. Europeans, not
Chinese, turned science's insights onto society itself in the 18th Century in
what we now call the Enlightenment.
Continue reading the main story
Will China soon rival the US?
George Bush
Many observers think so, but not George W Bush. In an interview with the Times
this week, he said that "internal problems" meant it was unlikely to rival the
US any time soon. "Do I think America will remain sole superpower? I do."
By 1800, science and the Atlantic market economy pushed western Europeans into
mechanising production and tapping the power of fossil fuels. Britain had the
world's first industrial revolution, and by 1850 bestrode the world like a
colossus.
But the transforming power of geography did not stop there. By 1900 the
British-dominated global economy had drawn in the resources of North America,
changing the meaning of geography once again. The US, until recently a rather
backward periphery, became the new global core.
And still the process did not stop. In the 20th Century, the American-dominated
global economy in turn drew in the resources of Asia. As container ships and
jet airliners turned even the vast Pacific Ocean into a puddle, the apparently
backward peripheries of Japan, then the "Asian Tigers", and eventually China
and India turned into even newer global cores.
The "rise of the East", so shocking to so many Westerners, was entirely
predictable to those who understood that geography determines how societies
develop, and that how societies develop simultaneously determines what
geography means.
When power and wealth shifted across the Atlantic from Europe to America in the
mid-20th Century, the process was horrifyingly violent. As we move into the
mid-21st century, power and wealth will shift across the Pacific from America
to China.
The great challenge for the next generation is not how to stop geography from
working; it is how to manage its effects without a Third World War.
Why the West Rules - For Now: The Patterns of History, and What they Reveal
About the Future is published by Profile.
Below is a selection of your comments
A charming post-hoc story, spoilt only by the claim that anyone skilled in the
art could have predicted the "rise of Asia" - which has hardly been homogeneous
in any case and probably should not be considered a single phenomenon. I'm old
enough to remember when geographers and historians were writing off Asia
because it was mired in Communism and instead predicting an African
renaissance.
Ian Kemmish, Biggleswade, UK
An amusing post-prandial idea to kick around with the brandy and cigars but
hardly history. To assign one cause as the determinant for any historical event
is rather a crude approach to the development of societies. Indeed it reminds
me of AJP Taylor's assertions in one lecture about the Germans being aggressive
because they lived on the North German plain and so obviously they were going
to invade Belgium - only he was joking.
Mike Tittensor, Cambridge
Is it not more realistic that in a world that will inevitably have to move away
from oil towards renewables like solar power, or towards nuclear power, that
places like Australia with its vast, uninhabitable, but solar
gathering-friendly deserts and massive uranium reserves, or Africa with it's
remaining untapped sources of minerals, oil, gas, and again a very conducive
environment for renewable energy production?
Ian, Leeds
This overview does not take into account the impact of social change that has
occurred. For example, re: China, I am sure the lack of drive and change in the
18th and 19th centuries was due to an all-controlling aristocracy and ruling
family. That plus the dramatic move to communism in the 20th century which
resulted in control being vested solely in a small group of people unwilling to
share has meant that China took a backward step. Now that they seem to be
embracing free market forces more and more and allowing a more democratic
approach with an increasingly open mind means that exciting times are ahead for
them and worrying times are ahead for the west.
Aidan Brand, London, England
In the Rise and Fall of the Great Powers 1500-2000, Paul Kennedy considered the
question of why Europe, one of several roughly equal power groups at the time
(China, Mogul Empire in India, Ottoman Empire) came to dominate. If I remember
it rightly, he argued that it was the fact that Europe was divided into waring
states (war is the mother of invention) that led them to create greater
inventions (e.g. better firearms - I use the word "great" loosely). The others
were all bloated empires, and remained static by comparison.
James, London
When the time comes that "geography" will shift wealth and economic power to
Africa, my guess is scholars in the West and East will be in for a shocking
surprise...
Kierin Ombu, Lagos, Nigeria
I always thought that the introduction of Confucianism parralysed advancement
and fossilised society in China as it taught that people should be content with
what they had and not strive for improvement through science and travel.
Progress had stopped in China a long time before European explorerers and
armies got there.
Richard Freeman, Farnham, Surrey
Most of the ideas here were put very eloquently by Jared Diamond in his book
Guns, Germs and Steel.
Neil, Marlborough, UK
Utter nonsense. China and India are growing because the US Corporations decide
to offshore manufacturing. If Africa can eventually do it cheaper, then China
and India will collapse.
Leeroy, Stroud
The industrial revolution could only have happened in Europe because personal
freedoms and property rights were protected, allowing individuals to benefit
from innovation. Legally protected private corporations allowed great numbers
of early capitalists to pour money and resource into risky projects, in the
hope of future deferred rewards. The Egyptians, Mayans and Chinese may have
enjoyed the early geographical advantage, but the real explanations as to why
they "stopped" whilst the West advanced are social and economic, not
geographical.
Steve, London, UK