How did Europe get so advanced

Nuka-sama

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How come when the Arabs, Chineese, Aztecs, Africans, and Indians were way stronger and more advanced, all ended up being colonised by backwards, and weak Europe?
 
Nuclear kid said:
How come when the Arabs, Chineese, Aztecs, Africans, and Indians were way stronger and more advanced, all ended up being colonised by backwards, and weak Europe?

Several reasons.

The Arabs suffered a horrible setback when they were conquered by the Mongols in the 13th century AD. The Indians were not inferior technologically to the Europeans of their time. They were just divided among themselves and that made them easier to conquer. The technological inferiority of the Aztecs was due to the same reason that all of the Americas were -- no pack animals. Eurasia had horses and oxen, while America had nothing. The only civilization to use pack animals in America were the Incas, who used llamas. None of the American civilizations had the wheel, because they had no animals to pull the carts made with them. The technological inferiority of Africa has been blamed on the widespread presence of disease, such as malaria.
 
Towards the end of the Mughal empire, India (well I think only Mughal India) had something like 25% of the worlds wealth whereas all of Europe had only 21%. Manchu China also had about the same as India (so between these three and add the Ottomans you pretty much got it all).

A huge reason the Europeans got ahead was their exposure to wide amount of people and cultures while still remaining relatively safe (well Western Europe) from the Central Asia. The constant Turkish/Mongol/Indo European conquests through history really set back many cultures and civilizations like nothing else with the Mongols being the biggest of them (or you could argue that Timur was).
 
Mongols did not conquer Maghrib or Egypt, the centre of arab and muslim civ of that time. You can't blame them, actually.
 
Also, there seems to be a constant desire to improve on things, to learn new things, and a tendeny towards and fostering of ingenuity in Europe, more so than in the the rest of the world ( I lump America into this group, too). China got on top, and then decided they were better than everybody else, so they rejected all outside thinking. They stopped searching the oceans for things ( they got as far as Zanzibar) because they decided that there was nothing worth seeing out there, because they were the best.
The Islamic Kingdoms believed that all outside thinking was evil, and the true path was shown to them through Allah, thus they did not take well the inventions of Europe or India, and fell behind.
In Africa and America, the natives never seemed to progress beyond the Iron Age, why this is I do not know, but they just went stagnant. Perhaps the pack animals mentioned above, or that lack of sanctioning or desire for ingenuity. inherent in their societies.
 
if you're really interested in the question, one great book to read is Germs, Guns and Steel by Jared Diamond.

here's a link to the book's homepage

i read it a year ago or so, partly because of my interest in civving :D probably should read it again.
 
Nanocyborgasm said:
The Indians were not inferior technologically to the Europeans of their time.
The indians indeed matched the europeans in many fields of knowledge, but they were far behind in one key field - military technology.
Not only were their weapons far inferior to those of Europe, they also lacked the sophisticated tactics of the european armies. That's why the british could defeat indian armies of many (and I mean many) times their size, just look at Assaye.
The same is true about the chinese, their military were no match for Europe's.

For some reason (there are many theories) the best weapons and military tactics were developed in Europe.
 
Another reason that hasn't been mentioned yet - international rivalry.

Once the early explorers got back, the many wars of Europe spread rapidly around the globe in search of empires to steal.

All that fighting meant an accelerated arms race within Europe.
 
Cincinnatus3 said:
if you're really interested in the question, one great book to read is Germs, Guns and Steel by Jared Diamond.

here's a link to the book's homepage

i read it a year ago or so, partly because of my interest in civving :D probably should read it again.

Yes, definitely read that book! Fascinating reading for anyone who is in the least interested in this kind of thing....

It gives more of an answer to how certain regions of the world (notably Europe, India, China) had a 'head start' in ancient times (very short version: access to more and more varied proteins/cereals, disease resistance due to greater variety of domesticated animals),though.
The question of who came out on top in modern times isn't answered, though. There are many reasons and theories, but another book by Jared Diamond, Collapse, is interesting and relevant for that as well.
 
People really seem to like "Guns, Germs and Steel"?:)

I always like to suggest Michael Ada's "Machines as the Measure of Men", as complementary reading when trying to explain the nature and extent of European technological superiority these last few centuries.
 
Power is cyclical, China was strong , but it fell several time in its history. A correct persepective is that, no nation remains strong forever. The period when Europe was strong is a short moment in history, nowadays it is arguable that the age will be an Asian one, with the rise of China, Japan, India and the various Asian "Economic Tigers". While i cannot speak for India, the reason why Europe were able to dominate China was that they had just fought a devastating war called the Taiping rebellion, which wiped out more people than WW2. The Empire was at its zenith with all that it implied, but China was not colonised by any meaning of the word.
 
Shaihulud said:
While i cannot speak for India, the reason why Europe were able to dominate China was that they had just fought a devastating war called the Taiping rebellion, which wiped out more people than WW2.
You can't possibly discount the fact that europeans actually had far better weapons and tactics than the chinese, rebellion or no rebellion.
 
Shaihulud said:
Power is cyclical, China was strong , but it fell several time in its history. A correct persepective is that, no nation remains strong forever. The period when Europe was strong is a short moment in history, nowadays it is arguable that the age will be an Asian one, with the rise of China, Japan, India and the various Asian "Economic Tigers". While i cannot speak for India, the reason why Europe were able to dominate China was that they had just fought a devastating war called the Taiping rebellion, which wiped out more people than WW2. The Empire was at its zenith with all that it implied, but China was not colonised by any meaning of the word.

but the numbers of that rebellion are exaggerated and is considered the second deadliest war in history besides WW2...

the number is still unbelievably high because this is before the use of pre
WW1 machine gun weapons and that it was a civil war
 
Mongols did not conquer Maghrib or Egypt, the centre of arab and muslim civ of that time. You can't blame them, actually.

Actually the center of the Muslim world was still baghdad. It had libaries, scholars, observatories, laboratories, hospitals you name it. It was burned and raided by the mongols, indeed, some accounts say that the river was black from all the ink. Agricultural production in Mesopotamia fell to 10% of what it was previously, and starvation was surely rampant. Mongol invasions were immensly destructive.

So yes you can blame the Mongols.
 
Check out a newer book called "The Victory of Reason" by Rodney Stark. It's more of an argumentative treatise pushing a different way of thinking about this subject. He posits that there were fundamental changes that happened during the conversion of the Roman Empire into the early Christian Middle ages.

A safe and effective horse collar, eye glasses, waterwheel, early capitalism and division of labor, new building techniques, banking all became common all throughout Europe by the time the middle ages were over... Industries left and right all saw revolutions in scale and advancement due to the way the societies were systematically reorganized after Rome fell.

For example, some of Augustine of Hippo's works are translated into English and were quite eyeopeners in how he described his world and the changes that were going on around him (I went ahead and read of the time period Stark spoke most about). And Augustine lived for seventy five years right at the transition of the final end of the Empire and the emergence of Christian Europe.
 
naziassbandit said:
Actually the center of the Muslim world was still baghdad. It had libaries, scholars, observatories, laboratories, hospitals you name it. It was burned and raided by the mongols, indeed, some accounts say that the river was black from all the ink. Agricultural production in Mesopotamia fell to 10% of what it was previously, and starvation was surely rampant. Mongol invasions were immensly destructive.

So yes you can blame the Mongols.

No, not fully. Yes, Baghdad was the capital of the caliphate and perhaps the greatest cultural centre, yet it has already been declining in every way.
Much of Baghdad was already burned at the turn of X/XI century anyway.
And my point stays: even if You can blame Mongols for decline of eastern half of muslim world, the western one didn't do anything better.
 
wow, thanks for all your help, Id tell you all why i needed this info, but then id appear lazy
 
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