Is the decline of the West inevitable?

[Dachs]

Having the best and most reowned staple markets. The West had them many of them: Antwerpen and Venice to name a few.

And ofcourse, the resources of the New World, although few were actually willing to trade these resources.

"The East had the best and most reowned [sic] staple [sic] markets: Bantam and Makassar to name a few.

And ofcourse [sic], the resources of the Chinese interior, although few were actually willing to trade these resources."

See what I did there?

I never used the word dominate, and I said "started exerting control over global shipping lanes."

You could just as easily say that Japan "started exerting control" over the East Asian shipping lanes. Does that make Japan a dominant trading power in the early modern Pacific Ocean?

 

[Theige]

You could just as easily say that Japan "started exerting control" over the East Asian shipping lanes. Does that make Japan a dominant trading power in the early modern Pacific Ocean?

But Japan in the early modern Pacific doesn't come close to the relative power of the various European nations in the Indian Ocean in the 17th century, does it?

Edit: and Japan is in the Eastern Pacific, while Europe is on the other side of the globe

 

[RedRalph]

Exactly. If we are factoring who had what control in the Pacific, factor in that there were relatively tiny states from the other side of the globe.

Opium Wars, I think. It must have been some utterly incredible decline for China if in 1800 it was technologically superior to European states and a mere 40 years later it could lose to ones a minute fraction of its size who had traveled halfway round the globe to fight them.

 

[Tahuti]

@Dachs: Even if it is true the non-Western nations outclassed the Western ones, it still doesn't explain the West's technological advantage, does it?

 

[Dachs]

But Japan in the early modern Pacific doesn't come close to the relative power of the various European nations in the Indian Ocean in the 17th century, does it?

Edit: and Japan is in the Eastern Pacific, while Europe is on the other side of the globe

Exactly. If we are factoring who had what control in the Pacific, factor in that there were relatively tiny states from the other side of the globe.

Yes, it's quite impressive that European countries were players on the other side of the world. But they were just players until the Industrial Revolution. They weren't "dominant", they weren't "controlling", they were playing the game by the same rules as everybody else. The fact that they were playing that game is nice and might be impressive on its own, but that's not what we're discussing here, is it?

Opium Wars, I think. It must have been some utterly incredible decline for China if in 1800 it was technologically superior to European states and a mere 40 years later it could lose to ones a minute fraction of its size who had traveled halfway round the globe to fight them.

Whoa whoa whoa. I didn't say that China was technologically superior. The Qing army in the late eighteenth century was something like technologically equivalent to the Russians; numerically, of course, it dwarfed anything they could bring to bear, and logistically, the Chinese could actually project power further into the steppe than the Russians could (at least until the nineteenth century).

Now, the Qing were actually worse-armed against the British than they were against the Zunghar Mongols several decades earlier; one could lay this to several potential factors, like court politics, a decline in military funding, and so forth. (My knowledge of Chinese history in this period is subpar, unfortunately.)

@Dachs: Even if it is true the non-Western nations outclassed the Western ones, it still doesn't explain the West's technological advantage, does it?

I've said before that the West didn't really have a meaningful technological advantage except in terms of perhaps naval travel...until the Industrial Revolution.

 

[schlaufuchs]

@Dachs: Even if it is true the non-Western nations outclassed the Western ones, it still doesn't explain the West's technological advantage, does it?

What technological advantage is that, exactly? And what time period are you referring to, specifically?

 

[Arakhor]

Why exactly are the Netherlands and Portugal being referred to as "tiny nations"? In a European context, they're fairly averagely-sized.

 

[Theige]

Why exactly are the Netherlands and Portugal being referred to as "tiny nations"? In a European context, they're fairly averagely-sized.

Sure, but we're not limiting ourselves to comparing just European nations to one another.

Also, they're still dwarfed by the traditional "major" European powers.

 

[Masada]

It proves that you can.
Dominance: The ability to dominate.

That I can do something does not demonstrate that I dominate in doing it. For that matter, military power is quite distinct from culture, from economics, and so forth. The one does not prove the supremacy of the other.

China was the most powerful non-western state/culture/polity/entity by that point, and it got defeated by the Brits.

Which demonstrates what? That Nazi Germany was the supreme expression of German culture?

If you count the USSR as western because Russia was a state/empire dominated by "caucasians" and a political ideology cooked up by a German, then the west had significant influence on the whole world.

Significant influence being what?

 

[Monsterzuma]

The IMF has just come out with a prediction that China will surpass the US economically by 2016: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/imf-bombshell-age-of-america-about-to-end-2011-04-25?pagenumber=1

this is clearly adjusted for purchasing power (which it should).

the decline of the West is now officially mainstream.

 

[Ayatollah So]

The continued ascent of the West is inevitable.
The continued faster ascent of the East is also inevitable.
You can do the math. But remember, "relative decline" isn't decline.

Glad I could clear that up for y'all.

 

[Monsterzuma]

You can do the math. But remember, "relative decline" isn't decline.

increased competition for resources can spell absolute decline for the established players, particularly when things like peak-oil loom on the horizon.

also, modern financial systems are leveraged, meaning that if an expected rise does not occur a strongly as predicted, the effect to prosperity can be negative. it takes GDP growth to stabilize the debt-to-GDP ratios.

 

[Dachs]

The continued ascent of the West is inevitable.
The continued faster ascent of the East is also inevitable.
You can do the math. But remember, "relative decline" isn't decline.

Glad I could clear that up for y'all.

Ugh, inevitability.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

That I can do something does not demonstrate that I dominate in doing it. For that matter, military power is quite distinct from culture, from economics, and so forth. The one does not prove the supremacy of the other.

I didn't mean supremacy as an evaluation which culture is "better", I just meant the ability to dominate: to impose one's will upon others, either economically or militarily.

Which demonstrates what? That Nazi Germany was the supreme expression of German culture?

Umm, no...
I don't really follow your train of thought here.

Significant influence being what?

Significant influence being the export of an ideology and the ability to compete and fight proxy wars with the other, more "western" superpower, not to speak of the technological advancements made by the soviet union which brought about the space race,

 

[rugbyLEAGUEfan]

Can anyone guess why I have found reading the last 3 pages of this thread extremely interesting and I have learnt a great deal , while the previous 5 were farcical ( or half of it) ?

G , I wonder ?

 

[Tahuti]

@Dachs: You have just given away: Naval travel. Like that wasn't important.

Besides, I now recall why the West was commercially superior to rest ever since the Early Modern era: Modern fractional reserve banking and corporate legal personality among others were all Western inventions. Neither the far east or the Islamic world had equivelants of these in the scale the West did have.

Honestly: Did the East had East-India trading companies? Large scale commercial enterprises? The ability to colonise the New World? Fractional reserve banking?

Na-ah.

Monsterzuma: Remember, that the EU, Canada and Israel are also the West. Russia and Latin-America can also integrate with the West, although I don't see that happen soon (but again, neither is China overtaking the USA).
Besides, everything that isn't Western is not as homogenous as the West is. The cultural differences between India and China are probably more significant than the cultural differences between the US and the EU.

 

[Algeroth]

I think you are wrong and islamic world had the institutions that you are denying them, but i'm not an expert on history, so I'll leave it to others.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

@Dachs: You have just given away: Naval travel. Like that wasn't important.

Besides, I now recall why the West was commercially superior to rest ever since the Early Modern era: Modern fractional reserve banking and corporate legal personality among others were all Western inventions. Neither the far east or the Islamic world had equivelants of these in the scale the West did have.

Minor nitpick, but since the Song dynasty China had independently developed a form of of corporate legal identity: The clan corporation that evolved out of ancestral funds, originally founded to secure the financing of mausoleums and family schools.
Those were extended clans not based on kinship that ran shops and other businesses. Like in modern corporations membership could be bought and sold, and dividents were paid according to investments. They even had their own chartas, professional management and they would split, unite with, or take over other clans. Basically they were coropration, but they officially disguised themselves as clans to get tax incentives (land owned by an ancestral fund was deemed sacred ground and not taxed, even though it wa soften used for agriculture) and because commercial activity was shunned in the confucian culture.
About naval travel, well everybody shoudl by now have heard of Zheng He and the Ming's blue water navy.
Those were all things that the West and China both had, and the Chinese even had them a bit earlier, like gunpowder weapons. But in the West exploration and commerce (and gunpowder weapons) became more developed due to the existence of many smalller competing states, while in China the state had no outside competition and no interest in the development of a commercial culture that would allow businessmen to grow wealthy and powerful enough to challenge the authority of the emperor.



Further reading on clan corporations:
Ruskola, Teemu: Conceptualizing Corporations and Kinship: Comparative Law and Development Theory in a Chinese Perspective, in: Stanford Law Review (52) 2000
Sangren, Steven: Traditional Chinese Corporations: Beyond Kinship, in: Journal of Asian Studies (43) Nr.3 1984

 

[civ_king]

@Dachs: You have just given away: Naval travel. Like that wasn't important.

Besides, I now recall why the West was commercially superior to rest ever since the Early Modern era: Modern fractional reserve banking and corporate legal personality among others were all Western inventions. Neither the far east or the Islamic world had equivelants of these in the scale the West did have.

Honestly: Did the East had East-India trading companies? Large scale commercial enterprises? The ability to colonise the New World? Fractional reserve banking?

Na-ah.

Monsterzuma: Remember, that the EU, Canada and Israel are also the West. Russia and Latin-America can also integrate with the West, although I don't see that happen soon (but again, neither is China overtaking the USA).
Besides, everything that isn't Western is not as homogenous as the West is. The cultural differences between India and China are probably more significant than the cultural differences between the US and the EU.

India had a very long history of corporation, sreni though it declined in the 10th century

 

[Tahuti]

GoodSamartian: Thx for the interesting info! I really appreciate that!

It's also good you noted Zheng He and the like. Ming China may have been able to colonise the New World, hadn't they neglected the navy after the Zheng He era, if I may name it that way.

civ_king: Well, the main problem in early modern Indian trading culture was the high incidence of nepotism. When making deals, businesspeople generally sought deals with family, even if other offers were much more profitable.