Largest economy in the world in history?

[innonimatu]

Wait...you are calling Macau "China's most important harbor"?
At no point in history was Macau a noteworthy trading port of China, let alone its "most important harbor". Guangzhou, Fuzhou, Quanzhou, Hangzhou, Wenzhou, Shanghai, Hong Kong were/are. Macau was/is not, and it is evident simply judging from its population.
Macau was virtually a couplemiddle of nowhere when the Portuguese went to China and the Portuguese had to pay RENT to China just for the RIGHT TO TRADE in Macau up until the Opium Wars when Portugal rode the coattails of UK and France. If that is your concept of "gifted" then I am more than happy to "gift" you some of my worthless possessions in return for a 20kg of silver every year

Yep. All of RickFGS View Post's posts are made up of outrageously false claims. It's somewhat embarrassing for me as a portuguese, really, to see countrymen making such wild claims, so I feel compelled to respond to the worst. For example:
- he blames the decline of the portuguese empire on lack of support due to the Iberian Union, forgetting that Philip III sent in 1625 one of the largest castillan fleets to the americas up to that time just for recapturing Salvador from the dutch. The Ibrerian Union was a problem indeed, but it's nos as simple as "lack of support".
- Philip II of Castille never had to push that idiot Sebastião into Morocco to get himself killed, nor had anything to do with his death. He only had to wait for Sebastião to die anyway, as it was obvious he wasn't going to produce any heirs.
- portuguese "semi-automatic cannons" in 1450!!! no comments...
- "portuguese navy totaled almost 10,000 ships" and was built with wood from Madeira! Madeira was cleared of its wood quickly, yes, in several years of large forest fires if we are to believe the written documents from that time. A few years later the lord of the island had to order the planting of forests, and wood shortages have been chronic there ever since those early days of settlement!

Funny thing is, all RickFGS or anyone else had to read to dispel these outrageous nationalistic fictions were João de Barros' Decades of Asia, a near-contemporary chronicle of the portuguese expansion in the Atlantic and Indian ocean during the 15th and early 16th centuries. Which, if anything, would be pro-portuguese, and nevertheless dispels those wild claims. For example, from the first book, first decade, about the early settlement of Madeira:
"affy tomou o fogo póffe da róça e do mais aruoredo, q fete annos andou viuo no brauio daqllas grãdes mátas que a natureza tinha criádo auia tãtas centenas de annos. A qual deftruyçã de madeira pofto que foy proueitófa pera os primeiros pouadores lógo em breue começárem lograr as nouidades da térra: os prefentes fente bem efte dano, por a falta que tem de madeira i lenha [...] efta neçeffidade prefente que a ilha tem de lenha [...]"
Translation: the fires set to clear out some land burned on the island for seven years, and though they were good for clearing the land the island now (~1540) lacks wood.

About his sources:
-> O Dia de Aljubarrota de Luís Rosa
Historic fiction (how I hate that term!), writer.

-> Portugal pioneiro da globalização de Jorge Nascimento Rodrigues
professional political propagandists, an economist...

-> 1509: A Batalha que mudou o domínio do comércio global de Tessaleno Devezas
...and a physicist! Idiots clearly trying to imitate other idiots, Thomas Friedman and David Landes.

-> Homens, Espadas e Tomates" de Rainer Daehnhardt
Rainer Daehnhardt is what we call "eccentric". What we'd call "insane" if he didn't happen to be wealthy and somewhat well-connected. socially. Still somewhat respectable within his main obsession (medieval and early modern weapons), but well known for conspiracy theories and plain crazy claims.

-> Grandes Batalhas Navais Portuguesas, Colecção "História Divulgativa"
...

-> A Expansão Marítima Portuguesa 1400-1800, Francisco Bethencourt
Finally an historian! I may still check this one out, if he'll tell me which of those outrageous claims that author backs.

 

[Masada]

João de Barros

Or Tomé Pires.

 

[Traitorfish]

Under Ur it was.

Eh, from what I know, the "Empire of Ur" is better understood as a regional hegemony rather than outright dominion. Ur recieved tribute and obedience, to whatever extent, but it didn't function as the centre of a single polity.

 

[General Pilates]

Eh, from what I know, the "Empire of Ur" is better understood as a regional hegemony rather than outright dominion. Ur recieved tribute and obedience, to whatever extent, but it didn't function as the centre of a single polity.

Not entirely sure that's true. For a simple tribute system they had a fairly complex bureaucracy and went through great lengths to keep everything stable.

 

[Traitorfish]

Not entirely sure that's true. For a simple tribute system they had a fairly complex bureaucracy and went through great lengths to keep everything stable.

Well, perhaps I'm oversimplifying things; I know that there was a varying degree of control exercised over different cities, with those closer to Ur being subjected to a greater degree of internal control than those of the periphery. But I would also suggest that the relatively stable continuity of individual cities as compared to the various "empires" suggests that political organisation was concentrated on that level, rather than at an "imperial level"; the collapse of centralised states tends to produce a variety of statelets formed out of the conflicts of vying factions, while in Sumeria it tends to be the case that the dominion of any one "imperial" power expands from or recedes towards the capital over time. That suggests that we should be wary of classifying these empires as unified polities in which the component entities have a stable, uniform relationship to a single overarching government.

(This is probably true of some of the other suggestions given, to be honest. A lot of pre-modern "unifications" weren't really anything of the sort.)

 

[r16]

the semi automatic cannon thingy is also understandable . Not that ı could tell the difference but original gunpowder weapons were all like that , kinda breech loading . Though muzzle loading enabled stronger barrels and heavier shots . Portuguese weapons would have been credible enough against rowboats or anything used by the Muslim traders , they would be totally outclassed by , say, a British ship of the line .

 

[ParkCungHee]

the semi automatic cannon thingy is also understandable . Not that ı could tell the difference but original gunpowder weapons were all like that , kinda breech loading.

Semi-Automatic would mean that when you pull the trigger, the weapon automatically loads the next bullet from the magazine or the clip into the chamber, allowing you to fire the weapon continuously so long as you have bullets in the magazine/clip and you are pulling the trigger.
Breech loading weapons by definition are not semi-automatic.

 

[innonimatu]

Or Tomé Pires.

Yeah, I've heard about the Suma, but never actually found a copy of it to buy. So it is still useful source material on some parts of southeast Asia? I keep hoping that all those several 16/17th century histories will be republished in new editions, but so far it's only the Decades of Asia and Pedro Pais' "História da Ethiópia" are found for sale now. Luís Fróis' "Historia de Japan" was supposed to be better researched and republished next year, but afaik the public funding for the work got cut among the latest damn "austerity".

Anyway, what stuck me from reading some of those old accounts from europeans in Asia was that they did regard India and China to be extremely wealthy. They were impressed with the japanese political system, but not particularly so with the wealth of the country. Southeast Asia was important for its spice but somewhat marginal and poor compared to India and China.

I'm not convinced that either China or India were globally wealthier that Europe as a whole at that time. All those three areas had huge populations and very wealthy areas compared to the situation in the rest of the world. That traders went from Europe to Asia to get stuff (in exchange for other stuff) by itself only meant that both markets paid, not that one was wealthier than the other. So I don't really take any of those estimates of past GDP seriously, I think that attempting quantitative analysis of economic wealth in centuries past is a totally silly idea. Qualitative comparisons between degrees of development and population size are the best we can seriously try using material evidence, and qualitative comparisons of people's perceptions back then is the best we can do with documentary evidence. But perhaps I'm being too skeptical of modern historians' abilities?

 

[G-Max]

If we're going by raw GDP, I'll go with the expected answer: USA #1!

If we're going by GDP as a percentage of global GDP, then my vote goes to the Pax Mongolia. Smashing the economies of your three biggest competitors (China, India, and large parts of the Islamic Caliphate) and absorbing their manpower and natural resources can have that effect.

 

[Tee Kay]

If we're going by GDP as a percentage of global GDP, then my vote goes to the Pax Mongolia. Smashing the economies of your three biggest competitors (China, India, and large parts of the Islamic Caliphate) and absorbing their manpower and natural resources can have that effect.

Eh, the Mongols never really got into India...

Of course, there was an awful lot of destruction, and by the time the Mongols got around to taking out the Southern Song, the different parts of the Empire were already breaking away.

 

[G-Max]

Eh, the Mongols never really got into India...

They controlled the Indus Valley, which I think has historically been one of the really important parts...

 

[Tee Kay]

They controlled the Indus Valley, which I think has historically been one of the really important parts...

One battle and a few raids into the area does not mean they "controlled" it. Not that controlling the Indus valley would be much of an accomplishment; Punjab was (and is) heavily populated, true, but by 1200 the centre of power (political and economic) has moved east to Delhi and other cities of the Ganges valley, and to the southern kingdoms. As it was, the Mongols could barely hold down Kashmir, so I don't like their chances of holding down Punjab without splintering the Empire in the process.

 

[r16]

Semi-Automatic ... automatically loads the next bullet from the magazine or the clip into the chamber, allowing you to fire the weapon continuously so long as you have bullets in the magazine/clip

indeed correct but ı think the post that claimed the idea also said there were spare barrel ends that were speedily loaded into the weapon and the the semi definition is later addition by an other poster . Have been so involved in lunacy , ı immediately grow an affinity for such "outrageous" things .

 

[Domen]

Check this:

 

[say1988]

Why does the US include Canada from 1980?

 

[Domen]

Ask the United Nations.

 

[Dachs]

so um

where is the un getting its bogus statistics for pre-1860 or so

 

[innonimatu]

so um

where is the un getting its bogus statistics for pre-1860 or so

And it if were only the pre-1860 ones... if that index was realistic then India's "industrial production" between 1830 and 1900 (whatever that may be) collapses by more than 2/3 in absolute terms, despite a huge increase in population and new technology! Likewise, but to a lesser degree, with China. Japan's numbers, especially the most recent ones, are also absurd. And then we have Western Germany producing more that the USSR in 1980, Japan producing half as much as the USA, France's trente glorieuses compressed in the 1970s, etc.

 

[Dachs]

yeah maybe but I'm going with what I know

 

[Domen]

Hi, it's from "Tablice historyczne", publishing house Adamantan, 1996, ISBN-13/EAN: 9788385655855.

Here is the link to purchase 2nd edition: http://www.allbookstores.com/Tablice-Historyczne-Witold-Mizerski/9788385655855

But there are some mistakes in this book indeed. Most likely in 1992 China also had more than 10,2% and India much more than 1,7%.