What was it that allowed Europe to take over the world?

[Kukulofori]

Was it just the diseases? Some kind of superiour weaponry? Horses? what?

[Bankotsu]

Industrialisation, modern technology, science.

[Comrade Kaile]

everyone seems to of advanced in different areas, some in technology, others in agriculture etc. mongolia had far superior horses, and keep in mind they once controlled majority of eurasia, there was alot of religious empires around that were once pretty powerful, but i think that what made the europeans, and the west so powerful was that they had a more refined sense of leadership and trading

using this and various other tools, i supposed they wouldve built on the rest of the worlds initial advances and just gained a very very adaptive way of manipulating the envrionment

so id say in one word "capitalism"

oh and imperialism... dont forget the imperialism

[FreeFocus]

I think Jared Diamond's hypothesis is a good explanation. Guns, germs, and steel, all enabled by geography and historical events that provoked constant conflict and therefore military advancement led by the state.

[scarletghoul]

Some kind of superiour weaponry?
yeah guns, thats the main reason

[Kukulofori]

Didn't we get guns from the Chinese? Why didn't the Chinese take europe over, then?

[Led Zeppelin]

Environment and geography, which in turn determines the material conditions of societies. Of course on this basis political and economics start to have an influence as well, specifically modes of production.

Jared Diamond's analysis is popular science. Marx and others wrote the same stuff a century before and a lot better, so he didn't really invent anything new. He only simplified it and dumbed it down.

Much better works on the subject:

The Development of the Monist View of History (http://www.marxists.org/archive/plekhanov/1895/monist/index.htm)
The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/index.htm)

Marx touches on it in Capital as well.

[revolution inaction]

Didn't we get guns from the Chinese? Why didn't the Chinese take europe over, then?
I think guns where developed independently in europe, although china probably had them first, but the big difference between china and europe was that was a single state under with one government while europe had many in consent competition with each other. So when the emperor decided china should become isolationist thats what happened, no one could make that decision for europe so continued to develop and expand.
The reason the china had one government and europe many may be because of geography, china has less internal divisions, like mountain ranges, than europe, making it easier to form and run a single state.

You should read Guns, germs, and steel its vary good and explains a lot of the reasons why different parts of the world developed differently.



Jared Diamond's analysis is popular science. Marx and others wrote the same stuff a century before and a lot better, so he didn't really invent anything new. He only simplified it and dumbed it down.

Much better works on the subject:

The Development of the Monist View of History
The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State


I haven't actual read either of these yet, but I don't think it is correct to say Jared Diamond dumbed down work by marx or plekhanov, based on a quick look it appears that both of the books you link to deal almost exclusively with europe whereas guns, germs and steel deals almost exclusively with the world outside europe.

[Led Zeppelin]

I haven't actual read either of these yet, but I don't think it is correct to say Jared Diamond dumbed down work by marx or plekhanov, based on a quick look it appears that both of the books you link to deal almost exclusively with europe whereas guns, germs and steel deals almost exclusively with the world outside europe.

They don't deal almost exclusively with Europe. In fact, far from it.

But yes, Jared Diamond did dumb down their theory, and appallingly so.

Where Diamond talks about the rise of "public officials and states" as a consequence of surpluses in agricultural production, and leaves the subsequent development of those states in the hands of fate, Marx and Plekhanov delve deeper into the issue in their books and explain the effect of the mode of productions on the form of states and their subsequent development.

Diamond's book is actually on the same level as those of the early French materialists in that he completely disregards the question of politics and economics and the role they play in the development of societies. He merely says that with an advance in societies, the politics and economics also advance. Ok, great, that was established two or three centuries ago.

What effect do politics and economics have on the development of societies and what effect does geography and material conditions have on politics and economics? He totally ignores this question. Plekhanov and Marx answer it head-on, and by doing so establish the scientific basis for historical materialism. Also, Diamond pretty much ignores the question of class-struggle and the role it plays in history.

I've read his book, and it wasn't that great. It's good if you want to read some popularly written work on why one area of the world developed faster than another, but if you want to get deeper then don't bother.

For example, I can sum up Jared Diamond's theory in this one excerpt from Lenin's remarks on Plekhanov's Fundamental Questions of Marxism (https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1908/remarks/ch01.htm):


Thus, the features of the geographical environment determine the development of the productive forces; the development of the productive forces in turn determines the development of economic relations and, then, all other social relations...

But Lenin goes even further than Diamond and gives a full analysis:


Each given stage of development of the productive forces has its corresponding definite type of weapons, military art, and, finally, of international—more exactly: inter-social, i.e., also, incidentally, inter-tribal—law. Hunting tribes cannot create large-scale political organisations precisely because the low level of their productive forces compels them, in the ancient Russian expression, to wander separately, in small social groups, in search of the means of subsistence....

According to Marx, the geographical environment influences man through the production relations arising in the given locality on the basis of the given productive forces, the primary condition for the development of which is this environment’s features....

That's just from a few remarks Lenin made. The book Plekhanov wrote on it deals with it much more extensively.

[Dimentio]

Was it just the diseases? Some kind of superiour weaponry? Horses? what?

Look at the size of the European continent compared to the length of its coastlines.

[Dr Mindbender]

i think another important factor is that Europe distributed drugs which had the effect of making local populaces docile.

The british introduced opium to china, for example.

Native americans were introduced to alcohol by europeans with devastating consequences.

[Invader Zim]

The british introduced opium to china, for example.



A minor point, but I recall reading that the Spanish introduced opium to China in the 16th century.

[Kukulofori]

So why didn't the Ottomans colonise anything overseas?

[ComradeOm]

So why didn't the Ottomans colonise anything overseas?Why should they have? The Ottomans had plenty of wealthy provinces at home, easy access to trade routes, and enough military adventures on their own borders (N Africa, Middle East, Balkans) to keep them busy as it was. They simply had no need to pour money into costly colonial ventures

By the time these colonies began to become profitable (circa the mid 1700s) the Ottomans were already well behind in the game and in no position to challenge anyway

[The Situationist]

Read the book "Guns Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond

[Random Precision]

Read the book "Guns Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond

Wow. Can you please read the thread before making an idiotic response?

[narcomprom]

No matter what you take - Economy, Philosophy, Arms or Ships - In all these respects the Khoresm or the Song Dynasty had much more to offer than any european power of the middle ages and, without a mongol invasion, they surely still would. I'd blame Temujin and his descendants for utterly destroying the most prosperous regions of their time. His son Ogedai, in particuar, I'd blame for stopping Batu Khan's conquest of Europe by chosing the wrongest moment possible to die. He passed away in 1241, the very year the first and only German castle, Liegnitz, would be burnt, forcing Batu to return for elections.

Gunder-Frank set the discovery of America and, consequently, Aztec gold as the pivot point of european hegemony. It may have played it's role but I don't think a central one, as by the renaissance western europe already was world's most prosperous and progressive area.

Mind that it's not that China just didn't have a Columbus. It did, funded by the monarch, named Zheng He. He was the first to discover Australia, he sailed to Sri Lanka and the middle east, he was the first Chinese to set foot on Africa and Madagascar. There just weren't too many bourgeois would-be conquistadors and colonists in centralised China. Their Cortezes and Pizarros used the bureacratic ladder to quench their hearts' desires for pillage and conquest.

Eastern traders were content with their markets through the silkroad. Their european comrades, however, wanted to get rid of the muslim middleman gaining direct access to the East. Therefore they went bananas sailing the seven seas. Being the middleman sufficed fully to their Muslim collegues and that played it's role in preventing them from developing the manufacture Europeans did.

[gilhyle]

Bottom line - Europe conquered the world because it had the elements of capitalism in place: well developed feudal agriculture, an absolutist state system, highly developed trade nascent manufacturing capacity in a much wider range of specialisms than any other continent, good money transmission systems, strong military technology: in Europe all these came not from Empire building conquests of vast peasant territories but from below, from the beginnings of capitalist social relations. Ask why China turned its back on Zheng He's project - it could not deal with the internal social consequences. Europe could, because of its very different social structure....and China is the only real puzzle, the inadequacy of the Ottomans is clear and there were no other contenders

[New Tet]

Gunder-Frank set the discovery of America and, consequently, Aztec gold as the pivot point of european hegemony.

As I see it was the conquest of America that set Europe on the path of world domination.

[Kukulofori]

As I see it was the conquest of America that set Europe on the path of world domination.

Is this even remotely up for debate?

[JacobVardy]

Is this even remotely up for debate?

Yes that is ‘up for debate’ – the question is why did the western European states have such superiority that they were able to conquer nations with many times their territory and population?

For those who say that capitalism was the driver, then why was capitalism developed in western Europe before the rest of the world? Furthermore, Europe of the 1500s was still an agrarian, feudal society. It is just as reasonable to say that capitalism was a result of the surplus wealth created by the theft of American treasure. The rise of the Dutch manufactories, the English wool trade and both nations’ merchant navies was paid for by Spanish loot. That is, newly wealthy conquistadores bought luxuries from England and the Netherlands with the blood drenched gold of the Americas. To answer ‘capitalism’ or ‘discovery of the Americas’ is to supply proximate not ultimate answers.

I’m going to try and summarise Guns Germs and Steel, however its been several years since I read it, so please forgive any errors. Also, I don’t agree with all the positions in the following summary. Furthermore, when I write Eurasia or Europe, this includes North Africa, which in this context has far more in common climatically and culturally with Europe than Sub-Sahara Africa.

Jared Diamond and others have argued that the east-west axis of Eurasia, compared to the north-south axis of the Americas and Africa, allowed the transfer of crops and cattle within similar environments. That is, wheat, rice, et al could be grown from the Mediterranean to the China Sea. However the Aztec, Maya and Inca could not exchange crops as each civilisation was at a dramatically different latitude and thus had different climates.

Also Eurasia had a drastically larger number of domesticable animals. Either due to size or temperament many animals of Africa, the Americas and Australia are unsuitable to farming. Domestication, as opposed to taming, requires captive breeding. That is, the un-natural selection of animal reproduction based upon their utility to humans. This is not possible with animals like, say, elephants or kangaroos. Diamond presents a romantic image of brave African soldiers conquering the world on their unstoppable rhino cavalry. Alas, rhinos’ are not susceptible to either domestication or taming.

With domesticated crops and animals the Eurasians could build up far larger populations with the obvious benefits – it is only with civilisation (city-living) that guns and steel and writing can be developed. However cities have another benefit: they breed diseases. Lots of people living together means that diseases can reproduce with out burning themselves out by killing all of the population. Furthermore, most new diseases arise from species-jumping, like swine flu. So Eurasians, having more species domesticated were subject to more diseases.

So when Eurasians came into contact with non-Eurasians, they had greater population density, superior technology and nastier diseases. The consequences of this are obvious. As to why it was the Europeans, and not the Chinese or Indians, who conquered the world there are several possibilities.

One possibility is that the highly indented coast of Europe compared to India or China fostered the naval arts in Europe to a greater degree than in its rivals.

Another possibility is that of the sheer proximity of the Americas to Europe. That is, by geographic accident the Europeans were the first to conquer a non-Eurasian land mass and the resulting windfall of capital allowed them to conquer the world.

Also suggested is that the huge river valleys of China and India fostered the creation of the huge states that then swallowed up their neighbours like states do. This ment that the states of China and India were more interested in terrestrial expansion as opposed to maritime expansion. However Europe is comparatively riven by mountains and peninsulas, thus its naval expansion. Furthermore, the centralisation inherent in the super-states ment that the whim of a few could set the course for a whole civilisation. Thus the tragedy of Zheng He.

As to why Spain and England were more successful than their European rivals it should be remembered that both nations already had experience in colonial ventures before reaching the Americas. England in Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Spain in Catalonia and Andalusia. Both nations had previously experimented in exterminating and enslaving large proportions of the native populations.