Why did Western, and not Eastern civilization emerge as the world's dominant civilization?

Large Dancing Iguanas....they taught Whitey everything....

Because we is white!

who says they are done?

Read "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Diamond. Good book.

You do know that that the pacific takes longer to cross than the atlantic, right?

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

It's this attitude that got us here. Along with a little luck.

with ideas adopted from the magna carta...

I'm no historian, but doesn't it have a lot to do with China and Japan being somewhat isolationist in their past? That and Asia had a buttload of spices that the Europeans wanted, so they would try anything to find a quicker route. Speaking English plays a role as well, doesn't it? I've heard English is a very efficient and specific language compared to others, but I really wouldn't know.

It's amazing how intelligent and advanced the Chinese were thousands of years ago. They totally f***ed themselves over with their "China is the center of the universe" thinking, but they're barrelling back up the hill of world dominance.

Another question could be why we aren't all Romans, but the answer to that question is pretty easy: religion. The dark ages retarded scientific development by several hundred years. Given that we've gone from wooden wagons to space shuttles in the past 200 years, imagine where we'd be if Dark Age Christians hadn't killed everyone who cared to think a little.

If we were Asian, 'we' wouldn't really be here. Kind of strange to think about.

history isn't over yet

History of the World (according to LR.C)

Good class to take, but you can probably find a number of good books that actually will do a better job of explaining than 100's of LR.C posts (some useful, most lame).

Go read. Learn.

Academics have been debating this for a long time now.

Two trains of thought that I like to think about:

1. The "guns germs and steel" version -- honestly I didn't like the book, because history is not a science, and he tries to make it sound like one. But he did raise a number of interesting and important points (as well as a number of things I disagree with), but it's hard to judge the importance of these forces. History has only happened once.

2. The dumb-luck version. The countries that became global powers were the ones that happened to be in the lead at the very first sustained instances of globalization -- this happened to be Europe. China was nearly there -- in the 1400s they were possibly the most advanced civilization in the world, explored much of asia and the indian ocean and found no true rivals. Then they stopped all exploration, burned much of their knowledge of foreign places, and began to look inward. I think it would be impossible to predict this chain of events from environmental factors.

There's cycles and phases in the world. We all originate from the same two parents in Kenya 60,000 years ago. All European and Middle Eastern first names and last names originate from the the Nile River Valley (Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia). As far as European ancestry is concerned the last major forced blending was in the 1300's when the Mongols civilized the 2/3rds of the primitives and aboriginals of Europe creating a new hybrid Asian-Caucasian mixed race. Today the civilized offspring of the Mongols inhabit all of Eastern Europe and parts of Central Asia. Also many of the Mongol offspring inhabit Western Europe, Australia, Americas, etc. Just look at the eyes of Ryan Hall and you can see the Mongol heritage that he has.

Funny to hear you Americans think that you dominate the world ;-) You don't. Not since the your defeat at the hands of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army. Keep believing your Hollywood movies though while the rest of us laugh ourselves silly.

pennywise de clown wrote:

Read "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Diamond. Good book.

I second that!!

As an earlier poster mentioned, by about 1400 AD, China was well out in front (so much so that when Marco Polo comes back from there, everybody at home thinks he's a liar), while Europe was just coming out of the terrible 14th century (plague, schism, etc.). But the Chinese, deciding everything outside their borders was barbaric, turned inward. Were it not for that choice, China "discovers" the new world first, among other things. Within roughly the next 100 years, Europe experiences the Renaissance, Reformation, and Age of Exploration, along with the scientific revolution. We spend the next 300 years catching up in terms of both technology and civilization, and by the time Chinese and European civilization ineteract in the 1800's, the balance is way off (Opium Wars, Boxer Rebellion, "Spheres of Influence," etc.) It's classic tortise and hare stuff--the hare takes a nap and lets the tortise catch up.

Industrial Revolution: mast production and the rise of the wage earning middle class

Capitalism: production for a profit. Feudalism could not keep up with mass greed.

Large scale for profit food production: made possible large city centres focused on production

Innovation and Invention: Guns, machines, steam plants, railroads, automobiles, aircraft...we left them behind

Large scale financial innovation: rise of banks in Europe made access to capital easy.

And more...go get a geography degree. Penn State one of the best.

Sid Meyer wrote:

Asians supposedly have higher IQs, so why did Asia not come out on top? Why did Europeans and not Asians discover the Americas? (they were not far away after all) Why did Europeans found the best country in history rather than the Chinese or Japanese?

I really hope you're a middle school student trolling these message boards to help you on a first week of school homework assignment. The US is only another empire on an extremely long list of empires that once ruled the world. Another will follow us sooner and not later. Please don't be foolish.

"Guns, Germs and Steel" is basically a summation of lower division world history survey courses. And it's the best explanation as of right now.

The Chinese weren't interested in exploration and conquering, largely for cultural reasons. There was one Chinese Empire which dominated the region, while there were many small European kingdoms, all trying to gain on advantage on their neighbors. This meant seeking out wealth and territory beyond their borders, which led the Portuguese around Africa to Asia, and led Columbus and the Spanish to accidentally run into the Americas. Of course, Columbus died thinking that he had found a shorter route to Asia, never knowing Hispanola was part of an entirely seperate continent. In the Columbian exhange of diseases, it so happened that small pox was more deadly and easily communicable than New World diseases like syphilis. Small pox had developed in Europe and Asia because of the domestication of sheep, goats and cattle and diseases like cow pox mutated to infect humans as small pox. Upon the arrival of humans into the Americas, all the large mammals that might have been domesticated all went extinct, with the exception of the llama in South America. But the Americas' north-south orientation meant that one form of technology (like animal husbandry with llamas) that was prevelant in the Andes, wasn't easily transferable to a different part of the continent which lay at a different latitude and had different seasonal patterns. Compare this with Europe and Asia, which has an East-West orientation, and vast amounts of territory all at the same latitude.

Furthermore, the fact that there were plentiful quanities and varieties of nutritious grains in the Fertile Crescent (modern day Iraq) meant that farming was easily feasible in this area and that technology quickly dispersed across the rest of Europe and Asia. And where there's settled farming and animal domestication, writing usually follows, allowing for better transmissiona nd documentation of ideas and thus more advanced technologies. Since there wasn't the same availability of grains or mammals for domestication in the Americas, farming and settled society was much more limited, and by the time of Columbus' arrival, Mesoamerica was the only part of the Americas in which writing has developed.

So the deadly diseases Old Worlders had developed from close contact with domesticated mammals, plus their guns developed from Chinese technology, mounted on horses and reinforced by steel armor, allowed Europeans to easily conquer and kill most of the Native American population. Few had time to adapt, but those that did, such as the Sioux, were formidable foes to American settlers.

This meant that Spain, Portugal, France and Britain gained vast quanties of arable land and large amounts of mineral wealth, and it's why their descendents still control the Americas today.

Europeans enganged in somewhat similar scramble for Africa in the 19th century, where conditions had favored limited farming and a more nomadic lifestyle for much of the continent, making Africans easy targets for European warfare technology, further increasing the wealth of European states. Only Ethiopia was able to successfully beat the European invaders and maintain their independence into the 20th Century.

So that's why.

Because China called Zheng He back.