European Domination part III: Europe vs. East Asia

Finally, the hardest question to answer is perhaps: why not the East Asians? Now THIS is far from a trivial subject, since the civilizations of the Far East and those of Europe / Middle East developed at about the same pace, starting out with about the same time line for landmark inventions. Asia had a writing system, similar weapons, advanced ship-building technology, and gunpowder was invented in Asia centuries before it made its way to Europe. The Chinese explorer Zheng He traveled all over the Indian Ocean and sailed as far as Kenya in the XV century. It almost seems as though it was the natural progression of history for the Chinese to be the dominant power in the world. Then why didn't it happen?

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While the outcome of the "clash of civilization" between Europe and the Americas was predetermined well in advance, the outcome was not so certain in the case of East Asia. Here luck and historical timing played very important roles. The two civilizations had been developing almost independently until the XV century, with little or no conflict of interest, simply because of the sheer distance involved. The Chinese voyages under Zheng He happened in the years of 1405-1433, after which there were no more trips of such magnitude. Fortunately for the Europeans, they did not arrive at the height of Chinese power. By the time the first white voyagers (or you might call them pirates) entered the Indian Ocean in 1497 with ships of Vasco da Gama, the Chinese voyages in that direction had already stopped.

Had the Europeans paid their first visit to the Indian Ocean only 70 years earlier, they would have encountered a massive Chinese fleet of 317 ships, which they couldn't beat. The entry of Europeans into East Africa, Arabia and India may well have given the Chinese just the motivation they needed to keep their navy active and ward off the European invaders who were a clear threat. This could have easily changed the course of history, especially for places like South Africa, India, Australia, and Indonesia.

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This issue of timing begs the following question. Why did the Chinese scale back their fleet in the first place? The answer lies in the fact that all the way up to the arrival of Europeans, China had been too centralized and did not have enough competitors in the region. Japan, Korea and others in East Asia had always looked up to China. In the early XV century, China was the world's largest empire, with no significant rivals, and an army of 1 million troops. Under the command of Zheng He, the Chinese undertook a series of great voyages around the Indian Ocean, from East Africa to Arabia to Indonesia. The Chinese had a much larger fleet and better ships than even the Europeans.



While the Chinese voyages were grand in scale, they did not return a significant profit. In some ways China was like a fat lazy cat, who didn't have to work hard to get what he wanted, while Europe was like a pack of skinny and hungry cats, out against each other, forced to be clever and opportunistic with the resources that they did have. European trips to every corner of the world were extremely focused on returning with the most valuable cargo, and beefing up the coffers of their respective empires. The Europeans had always been in competition with each other, and any country that decided not to send out expeditions would have been at a competitive disadvantage. After a while the European voyages started to pay for themselves.

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If we were to dig even deeper, we would have to turn once again to the brilliant Jared Diamond and his book Guns, Germs and Steel. In the last chapter he tackles the reasons for WHY China was so unified and Europe so divided. The answer seems to lie in regional geography. China seems to have few natural barriers and peninsulas, while Europe is inundated with those - the Alps, the British Isles, Scandinavia, Italy, the Iberian Peninsula, Peloponnesus.

Just take a look at the superimposed map for comparison:

Diamond argues, that the Europeans states have always been close enough to spread technology and innovation, but never really had the possibility to unify for long periods of time.

With Europe constantly divided, noone could get away with deciding to ban guns (like they did in Japan) or to ban shipping (like they did in China). Plus, any time an inventor wanted funding for a new technology, or a voyager wanted funding for a big trip, he had several heads of state to turn to. Christopher Columbus is a good example of that. Perpetual competition and division ensured very few inventions were left behind, and contributed to the rise of Europe as a whole.

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This just about covers the series of essays on European domination. Stay tuned for other posts, perhaps from entirely different areas.

Papua gets connected

Just saw a pictorial on the BBC webpage about these people getting their first radio signal. Fascinating stuff in the year 2007.

Apocalypto clip

While I'm too busy to post my own content ATM, here's an awesome clip from Mel Gibson's Apocalypto, in a colorful portrayal of the Maya civilization.

Warning: extreme graphic violence.

Guns, Germs and Steel:Old World vs. New World

First of fall, let's see how this book relates to my earlier post. The question I asked there was "Why did the Europeans take over the American continent, and not vice versa?".

Chapter 3 of Guns, Germs, and Steel, entitled "Collision at Cajamarca", contains the most fascinating first-hand account of the encounter between the Spaniards and the Incas, written by the Spaniards themselves. It describes how 168 armed Spaniards with no reinforcements were able to overtake an army of 80,000 of Incas and capture their leader. In and of itself, this historical event is of utmost significance, and I cannot believe how few mainstream history books actually contain the account of this encounter between conquistador Francisco Pizarro and the Inca emperor Atahuallpa. After this story, Diamond asks the most natural questions about the incident.

• How was it possible for the Spaniards to win such an uneven battle?
• Why were the Incas so naive as to be thrown off by the small band of isolated foreigners, (however armed they were)?
• Why did the Europeans have such an enormous advantage in this and many consequent encounters in the Americas?
• What historical factors made the difference between the civilizations so staggering?

Like I argued before, and Diamond confirms, the Native American civilizations were late to develop farming, cities, and writing systems. However, he digs deeper into the reasons. Here's some of the main ones:

• Slow domestication of plants:
• The domestication of plants in the Americas happened slower, because the plant cultures on the continent (corn and potatoes) were more difficult to domesticate, and provided less protein than the Eurasian counterparts of wheat and barley. The birthplace of agriculture, the Fertile Crescent of in Southwestern Asia was blessed with a package of domesticable plants that could be adopted and shared quickly between the peoples within the small region, and then spread further east and west.
  
• Slow domestication of animals:
• When the American continents were settled, human hunters exterminated all or almost all of the large mammals suitable for domestication. Such extermination of large mammals did not occur on the Eurasian continent because the wild animals co-evolved alongside humans, adapting sufficiently to the highly skilled hunters so as not to be completely wiped out. Thousands of years down the line, when those animals would have come in handy for domestication, they were not available in the Americas (e.g. the Aztecs had only turkey and dogs), while the Eurasians still had access to cows, goats, pigs and chickens and, later on, horses.
  
• Slow development of immunity to germs:
  
• The Eurasians' domesticated cattle was a mixed blessing. On the one hand, the animals provided protein, shelter, clothing, fertilizer, etc. On the other hand, they were also a constant supply of new germs. The Americans had fewer deadly germs, partly because they had fewer domesticated animals. By the time the Europeans invaded the Americas, they brought with them a plethora of disease to which the American populations had no immunity.
  
• Orientation of the continents:
• Jared Diamond notices that the general orientation of the continental axes is east-west for Eurasia, and north-south for America. This seems to have paramount significance in the spread of agriculture. Similar latitudes have similar climates, and allow for adaptation of similar crops, while a north-south transfer of agriculture is much more difficult. Agriculture spread very rapidly in Eurasia from the Fertile Crescent to most of Europe, North Africa and India. However the Inca and the Maya/Aztecs had no contact with each other, isolated by a buffer of areas unsuitable for agriculture, unable to transfer domesticated crops, animals, germs, writing systems or useful technological inventions.

I believe these reasons provide the key answers on the issue of European dominance over the Americas. Jared Diamond's analysis is thorough, and his facts are well-researched, thus on this question I have nothing more to add.

Guns, Germs and Steel

Well, well, well. I was in the process of writing another post on the reason for European domination of the global resources. This one was going to be on why it wasn't the Chinese or other East Asians who "had the cake and ate it too". But I had a hard time coming up with very solid reasons, because it seems like it was a very close race (meaning "competition" in this case).

In the meantime, a friend of mine suggested a book called "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond. He said it's a must-read, and that I'd love it, and indeed I did. I am now half way into it, and I have to admit, that hands-down this is the best book on history I have ever read, in fact I believe it should be required reading in all high schools, as it is very much fundamental knowledge about history. It is absolutely brilliant, with in-depth analysis of every question that I have asked in the earlier posts, and some that I have had in the back of my head. Basically, the questions this book attempts to answer are:

• Why does the world look the way it does today?
• What are the underlying historical forces that set the human populations in motion?
• Why did some civilizations advance quicker than others?
• What are some fundamental civilization stepping stones, and how did they come about?

Every question Diamond asks, he digs deep to the root causes, leaving no stone unturned. So I'm going to spend some time on answering and re-answering the same questions I asked earlier, now with the knowledge from this phenomenal book.