European Domination

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
1

I read with interest the article here:

How come Europeans dominated the rest of the world and not vice versa?
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a970620.html

That topic is one I’ve wondered about, too, and I’ve come up with an idea of my own:

The Roman Empire.

The Romans spread out over a huge area. Because of that, they acquired the “technology” of all the various cultures they dominated.

Many of these individual technologies may have been relatively insignificant on their own, had they remained confined to their place of origin. But because of the Romans , one technology from the Eastern end of the empire could be brought to Rome, and another from the Western end could also be brought to Rome. And then some clever individual could see the two technologies, and realize that by combining the two they could come up with something brand new and especially useful.

When the Roman Empire dissolved, it was Europe that retained the Roman flavor and culture. Italy being part of Europe probably had something to do with that, considering that Rome was the center of the Christian church, and Europe was predominantly Christian. Because the Empire’s African/Eastern regions were predominantly Muslim, those states naturally shunned the Roman/Christian paradigm.

And so, because of the continuing influence of Roman methodology in Europe, and the desire for expansion mentioned in the article, Europeans were naturally poised to recognize the potential of technologies they discovered elsewhere in the world, and to combine these new findings with the things they already knew, and come up with improved technologies that enabled them to dominate the rest of the world.

Of course, some of these “technologies” weren’t destructive, and tended to improve conditions for everybody. For example, the Asian concept of “bathing”. Previously either unknown or shunned as “dangerous” by Europeans, bathing gradually became popular due to the influence of merchants who discovered it in Asia. Bathing was soon combined with a Roman invention - “plumbing”, making bathing easier and more convenient for everybody, so that they were now able to spend more time developing new and better ways to kill each other.

Okay, I’m being facetious in that last paragraph, but you get the picture, I hope.

MODERATOR NOTE: THis is a thread from 2003, revived July 2014 in Post #6 (mainly pointing out some typos in the column.) – CKDH

2

It’s certainly one of the factors which helped the rise of European civilization, but there were empires elsewhere in the world, of a size similar to the Roman one. Think of any of the Chinese dynasties, for instance, or the Aztec or Incan empires. Why didn’t they derive a similar advantage from their span of empire?

3

This question has been thoroughly answered for me by Jared Diamond’s book Guns, Germs and Steel.

Essentialy he says it’s luck, of terrain, resources, and useable crops and domesticatable animals.

4

What about the Protestant Ethic? Weber argued that some of the characteristics of european protestantism (thrift, work as a calling, entrepeneurialism (sic?), etc.) contributed to the rise of capitalism in western europe, whereas the abscence of some of these characteristics in places such as the middle east, India, and the far east held them back.

5

I think it was the peanut butter and jelly. Think about it - a sandwich made of mashed peanuts and fruit paste. Once you master the technology of PB&J, cold fusion can’t be far behind. :wink:

6

Bumping this thread, since Cecil’s 1997 column is back on the front page.

Looks like there are commas missing in the paragraph beginning “Maybe. But consider…,” and the three topics in the paragraph beginning “Admit it, I’m on to something” should be indented, bulleted or italicized, as in:

  • Political and military pluralism
  • A free-market economy
  • Intellectual liberty
7

When we put all the Classic Columns through the Transmogrifier with the last move, not everything got through the space-time continuum correctly. This is as messy an example of gremlins in the system I’ve ever seen and we do apologize for your inconvenience, we’re getting it fixed.

8

European domination really began with the Italian Renaissance, which began about in the fifteenth century.

Arabic civilization was largely derivative. “Arabic” numerals were really invented in India. It was not until they reached Europe that modern rules for arithmetic were invented.

The Arabs read Aristotle in translation. They did not question his assertions. Galileo did when he discovered that a ten pound weight and a one pound weight fell at the same velocity, contrary to what Aristotle said. Galileo also discovered that the earth revolved around the sun, rather than vice versa.

While the Italian Renaissance was happening, the Chinese were retreating into xenophobia after becoming independent from the Mongolians. The Chinese ruling class was selected competitively on the basis of passing the Imperial Exams, so it was more intelligent than any aristocracy. However, the Imperial Exams were based on Confucian classics, rather than recent scientific discoveries. Consequently, the Chinese elite looked backward.

Now East Asians are surpassing Westerners, both in the United States, and in their countries. European dominance may be slipping away to the east. The east is not red, but it may be where the future is.

9

Hold on. How was “Arabic civilization” any more “derivative” than the Italian Renaissance? It, too, borrowed heavily from outside sources - everything from Greek philosophy to Roman law, Hebrew religion and Byzantine mythography.

So did the Italian Renaissance men, who read him in Latin. So what?

Cite?

My understanding is the Arabs “Islamicized” Aristotle much like the Italian Renaissance “Christianized” him - picking and choosing and reinterpreting him after their own tastes and sensibilities.

10

Go back and read this again:

11

So… Your post is your cite?

12

Essentially. The Arabs read Aristotle in translation. Like the Europeans for nearly two thousand years they did not test his assertions. There was no Arab equivalent to Galileo.

It was during the Renaissance that Europe developed the scientific knowledge and military power to dominate the world. Even during the Roman Empire, Roman power was not felt beyond the borders of the Empire.

13

Just like certain right wing people in the USA are preparing for an American Century where AMerican dominates there was a thousand years where the Arabs were ahead of Europe. It is just a swing of the pendulum. It will presumably swing to China or elsewhere next.

14

But according to the Babble Rome ruled the world, so where was a spot that wasn’t under their domination? LOL

15

Ah, but in your earlier post, you didn’t talk about testing Aristotle’s assertions.

Instead, you claimed that the Arabs “did not question [Aristotle’s] assertions,” which is simply not true.

One example:

Nasr, too, has written on the subject - lookie here, and here, for starters.

16

Then why did Europeans, rather than Arabs or Turks, come to dominate the world?

“No major invention or discovery has emerged from he Muslim world for well over seven centuries now.”

17

Questioning Aristotle’s assertions doesn’t automatically lead to world domination.

It’s not like “whoever questions Aristotle first gets to rule the world.” There are other factors at play, too.

18

Aristotle was Christianized in western Europe long before the Italian Renaissance, mainly through the work of Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century. In that era, many of his works were only known in translations from the Arabic. (And the Arabic translations were often translations from Syriac translations of the original Greek, or perhaps sometimes from Latin.)

It took some quite impressive intellectual gymnastics to Christianize (and, indeed, to Islamicize) Aristotle, since he denied two of the most important doctrines of those religions: that the world had come into being at some particular point in time (Aristotle held that it has existed eternally), and the immortality of the soul (which Aristotle appears to deny in most, if possibly not quite all, of his relevant writings).

19

Good point, cheers.

20

There are several points that can be suggested, such as that the Christian West at least assumed that history was going somewhere and had a point. And, while the calm, inland Mediterranean was of use in the development of marine economies during the Bronze age, Europe had the Atlantic to play with later on. And then there was Al-Ghazali’s The Incoherence of the Philosophers, which produced in the Islamic world a doubt of the very possibility of learning.