I’ve heard this, off and on, before, so I’d be very interested in a broad outline of the problems with it
Northern and Central China? N Iran. The North Indian plain? Anatolia?
I’m familiar with various problems of the “resource curse” in modern states (e.g. all that money sitting right in the ground encourages a dysfunctional “rentier state”). However, all the examples I’m familiar with have been from the 20th century, and require a global market for the resources of the “cursed” state.
Are there any other examples prior to the 19th century? Prior to colonialism? After all, the modern “resource curse” seems very different from the sort of “resource curse” where a colonial power invades a country, installs a puppet ruler, and then starts extracting resources for its own benefit.
Wandering through Wiki links, I read about the high level equilibrium trap theory. It posits that China, probably the most advanced and prosperous pre-industrial state, had such a stable economy that there wasn’t as much incentive for innovation. To quote:
Another factor that’s cited is that the pre-industrial Chinese intelligentsia focused much more on social philosophy, while in Western Europe there was increasing focus on natural philosophy and science. When combined with the demand for e.g. high production in the absence of sufficient labor, some of those scientists started figuring out ways to apply their knowledge to industrial applications.
This seems reasonably plausible to me… but most of what I know from this period of Chinese history comes from a few weeks of a 200-level history class. Does anyone else know of further development or criticism of the concept?
The resource curse is applicable mainly to oil; outside some Arab states, that is apparent.
But, pretty much all nations who have developed have been blessed with resources. You really are going to argue that the US does not have near infinite natural resources?
Any cultural explanation just pushes the question a bit further - if you aregue that there’s something special about Western European cultures apart from their geography, you have to explain what that is and more importantly, where that came from in a way that isn’t related to geographical factors.
Regarding Western vs. Eastern Europe. Western Europe has a lot more access to the oceans. Sailing was a much bigger part of their culture.
At some point there was going to be a culture with guns, ocean-going ships and a non-isolationist attitude that was going to jump out of their homeland and start taking over the world.
Western Europe was the right place at the right time to do this. Geography was only part of it.
Once it started, it accelerated due to feedback in development. Once you get ahead in this acceleration curve, it’s hard for similar other groups to catch up.
Thread relocated to Great Debates from IMHO.
A lot of these theories depend on what I would contend is a highly inaccurate view of Chinese history, which was far from the relatively stable, peaceful and politically homogeneous portrait that has been painted throughout much of it. If you look for example at China immediately before the Mongol conquest, it was split into several competing kingdoms or empire-lits, of which the main were the Southern Sung and the Jin (along with the Western Xia or Xi Xia, and the Da Li):
A map of Europe around the same time would have been more complex (largely because we know more about it), but not hugely so: you would have the Angevin Empire, the Royal Domain of France, the Holy Roman Empire, etc.
The primary difference, I would contend, is that if you look at China in parallel with Europe, the Chinese dynasts managed to achieve an all-embracing “gunpowder empire” in the 15th through 19th centuries - first under the native Ming, and then under the Ch’ing.
In Europe, the equivalent dynasts failed. First the Hapsburgs failed to achieve continent-wide hegemony, and then the Bourbons failed to do so.
In an alternative universe in which (say) the Mongols invading Europe converted to Catholicism, usurped the place of the Hapsburgs, and conquered the whole of Europe (perhaps failing to cross the English Channel because of storms? 
), and then spawning fresh imitative “universal” Christian imperiums after its fall, you may have seen Western Europe later falling into stagnation just like the Chinese, the Turks, Muscovy and the Mughals.
Conversely, if the Mongols, deterred by the unsuitability of Southern China for operating herds of horses (that geographical determinism again!), failed to conquer the Southern Sung, you may well have had that “empire” break up into semi-autonomous city-states focused on trade with SE Asian and beyond (as was already happening when the Mongols put an end to it in our universe), and permanently at war with its Nomad-ruled northern neighbors and each other. These cities were technologically far in advance of anything in Europe at the time and, again contrary to modern views, they had nothing against trade and long-range travel: SE Asia is scattered with the wrecks of Chinese ships; they may have discovered Australia, long before Europeans did.
If so, it could have been the Chinese, not Western Europeans, to achieve the scientific revolution, imperial colonization, and industrial revolution. To my mind, there was nothing whatsoever “inevitable” that this would happen in Europe, other than the fact that it did.
Perhaps the OP believes there’s a genetic reason for Europe’s success.
I do think that determinism is the wrong word for how things went down - I think there are good reasons for why Eurasia as a whole was primed for being the location of a lot of developments, as per GG&S, but I don’t think the fact that it was Western Europe was inevitable, and I certainly think it was circumstantial, and that it would take fairly minor changes to have things play out differently (I call this the *Years of Rice and Salt *outcome)
I think racial categories like ‘white’ are probably too broad to be useful, but you’re certainly correct that the horse cultures certainly went in large numbers to the Subcontinent and to China as well. They just didn’t ignore Europe, was my point.
Personally, I would vote that it’s the introduction of paper into a region where there was a largeish group of outsiders who largely supported themselves by loaning at interest.
Geographically, everywhere from India to Japan could have been a contender. Potentially, large chunks of the New World could have been as well, depending on whether you buy the argument that horses are necessary.
But I know that I once graphed out a chart which was the quality of life (I think I used the infant mortality index) compared to arable land and economic freedom (in modern day). The amount of arable land, I was surprised to discovered, actually had no impact on anything. The quality of life was purely correlated to economic freedom.
If you look at the Arabs, during the Islamic Golden Age, they were just as technologically advanced as the Chinese and the Europeans at the time, if not more-so, despite largely living in a desert. Green growing things really doesn’t seem to be a component of success.
But, religions across the Eurasian continent were unfavorable to merchants and lenders. Interest in money and loaning money at interest were both considered disreputable and even sinful. Europe just had the distinct case that the Christians were allowed to loan to the Jews and the Jews were allowed to loan to the Christians, creating the ability for people to raise capital and invest in new technologies.
But, in order to really advance technologically, you need correspondence between the great minds. Otherwise, they’ll tend to not check themselves and their beliefs, or go to their graves having not passed on their knowledge to the next generation.
I recall reading (may have been Diamond) that Europe’s rapid advances had to do with local topography. The OP asks if Eastern Europe is different from Western. My understanding of the theory is the landscape in Western Europe is fractured by large rivers and medium-to-tall mountain ranges. The landscape being broken-up like that made it so people inhabiting the area were for the most part insular and tribal. As communication and trade became options, as well as need to feed growing populations, so did conquest. And what drives innovation more than inventing methods in which to slay one’s enemy and take their resources? Not much. Add the competition for fertile and accessible farmland - gave the group in one valley a reason and incentive to invade the folks in the next valley for their land. And so on to the next valley, etc.
I think the theory was that Western Europe was unique in this regard. China had a largely homogeneous ethnic group and generally un-fractured landscape (yes, hemmed-in on the south by tall and impenetrable mountain ranges, and the north and west bounded by deserts, with the two main rivers). Eastern Europe has the large rivers, but not much as far as mountains between the Carpathians and the Urals. Hence, societies without these barriers more easily communicated and assimilated with one another, and did not compete as directly.
So, perhaps the isolation and close quarters, relatively, of European peoples in competition with one another for resources drove their earlier development of technology and ideas, where as other parts of the ancient world lived primarily in non-competitive, stable situations without the topographical barriers?
The parts of the Middle East that were flourishing had plenty of green growing things. In general, deserts can be highly agriculturally productive as long as you have access to irrigation or rivers (as was the case in Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Punjab, and for that matter much of the modern-day Western United States). I don’t know of too many desert areas that gave rise to flourishing civilizations without irrigation, though.
I’d need a while to dig up the specific critiques I’ve read of Diamond, but the most common one is that he cherry-picks data (in terms of which civilizations he chooses to address and employ as examples) heavily, and that he at times draws idiosyncratic conclusions which the academic community within the fields of history and anthropology do not consider to be supported by the evidence.
One of the more interesting critiques I’ve seen of him (and one that stuck with me, being rather novel), is that Diamond at one point makes a rather significant claim which is based on the date of domestication of maize, but, due to his unfamiliarity with the specifics of the matter, fails to realize that the earliest archeologically supported date of maize domestication != widespread employ of maize as a food crop.
In general, most of the critiques of Diamond take a similar form - he is a geographer operating far out of his field, and this shows both in his data selection and data analysis. It simply is not a well-researched, well-analyzed work of science, despite presenting itself as such.
Muslim and Chinese cultures had the edge, but blew it at critical moments. The first was due in part to Al-Ghazali slamming the brakes on scientific development in the early 12th century, the second was due in part to a Ming policy of isolation and inward-looking in the mid-15th century. If either of those trends had been reversed, these cultures could have held onto widespread dominance.
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If you look at the Arabs, during the Islamic Golden Age, they were just as technologically advanced as the Chinese and the Europeans at the time, if not more-so, despite largely living in a desert. Green growing things really doesn’t seem to be a component of success
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They didn’t live in the desert. The lived in fertile river valleys. People don’t live in the desert if they can help it.
Here is a nightime map of Egypt;note where the population lives.
Sage Rat was discussing arable land in relation to quality of life - I’d imagine his desert quip was simple hyperbole.
I’ll give the geographical determinists one bite: living in a place that relies heavily on irrigation for agriculture makes such areas different from temperate areas that can get by with relying on rainfall.
Though the impact on human progress is not straightforward in the least:
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it has some aspects that appear to push progress forward (centralized control offers an advantage - so Egypt, Sumer etc. develop complex state-level societies remarkably early: the pyramids of the Old Kingdom were roughly contemporaneous with Stonehenge).
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on the other hand, it makes such centralized civilizations very vulnerable to major collapses should the system break down.