have you ever stopped to wonder if maybe the europeans dominated the earth as a reward for following the god of the bible?
just a thought
bruce
Interesting thought, Righteous. What’s the reward for the Arabic and African Muslims, or the American tribes, for following the same God? I mean, if the Europeans get a reward, shouldn’t all of His followers?
I would have thought you meant “Following Him in the way described in the Bible”, but there’s really not all that many Jews in Europe, compared to other religions, are there?
Good bye, can’t say I’ll miss you.
Why are you focusing on GB when I refered to the larger state structure in Europe and the specific geographical constrainsts which rendered a pan-European state a la China somewhat more difficult to achieve than in other regions. A poor straw man argument at best.
And the above sounds like racist tripe.
The happy coincidence of technologies occurs in the late 15th early 16th centuries when espacially naval technologies came together to allow for a much wider expansion. You can be expansionist as all get out but without the means to get around and of course win it doesn’t mean much. Inventions are key to actualizing expansionist tendances (which given a good read of different histories one sees cropping up everywhere. Nothing terribly European about that.)
Didn’t say there weren’t: First the phrase is a bit deformed, I meant the elites of European society in recognition that its not all of society which is making the relevant changes. Second, note I am making a qualifying statement. Clearly some intellectual ferment took hold in Europe in the 16th century and later which differs (perhaps in degree rather than absoluteness) from the rest of the world and when combined with other factors starts a ball rolling.
Capitalism does not predate European expansion. It comes hand in hand with it. I have no idea what you think you’re saying in the phrase “management run STATE…” but to focus on actual history, it seems clear that the conquest of the new world opened up new horizons and the gold and other bullion brought back helped create the liquidity necessary for the nascent roots of capitalism to begin developing through the 17th and into the 18th centuries. Nonetheless, we can’t really say capitalism per se exists outside of say GB before the late 18th century at the earliest. It does not in any way explain European conquests per se.
Your characterization of the rest of the world is at best a characiture.
Adding to Chronos’ comments to Righteous [sic]
And what about the African Xtians for that matter? And I’m not even talking about the colonial era converts, I’m talking about the folks who converted well before any of my smelly assed barbarian ancestors ‘found the light’
chronos, the other religions of which you are speaking (muslims and jews) only use the old testament, not the new testament which has God’s message brought to us by Jesus Christ.
the african christians were converted from the efforts of the european missionaries so they came later.
in any case one can find many political, economic or geographic reasons to explain the domination of western europe but let’s not forget that the hand of God is behind His creation and everything is caused by Him. thats all i meant.
bruce
If you’re looking for missionaries, what about the Buddhists? Buddhism spread pretty far.
Also, if you’re looking for the idea of a bureaucratic state and the idea that the individual should be subordinate to it, look at some periods of the Chinese Empire, and, Confucian political theory as a whole. Remember, Confucius’ ideas were developed as a reaction to the society he saw, where there were a number of dukes, princes, and feudal lords engaged in almost constant warfare, and the legitimacy of a ruler came from his ability to conquer and hold territory. Confucius set up another system, which eventually got adopted, where he said that legitimacy doesn’t come from conquest, but that there are abstract, universal ideas of “justice” and “duty”, independent of the skills of individual rulers, and that what grants legitimacy to a state is obedience to these principles (the Mandate of Heaven), at the cost of individual desire. It’s not enough for a ruler, in his teaching, to take over a land, or raise taxes, or whatever, because he wants to or because it would benefit him personally. The ruler has to judge if doing that would be the right thing to do, and if the ruler is unjust, or neglects his duty, things will become unstable, and he will be replaced.
Righteous claims:
I believe that that is not the case.
Collounsbury wrote:
(Emphasis mine.)
It appears quite likely that Collounsbury is referring to the pre-Islamic Christians of North Africa (and perhaps Egypt, although it can be argued that Egypt is sui generis in many ways). You know; Cyprian, Augustine Major, and those guys?
Dear “Righteous”:
Precisely what are you saying? That world domination is God’s reward to Christians? In which case, are you not justifying thereby slavery, apartheid, present-day child prostitution in Thailand, etc.? Or, on the other hand, are you, like the half-wit who’s apparently soon to be our next President (God help us all!), lauding Jesus as a “political philosopher”?
Mt 7:21-23
Child prostitution in Thailand? Precisely how are “Christians” responsible for that?
Yes, Christian nations instituted apartheid and practiced slavery. But the ethnic hatred that prompted apartheid is not unique to Christian nations - ask any Hutu or Tutsi in Rwanda. And slavery has been the rule, not the exception, for all of history since the Egyptians; what distinguished Christian nations is not that some of them practiced slavery, but that they eventually wiped it out from most of the Earth, with very little assistance from non-Christian nations.
The list of real Christian misdeeds is long enough: the Albigensian crusades, the sack of Jerusalem, the burning and hanging of witches, the pogroms and other persecutions of Jews, and so on. There is no need to accuse Christian culture of things it didn’t do (like establish child prostitution in Thailand), or things it practiced to a markedly lesser extent than other cultures (like slavery).
Of course, Bruce’s thesis begs the question; European civilization has been mostly Christian for almost two millennia. If world domination was a divine reward for this, why did Europe spend most of that time as a backwater, and only begin to dominate the globe in the 18th century, when the power and influence of the Christian church was declining?
As far as naval technology goes, the europeans were very far behind the Arabs and Chinese in the 14th century. As everyone knows, the Chinese sponsored a huge fleet that sailed to africa and all around the Indian ocean in the early 1400s. China could easily had discovered america from the west if the fleet hadn’t been scrapped for political reasons.
Which points out the difference between China and Europe. Europe seems to have had just the right mix of unity and fragmentation. It was culturally and religiously united, but politically separate. So even if one ruler or dynasty of one country decided that trade and exploration was bad for stability, the others could go ahead. The insular country would soon find themselves left behind the others, and would be forced to adopt the new things, even if it threatened the entrenched elite.
Exion’s conclusion that europeans are somehow innately more greedy than other people is just silly.
And I don’t have the strength to begin on Righteous’s delusions.
Clarification time
[quote]
No, in fact indigenous Xtian communities were extensive in North East Africa, as for example in Sudan through to Ethiopia. The Coptic, Orthodox and related churches of the region are actually older than most European churches.
That leaves aside the North African Xtians, but since they came in multiple colors, I’m going to leave them out of the argument (which is actually so stupid as to be ridiculous).
Actually Ak I was thinking about the North East Africans, but your additions are welcome. As I recall, Sudan, or perhaps better Nubia featured several major Xtian kindoms right through the 14th or 15th century. So, there’s no divine reason I can think of for them to be excluded from whatever holy ass domination is being posited.
On Naval Technology
Honestly not sure what can be characterized more advanced so I accept the correction. The point more or less is, however, that at about the 16th century, the Europeans had half-stumbled into an advantageous package of technologies which when combined with other factors as noted, turned out to equal domination, although this spread fairly slowly.
Tamerlane did an excellent job of rebutting Exion’s rebuttal for me, and Exion seems to have left the building anyway. But this whole thing strikes me as an interesting example of the danger of looking at the past through the lens of the present. If you’re determined to see white people as conquerers you’ll look through their history as one long conquest, ignoring the quiet periods, and all of the past conquering behavior of today’s subject peoples can be explained away (yeah it was an empire but it was an anamoly, or it wasn’t that impressive an empire, etc.) I used to have a co-worker who claimed white people took over the world because the Cro-Magnons ate the Neanderthals. Revisionism like that drives me nuts.
i see a lot of accusations of misdeeds against christians in the messages above, but obviously the people that committed those deeds were not true christians since the Bible says “love they neighbour as thyself”. so the actions of those people do not reflect on christianity. QED.
another person made fun of Jesus Christ as a philosopher, but i think if you read the new testament you will find that there are many good ideas in there of which you can take advantage. there are bibles online on the internet (i can provide a link if you want).
as far as the “christian kingdoms” in afria - i have never heard of those, but since they didn’t end up “dominating the world” in the same way as western europe did i don’t see how they are relevant to the discussion which is why europe is a dominant power. lets try to stick to the topic please.
im not saying that the fact that europeans were christian is the only reason for their world domination but it’s something to consider. maybe other people welcomed the christians because they liked what christianity had to offer.
Such as?
The import of this is that it is a refutation of your
Either this is not true at all or there other important matters involved in European success.
I didn’t mean that the Europeans were more Greedy, ALL cultures have had their greedy peoples throughout time.
What I mean, is that Nations like China and Japan, that were alot more ingrained in their Institutions of Goverment that were ruled usually by one man, were more inward looking than the Europeans. And they really weren’t willing to expose themselves to the amount of CHANGE that goes along with conquering large groups of people.
I also still think that the Eupean machine like mindset, where they could go in and chew up a whole country, like in the Americas, along with it’s people, was foreign to alot of the rest of the world, and helped them pave the way.
I am not esposing Racial Superiority by any means. I just think that the Europeans DID have alot of Governmental, Societal, Cultural differences that gave them the edge. And their willingness to expose themselves to so many new and different situations helped to push them over the top.
Exion
Exion: The problem is that the “facts” you’re basing your assertions on just aren’t true. I don’t mean this as an attack ( though I fear it’s going to sound like one 
), but I really think you need to do some more reading on these subjects. A couple of examples:
1.) The Japanese, seemingly culturally, have almost always favored “rule by committee”. Despite the technical status of the Japanese Emperor as a “Living God” ( sorta ), there have been virtually no actual absolute monarchs in their history. Even the earliest Yamato rulers were constrained somewhat by other powerful clans. And they probably came closest to the ideal of absolutism. That period was brief. No subsequent ruler has run Japan by absolute personal fiat, whether they actually held that sort of power or not. Even the most powerful Shoguns rarely made decisions purely as individuals.
2.) China has more of a tradition of absolutism, it’s true. But it was a more flexible and limited than I think you are acknowledging. And Chinese philosophy always has recognized that the “Mandate of Heaven” can legitimately be lost by incompetent Emperors.
3.) Moreover China refutes your point that “they weren’t willing to expose themselves to the amount of CHANGE that comes with conquering large groups of people.” Quite the contrary - China’s history has been one of continual expansion. Particularly to the South, where conquered minorities like the Min, Hakka, and Miao continue to live to this day ( where they speak “Chinese dialects” that are more different from each other than the “separate languages” of German and English ). The large southern province of Yunnan was a powerful independent state until the the late 13th century and is still inhabited by large minorities ethnically and linguistically similar to the modern day Thai and Laotians. This isn’t even to mention all the Altaic speaking people of the West and North that were repeatedly “Sinicized” ( sometimes violently, sometimes not ) throughout different periods of Chinese history. And Vietnam was certainly on the list of regions to be added eventually - it was repeatedly invaded. Likewise Burma. Both of those last in the 18th century ( as well as earlier ).
4.) For that matter Japan, despite their geographic isolation, repeatedly attempted to colonize and conquer Korea and occasionally meddled in their foreign affairs. And Japan greatly feared ( which seems to imply there was at least some cause for that fear ) invasion by T’ang China, a threat that gave impetus to the coalescing of the early Yamato state.
That the Europeans enjoyed great advantages ( many of them lucky ) that led to their ultimate success is obvious. But that those advantages included a more “machine-like” aggressiveness than other cultures just doesn’t seem to stand up to close scrutiny.
I hope you don’t feel I’m trying to browbeat you. But I do think you need to re-consider your thesis.
- Tamerlane
But Exion, really.
The Europeans had a machine like mindset that allowed them to go in and chew up whole countries?
Haven’t you been PAYING ATTENTION? Like, remember the: Turks, Mongols, Assyrians, Huns, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Arabs, Japanese, Russians, Zulus, Aztecs?
Do a little reading about how the Zulus got started, M’kay? Or read about the rape of Nanking. Or the Aztec empire. Or how the Mongols used to make neat pyramids of skulls from conquered cities, one for men, one for women, one for children, one for horses, and one for dogs?
Yeah. What the Europeans had was a locally superior technology, a locally superior social organization, and a locally superior immune system. That’s what enabled them to conquer the Americas. Not some “Machine-like” mindset. I mean, really. Did Cortez and Pizarro have a machine-like mindset? Let’s not be silly.
I think you’re right on track in most of this post, great Khan, but let me play devil’s advocate on this part I’ve selected.
Japan had two major expansionist periods that I’m aware of: one under Shogun Hideyoshi in the 16th century, about two generations of war with Korea, China, and Okinawa, and the other from the late 19th century to mid 20th century, about three generations when the Japanese tried to absorb virtually everybody around them. All in all, about five generations of expansion in a history going back well over a thousand years.
It’s submissible that Japan’s expansionist periods were brief exceptions to a general rule of foreign-policy quietism. Throughout the Tokugawa shogunate, the Ashikaga shogunate, the Minamoto-Taira wars, and the Fujiwara dynasty, I cannot recall a single major Japanese attempt at overseas conquest.
This is in sharp contrast to England, which spent virtually the whole time between the Norman Conquest and Bloody Mary’s reign trying to gain, hold, or expand its possessions on the Continent, then switched to the rapid acquisition of possessions further afield in the Mediterranean, the Americas, and eventually Africa and Asia. So I’d say Exion is partly right in considering England to be overall a more aggressive expansionist power than Japan.
Unlike Exion, I would not attribute Japan’s less expansionist tendencies to an “inward-looking” culture so much as to the presence of a huge, strong, united China next door which Japan usually could not hope to match. England, on the other hand, had a roughly equal rival in France, more populous but weakened by internal division. This tends to bear out the Paul Kennedy thesis that Cecil referred to: the co-equality of powers in Europe vs. the predominance of China in Asia.
Danimal: Conceded 
. Partially 
. You’re missing one period though ( at least, there may be more, I admit my knowledge on this subject is not complete ). I quote Karl F. Friday’s The Rise of Private Warrior Power in Early Japan - “By the 630’s the Japanese were driven by T’ang forces from their long-established foothold on the Korean penninsula and the threat of Chinese invasion of the Japanese archipeligo itself seemed very real.” A paragraph or so later he describes the makeup of an army despatched to Korea in 591. Even later he states that Japanese adventures in Korea began in the 5th century. Sadly I don’t have a good volume on Korean history sitting around right now so I can’t swear to the level of involvement between the 7th and 16th centuries. But doesn’t mean there wasn’t any 
. I’ll try to look it up.
But you’re correct I may be overstating that particular case a bit . Of course the Japanese were also involved in expansion NorthEastwards in the archipeligo in opposition to the ethnically similar, but culturally and linguistically distinct Emishi ( Ezo, Ebisu ) from earliest times through the 9th century ( I think ). Which involved massive campaigns with large armies and a lot of “pacification”. And I believe reading somewhere that there was at least some “official” sanction of the devastating Waku pirate raids on Ming China. So I still think we can dismiss Exion’s notions of the Japanese showing a lack of the requisite aggressiveness to establish world dominance ( not that you are disputing that, I realize ). You ( and Uncle Cece ) are probably on the right track ( factoring in geography and local political upheavals ) about why the Japanese didn’t burst out of their islands earlier .
Danimal: That is, I don’t think you are disputing the inherent aggressiveness of the Japanese so much as the fact that they have seemingly been less prone to foreign adventures than the English over time. Correct, no?
And in addition to the factors you mentioned that allowed for England’s early expansionism, we should also figure in the pull of the dynastic entanglements that spread like a web throughout Europe. Something that had far less force ( especially when we consider the vastly larger area and greater diversity of cultures ) in Asia.