The White Man Cometh

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
41

The ** * 630’s??? ** *

I didn’t know recorded Japanese history even extended back that far. In my mind, that was part of the misty era when legendary emperors were having sex with Amaterasu Omikami.

OK, point taken. There are at least three expansionist periods in Japanese history.

Quite correct. The last thing I ever want to face is a samurai who’s just been told by his daimyo to expand in my direction. Where Japan did not expand overseas for much of its history, I believe it was from lack of means and opportunity, not lack of inclination.

I hadn’t thought of that. A good point.

42

Righteous said:

Oh please, this is an even dumber assertion than the one about European expansion being part of god’s will. They were not true Christians? HA! They certainly believed in a deity they called God, they accepted the teachings of the bible as their holy book, they claimed Jesus their savior. They certainly felt they were christians. They may not have been true to the ideals you hold as the key to christianity, but that is by no means a refutation that they were christians.

The actions they took in the name of christianity certainly do reflect on christianity.

43

Righteous pleads:

Which we are. African Christian kingdoms obviously did not dominate the world; for that matter, Christianity wasn’t sufficient to prevent Islam from conquering the Fertile Crescent (the western half of which was Christian), Egypt, North Africa, and even Gothic Spain (certainly a European Christian nation).

In Latin translation the OP asks for a translation of a Spanish phrase meaning “God alone is enough”. In this case, that is manifestly untrue.

44

One person asks “what did the christians have to offer”? what they had to offer was the promise of eternal life in heaven open to anyone regardless of race or gender as long as they accepted Jesus Christ as their saviour. i think many people would welcome that message which might help explain why christianity is a dominant world religion.

as far as the african christian kingdoms, like i said before i don’t know much about those so i can’t discuss them very much. but thank you for bringing those up i will be interested in looking for books about them. that’s an interesting question, why did not christianity spread outward from their area also? assuming thats true i will ask a friend of mine who knows a lot about the history of the church and when he gives me an answer i will let you know.

irishman - a christian is someone who follows Gods’ commandments. it goes beyond just telling people “i’m a christian”. i could call myself an irishman but just because i do that it doesn’t make it so (i’m not from ireland, i’m an american). do you see what i mean?

45

“Righteous”- The place for witnessing, if you feel you must, is GD. You might want to review the forum descriptions. Also, there’s a key that you can find to the left of the Z and, as a special bonus, to the right of the ?/ key. It allows you to capitalize words at the beginning of a sentence and helps you superficially look like a more informed debator.

I would like to second Guns, Germs, and Steel as an excellent book.

46

Come to think of it, “Righteous’” posts bring to mind a question I’ve always wondered about.

Christians have enjoyed a tremendous amount of success converting peoples of pagan religions. On the other hand, they have had almost no success converting followers of other religions of “the book”: Islam and Judaism. And this is not explicable just by armed Christians forcing their religion down other people’s throats; they converted the Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Franks, and like tribes even as those tribes were subjugating them. Obviously some peoples did “like” what the Christians had to offer, but most of the Muslims and Jews very clearly did not. The futility of Christian attempts to convert them, even at sword’s point, is attested by the almost complete absence of Christianity from the lands that once constituted Outremer. (Lebanon is the only Outremer state I know of with any significant number of Christians, and I believe those Maronites were there before the Crusaders ever came).

So why did Christianity appeal to the followers of so many different pagan religions, but not to the Muslims and Jews?

47

Oddly enough, other religions promise the same thing. Funny that.

As for open to anyone regardless of race or gender: in theory, in fact it was not quite so easy now was it? A good deal of conversion came under stress or duress.

See the Cambridge History of Africa (most recent addition, 1985 I think). Why? Because they lost steam. Why did they lose steam? Lots of reasons, not all of which are clear. Certainly isolation post-Islamic conquests helped dampen any expansionist tendancies. I might also suspect that the call was just not convincing at that time.

48

Addressing various points.

  1. Child prostitution in Thailand is largely a matter of catering to western pervs, and is certainly relevant to the issue of any proposed linking between Christianity and Western expansion. Same point with slavery, etc.

  2. Christianity (and Islam, and even Judaism, given a chance) tends to sweep away paganism because paganism, per se, is dumb. e.g., Watch Plato desperately doing the philosopher’s quick-step, trying to defend “religion” from “poets”. Only Hinduism has successfully managed to combine a pagan belief system with intellectual appeal.

  3. “what [Christians] had to offer was the promise of eternal life in heaven open to anyone regardless of race or gender as long as they accepted Jesus Christ as their saviour.” – I have never seen a more forthright presentation of “pie in the sky, bye-and-bye, when you die.” “Righteous”, please stop trying to witness; you’ve done more to advance the cause of atheism in just a few days than all the actual atheists, combined, have done for as long as I’ve been on-line. And if you think Jesus was a political philosopher, that only means that you do not understand Jesus, politics, or philosophy.

Mt 22:21
Lk 12:13-14
Jn 18:36

49

Bother. To Xtians paganism, I assume you mean multiple gods, is dumb, not so to the believers clearly. Shinto goes on strong.

Well that is hard to disagree with.

50

Danimal asks:

See Why did Islam succeed where Christianity failed? for some discussion on this point.

51

I was under the impression there’s a pretty big Japanese clientele for this also. Also, the reason the pervs go to Thailand is that sex with minors is illegal here and relatively tolerated there. I have trouble seeing how you can lay this at the feet of Christianity or Western society in general, unless you’re arguing we should allow child sex here so our pervs won’t prey on Thais. Or that we shouldn’t have invented air travel so the pervs can go there. Or what?

52

Let’s just get away from all this religious stuff for a moment and get back to the question at hand. Why has Europe dominated the world in recent history? It has to be naval supremacy that only developed in the latter half of the 2nd millenium, spurred on by the Hanseatic league of Europe and developing successes in the off shore fishing industry and newly developed techniques in fish preservation all the way to market. In short there was lots of money to be made in fish, and naval technology resulted.(Of course it helped that Christanity had a ban on meat on Fridays, which resulted in increased fish consumption throughout Europe.)

But now, Eropeans were able to travel vast distances to rape pillage and plunder from people who existed far away from the developing technologies of Europe. Bridging vast gaps of territory virtually unimpeded they sucked the wealth from stone age man and transformed him into a slave of their requirements. All this wealth resulted in power, and the idle rich were able to use their minds further in the cause of mankind (white mankind). Note that Europe did not dominate their immediate geographic neighbours. The automatic transfer of new technologies always takes place, so that one people can not dominate the other for long in close proximity. As for China and Japan, I have never heard of one naval exploration on their part prior to the 20th century.

53

One piece of the puzzle certainly, although I would personally add other explanations based on the power structure in Europe, geographical constaints etc. as argued above. However, the Hansaetic states were not seats of naval innovation (to my knowlegde) relevant to the first “age of (european) exploration” : the Iberian states were, although I seem to recall their prowess depended in part on merging innovations from the Islamic states with those developed farther north.

Well, although perhaps technically correct it seems less than fully accurate to describe american indians as stone age man insofar as that has somewhat inaccurate connotations about society and the like.

Hmm, well it all depends on a number of factors. I think you have something here – European powers certainly were unable to dominate mediterrean islamic powers until at least the early 19th century. However, it seems clear from the decadence of the Ottoman Empire from say the 18c forward that tech xfers require fertile soil if they are to balance out.

Well, then you should. China had a burst of naval exploration which reached even the coasts of East Africa. Both Diamond and I think Kennedy talk about this, that is why China strangled its own, more advanced, naval sector after a certain date.

54

Nope.

55

Grienspace: Re: Colounsbury’s reference:

Admiral Zheng-He - 7 voyages ( 1405-1407, 1407-1409, 1409-1411, 1413-1415, 1417-1419, 1421-1422, 1431-1433 ). The first featured a fleet of 317 vessels. 62 of these were of the largest “Treasure Ship” class and were 440 in length with a displacement of 3,100 tones and a cargo capacity of 2,500 tons. The rest of the ships ranged down to a minimum length of 200 feet ( by comparison the mighty Spanish Armada of 1588 included 137 ships, only 7 of which had a capacity of greater than 1,000 tons ). These vessels were “mega-junks” that featured such advances as compartmentalized hulls separated by waterproof bulkheads and external stern-post rudders moved by mechanical steering devices for precision maneouvering. The admiral’s expeditions all included a complement of between between 20,000 and 30,000 sailors and soldiers( depending on what expedirion we’re considering ). The Portuguese would have dropped a load in their pants if they had seen something like this headed at them :smiley: .

These voyages visited Vietnam, the Straits of Malacca, various Indonesian states, both coasts of India, Ceylon, the straits of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, the southern coasts of the Arabian penninsula, and the East African coast between Mombasa and Mogadishu.

They ended with the Admiral’s death - partly because of fiscal concerns and partly because of an increasingly isolationist tenor at the Ming court.Thereafter the Ming govt. stuck to smaller vessels for coast defense and local shipping. But independent Chinese traders that had travelled those same routes for centuries before Zheng-He continued to do so.

And I should point out that the Sung had a huge navy. So did the Mongol Yuan dynasty, as we recall from the attempted amphibious invasions of Japan and Indonesia.

The Europeans won out at sea ( big time ) through a combination of technology and fortuitous timing ( including the fortuitous timing of technological discoveries ). And even then their mastery was hardly complete, even later in the game. The Omani Arabs expelled the Portuguese from their most valuable East African real estate in the 17th century ( the present day coasts of Kenya and Tanzania - the last linchpin Portuguese fort in that region, Fort Jesus in Mombasa fell in 1695 I believe ) and limited them to the backwater of Mozambique. A Chinese Warlord expelled the Dutch from Taiwan in 1662 ( only to be expelled in turn by the Manchu Ch’ing force in 1683 that included 300 vessels and 20,000 men ). Etc.

56

Obvioulsly, i mistated the facts regarding Chinese naval exploration.But it was only one short period under one admiral. The period sounds like a vast deliberate government program right from the planting of trees relevant to ship construction.The soviet union after all were the first into space, but the soviet empire last less than a century. Naval supremacy is recognized not only by accomplishments of exploration, military success in naval engagements and technology, but by a massive uncotrollable infrastructure that is not beholden to one person or committee.

57

Grienspace: Hmmm…

Well, yes - I would agree. At least in part.

However I would maintain that such a network was in place in both China and amongst various Arab traders. The volume of sea-borne trade in the West pacific/Indian Ocean was pretty tremendous pre-European expansion. And it was almost all conducted by private individuals ( including local nobility and regional Warlords, but largely excluding central governments ). What was lacking ( at the time that the Portuguese penetrated the Indian Ocean ) was A.) The technology, especially in gunnery, and B.) A true naval power in the governmental sense.

China had withdrawn to their coasts ( militarily ) and the Ming state had entered serious decline ( in fact they were shortly to become victim to rampant Warlordism and repeated raids/small-scale invasions on their casts by Japanese and Chinese pirates ). India’s naval traditions seems to have begun and ended with the old Chola dynasty in the Tamil Nad. None of the large states there maintained a substantial navy ( that I know of ) by the late 15th century. Persia had also only very rarely been a naval power ( they lacked good ports, for one thing ). Later powers, like Oman, were still nascent. The Ottoman state DID maintain a reasonably modern navy for awhile on the Red Sea and in the Gulf ( I know an ttoman fleet besieged the Portuguese base of Diu in India in 1544 ). But it was very much a secondary ( even tertiary ) theatre for them and after the peak of Ottoman power passed in the mid-16th century they largely disengaged fronm the region, a process helped along by the loss, for a couple of decades, of Iraq and its Gulf ports to Persia under Abbas the Great ( 1587-1629).

Meanwhile the Portuguese, with their superior military technology, were quite systematically disrupting and suppressing Arab ( and to a much lesser extent, Chinese ) shipping and insinuating themselves into the carrying trade. I seem to recall that it has been argued that the total volume of trade in the Indian Ocean dropped preciptously in this period, as the Portuguese successfully displaced the long-distance Arab trade, but then lacked the carrying capacity to replace it. Regardless as to the truth of that statement, what is apparent is that once they took over those routes, they became indispensable to local rulers. All the subsequent European powers, who in turn displaced the Potuguese, just built on that new role.

Likely Manchu ( Ch’ing, Qing ) China COULD OF offered up viable compeitition ( witness their Taiwan campaign ). But they were pre-occupied with expanding West ( mostly ) and South by land, and had little need to pay attention to the Westerners and foreign trade until the 19th century. And of course by then it was far too late.

58

Damn “o” key :frowning: .

59

How much advantage did European powers have in naval technology, and when did they get it?

Clearly, once the western navies got steam power, no other navy could compete with them any longer, expecially because steam power makes oceangoing ironclads possible. Yet, well before then, European navies were crawling all over the world, while the Chinese, Indians, Japanese and Ottomans were sitting at home.

Tamerlane, you mentioned the Chinese disadvantage in gunnery. When did this become crucial? I would guess no earlier than 1588, because at the time of the Armada, Spanish tactics were still based chiefly on boarding. And it was truly embarrassing how little damage the English gunnery managed to inflict on the Spanish ships; they were able to keep the Armada from landing, but they really couldn’t do it any significant damage. I would be surprised if European gunnery at that point would have been enough to allow it to beat Zheng-He’s fleet as you described it. Did later gunnery advances give the West an advantage?

Were navigation advances more important to the West’s naval pre-eminence than any actual advantage in ship design? I know the Chinese had compasses, but did they have astrolabes, octants, or sextants? I would think, with their advanced astronomy, that the Chinese could calculate latitude as well as the Europeans could. But could they calculate longitude? Accurate clocks were needed for that; the Europeans didn’t get them until the 17th century. I don’t know if, or when, the Chinese had such clocks at all, nor if they ever figured out how to use them in navigation.

Were these technological differences really what gave the West naval pre-eminence, or was it simply that the Chinese and other eastern powers chose not to emphasize the navy, and could have beaten the Europeans out if they had tried?

60

I’m fairly convinced that Columbus’s initial reports of gold and silver in the “new world” ripe and easy for the taking followed by the very real proof of such, provided the gold rush mentality whereby massive state, corporate, and individual efforts were brought to bear on the extraction effort. The rapid rise in global activity coupled with intra European rivalry drove the relentless development of naval technologies. As air supremacy today is tool of power and influence, so was naval supremacy during the rise of European power. I wonder if the Asian merchants were ever driven to such a high pitched fever.