I believe the use of clocks did not arrive until the time of Cook, circa mid 18th century. European supremacy was already well established by then, but certainly this new development served to perpetuate the dominance.
Originally posted by Danimal
I just finished reading a book called The Wealth of Man by Peter Jay and he cites several sources indicating that the technological advancement in naval gunnery gave the Europeans an advantage over China, the Arabs, and the rest. I’ll dig through the citations listed in the book and post them if you’d like.
See above…I beleive Jay also briefly touches upon these issues well.
Interesting question, and again, something Jay in his book touches upon briefly. It would have been very intersting to see what would have been the outcome if the Chinese naval expeditions off the coast of Africa had encountered the Portuguese expeditions around the same time (That is, around the time of the Chinese expeditions). I’d surmise that the Chinese would have had the upper hand in any kind of naval encounter. Encountering the Europeans off the coast of Africa around the same time might also have very well given the Chinese a reason to advance their naval technology, thereby neutralizing/lessing the European’s eventual naval dominance in the Indian Ocean and the islands of Southeast Asia. Pure speculation, I know…but an interesting scenario for those interested in alternative histories.
By all means, tell me about it. You don’t have to post sources, as I’m too lazy to check them anyway, and I’m not disagreeing with you yet. 
But as for any useful facts and opinions you picked up from Jay, throw 'em at me; some are bound to stick.
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One of the factors is that Christianity INCORPORATED pagan religions.
For example, Brigid, a Celtic goddess, was made into St. Brigit, a Christian saint. See here for a cite.
Also, many holidays were incorporated, I may be incorrect but I believe Christmas is related to Midwinter and All Saint’s Day to Samhain.
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A) No, Shinto is not going strong. It’s always been a weak sister compared to Buddhism, except during the WWII era, when it was artificially pumped up. It still commands a large pro-forma loyalty of sorts, but the average Japanese is no more a thoroughgoing Shintoist than the average New Yorker is a thoroughgoing Christian.
B) The stuff about Christianity absorbing paganism is mostly hooey. A meaningless name or calendar date here and there means nothing; what matters is the single mind-shattering notion that a single, particular individual, living at a particular place and time, in a known historic context – not a long, long time ago and far, far away, but in Jerusalem, during the priesthood of Caiaphas and the procuracy of Pontius Pilate (a nobody who had married into the imperial family and got thrown an unpopular job to get him out of town) – literally was Almighty God. And we humans couldn’t stand him, and tore him to pieces for being a troublemaker. Believe it or not, as you please, but it pretty much plays the petty, bickering godlets of paganism off the field.
Danimal: Eponymous’ references are probably more up to date, but I have a dusty copy Foundations of the Potuguese Empire vol. I ( 1415-1580 ) and it makes some references to the gunnery situation. First off there were few warships available - most rulers paid no attention to naval trade other than perhaps an initial hull tax, and there was no threat from anything more pressing than the occasional pirate. Also the war ships in use on the Indian ocean were almost exclusively galley types and many were very lightly constructed ( partly for speed and maneoverability, partly due to lack of resources like wood ).
Quote “Moreover, what war vessels they did posses were not stoutly put together: both the Indian and Arab shipbuilders had the peculiar habit of lashing a ship’s planking together with ropes, instead of using iron spikes as Europeans did - an excellent way of preventing corrosion and saving metal, scarce in the Arab world, but not a sturdy method of construction.”
So you had lightly constructed galleys, that because of their size and the presense of banks of oars mounted only a few light guns on bow and stern. Meanwhile the Portuguese were sailing naus( heavy vessels ). Very tall, round, sail-driven vessels, with tall, castle-like towers. They were designed for the container traffic on the stormy North Atlantic - iron-nailed, thick-planked, very sturdy - built to last ( whereas Arab dhows and bhagras wre built to maximize quick profit and although fragile, were easily replaced if lost to sudden squalls ). The large ones probably mounted 30-40 cannon not counting light swivel pieces.
Since the Portuguese ships were so solid, the normal galley tactic of ramming was likely useless. The small galleys probably couldn’t penetrate the hull. And the galley’s few light guns likewise. So the only thing they could do was try to grapple and board. The Portuguese on the other hand, with an enormous height advantage ( the galleys were very low on the water ) could fire down on the approaching enemy ships from multiple banks of guns and once they were close rake the exposed decks with swivels gun fire. It was no contest.
All the early encounters documented seem to indicate that the Portuguese repeatedly shattered much larger fleets. Often with losses - but always acceptable ones. And once dominance was established, they became a necessary evil as part of the trade cog.
Now in China the situation was different. The Portuguese ( after a couple of early encounters ) didn’t try to bull into the Chinese market in the same way. In one early dust up in 1522 they lost two of six ships and the intimation is that they came out worse ( relative to resources, anyway ). But the Ming govt. in its new isolationist mode had forbidden Chinese traders to operate outside the confines of SE Asia and Japan. However often this was honored in the breach is unclear. But the Portuguese nonetheless offered outside profits. And they were at best annoying little gnats buzzing around the Ming colossus. They insinuated themselves into Macau to stay.
Now in Japan the Portuguese DID expel the Chinese ( in 1544 ). But here they faced only independent traders, not the force of the Chinese govt. ( who by that point couldn’t have cared less about trade in Japan ).
Lest I was unclear in that first paragraph - I meant the Muslim rulers on the Indian Ocean had few warships and were largely unconcerned about the sea-trade. The Europeans were quite the opposite, obviously 
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Grienspace: Actually I’ll go you one better than Columbus . Vasco de Gama when he arrived in Calicut in India bought up everything he could. He was outrageously cheated - paying twice the going rate for most goods and ending up with mediocre goods ( ginger loaded with red clay, lousy cinnamon, etc. ). When he arrived back in Lisbon in 1500 with two of his four original ships and his crappy cargo - he reaped a 3000% profit . Sixty times the total cost of his two-year expedition. I think THIS is what really got people in a tizzy, Columbus’ grandiose claims notwithstanding .
And I agree as to motivation and governmental committment. No, I don’t think Asia ( in a general sense ) really were driven in the same way as Europe until it was too late.
It seems to me that Tamerlane’s references to European vs. Arab/Indian naval technology has some relevance to eliminating red herrings.
From the early part of the 16[sup]th[/sup] century, it seems to me that Europeans, because of their navies of cannon-armed, deepwater sailing vessels, may be said to have dominated the world’s oceans, and, except in the Ottoman Empire, had the potential to dominate any piece of land no more than a cannon’s shot from the water (whether they actually did or not depended on whether they thought that they could make a florin off of it). Additionally, for various reasons (in part but not entirely, IMHO, havig to do with disease), Europeans quickly came to dominate much of the Western Hemisphere (full penetration was to take a few centuries).
However, I do not think that Europeans could be said to have dominated the world. Sub-Saharan Africa was protected by the disease gradient, but the Mogul Empire (the rise of which began shortly after, but not IMHO because of, the arrival of the Portugese) in India, and the Ming and Ch’ing dynasties in China, could not have been dominated by the small amount of force that Europeans could have brought over that distance (indeed, as Tamerlanenotes, when the Portugese did try it, they got their clocks cleaned). Not until the Moguls collapsed in the first half of the 18[sup]th[/sup] century, and the Ch’ing in the first half of the 19[sup]th[/sup], coincident with the perfection of musketry tactics by Europeans and the Industrial Revolution, could Europeans be said to dominate the world, or to have a chance at it. And that dominance really only lasted (for choose nice, round numbers) about a century, 1850-1950.
Danimal,
Going back through the citations in the relavant chapter in Wealth of Man by Peter Jay (concerning European naval technology), he essentially echoes the sentiments covered by Paul Kennedy in The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (1989) and William McNeill in The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force and Society since AD 1000 (1982). The relavant chapter from Jay’s book is Chapter 5: Globalization (pp. 110-157).
Tamarlane’s posts are dead on - with their advancement in naval technology, the Europeans (first the Portuguese, then the Dutch, and finally the British) were able to successfully penetrate the Indian Ocean and Southeastern islands and establish long distance trade routes.
But it wasn’t a forgone conclusion by a long shot. The Turks, the Indians, and the Chinese COULD have thwarted the European thrust into the region, but didn’t for various reasons (as explanined in previous posts). As mentioned by Jay in his book (echoing Kennedy and McNeill) the Arabs, Turks, Indians, and Chinese were as good or better in naval technology as the Europeans up to around 1450. Thereafter, the Europeans edged ahead as their technology improved (use of better navigational instruments, gunnery, etc.).
And Akatsukami makes a good argument - the Europeans can be viewed as dominating the world’s oceans after 1500 AD or so, but not the entire world. My guess is that he/she is pretty close as to the actual events/timeframe leading up to “European world dominance”.
As I’m not a historian, I’ll defer to Tamerlane’s and Akatsukami’s posts; they both seem to have an excellent grasp on the issue.
I absolutely agree with the analysis but wish to add one nuance here: in addition to the disease issue, the Sahel states (such as in N. Senegal region where the disease issue was not such a problem for the Europeans, and who had plenty of gold trade going on to attract our greedy little ancestors, bless their souls) were quite advanced militarily speaking. They knew how to deal with mounted combat and were not unfamiliar with firearms because of their trans-Saharan Islamic connections.
Thorton (if memory serves) records an early uprising in Jamacia (in the Spanish period) headed by apparently Senegalese (using the term as a regional one) who defeated Spanish cavalry on more than one occasion. Spanish records record them as having sophisticated tactics fully adapted to the Spanish mode of combat at the time.
Just a note not to sell the entire continent short on issues of development and sophistication in this time period.
You are correct; I should have written, “Sub-Saharan Africa was protected by, among other things, the disease gradient”.
I didn’t mean to imply that all of Africa south of the Sahara was a Paleolithic sinkhole defended only by germ-carrying insects, but I agree that that could have been taken that way.