Actually, the theory is mentioned in Montesque’s “The Spirit of the Laws”, so it’s older than the 19th century.
The problem is, though, who stole what in the 1600’s or how much more expensive it is to make certain products in one country vs. another affects political instability and/or poor economic policy, so if you ask a question like “Why have European countries, for the most part, been able to create economically developed democracies while African countries, for the most part, have not.”, you need to take into account things like imperialism, colonization, and the structure of the global economy.
Grienspace:
Trust me, that’s no reason to eliminate Singapore. There is NO cooling influence whatsoever from the proximity of the sea. Temperatures here range from typically 25C at night to 30-34C during the day, every day of the year. Singapore should definitely be included in your list.
Widely disseminated yes to the ports under the control of the colonial empires. But I doubt differences in technologies were negligible. There were differences even among Europeans, resulting in British pre-eminence and the Pax Britannica following the Anglo-Dutch wars of the 17th century. Your late seventeenth century reference is probably related to a brief spot of trouble that European merchant vessels endured off the coast at Bombay. That only lasted for several decades.
I also mentioned guns. In the seventeenth century, European musketry and cannon are largely credited with inflicting defeat after defeat on the most powerful empire in the world at the beginning of that century, the Ottoman Empire. These weapons were exclusively manufactured in Europe in the 16th and 17th century. These weapons were also instrumental in dominating non-Europeans all over the world.
My purpose in expressing the point of limited technology transfer in the historical past, was to account for the geographic limitation of the “advanced” cultures of pre-columbian meso-america. After all, if my point is that tropical countries have a more lethargic population, then why was the “advanced culture” limited to the tropics and not improved upon further north where people had more energy? Indeed, if that were the case, the technologies of these civilizations might well have been preserved. In any event, I do not equate evidence of creativity with a greater capacity to work.
There are edifices today throughout any city in the tropics that far outshine the accomplishments of past civilizations. The accumulation of gold and silver of past tropical empires is no indicater either of comparable productive capacity to non-tropical cultures. In fact, I question whether any* society as a whole* in the past works as relentlessly as the modern western society. These past empires have not been tested to the extent that is demanded today of any country that wishes to match the GDPpc average of the world.
I’m sure I can find isolated examples of relative superior wealth and productivity within any country. After all, I did not claim that industrial production was non-existant.
The posited factor was constant hot climate. I’ve lived on the northern praire like Sam Stone, and I have often experienced the 40 degree celcius temperature, but not all year round. jIf you go to Google, and type in * country climate * you will get the World Travel Guide Site that will give you temperature graphs of the major cities of that country. To a ‘t’ you will note that cities in the tropics show flat lines indicating constant temperature rear round while immediately north of the Tropic of Cancer you will find that cities exhibit 15 to 20 degree celcius difference throughout the year.
But when we refer to the ancient or past civilization of India, we are primarily refering to the Indus valley which lies north of the Tropic of Cancer.
Please note previous comments to Tamerlane regarding tropical empires.
And just how large was this leisure class? No one really knows. How much of a burden was this class really. And as far the physical evidence is concerned, and given the duration of these civilizations, do these large monuments represent a consistant significant industrial activity on par with the demands of a modern society?
But then we may have some exceptional circumstances in central America. The capital of the Aztec empire, Mexico City, has a mean daily temperature that ranges between 10 to 20 degrees celcius throughout the year. Guatemala, representing a portion of the Mayan empire has a mean daily temperature ranging between 15 and 20 degrees. Perhaps Central America does have a future.
Yes, but is that why Peru only ranks 88 in the world? Look at Saudi Arabia, the envy of the world with regard to an immediately available valuable commodity. They rank 53, well behind the Falkland Islands which are only good for raising sheep.
The money had to flow in before it flew out. In the meantime infrastructure was developed and educational exposure was facilitated that should have enabled the tropical colonies to do better than they are today.
I had considered the Formosa situation and determined that not only did most of the country lie north of the Tropic of Cancer, but that the capitol and a significant majority of the population centres were outside the tropics as well 
I just wish to add that political instability is a result of relative poverty. Yet political instability is not a factor in many impoverished countries.
Well you are absolutely correct. (Not that I didn’t trust you, but I checked it out). I would surmise that a city state like Macau, Hong Kong and Singapore have stats that generally reflect economic parameters that are indicative of a city economy which I presume is generally more productive financially than an entire economic region inclusive of a poorer hinterland, and thus skewing the stats. (not to mention that the seats of financial wealth lie in the cities)
BTW, is there a lot of air conditioning in Singapore?
I completely agree with the op. What a remarkable observation, of course climate has a lot to do with economic condition. I pity the bastard that live in Palm beach. The temperature down here is 5 centigrades (I’m freezing) but if that is what it takes to make my country an economic empire. Then I say God Bless the horrible climate Oh Argentina!!!
Nope. Native polities as well. Not all of these technological advantages were adopted. Lateen sails, for example, continued to be popular on the Indian Ocean long after square-rigged sqails were introduced and European methods of caulking were looked on with suspicion. But this was more technique/cultural preferences. The reason native ship-building died down after 1750 had more to do with increasing European dominance on land. To quote Chaudhuri:
From the available evidence one must conclude that if the balance of sea-power was unevenly distributed between the Asian merchants and the Europeans, it was perhaps more the result the of different economic, social, and political considerations than the technology of shipbuilding. For when Asian seamen turned predators and had a tangible motive for gaining the day, even a heavily-armed East-Indiaman such as Derby ( 1735 ) proved a victim.
and…
The overall impression conveyed by this particular type of Dutch source and other European records, Portuguese, English, French, and Danish, is that of a flourishing shipbuilding industry and merchant fleets in all parts of the Indiuan Ocean…We know there was a constant interchange of ideas between European ship-owners and shipwrights and local shipbuilders. Thomas Bowrey thought the carpenters of the Krishna-Godavari delta on the Coromandel coast could contruct and launch ships as well as any shipwright. They knew and discussed the technical reasons behind nautical designs, and many of them had learned the technique of European construction from English craftsman…In the later period of our study, European country-traders made little technical distinction between ships built in the West and those built in the countries of the Indian Ocean. If anything, they seemed to have preferred the local ships, as the standard of finish and the general wormanship remained high.
another anecdote…
The men-at-war belonging to the Sultan of Muscat had a formidable reputation in the Arabian Sea. In 1695 an Omani fleet of sixteen sail was sighted in Indian waters. The Muscat Arabs had begun fitting out large warships during these years, no doubt to provide an effective force against the European privateers who descended on the Arabian Sea from the West Indies in the 1690’s. The French ship Legier, of forty guns, ran into two Muscateers, of sixty and eighty guns respectively, off Goa and was promptly engaged. The action and cannonade continued until nightfall, and under the cover of darkness the Legier managed to get away. She arrived in Goa in a shattered condition; her captain had been killed.
I’ll also note the fleet of the Chinese warlord Coxinga that expelled the Dutch from Taiwan in 1661 ( where they had controlled since 1624 ).
‘Several decades’ is not ‘a brief spot’ :). But no, this extended over a wider area and longer period of time. The Malabar and Gujarati coasts just happened to be areas of heavy ( universally feared by both Asian and European shippers ) piracy.
European advances in field artillery were only part of the equation. The internal weaknesses of the Ottomans were far more telling. Remember, the Ottomans got their asses handed to them but the Austrians et al under Eugene of Savoy and lost a good bit of the Balkans in the 1690’s. Only to smash the Austrians and win back all they had lost in 1737-1739. To quote:
In general terms Ottoman artillery practice in the 17th century coincided with European practice. As for the standards of production and general capabilities of Ottoman weapons, it seems they were also broadly comparable with those found in Europe at the time. Around the time of the Thirty Years War, European muskets using bullets weighing approximately one and a third ounces had an effective range of 201-247 metres. By comparison, the range of the muskets in use by the Ottomans about the time of the siege of Vienna was approximately a fifth greater, capable of delivering their loads, according to Western military observers, a distance up to 300 metres.
From Ottoman Warfare, 1500-1700 by Rhoads Murphey ( 1999, Rutgers University Press ).
Nonsense. The Chinese had both muskets and artillery in the 16th and 17th century. As did the Ottomans as noted above ( in the 16th century they built the best siege artillery in the world ). All the significant Muslim states maintained artillery contingents. And this technology too, was diffused. In the late 18th century/early 19th century the Marathas ( Sindhia ) and the Sikh kingdom of the Punjab were casting bronze field artillery every bit the equal of the European guns they were modeled on.
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Certainly musketry won the battle of Panipat for the Mughuls in 1529 and the battle of Tondibi for the Moroccans in 1591 ;), and as time went on European advances in weaponry escalated. But it wasn’t entirely the barrel of the gun that won many of those encounters, it was other advantages as well.
Those geographic limitations are explained by geography :). Barely passable desert to the north, barely passable jungle to the south.
You “more energy” assumption is completely unproven for one thing and seems based on your own anecdotal experience. “Further north” is hard to expand when you have to cross hundreds of miles of desert with no significant pack animals.
Well, obviously. And the Golden Gate Bridge is more impressive than Stonehenge. Means nothing.
shrug An impossible standard to make judgements on, IMHO.
You may be. I most certainly am not :). ALL of India has a rich Imperial history, north and south ( and central ). Take the Tamil Nad-based Chola empire in southern India which not only conquered much of south and central India ( briefly ), but also Ceylon( Sri Lanka ) and launched naval expeditions as far afield as Indonesia.
Hard to compare. They do represent an enormous, fairly constant outlay of hard labor - Sites like Angkor Wat took many years to construct.
Lots o’ reasons, few of them related to temperture :).
snort Hardly. They have ONE commodity and damn all else.
Says who? I disagree.
Eh, no. Infrastructure? Educational exposure? Give me a break. The level of that varied widely in tropical colonies and never even approached that of the ruling countries. Not even close.
- Tamerlane
Just a fun fact, but when the Belgians left the Belgian Congo in 1960, only 17 Congolese had a university education.
Well I was wrong. Dead wrong. I wish Tamerlane had cited a reference on the net rather than just quote the works of Chaudhuri. I have to travel 250 kilometers to get to a decent library. I didn’t make a statement like I did above without searching the net for references to Ottoman (Islamic) and Chinese gunnery and musketry. I had come across references claiming the “fall” of Islam was attributed to refusal to adopt Western technologies particularly in the decline of the Ottoman Empire. With regard to the Chinese, I was educated to understand that the Chinese having invented gunpowder never used it militarily which Europeans did immediately upon aquisition of the knowledge. The word artillery got me a Google reference to
http://www.oslo2000.uio.no/program/papers/m1b/m1b-dicosmo.pdf entitled
European Technology and Manchu Power, Reflections on the “Military Revolution” in Seventeenth Century China.
This paper unequivocably supports the contention that the Ottoman Empire and the Chinese were manufacturing both muskets and cannon.
In any event , to characterize the exact extent of technology disbursement in the seventeenth century throughout the world as comparable to that of today is still not correct. The technology of that period was still very limited in the context of the total world population. In the case of today however the technology required for a standard of living equivalent to that experienced by America in say the 1980’s is available just about everywhere. Indeed, as I understand it, the knowledge of the internet so commonly used here to support our discussions is available in the poorest countries of the world. That is why I have little regard for the relevance of history to explain the relative poverty throughout the tropics.
I’m dissapointed that you need to resort to expressing emotional outburst. Up to now I expected more from you. In any event to poo poo the value of Saudi Arabia’s oil reserves, the envy of the world, particularly in light of the relatively cheap extraction cost and small population of the country does not suggest that you are taking this discussion seriously. Oh, btw don’t the Saudis have significant real estate holdings in Britain and America?
The colonial period of Africa is rife with the building of railroads with purpose of extracting resources of course. America gained independance prior to any railway construction, and Canada gained independance in 1867 with a promise to itself that it would build a cross country railroad.
With regard to education, it has long been my understanding that higher education for the sons of the indigenous elite of British African/Asian colonies was the norm. These were the leaders of the post-colonial period as I understood it.
Sorry :). But that wasn’t really to the level of an emotional outburst - That would have been something a little stronger like, “GAHH!!!” ;). I just thought your contention in that case was poor - SA’s wealth is not as great as some would think and it is increasingly unevenly divided ( and never has been the best invested in terms of infrastructure ).
No, it indicates I don’t think your point here was strong ;). If I didn’t take the discussion seriously I wouldn’t bother digging up cites. I WILL admit to not thinking your argument has any real legs - You’d have to work extremely hard to convince me, as your contention contradicts my own understanding of history and biology.
Depends what you consider significant, I suppose. The fact is that the SA elite have had relatively sizeable amounts of liquid cash handy in the past to spend on outside items. But SA’s economy was never built on a solid foundation and is already beginning to decline as the boom days wane. Yes, I’m sure many nations wish they had SA’s oil reserves. But that does not make SA a potential economic powerhouse - For that you need more than JUST oil.
Railroads are not the end-all, be-all. At any rate I think you are vastly exaggerrating ( or just mistakenly overestimating ) the infrastructure built in many of these colonial possesions vs. the harm inflicted by colonial occupation. But it’s a point I find hard to argue without going into reams of detail and at any rate there is some subjectivism mixed into it. Until I get a little more time to tackle this issue in more depth I’ll just leave it as “I disagree” for now.
Very mixed. Depends a great deal on the period and the colony. At times this was the case, but it was far from universal. And Britain was the best case scenario here. Captain Amazing just cited the other extreme, Belgium. In between we have an entire constellation from Germany ( not good ) to Portugal ( probably worse ) to France ( a little better ), etc.
Again, as time permits, I can try going into greater detail on this later if you like.
- Tamerlane