I've done some research papers on this and i am fairly convinced i nailed it, but i would like to hear other people's take on this subject and why? Show me some historical evidence. The question being...

What propelled Western civilization to so quickly bypass the East in terms of global dominance? More specifically, i am specifically referring to the Chinese, but feel free to mention other eastern civilizations. Hope to spark up some good conversations and hear some interesting thoughts (evidenced of course).

The Chinese had centuries of political and economic isolation. They sealed themselves off from the rest of the world until the 19th century.

Eh, yes and no. They never really sealed themselves off like Japan did, and as late as 1800, the Qing still ruled over one of the wealthiest states in the world. The net flow of silver in the world still tended to go toward China. In 1700, something like 7 of the 10 most populous cities in the world were all in China. Living standards, food production, and life expectancy were on par with or ahead of Western Europe.

The short answer is industrialization. While both China and Europe (particularly Britain) were facing a timber shortage in the mid-1700s, Britain had easier access to coal as an alternative source of energy (Britain is small and its coal deposits are relatively close to urban centers, whereas China is large and its coal was far from the coast, where the cities were). Also, differences in coal (British mines tend to be wet, while Chinese mines tend to be dry and quite dangerous) favored Britain's utilization of coal fuel at an earlier date.

See Kenneth Pomeranz's The Great Divergence for a more detailed explanation.

The first episode of this new series on Channel 4 (in the UK) looks into this very subject. Might be worth watching.

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/c...st-history/4od

The Chinese were responsible for some of the greatest inventions like the ship's rudder.

Must have been invented elsewhere too, I guess? A somewhat bigger ship just needs it.

Before about 1800, the vast majority of technological innovation flowed from East to West. There are a number of histories examining to what extent various inventions arose independently or were modeled on earlier (often Chinese) innovations. A good primer on the subject is Arnold Pacey's Technology in World Civilization.

China was also the first culture to develop the printing press, although it's still fairly controversial whether their design influenced later European models (unless this has changed in the last few years). Interestingly enough, early printing in China and Europe were largely used for the same reason: the circulation of religious texts (Buddhist in China, Protestant in Europe).

Funny/ironic that you point that out because the thesis to one of my papers was that a failure in maritime expansion/exploration was the initial misstep in China's decline.

I assume you're referring to the decline/dismantling of the Treasure Fleets during the Ming Dynasty?

new frontiers promote growth

The chinese have always been troubled with their inventions.

Yes, this is the exact period i am referring to. The reasons being of course that Chinese government philosophy at the time felt it was more advantageous to address inland/domestic issues than aggressively pursue exploration. This same type of thinking also bit them in the ass when industrialization was revolutionizing the world, and they continued to rely on an agriculturally based economy.

Before the Renaissance, China was likely more advanced and prosperous than Europe.
However, after that, Europe became more powerful and innovative.
The Renaissance and the discovery of the Americas, Australia, and the Pacific islands made everything change.
While Europe became more advanced, China became more outdated because of the Confucian rules of the Ming and the Qing dynasties, the policy of isolation, the agriculture-based society, the corruption of the aristocrats and eunuchs, and many more.
What China could do during the Ming and Qing dynasties were to expand its territory over Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia

China's fleet could easily have dominated the world but for Confucian reasons, perhaps, the emperor ordereed the entire fleet destroyed. Reading a good book about this now called "when china ruled the seas" by Louise Levathes

Confucianism denigrates trade and pursuit of profits and certain emperors were influenced by their Confucian ministers. Further, the emperor could have been motivated by fear of merchants becoming too rich and therefore too powerful.

To say they weren't interested in dominating their neighbors though is a different matter. Vietnam would certainly disagree with that statement, considering the 1000 year colonial domination of Vietnam. It seems that the general teaching in history is that Europeans invented colonialism. It's more accurate to say that it has been a general trait of dominant cultures since the dawn of time and all share the 'guilt' equally.

The Confucian countries of China and Vietnam didn't care about navy and maritime expansion in the past. The first time a Chinese standing navy had been established was in 1132, under the Southern Song dynasty. Similarly, before the Nguyen lords' southward expansion into Champa, the Vietnamese dynasties had controlled only the Gulf of Tonkin

Guys, it's called the great divergence and no historian or academic institution has ever put forward a compelling argument that isolates how it happened. I doubt some speculative posts on 2+2 are going to solve the riddle.

There's a lot of piecemeal bits that are indisputable but basically every holistic approach is very problematic and has a lot of evidence refuting it.

My own belief is that it was a combination of so many different factors, which is exactly why it's so difficult to pin down.

Anyone reading this thread should probably read The Gunpowder Age. It's a very well written and approachable book that tracks the history and spread of gunpowder across the globe and inevitably ties into trying to understand just how the area where this weapon originated ended up becoming dominated by it.

It doesn't provide any overarching conclusion but it's great as a history of gunpowder and for knocking down a lot of common myths created by Hollywood. For example, in an old film about Marco Polo there's a scene where they are using fireworks and Marco tells them "wow this would make an incredible weapon" and he gets naysayed which seeded the belief that the Chinese never used them as weapons etc etc

There's a lot more books specifically on the great divergence but they are more academic in nature and horrible to slog through. The book TP recommended is great but reading that is a painful experience even if it's a topic of interest.

How long until thread title changes to- what happened to the West

about 350

Not sure they did... British kept the Chinese subjugated by getting the populace addicted to smack, financed and laundered via Hong Kong, that's why the British only gave a rats arse about HK not mainland, that was all that was necessary.
Think I misread, "bypass" as in "overtook" or bypass as in didn't really bother..?

Dan Carlin made an interesting argument in his Hardcore History series on the Mongols that the Mongol conquest of China, that killed an estimated 40 million people, set China back generations and ultimately knocked them off their perch as the foremost civilization in the world.

It seems like it's hard to be a super power when your standard citizen is a beaten down peasant. Psychologically they are inferior cuz they've mostly been conditioned to be dominated by others for generations, kinda like pet dogs. Pretty messed up to think about and makes me happy to have grown up in China.

i definitely agree their education system is going to be a bottleneck at some point

thing is in the meantime the bar for suceeding has been set so low and they are really good about filtering talent - ie everyone running anything there is insanely intelligent whereas the people running things in the US could be anyone etc

i'd wager the median IQ of from their civil servants and higher level officials is easily a full standard deviation above that of the west and this can overcome a lot where the government can prop up a population vs in the west where they drag it down

Hi BenLZ:

I think this is partially it, but it's not complete. Going back to the mid 1400s, China was way ahead. But Europe consisted of a bunch of city states that competed against each other while China had become a big monolith with no one to compete against. And competition does move society forward. So, it didn't take long for the West, including the United States, to move past a stagnant China.

However, today things have changed and now there is great competition between China and the West, and again we can see the results of what competition can do.

Best wishes,
Mason

grunching...

i recently read james clavell's book TaiPan about the establishment of Hong Kong... can't remember the exact date but it wasn't that long ago. Macao were populated prior to HK.

fascinating book, although obvious highly fictionalized.

when the west traded with china it was from a very small closed area around the docks in Canton......... it was written that almost no westerners had ever been in china, at least around Canton and in any signifcant manner. seemed like the number was very very small, like 100 people. a bit confusing as the canton traders did seem to sneak across the border but it was very short duration and very specfic purposes (whorehouses, moneylenders etc.)...

so basically china cut itself off from the western world for a long long time.

i live in a city with an enormous number of indian, hong kong and mainland chinese immigrants. and you really see the difference between indians/hk and mainland chinese in terms of english proficiency and day-to-day living. HK and india were very open. english colonies or similar governance.