The score created by Morris in the 541 East to the West ahead for the first time. Why East emerged from the crisis at the beginning of our era long before the West? China rediscovered its unity in the late VI with the brilliant T'ang empire. West as she got was the Carolingian Renaissance, modest compared to the T'ang and also did not cover the entire West. Morris is the answer for: geography. From the third century AD had farmers have begun to exploit the regions south of the Yangtze from the sixth century and began to introduce new agricultural techniques that increased yields. China was an advantage that the West had not: in the north still had an organized state, the Sui dynasty, whose economic base was ruined, in the south had weak political parties and a thriving economy. The Emperor Wendi realized that the south was crying out and conquer who heeded the call, reuniting China and laying the foundations of the Renaissance T'ang. In the West a little before Justinian wanted to do something similar and re-establish the Roman Empire. Failed for many reasons: the situation on its borders was more complicated with the Sassanid Persians in the east and the newly arrived Slavs in the north, which was faced with Wendi, anywhere in the Mediterranean world had an economic base so rosy as that existed south of the Yangtze, to sustain imperial renaissance, and to finish the last years of his reign were stained by epidemics.
early ninth century, the West and East again in trouble. The Carolingian Renaissance was losing steam and the relative economic and social recovery that brought Charlemagne, attracted new invaders: the Vikings and the Magyars. On the other hand, the emergence of Islam had made the Mediterranean ceased to be a sea that linked and facilitate trade, to become a border between two hostile civilizations. In China, the mid-eighth century T'ang dynasty was in crisis and beyond would only limp to its sad end in the tenth century
And then, the great engine of history is to Morris became climate change: temperatures rose between 900 and 1300 around a level and rainfall fell 10%. The change was a relief for Europe and a nightmare for the Muslim world, which became warmer and drier and began to lose the advantage he had taken over the Christian West (Warning: For Morris, the Muslim world is still part of the West it comes from the same original nucleus). Europe began to plow land and develop new agricultural techniques and returned to grow. In Song Dynasty China restored things more or less in 960.
Universal History was about to overturn in the twelfth century when the Chinese were, according to Morris, in a trice to invent the industrial revolution had reached a level social development similar to that achieved by the Romans in their heyday. In the eleventh century Chinese laborers had invented a winder and later pedal invented one that could use animal power or water. At the same time Chinese blacksmiths of the city of Kaifeng, which was the capital of the empire, began to use coal to the wood shortage. The industrial revolution in England just started with the application of machines in the textile industry and the use of coal as an energy source. Only someone lacking in China invented the steam engine. But instead of the steam engine, which came to China in the twelfth century were the Jurchen barbarians. In 1127 Kaifeng fell to the Jurchen and the rule of the Song was restricted to the Yangtze valley. Still, conditions were so that in the thirteenth century Southern Song had invented the industrial revolution. Unfortunately, Genghis Khan was born came early thirteenth century and the Song and technological advances went to hell with the Mongol conquest and epidemics and famine that accompanied it.
A mid-fourteenth century saw the terrible plague of the Black Death, which may kill one-third to one half of the population of the West and also wreaked havoc East. In addition coincided with that old friend of Morris, climate change. At about that time is over heating initiated at 900 and there was a period that has been called the Little Ice Age, with that name does not need to explain what was. But for the fourteenth century East and West were older, more developed technologies available and were better able to withstand shocks. By the early fifteenth century, both had begun to recover.
early fifteenth century, the newly established Ming Dynasty commanded seven great naval expeditions that went through all the coasts of the Indian Ocean to Mozambique, which have excited the imagination of writers Uchrony . In 1433 the Ming decided it was OK chorraditas maritime expeditions ended and left the large fleet rots. The historian Arnold J. Toynbee gave an explanation of why that might occur in China and could never happen in Europe. China was unified under one emperor, which will determined the grand strategy of the empire. If the emperor and his ministers had adopted a policy, there was no turning back. Europe, however, was divided. A state that ceased to test a potentially useful policy, I was just giving way to another state so that put an entrepreneur into practice. One example is when Portugal did not accept the plans of Columbus to find a western route to the Indies. Columbus crossed the border and simply offered his plan to Castile.
André Gunder Frank said it was the discovery of America and its wealth that gave the Europeans behind the silver needed to be introduced in Asian trade networks were focused on China and, finally, take the lead. Morris believes that geography made it almost inevitable that they were the Europeans who discovered America and not Asians. The Atlantic is smaller than the Pacific, has winds and currents that favor the middle passage and islands of the Azores or the Canaries, which serve as scales. Moreover, the Europeans had in the fifteenth century to explore other economic incentives Asian regions, swam in abundance, they were not. One of the incentives, so important was the Ottoman Empire with the conquest of Constantinople and the Mamluk Empire in Egypt became almost inevitable intermediary between Europe and the riches of Asia. The Silk Road and sea routes of the Indian who took either the Gulf or the Red Sea flowed into territories controlled by the Ottomans. Europe needed new routes to link with Asia. Portugal sought outlining the Asia and the sought Castilla heading west and turning face to face with America.
The
XVI and XVII centuries were centuries of growth in East and West, but more in the second. The Scientific Revolution and plunder the wealth in America helped to close the gap with East West. The seventeenth century was a century of crisis across Eurasia, Central Europe was devastated by the Thirty Years War in China Ming dynasty fell and was replaced by the Manchu invaders who established, in India the Mughal Empire began its decline. However, social development indices did not fall and early eighteenth century in the East and West had reached 43 points, the same levels they were when the Roman Empire began to decline and have and when East and West declined in the fourteenth century.
Morris thinks about the 45 points of development is a ceiling over an agricultural empire whose energy forces are the human and animal and some of the wind and the water can not break. It is an ecological bottleneck, which poses a Roman Empire or the Han Empire can not solve. East and West have seen a crisis like I and XIV centuries, if there had been no industrial revolution, which changed the game by providing tools for companies that had hitherto not been available.
The eighteenth century was the century in which Western regained the lead. There was a technological revolution. Steppe frontier was closed. The sedentary group had developed new weapons, cannons and guns, the cavalry against the nomads could not compete. For the first time in history stopped the barbarians threaten the sedentary empires of Eurasia. He had developed an Atlantic economy, which did not exist during the crisis of the ages I and XIV.
East Morris estimates that by itself could have perhaps invent the industrial revolution in the nineteenth century. If the West, and more specifically England, he was advanced by a number of factors. The first is the labor shortage in the West. The population density was lower in the West and the Europeans always have the possibility to go to the colonies. The result is that labor was far more expensive than in the East. There was thus a very important incentive to find ways to produce with less labor. England had plenty of coal and also had it in very convenient locations: near the iron mines and large populations that would be ideal sites for the first factories. The colonies provided a captive market that would absorb any product that they send. And finally, the West, especially England, had developed financial markets, any producer who would brave enough to try a new machine at his disposal all the money he wanted, provided it could convince investors of the project's sustainability.
industrialization, coupled with enhanced communications that made the world smaller, caused no only since the eighteenth century (1721 to be precise, following the detailed accounts of Morris) West ahead of the East but the West to become the lord of the planet.
0 comments:
Post a Comment