this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2025
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Rise of west is more attributed to the colonization no? They did have really good naval technology.
It is a fascinating question, isn't it? Why specifically did the left edge of Europe, and basically no one else, take over the world?
I totally get that the New World just didn't stand a chance because by some quirk there are basically no domesticatable animals native to the Western hemisphere. Imagine trying to bootstrap yourself to the iron age without the horse, cow, pig, chicken, sheep, goat, donkey, dog or cat. So when Cortez landed on the Yucatan with steel weapons and armor, firearms, horses etc. he encountered civilizations on par with the Old Kingdom of ancient Egypt, and that was the most advanced it got in the New World.
But the Old World, AfroEurAsia, had been in contact with each other basically forever. Why was it that Portugal, Spain, France, the Netherlands and Great Britain became world dominating global superpowers when, say, Japan, Korea, China, Southeast Asia or India didn't? I can understand why the coastal and island nations on the left edge of the "world" might invest in sea power and start sailing the world...why didn't the coastal and island nations on the right edge do the same?
Yeah the Western empires grew to global supremacy via colonization which is still echoed in the present day, the United States of America, former colony of Great Britain, is still the most powerful and influential nation on Earth. Britain sailed so we could fly. Why didn't anyone else in the world do the same?
Well, it seems that Western Europe had a lethal combination of three things that no one else in the world had:
So it turns out that in the entire world, only the Western Europeans had the means, motive and personality to travel the world by ship. Asians and Africans had the means, but not the motive or personality, and nobody in the New World had the means. Fast forward a few centuries and the result is the petrodollar.
That sounds like Gun Germs and Steel which is a very problematic book.
Would you mind explaining whats problematic about it? Seems pretty logical from the comment you replied to no?
It’s way too neat of an answer to a complex question.
Diamond is an ophthalmologist and a bird watcher. He is in no way in any regard an anthropologist, sociologist, or historian. He’s a hack who keeps pushing his ascientific notions because it got him fame.
Reddit’s askhistorians FAQ has a whole bit about this book and its issues.
GGS's core argument leans very heavily into environmental determinism, which is generally not regarded as a serious comprehensive argument for societal differences.
Thanks for expanding on it. Do you know what other theories bring up as the reason why it happened to be Europe that came to dominate?
One which I brought up elsewhere in the thread is an old one - that Europe discovering, plundering, and then exploiting the Americas gave them the boost they needed to extend that hegemony to the rest of the world. They 'lucked out' into finding a bunch of 'easy targets' and a massive amount of land once they were done butchering.
Noneofurbusiness brought up capitalism, which is another common explanation - capitalism, for all of its faults, gave Europe in the 17th century AD an unprecedented period of sustained growth, which not only fueled Europe's ambitions, but also the later Industrial Revolution which would extend its advantage even further.
Makes sense but that also requires Europe to have the resources, animals and geography to encourage naval expeditions. The Americas didnt come to Europe, presumably because of the lack of large domesticated animals (?)
Of course - there are a great many factors behind Europe being the ones to discover the Americas, and not vice-versa. But, importantly, many other Old World regions had the same access to material goods and technology that Europe did - China in particular - but did not end up discovering (or exploiting) the Americas.
The point in rejecting environmental determinism is not the rejection of environmental factors, but the rejection of determinism - history is a vast field, and even small changes can arrest entire civilizations.
That's fair, I'm definitely no expert but the two theories seem very in line with each-other. The difference being how "certain" the outcome would be.
You're jumping ahead a bit there, because before they stumble on the Americas, they've still got to have the ability and willingness to sail thousands of miles into unknown territory. Which basically no one else did.
But plenty of people did? There are no end of expeditions to nowhere in world history, some success, most not. Hell, the only reason Columbus succeeded was because he was wrong about the size of the world - otherwise, he would've ran out of supplies long before landfall.