None of those hold up to much scrutiny.
1) Unusual incentives related to economic backwardness (Europe's ruling class imported luxury products from richer but distant places while having virtually nothing to trade in return, creating centuries of grinding deflation until they stumbled ass-backwards into pillaging precious metals from the Americas and militarily imposing maritime trade monopolies in Asia)
2) Access to the Chinese/Indian/wherever technology from the Mongols which some other backwaters lacked (not getting destroyed by the Mongols in the process also helps)
3) Weak and violent states (by global standards) fighting each other endlessly for 800+ years with little consolidation or interruption, recreating the state/military modernization process that incidentally also happened 2000 years earlier in China
4) A pre-modern tradition of thin and high walls that incentivized use of heavy artillery (this incentive was absent in places that entered the gunpowder era with better economies and thicker walls, but heavy cannons on ships, walls, and in sieges ended up being the future)
1. Very few states had any major precious metal influx from the New World. Only Spain did so in huge quantity (the English and Dutch stole a fair bit of this), and the economic effects of that much specie were
not good. One of the big contributors that led to Hapsburg Spain being replaced by Bourbon Spain was that massive inflation had gutted the economy.
Equally important, the trade networks in question brought great wealth to everyone involved. It wasn't just a matter of "all our gold and silver goes out, spices and silks come in". The crippling effect you're talking about didn't happen.
2. Any technology desired could flow along the same trade networks, and Europe wasn't the total technological backwater that people think it was. The biggest difference between Europe and elsewhere is that we don't easily recognize a lot of what they did as technology, because it was improvements of a sort that are invisible to moderns no matter how big they were at the time.
3. Also nonsense. The only reason that some places (like the Muslim world) were relatively less violent was that they'd already "progressed" further along that same path. Many areas that would later be subject to colonialism were rich and powerful empires at that time.
4. All medieval fortresses were obsoleted by gunpowder. The most expensive and formidable curtain walls ever built could be (and, IIRC, were) knocked down by cannon with ease. Having slightly thicker walls didn't help a damn - resisting cannonfire required the demolition of the fortifications and replacement with a completely new system.
Exploiting fossil fuels in industrial machinery first was made possible by:
1) Northern China's 13th century huge coal+iron industry getting destroyed and the region depopulated by the Mongols in a 100 year conquest that erased its innovations and memory until modern times
2) British and European lack of sustainable forest management eventually creating a non-industrial market demand for household coal-use in Britain (coal is extremely undesirable for household use compared to burning wood and wouldn't have been mined if European forestry had been less unsustainable)
3) Britain's high water table compared to northern China (ideas behind steam engines had been around for thousands of years in various places, but it turns out one of the few places where the extremely inefficient prototypes with very high bulk fuel transport costs are economical is when pumping water out of a coal mine itself, which is unnecessary in dry Chinese coal mines)
1. Meaningless. Mined coal was replacing charcoal everwhere in the early 1100s, not just in China. The only major exceptions were places like some of the Germanies, where careful forest management had ensured a much more reliable source of charcoal.
2. Only Britain had a near-total deforestation, and that long predated the industrial use of coal. This was because their naval and maritime traditions required huge quantities of lumber to build the ships (which also made the virgin forests of North America extremely valuable). Coal replaced wood in household heating not because of unavailability, but because it is far more energy dense and thus much more practical to transport and stockpile.
3. It is true that the need to pump mines dry was the first practical use of the steam engine. However, the notion that "ideas for steam engines were around for thousands of years" is nonsense. That claim is based on the Aeolipile, which did exist. However, the Aeolipile was useless, and it is utterly impossible to adapt it into something that can be used - trying to power anything with it would instantly overwhelm the tiny amount of torque you can get out of it. Experiments in practical use didn't crop up until the late 1600s (a handful of patents exist from a century earlier, but no evidence of any practical experiments has been found), and those were very impractical because getting to useful working pressures would often make the things explode.The mid-18th century devices, and more importantly the 19th century ones, were the first to exist because this was when materials capable of handling them began to exist.
Very few states had any major precious metal influx from the New World. Only Spain did so in huge quantity (the English and Dutch stole a fair bit of this), and the economic effects of that much specie were not good. One of the big contributors that led to Hapsburg Spain being replaced by Bourbon Spain was that massive inflation had gutted the economy.
Inflation was indeed huge throughout Europe (especially after the prior centuries of deflation) but the bulk of the precious metals ended up in China. Ming replaced its currency with enormous amounts of silver coinage that came almost exclusively from the Americas or a few mines in Europe, and in return European merchants received all manner of goods that either ended up in Europe directly or were traded elsewhere for other goods in Asia and Africa. Exporting precious metals was virtually the entire basis of European trade with Asia until the 1800s, but most of the real money in pre-industrial colonialism in Asia came from European merchants taking over inter-Asian trade or the early monopoly companies extracting customs/tariffs from non-European merchants.
Equally important, the trade networks in question brought great wealth to everyone involved. It wasn't just a matter of "all our gold and silver goes out, spices and silks come in". The crippling effect you're talking about didn't happen.
Medieval Europe is well known for having a very low quantity of precious metals in circulation compared to most other regions and a low volume of trade with other regions. The woolen cloth industry was significant internally, but of little value compared to cheaper and better cotton cloth produced elsewhere, and metals were too expensive in Europe to export either.
2. Any technology desired could flow along the same trade networks, and Europe wasn't the total technological backwater that people think it was. The biggest difference between Europe and elsewhere is that we don't easily recognize a lot of what they did as technology, because it was improvements of a sort that are invisible to moderns no matter how big they were at the time.
Europe was certainly an economic backwater and technologies originating in China were necessary for early colonialism, but there were some technological areas that early modern Europe led in independently of colonialism. Wind or water powered mills spring to mind, which was a factor I should have listed as important in transitioning to fossil fuel powered machinery.
The only reason that some places (like the Muslim world) were relatively less violent was that they'd already "progressed" further along that same path. Many areas that would later be subject to colonialism were rich and powerful empires at that time.
I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with, but the frequency of warfare is important because it happened at a time when technologies necessary for early colonialism (fortresses defended with artillery and firearms, ships with heavy cannons, siege techniques to capture weak pre-gunpowder forts quickly) were being developed by Europeans for use on each other, with incentives in that context that didn't exist elsewhere.
4. All medieval fortresses were obsoleted by gunpowder. The most expensive and formidable curtain walls ever built could be (and, IIRC, were) knocked down by cannon with ease. Having slightly thicker walls didn't help a damn - resisting cannonfire required the demolition of the fortifications and replacement with a completely new system.
In medieval Europe, absolutely, but elsewhere it's not just "slightly thicker". City walls in China being 6-8 meters thick or more at the base were commonplace and survived in use until the introduction of high explosive shells in the 20th century, while the typical medieval stone wall in Europe was less than a foot thick. The high and thin mortar-and-stone walls and towers in Europe could be knocked down by primitive heavy cannons, and that sudden vulnerability spurred a chain of developments that included military techniques necessary for pre-industrial colonial powers to hold the small enclaves they captured in Asia and Africa. China had a longer and more developed tradition of using gunpowder weapons, but never independently developed heavy artillery because they had a pre-gunpowder tradition already immune to its use in sieges (Japan's fortifications and many in India were immune as well, in the sense of just knocking down a wall).
The point is that Europe lucked its way onto the ultimately "winning" combination of military technologies necessary for pre-industrial colonialism in ways other places were unlikely to, and it was partially a consequence of their weaker economy that produced walls vulnerable to the eventual introduction of gunpowder in ways other fortifications in richer places weren't.
1. Meaningless. Mined coal was replacing charcoal everwhere in the early 1100s, not just in China. The only major exceptions were places like some of the Germanies, where careful forest management had ensured a much more reliable source of charcoal.
Charcoal's a bit of a weird thing to bring up, since it isn't comparable to either coal or wood (and coal certainly can't replace it, until introducing coke). Charcoal uses enormous amounts of wood to produce, is difficult to transport (it chips away to dust), and was exclusively used in applications that require a higher burn temperature than wood or raw coal can provide. China used techniques that allowed the use of coal as a flux and fuel in iron production at lower temperatures (but the results are of lower quality) alongside charcoal for more typical bloom smelting (and later only charcoal, no coal).
It's also not a question of whether any coal mining was done at all, it's a question of scale. The coal/iron industry in northern China was huge, and the early modern (not medieval) British coal industry was also huge for the population involved, while coal mining anywhere else was nearly irrelevant in comparison to wood as a fuel.
2. Only Britain had a near-total deforestation, and that long predated the industrial use of coal. This was because their naval and maritime traditions required huge quantities of lumber to build the ships (which also made the virgin forests of North America extremely valuable). Coal replaced wood in household heating not because of unavailability, but because it is far more energy dense and thus much more practical to transport and stockpile.
This is another one where it doesn't even feel like you're disagreeing, but it should be said that raw coal is strictly inferior to wood for household use. It burns less hotly, less efficiently, produces more smoke, and is more difficult to ignite. People prefer wood, and it takes shortages raising the relative price of wood much higher than coal to create demand for it outside of a few commercial applications where the cooler burning temperature and noxious smoke isn't a problem.
3. It is true that the need to pump mines dry was the first practical use of the steam engine. However, the notion that "ideas for steam engines were around for thousands of years" is nonsense. That claim is based on the Aeolipile, which did exist. However, the Aeolipile was useless, and it is utterly impossible to adapt it into something that can be used - trying to power anything with it would instantly overwhelm the tiny amount of torque you can get out of it. Experiments in practical use didn't crop up until the late 1600s (a handful of patents exist from a century earlier, but no evidence of any practical experiments has been found), and those were very impractical because getting to useful working pressures would often make the things explode.The mid-18th century devices, and more importantly the 19th century ones, were the first to exist because this was when materials capable of handling them began to exist.
I agree, my hand-waving the other factors in steam machinery was hasty. Perhaps there are 3 limiting factors to adopting the use of early steam engines:
1) Preliminary knowledge sufficient to think to even try it
2) Materials and metalworking techniques capable of withstanding the pressure
3) An application where the fuel use is economical, in particular fossil fuels
It's very reasonable that with Britain's widespread use of watermills they would have figured out an economical use for early steam engines later even if their mines had been entirely dry and the obvious first incentive hadn't presented itself. It's also plausible that China was so lacking in 1) and 2) that they would've never developed it independently, especially without the best initial incentives in mining. I think I framed the mining application as too decisive of a factor; if it was important, it was more as a limiter on China than as an aide to Britain.
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Topic: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O (Read 14938828 times)