Comment by cerealbad | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cerealbad | Hacker News Reader

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I would love to see a reasonable explanation for the rapid development of Western Europe. The henge circles all across the world (including the new world) show an advanced mathematics and astronomy for thousands of years before the rise of settler empires say parity ~9000 BC. Jump forward all the way to the late 1800s and despite the glacial pace of social change in Russia they are still designing one of the best rifles and bullets in the world, in use for 100+ years. The success of social organisation must stem from some mixture of accelerated development due to geographic sheltering and island vs mainland conflict- with the island empires (Spain, Portugal, Dutch)proving they don't need to fight landwars if the can control global shipping lanes. The interplay between Japan, China and Korea reminds me of England, France and Germany. Russia plays a role as a cultural glue between these two remote spheres but because of its size proves to be ungovernable. South East Asia gets ignored much like Eastern Europe. Italy, Greece, India, Iran and Egypt great middle civilizations are paralyzed by their ancient past insular and corrupt. Most of Africa, America and Eurasia are mysteries because of contact contamination.

If the answer is a universal religion plus a sea faring civilization gives you world power it still makes me wonder why it took until the late 1400s to kick off. Had the Romans avoided debasing their currency and managed their bureaucracy better couldn't they develop an ocean crossing trireme by the 800s maybe 1000s? So much time has gone by and humans are still just stumbling around unable to organise or understand the emergent forces their complex networks generate. The loss of life due to famine, disease and war in the previous millenium is at a shocking scale of proportionality to the existing populations affected by it. A mistake is being made by not teaching history thoroughly, say 2-3 years of intensive world history for all children. You could introduce a lot of concepts as they emerge in context from religion to agriculture to mathematics, music and politics.

> I would love to see a reasonable explanation for the rapid development of Western Europe.

Rapid and development in what sense? This topic is sort of contaminated by the fact that most askers of the question have a circular definition that refuses to countenance the concept that Western Europe might have been far from dominant (e.g., in areas such as quality of life or health).

In terms of how Western Europe came to politically dominate the world, this essentially boils down to them deciding to arm their trading fleets and have them act as a military force against competitors, and then snowballing the resulting profits into more powerful navies (and armies) that the other countries couldn't keep up with. The technological gap often wasn't near as wide as people usually assume it to be, and there are several instances of Western powers getting their asses kicked by natives, but the Western powers could afford to keep up the pressure for decades or even centuries if need be, whereas the native peoples had less ability to recover from attrition. At the same time, European powers were also able to achieve highly centralized states that prevented them from collapsing due to internal struggles mid-snowball, which is generally the historical case for large empires (see: Aztec, China, Inca, Rome).

Specifically in the power to kill at a distance. From cannonball to bullet to firebombing and nuclear airburst. The advancement made seems unreasonable and curiously asymmetric. Communicating instantly across the globe sure, even travelling to other celestial bodies fine. But the idea that a small group of people thousands of miles away can decide to evaporate millions without any warning or reasonable form of defense would seem insane to anyone from the pre nuclear age escalating retaliation keeping global peace is an absurd tragedy.

I have a pet theory about this and the development of "advanced" civilization in general, that civilizations always advance relatively rapidly due to constant conflict. It doesn't necessarily have to be military conflict, but it generally seems to have been right up to the 20th century.

Because Europe is geographically small, the probability of neighbour conflict is always very high especially when that small space contains such a high degree of variation in language and culture. If you add a particularly ambitious, capable and politically-placed individual to that mix like an Alexander the Great you tend to get empires forming.

I don't think this is specific to Europe at all; Asia has experienced similar rapid development throughout its history, many times being very technologically advanced from a global perspective, and the origin of smaller empires like the Aztecs, Iroquois and the Oyo in other parts of the world.

It's more about attempting to quantify the level of civilization than theorizing about underlying reasons, but I found Why the West Rules for Now a reaaly interesting chronicle about the West (and China) over time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_the_West_Rules%E2%80%94For...

> If the answer is a universal religion plus a sea faring civilization gives you world power it still makes me wonder why it took until the late 1400s to kick off.

I'm not sure it would fit the idea, but:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Peoples

Western Europe is not so special as people imagine. The Greeks and Romans managed to conquer pretty much everything that was important for them at the time, and they did it centuries earlier. The difference for Europe is that they were able to build on top of ancient knowledge passed down by Greeks and Romans. With modern technology they were able to reach everywhere in the world and create armies that were almost impossible to defeat. I think earlier empires were much more impressive for doing so much with so little knowledge.

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