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Comment by soperj | Hacker News Reader

> > Diamond also attempts to explain why European, rather than Chinese, conquerors were the ones who did all the colonizing. This is a simple balkanization theory—Europe divided into many areas conducive to states, China formed a great homogenous core—that does not need lengthy restatement. Europe has a highly indented coastline with multiple large peninsulas, all of which developed independent languages, ethnic groups, and governments, plus two large islands.

It's like he knows nothing about China. There's lots of different dialects, Mandarin wasn't the main language used by Government until around the time that the Americas were being colonized by the Europeans.

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I read Diamond a long time ago but what he was contrasting was that the Chinese Empire was centralised and so when they decided not to expand, that applied to the whole empire, while the Europeans were fragmented so even if Germany and France and England didn't want to send any ships, Portugal and Spain could be convinced to take a risk.

Columbus' 3 small ships were also vastly cheaper than Zheng He's large fleet that had some really large ships in it (even if we dismiss the reported sizes as utterly unrealistic).

There's also the fact that the European ships at the time were more robust than the Chinese ships -- because robust ships had been really useful for sailing along the Atlantic coast for trade/fishing.

I also wonder which two islands are considered large out of GB, Ireland, Iceland, Corsica, Sicily... I feel like there's a couple of big islands around China too... Taiwan, some in Japan, Borneo, Philippines for instance. Indigenous Taiwanese settled the whole south Pacific.

Nothing in the quoted passage suggests that China does not have different dialects. But it doesn't take a history professor to recognize that China has been under centralized governments of much more comprehensive reach in space and time than Europe ever has, and it is with these periods of unity and stability that Chinese culture most identifies itself.

This is true now. But before, most people would have been loyal firstly to their area, speak a (quite possibly non-Chinese or even Sino-Tibetan) language or dialect only understood in their area, and at would at most have heard the names of some far-off places. It was not that different to Europe. And that's the relatively Chinese areas. Don't forget also that up until the 20th century large areas of present-day China were demonstrably not Chinese, in that nobody could speak or read Chinese in the area and they had adopted virtually zero Chinese language or culture.

I get where you're coming from. I think what the article should have said was, Europe has geography that favors multiple independent stable nation states, whereas Chinese geography, while it has certainly hosted many competing dynasties over the centuries, does not favor multiple stable nation states. Basically, it's too easy to conquer the whole, so it's been done many times.

Yes, if only the major rivers in China were different...

The Yellow River and the Yangtze River systems are so close that it isn't realistic to have long-term control over one and not the other. And controlling both gives you a fantastic base from which to conquer your surroundings.

Rice, rice, baby. - Vanilla Ice, on Chinese political anthropology.

Come 'n try to snatch my crops. - James Scott, on Zomian political anthropology.

> China formed a great homogenous core—that does not need lengthy restatement. Europe has a highly indented coastline with multiple large peninsulas, all of which developed independent languages, ethnic groups, and governments, plus two large islands.

This right here more than suggests that China speaks one language, also suggests that it's never split apart, which it has multiple multiple times.

> It's like he knows nothing about China

Oh yes.

And East Asia is much more than, much bigger than, China.

It is a ludicrous infantile argument from a Western POV Jarrad never notices.

He is a fish, swim g in a racist sea that does not know what water is

It's funny when people are so anti-racist they become racist.

I lean really far left, and know I am, so have to guard against bias being on the left. But this entire thread has really lost track of what racism is. So many people are arguing against Jared for being racist, while making racist arguments to justify it. Its getting bit crazy.

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