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In the previous lesson we saw the
scientific revolution change the world
beyond recognition.
We also emphasized, the scientific
revolution was
not the result of scientific research
alone.
This is because scientific research can
flourish only in
alliance with some religion or ideology or
political force.
The ideology justifies the cost of the
research.
In exchange, the ideology gets to
influence the scientific agenda
and to determine what to do with the
discoveries of science.
So, if you really want to understand the
scientific revolution and its development,
you have to
take into consideration the ideological,
the political, and
the economic forces that shaped the
sciences of physics,
of biology, of economics, pushing them
towards certain destinations and not
others.
Of all the ideologies and all the
political and economic forces that have
shaped modern science, the two most
important ones are European imperialism
and capitalism.
This lesson will be dedicated
to understanding the relations between
science
on the one hand and European imperialism
on the other hand.
Capitalism, we'll discuss in the next
lesson.
The first thing we need to realize
regarding the
rise of the European empires, is how
surprising it was.
Before the modern era, Europe, and in
particular
western Europe was poor and marginali-
marginalised area
of the world.
Nothing of importance ever happened in
Europe previously.
Western Europe was never as a center of
any great Empire prior to the modern age.
Even the Roman Empire is only important
pre-modern European empire
derived most of its power and wealth from
its North African and
Middle Eastern provinces.
The Western European provinces of the
Roman Empire, were kind of wild west and
they contributed little
to the power and wealth of the Empire
except minerals and slaves.
Northern Europe was so desolate and so
barbarous in the times of the
Romans that they didn't even bother to
conquer it because they didn't think
that there was anything there worth
conquering.
Similarly, no important religion or
ideology came from Europe before
the modern age, no great technological
invention or economic system.
Only at the end of the 15th century did
Europe start to become a center of
important military, and
political, and cultural development.
Between 1500
and 1750, Western Europe gradually gained
momentum and became the master of the
outer
world meaning the two continents of
America and the oceans.
Yet, even in the 18th century European
states were still weaker than
the great powers of Asia.
Europeans managed to conquer America
and the ocean mainly because the great
Asiatic powers of the Middle
East and India and China showed very
little interest in these areas.
The early modern era was in fact a golden
age for the non-European empires like the
Ottoman Empire
in the Mediterranean, the Safavid Empire
in Persia, the Mogul
Empire in India and the Chinese Empires of
the Ming and Ching
dynasties.
Even as late in 1775, Asia accounted for
80% of the world's economy.
The combined economies of
India and China alone represented about
two-thirds of
global production.
In comparison with
[INAUDIBLE]
Asia, in the late 18th century, Europe was
still
economically insignificant, or of little
significance.
The global center of power shifted from
Asia to Europe only between 1750 and 1850
when in
a series of conflicts, the European powers
defeated and
humiliated the Asian powers and conquered
large parts
of Asia itself.
By the late 19th century,
Europeans firmly controlled the whole
world and the world's economy.
In 1950, western Europe and United States
together
accounted for more than half of global
economic production.
Now as China was down to just 5% of the
global production, the Europeans
controlled not only the economy, they
created
a new global, old global, political older.
And a new global culture.
And today, all humans are, to a large
extent, a
much greater extent than they usually want
to admit, all humans
are European in their thoughts, in
their tastes, in the way that they see the
world and behave.
They may be fiercely anti-European,
anti-Western in their rhetoric,
but almost everyone on the planet views
politics and medicine and the
economy and war through European eyes.
Even, say, the growing
economy of China today, which may soon
regain its
global position as the, the giant of the,
of the world economy.
Even the Chinese economy is built today on
European models of
production and finance.
So how was it that
as a people of Europe managed to break out
of their remote
corner of the globe and conquer the whole
world in no more than two or three
centuries?
European technology is often given much of
the
credit for this, and it's unquestionable
that from
1850, more or less onwards, technology
gave you
Europeans and Americans of European
descent, a clear superiority
over everybody else.
There was a common saying for example
among European, European soldiers who
fought in Africa against African enemies.
These European soldiers used to say,
whatever happens we have
machine guns and they don't, so don't be,
don't worry.
But this wasn't the case before 1850.
Technology was far less important before
1850.
Even as late as 1800, the technological
gap
between European, Asian, and African
powers was relatively small.
More importantly, if in the year 1800,
Europeans dd
not have a significant technological
advantage over Muslims
or Indians or Chinese, how did they manage
in the following
century to open such a huge gap,
technological gap,
between themselves and all the rest of the
world.
When Britain began to build railways and
modern industrial factories.
Why were France and Germany and the United
States able to follow quickly
after Britain whereas China lagged behind?
When the
gap between industrial and non industrial
nations became a
very obvious economic and political factor
in the world.
How come European countries like Italy and
Russia and
Austria managed to close the gap and join
the industrializing club?
It was Persia and Egypt and the Ottoman
empire failed to do it.
After all, the technology of the first
industrial wave
was relatively simple.
Was it so hard for Chinese or
for Persians to engineer steam engines, to
manufacture
machine guns or to lay down railroads?
The first
commercial railroad in the world opened
for business
in 1830 in Britain; it led between
Manchester and Liverpool.
Twenty years later in 1850, western
nations: Britain, France, Belgium,
Germany, they were criss-crossed by almost
40,000 kilometers of railroads.
At the same time in the whole of Asia,
Africa, and Latin America there are only
4,000 kilometers.
in 1880 50 years after the beginning of
the railroad age,
the western countries had about 350,000
kilometers
of railroads.
All the rest, the rest of the world
together had only 10% of that, 35, 35,000
kilometers of railroads and most of these
railroads were laid,
were built by the British in India.
Take China, for example.
The first railroad in China opened only in
1876,
50 years after that railroad leading from
Manchester to Liverpool.
This first railroad was 24 kilometers
long, and it was built not
by Chinese, it was built by Europeans in
China, as the Chinese government
destroyed it, the year after it was
opened.
In 1880, 50 years after the beginning of
the railroad
age, the Chinese Empire did not operate a
single railroad line.
Were 50 years too short a time for the
Chinese to understand
how important railroads are, or to learn
how to build and operate them?
In Persia,
we see roughly the same situation.
The first railroad in Persia, what is
today Iran, was built only in 1888, almost
60 years after Britain.
And it was, it connected to Heran, to a
Muslim Holy Site, about 10 kilometers
outside the capital Tehran.
This railroad, the first railroad in, in,
in Persia, was constructed
by a Belgian company.
In 1950, the entire railway network of
Persia amounted still to only two, five,
2,500 kilometers.
And this in a country which is seven times
the size of Britain.
What the Persians and the Chinese lacked
was not technological inventions
such as the steam engines.
Even if you didn't know at first how to
manufacture
steam engines, they could easily buy them
freely on the market.
It wasn't a secret.
There wasn't an embargo.
If they Shah of Persia or the Emperor or
China wanted railroads and steam engines,
they could just buy them from the
Europeans
and then learn how to make them
themselves.
What the Chinese and
the Persians and the Turks and so forth,
what they really lacked was the values.
The judicial apparatus and the social
political structures that
took centuries to form and mature in the
west.
And which could not be so easily copied.
And internalized.
France or the United States, or Germany
could follow very
quickly in the footsteps of the British in
the Industrial age, because the
French and the Americans already shared
the
most important British myth and social
structures.
The Chinese as the Persians could not
catch up with the
British so fast because they thought and
they organized very differently.
This explanation
sheds new light on the period between say,
1500 and 1800, or 1850.
during this era, Europe did not enjoy any
obvious technological or other advantage
over the Asian
powers, but Europe was gradually building
a unique potential
whose importance became obvious in the19th
century.
The apparent
equality between Europe and China and the
Muslim world in, in 1750 was a mirage.
They might have been equal in their power
at present but their potential was very
different.
Think, as an example, about two builders
who are building towers and using
different method.
One builder uses wood and mud bricks.
The other builder is using
steel and concrete.
It's first when they reach just two or
three or four stories,
there seems to be not much of a difference
between the two methods.
Both towers grow at a similar pace and
reach relatively similar heights.
However, once a critical threshold is
crossed, the wood and
mud tower cannot stand the strain and it
collapses, whereas the steel and
concrete tower grows on and on and there
is no limit.
This is the difference between the
European
empires and the Asian, and the Asian
empires.
What exactly was the unique potential that
developed in Europe during
the early modern period and that enabled
Europeans to suddenly take over the world?
The two complementary answers to
these questions, what is the unique
potential
that Europeans developed, modern science
and Capitalism.
Europeans already in the early modern area
before the 19th century, they
became used to thinking and behaving in a
scientific and a capitalist way.
Even before they enjoyed significant
technological advantages over other,
other societies.
When the technological, the big
technological inventions, of
the 19th century, and the Industrial
Revolution came along,
Europeans were therefore in a much better
position, than
anybody else, to harness them and to use
them.
So it’s also hardly coincidental that
science
and capitalism, these two unique
potentials are not
only the basis that gave Europe primacy,
they're also
the most important legacy that the
European Empires left
behind them in the post European world of
the 21st century.
Europeans no longer rule the world today,
but science and
capital are still the keys for economic
and
political success in the world.
Well again, I said that before, we'll
discuss Capitalism in length in the
next lesson, so I don't want to, to
explain anything about it here.
The following segments of this lesson will
be dedicated to explaining how exactly
wars
science, and the European Empires
connected to
each other and what was the advantages
that science gave the Europeans even
before the rise of technology.
in in conquering the world.
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