Why did western civilisation become so dominant?

They didnt have the technology.

The Ming stopped the boats

Primarily by lumping several groups of cultures together which have waxed and waned over time but which generally were and remain somewhat prosperous. Take any individual nation under the grouping of "western civilization" and you'll see that they haven't been dominant on their own for all or perhaps even most of the time for which the whole of all nations under said grouping have been.

Why didn't they develop the technology?

I guess they didn't feel like it

Because they were too busy killing each other

>Implying China is in control when the USA is 60% of China's international market

Isn't one of the points europeans were so far technological than we didn't stop killing each others?

Why didn't they develop guns to make killing easier?

They did, Arabs got guns first, Western Africans also got guns eventually.
The difference was that they had to deal with Tribal warfare, which while it doesn't kill as many people, lasts longer, which negatively effects economic activity.

Because western europe had good agriculture and was slap bang next to the Mediterranean which was the informatin superhighway of the past.

I tough Tribal warfare was more brutal than other kinds of warfare, the Yanomamis kind of warfare for example kill a lot more people per capita than nearly all other kinds of warfare, with they kidnaping of women and raids to exterminate (ofter caused be people acusing each others of sorcery), and they are far from the only ones to get that far (in nova guine they killed each other for pigs in that way for example).

West Africans were too far behind, North Africans were suffering under Ottoman incompetence. North West Africa is basically just fucking nothing. They don't even want it today.

Tribal Warfare is usually much less brutal, it's usually skirmishes, cattle raids, kidnapping for slaves, and the occasional larger battle. It usually had a well developed honour code. This all developed to keep casualties low, because they didnt actually like to have lots of death and suffering, while maintaining the facade of honour, courage etc.

What you're talking about is actually bitter ethnic rivalries, a war of hate.

Industrialization. The only non-western empire worth its salt did not have the new world to colonize to fuel their development. At this point Chinas has more than caught back up though. if they can avoid a democratic revolution for another decade or so, they are in good shape.

Oops, this. Except a century might be a generous estimate. The world moves much quicker now.

This is not really how economics works. We keep their currency up and in return they get to keep accumulating U.S. debt while they sell us mass produced good and natural resources they are pilfering from Africa at the moment. The 60% thing actually hurts America because we are the value behind their currency.

I would love to see sources for that, the Yanomamis mainly wage war between themselves, and even when is pretty ritualized they kill themselves a lot. They aren't the worse tough, the Jivaros have a religion about gaining more soul power while killing people. They are the worst assholes ever.

western dominance happened because of the invention of the printing press, which allowed the cross-pollination of ideas to happen far more easily and so the intellectual development of our part of the world proceeded at a uch faster rate than other places.

Once we started making intellectual progress faster it was only a matter of time until we became more powerful militarily and economically.

I think having a culture of colonialism and ownership, coupled with competition from nearby nations, really made a difference. Also, geographically there are a lot of coastlines, peninsulas and islands in Europe, which encouraged an oceangoing industry. This also helped them establish vast trade networks and oceangoing empires.
Also, guns, germs, and steel.

>guns, germs, and steel.

I really hope everyone saying this is just memeing

What is impressive is how the printing press wasn't oppressed so fervently in Europe.

The printing press, in simpler form, already existed in East Asia but was strongly controlled by the government who really only used it as a propaganda tool. I don't know why European rulers didn't succeed in doing the same.

My source is just my own knowledge of tribes. Perhaps a loss of habitat is forcing those tribes to get more aggressive and violent.

Ottoman trade obstructionism
Movable printed type (& latin characters)
Christian work ethic
Location (need for spices, "in between" continents)
Timing of the age of discovery
The Black plague

You really cant just leave out the effect colonising the new world had.

Why do you think France, Britain and Spain were the most successful..

I thought it was implied by Location

You are correct though

It was the West's time to shine, every culture or civilization has a timespan and a period where they will achieve the most glory.

I'd wager that East Asia is next.

They didnt need to. Spain and Portugal searched for new roots of trade,while those places had access to the classic path.

The archebus was developed in Europe ( Spain I think) and it was the weapon that really pushed fire weapons as the standard

In terms of the Americas, lack of horses/oxen.
To really start yourself up on the developmental you need to be able to form cities.

Cities are the shit. I mean, sure, being farmers and stuff sucks, but with a city you have
>concentrated populations
All in one place, know where to find them, can focus efforts and resources better.
>larger populations
More people means... well, you can probably figure. Faster growth. More resources. faster technological development.
>persistent populations
This means that if you start building up infrastructure there... say, shipyards, roads, walls, they'll still be being made use of generations later.

Now that has requirements. More people means more food, and this is prior to any good transport system; a city can't sustain itself with hunting and gathering. You need farming.

And farming sucks. Holy shit. You ever tried to go out and till a few hectares by hand? Backbreaking labor in the original sense. That's what oxen, I think, were originally used for- because once you domesticated oxen and developed a harness for them, they could pull a plow, and suddenly it wasn't quite so hideous and awful.

There are other downsides too. Farming isn't what humans evolved for, after all. Diet isn't quite natural for them. Farming is dependent on weather and lack of disease/blights. Lots of things beyond your control can fuck your shit up senpai. When you're a hunter/gatherer, you don't give a fuck, you just keep walking.

(Incidentally, living concentrated in a city, with lots of domesticated animals in your city and surrounding farms, is a ripe petri dish for disease... which if it doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. Sorta.)

So to handle cities you need
>farming
>domesticated beast of burden/plow animals
>decent luck

I think NorthAM was lacking on the second one; south america (at least in places, like say, the jungle,) lacked the first. And they weren't Yuropean, so they both fucked up the third.

The Middle Class that was formed by 1400's was too powerful for a Monarachy to completely rule over completely

As an incidental note; in central Africa, indigenous populations learned to avoid bodies of water, because bodies of standing water tended to breed flies. Mosquitoes, tse-tse flies, whatever. And those are bad.

But you still need water, and their response to this was to settle MILES from the actual water. And start their days by walking for a few hours to go get (and carry back) water for the day. It worked, it kept you away from the disease-carrying flies and parasites, and you could get by... but that kind of water limitation really prevents cities.

When Europeans arrived, they thought the Africans were retarded, settled right on the water because that's what they did back in Yuroland, and... well, malaria ensued.

First it was might, now it's imitation.

They were already the home of some of the most powerful and independent empires of the "Old World". Why would they bother?

They had better crops than Europe tough. Maize let's you get a lot more surplus than wheat, and paired with beans gives rounds it up nicely, that's one of the reasons they had massive cities, they could support lots of people with realtively primitive agriculture. The Aztecs tough had the chiapas, than were able to produce a lot more than land crops, so they could support all the cities in the lake of mexico and Tenochtitlan. That's pretty funny too, because the Aztecs only had a civilization for less than 300 hundred years, and they empire was less than 100 when the Spaniards come to curbstomp them.

Being 2000 years behind has its downsides.

Tenochtitlan in central America was likely the biggest city in the world at one point famalam.

Several Mayan cities, Chichen Itza, Palenque, and Tikal, were all huge fucking cities.

The Inca also had some truly massive cities.

Even a few North American cities existed. The remains of a massive city (including the worlds largest earthen pyramid) are in the Mississippi valley, the Pueblo built their clay cities in the desert, and the Iroquois allegedly had a giant city near lake Ontario at one point.

>trillions
>with an s
haha

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_of_the_United_States#Foreign_holders_of_US_Treasury_securities

>we are behind the currency value
Again, that's kinda wrong. The Chinese Government artificially keep their currency weak to increase exports.

I think N. America being so huge probably hurt the start of civilization. Competition got too tough, or plagues started you could just fuck off and be a nomad.
We are pretty sure that's what happened to Cahokia atleast. Bad shit went down and people gave up farming and went hunter gatherer.

Rome set an example, a standard of success for every following empire to strive for.

I don't really know, I'm talking out of my ass. Really it's going to be access to other civilizations by way of the Mediterranean and colonization.

youtube.com/watch?v=LQfmv9fIfu0&list=PLXoujgzuzBV68V2Jg-UbWgkhOrZaC4XBi

Niall Ferguson has some ideas.

wine consumption created an incentive to develop transparent glassmaking technology, which led to eye glasses, which were the most important invention of the late middle age, since it allowed craftsmen and scientists to keep working at an old age, thus increasing the technological and scientific output of the west by a huge margin.

China never developed transparent glass since they drink tea or colorless alcohol, so they skipped straight to porcelain. Which is a more advanced technology, but without all the amazing outputs of transparent glass obviously.

>Tribal Warfare is usually much less brutal

socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com.au/2013/02/steven-pinker-on-deaths-by-violence-in.html

Pinker and lawrence keeley argue otherwise but I am not an expert.

Global imperialism and a move toward and freer trade.

>china thinks that investment in us bonds is the best use of their money
>thinking that America isn't still on top

There have been many theories on the rise of the west but the real reason why it became dominant is poorly understood. Western academia loves wanking over its own history but completely ignores the history and development of the other civilizations of the Old World. So as things stand it's impossible to get an objective study on subject.

Given that ancient rome innovated technology on a level that exceeds all ancient civilizations by a wide margin, you have to think there's something intrinsic about European peoples there.

Basic respect for the rule of law and a deeply entrenched legal tradition.

China

>muh geography
>muh guns germs and steel
Every historian worth their salt hate Jared Diamond and despise his error-filled overly simplistic book.

Jesus christ how wrong can one post be?
I literally don't know where to begin.
Just... shut the fuck up. Don't talk about shit you obviously know nothing about.

Ancient cities were overcrowded, unproductive disease-ridden firetraps. You don't need cities to have a larger population. The Americans has huge cities. The Americans have so many more good agricultural crops, most of which are stupidly easy to grow.

Niall Ferguson is superior
youtube.com/watch?v=ETcDMiAVbA4&list=PLXoujgzuzBV68V2Jg-UbWgkhOrZaC4XBi&index=2

ITT: everyone is beating around the bush

No one has brought this,but the lack of unity in Europe was a strenght,that allowed Europe to not isolate itself and become backwards as China did. So thanks to the papacy Europe became the dominant region

>reading books is hard, I prefer the thesis that's presented in a youtube video

Maybe they have on average lower intelligence. There. I said it.

K here is the book the series is based on nerd.

kat.cr/niall-ferguson-civilization-the-west-and-the-rest-epub-mobi-t11837332.html#main

White people naturally have higher IQ than shitskins.

impressive, but not nearly on the scale of Rome.

Romans discovered how to make domes, something that eclipses anything china did in terms of engineering.

JANNY

DELETE THIS NOW

>private Chinese investors put money in America instead of their own country
>this is bad

>Why did western civilisation become so dominant?

Because it was threatened with conquest and locked out of control of its traditional trade networks and thus had to change. The Trans-Saharan trade route was the first step in getting back in control of access to Africans goods. The development of the Caravel and the Carrack pushed what could be done in long distance trade and exploration. The Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire started right before the Rise of Suleiman the Magnificent. A not small part of the gold and silver gotten from that was giving to the Pope, the knights of St.John, and to a number of princes of the HRE. In a very direct way the conquest of the new world payed for the wars to stop the Ottoman advance.

The papacy didn't cause that, the collapse of the roman empire and the peculiarities of germanic succession laws did. The popes merely profited from that.

Dome were in use in Europe since 2000 bc, Rome didn't discover it

Lol at you're bluntness

It is one of the correct factors though. Not only one, as many polacks think, but one of many.

Western people like spices.
But can't grow them at home.
Or at least used to.

Assuming that this is correct for a moment, why did this dominance only really start in the 18th century? I mean, sure lots of africans are primitive, but the middle east had large and powerful civilizations, as did eastern and southern asia. The people who built these civilizations weren't idiots, and they were in fact quite intelligent.

When subsaharans negroids are factored out, the average intelligence of the shitskins (lol, my first time using that word) increases.

Kek

>Le Ottoman had a chance of ever conquering Europe meme

Because of our ability to remain open to new ideas instead of shutting them out like China and Japan. I believe it was due to our ingenuity by taking shit other people made and improving on it

What I wanna know is how, when, and why Europe urbanised after suffering de-urbanisation ever since the crisis of the third century.

Also interested in when the Europeans surpassed the Muslims and Chinese. According to eu4 it happened somewhere in the 14th century, but I'm not sure.

>Also interested in when the Europeans surpassed the Muslims and Chinese
You can't really put a precise date on that and it doesn't matter. It's not about gross product surpassing that of China, it's about political dominance too.

Ancient Rome was stagnant as shit post Pax Romana and on par with China in some respects, but far behind (technologically) in many others

And you're assessment is wrong
There. I said it

>rome innovated technology
every time

Sea trade, they found new land and routes and colonies to create.

...

Aryan superiority + geographic factors

You never saw the dozens of GGS threads in the early days of Veeky Forums?

Ok so it's not genetic because it took until the 17th century for the West to become dominant. I would say it was imperialism that did it. Europe just realized they could split up Africa and the New World before the Ottomans realized they could do the same. They got there first and got the natural resources. Then when the Ottomans collapsed after WWI Europe snatched up the Middle East too. The Far East had no chance at that point. Done deal.

You know there were several rival cultures and civilizations that were on par with Rome even at its height technologically speaking right?

>innovated technology on a level that exceeds all ancient civilizations by a wide margin
Topeka

This guy is right in most of what he says but the "wrong!" thing ticks me off.

name them

Better culture

The Persians for one.

they didn't even have cement are you fucking kidding me

next

I didnt know that iranians and indians are considered western now

>muh cement
That only applies to the Achaemenids, both the Parthians and Sassanids had that.

Also had heated flooring before the Romans were even an empire or even an independent power from Estrucan yoke, built road networks across their lands and territories, used qanats and underground irrigation systems for centuries to name a few.

Also the single largest arched structure made of brickwork in the world was devised by Persian engineers.

Try again.

>rome innovated technology
if you mean co-opted and combined a bunch of other shit they gained from other people developing it, then sure they "innovated" it, but that isn't unique to Romans.

just looked it up, they had mortars that resemble cement, but they didn't have actual cement which requires lime and gypsum.