Why is it now so hard to compare civilization and to judge some better than others...

these two

But aztecs were beaten into submisssion, while Japanese were given western technology on a silver platter.

Japs were just too damn far to invade

We all know about the diseases, but the Aztecs also failed to drive off the spaniards when they had the chance. I don't see how it's insulting to simply see that what those few hundred spaniards did in Mexico could never have been done in China or India. The Aztecs had an interresting civilization, but were obviously technologically behind Europe or China.

>could never have been done in China or India
...Except it was totally done in India, something similar anyway. Those few Hundred Spaniards didn't conquer the Aztecs, they divided and conquered everyone. It was proto-colonialism, they used themselves to increase local divisions and then pitted native armies against other native armies. This was repeated in many places and has little to do with "tech level" or other such nonsense. It's politics not technology.

It isn't a case of superior technology guaranteeing victory is the point. If it did the Spanish wouldn't have been driven out of Tenochtitlan after Montezuma's death.

The reason the Aztecs were able to be felled by such a small force was because that force wasn't actually so small when they came back, in part because they were bad rulers and Cortes was able to unite their vengeful enemies like the Tlaxcalans against them.

No, guys, Aztecs are obviously genetically inferior to Japanese.

It took centuries for Europeans to conquer India, not three years not three years like Cortes needed. The indian armies were also technogically comparable to the european ones, so no it's a different story.

It obviously had nothing to do with that. Why is it so hard to accept ? I don't think anyone is chocked if I say the Egyptians had a far greater civilization during the new kingdom period than anything you could find in Europe.

>not three years like Cortes needed
To conquer one small area in the Americas. Besides, that was the first time doing it.

> so no it's a different story.

No it isn't. It doesn't matter. It's a political story not a military one. The European powers never had the money, men or capital to constantly be waging wars across the oceans of the world, They always used locals whenever possible.

>They always used locals whenever possible.
This actually stretched well into the 20th century btw.

>The problem with this and what people who vehemently disagree with the concept of moral relativism don't get is that every fundamental axiom of what constitutes "best" is entirely opinion based not fact based. Thus it's impossible to objectively decide what is good or bad based on entirely objective parameters

So why exactly should we pretend that a model of the world which is incapable of telling us anything useful about it has any value and should be given the slightest credence over models which do?

Mesoamerica had rebellions for the entirety of the colonial period. Some places remained independent or briefly got their independence. Even well into the 1800s and 20th century native insurrections continued. Those 3 years were only for that one small area like that user said.

I don't think anybody relevant and sane denies that the Europeans were more capable militarily. But simply saying that the Europeans are better militarily doesn't mean that we necessarily can judge Europe as "better" than civilization X.
What if you tried to claim that Australia is a better nation than Italy because Australia has a larger military budget and is generally viewed as more successful militarily. I think that many people would find this idea incredulous and would point to millennia of Italian achievements in various categories and a host of other statistics to try to claim Italy as being better. How is being better necessarily at military thus to mean that the Australians, who's greatest invention is probably box wine, are hence superior to Italy who is second only to France as the crowning jewel of Western civilization? Australia may win in one category, but Italy wins in others.

But let's say that we track down every single relevant comparison between our hypothetical civilizations, and we decide that one beats the other in every way. Then we have to question how we arrived at these standards which came up with one civilization being better, and who decided that it is superior. These standards are inherently subjective; to bring up the above point about Italy vs Australia, I'm sure somebody could argue that Italy is militarily superior because of the Roman Empire. How do we define military success, given that wars are fought for different purpose and under different conditions? And who's interpreting these results? Australians and Italians will come up with very different results. And of course, we have to decide what constitutes a civilization's borders.

The end of all of this is that it is exceedingly difficult to draw a conclusion of one civilization being "better", as better is such an amorphous term which is inherently subjective, dealing with extremely complex affairs, and we are always biased in some ways in making our decisions.

>indian armies
>texhnologically similar
>had such inferior formations, tactics, and equipment that British expeditionary forces and mercenaries brought kingdoms with 5x the population of the british isles to heel
I dispute your statements.

More like 21st. Isn't that what we have been doing in Iraq basically?

Inferior formations and tactics doesn't mean that they're technologically inferior, it means they're organizationally inferior.
Indian armies weren't really that technologically inferior either, they had guns (which they upgraded to flintlocks from my recollection, matching the European level), cannons, rockets which the Europeans didn't, cavalry, etc. etc. It wasn't because of superior European military technology that the Europeans won in the 18th century, but because of superior European military organization and because of better political and financial capacities.

First of all shove your indian rockets and superior cannons up your ass like the rest of your assumptions.
European made guns were better than the indian weapons, a combination of more advanced manufacturing and technological expertise.
Second of all Indian countries were very large and powerful, and yet they were defeated by singluar countries like Britain, not a united Europe. British troops and company mercenaries repeatedly met indian forces of similar size and defeated them on a regular basis, and that's not including the gigantic mughal empire, regardless of what state it was in.
If Burma had conquered the whole of Europe, you wouldn't just dismiss it with that Europe wasn't united so it wasn't a difficult accomplishment.

The ironic thing is most liberals who hold up whig/progressive history as the norm and are anti-reactionary are the same people who wouldn't admit Europe is superior to what is far more primitive, conservative peoples.

its not hard 99% of important events/people/innovation/art/world change came from europe or europe made states(western civilization) idk whats so hard to gasp

>Second of all Indian countries were very large and powerful, and yet they were defeated by singluar countries like Britain, not a united Europe.
Not him but there wasn't even "a conquest of India," lmao.

When the Mughal Empire fell, what replaced it was the Maratha Empire. But the Maratha Empire was so loosely organized what really followed Mughal Rule was chaos for much of India. Indian rajs and princes rose up from centralized empires and fought each other for supremacy. To one up each other they signed an ever increasing number of deals with various European states for economic and military purposes, receiving trade and military aid & expertise in return for said Europeans getting favorably deals or having prime access to their lands for economic purposes.

A lot of Eurobenises were involved: Portuguese (who were already in Goa), the Dutch, France, and Britain. And the wars in 18th Century India merged with European wars, so you also saw Europeans and their Indian sponsors in the subcontinent fighting other Europeans and their Indian sponsors. It just happened that Britain came out on top in said wars and was left as the sole European entity in India.

If anything the closest Britain had to a "conquest of India" scenario was the Maratha wars, when the Brits put down the remnants of the Maratha empire.

tl;dr Indian princes handed their country to eurobenises in their wars. Britain and it's Indian buddies prevailed.over other Europeans and their Indian allies.

>why does it seem so hard for some people to admit Europe built the most efficient civilization as far as it's we can humanly quantify.
Same reason Eurocentrists won’t recognize something that Europeans themselves already understood hundreds of years ago

>These people live almost like those in Spain, and in as much harmony and order as there, and considering that they are barbarous and so far from the knowledge of God and cut off from all civilized nations, it is truly remarkable to see what they have achieved in all things.
- Hernan Cortes Second Letter of Relation to Charles V
>(About Tlatelolco) After we had sufficiently gazed upon this magnificent picture, we again turned our eyes toward the great market, and beheld the vast numbers of buyers and sellers who thronged there. The bustle and noise occasioned by this multitude of human beings was so great that it could be heard at a distance of more than four miles. Some of our men, who had been at Constantinople and Rome, and travelled through the whole of Italy, said that they never had seen a market-place of such large dimensions, or which was so well regulated, or so crowded with people as this one at Mexico.
- The True History of the Conquest of New Spain by Bernal Diaz del Castillo, Chapter XCII

>Here again, civilizations weren't equals.
Exactly, Mesoamericans developed their whole civilization in an area 1.5 times the size of the Iberian Peninsula, while the Old World shared the development of 3 continents.
>the Aztecs also failed to drive off the spaniards when they had the chance.
They drove them of Tenochtitlan. They couldn’t kill them because they retreated after their general was killed in a cavalry charge, being horses an animal domesticated by Central Asians and disseminated through the Old World. The Aztecs had one battle to develop anti-cavalry tactics, the Old World thousands of wars.
>Those few Hundred Spaniards didn't conquer the Aztecs, they divided and conquered everyone. This was repeated in many places and has little to do with "tech level" or other such nonsense. It's politics not technology.
Nobody offered an alliance to the Spaniards until they demonstrated that they could kill any commander with a cavalry charge. The main allies of the Spanish, the Tlaxcalans, fought against the Spanish many times before realizing that it was better to be on the same side.

>the Japanese were very quick to adapt and copy the european firearms, something the Aztecs couldn't do.
1. Fireweapons required ironworking, which the Aztecs did not know since they were not in the Old World, like Europeans, who got the technology from the Middle East.
>Mesopotamia was fully into the Iron Age by 900 BC. Although Egypt produced iron artifacts, bronze remained dominant until its conquest by Assyria in 663 BC. The Iron Age began in Central Europe about 500 BC, and in India and China between 1200 and 500 BC.
Fireweapons also required gunpowder, which again, wasn’t developed by Europeans.
I’m not underestimating European technology, which at the end surpassed both the Middle East and the Far East, but they didn’t develop said technology by themselves.

2. Japanese were literally instructed by friendly Portuguese traders, Spaniards never showed the Aztecs how to produce their fireweapons and prohibited iron mining as soon as they conquered Tenochtitlan.

3. Mesoamericans and Aztecs could and did adapt European technology, when they where instructed.
>As soon as Cortes was apprized of Narvaez's arrival in New Spain, and had received every information respecting the magnitude of his armament, he despatched a soldier who had served in the Italian campaigns, and who possessed an extensive knowledge of weapons and of the best method of fixing points to lances, into the province of the Tchinantecs where some of our men had gone in search of gold mines. The Tchinantecs were deadly enemies to the Mexicans, and had only a few days previously made an alliance with us. This people used a species of lance, which was much longer than our Spanish lances, and furnished with a sharp double-edged point made of flint. (...)
>Cortes had heard of this weapon, and sent word to the Tchinantecs to forward him three hundred of such lances, from which however he desired they would take off the flint points and substitute a double one of metal, as they had abundance of bronze in their country. The soldier who was despatched with these orders took a pattern of the point required with him. Cortes' wishes were readily complied with, and as the inhabitants of every township of that province set diligently to work, the lances were soon finished and they turned out most satisfactory. (...) The lances which Tovilla brought with him proved most excellent, and he immediately taught us how to use them, particularly against the cavalry. (...) Considering the smallness of our numbers we reposed our greatest hopes in the use we intended making of our lances, in which fortunately we were not disappointed, as will afterwards be seen.
- The True History of the Conquest of New Spain by Bernal Diaz del Castillo, Chapter CXVIII

>Cortes issued orders to all the townships which lay in the vicinity of Tezcuco, and were in alliance with us, for each of them to furnish him with 8000 copper points for our arrows, to be made after the model of our Spanish ones, of which some were sent them for that purpose.
>He allowed them eight days for the making and delivery of these; and indeed both the arrows and the copper points arrived at Tezcuco in the time specified. Our stock of these now consisted of 50,000 pieces, and the arrow points made by these people were even better than those we brought from Spain.
- The True History of the Conquest of New Spain by Bernal Diaz del Castillo, Chapter CXLVII

If you have the time, this guy explains it quite thoroughly from a philosophical standpoint.
youtube.com/watch?v=ODXgGS50AVY

>I’m not underestimating European technology, which at the end surpassed both the Middle East and the Far East, but they didn’t develop said technology by themselves
Of course it's better to have a more open civilization, and the Aztecs, being isolated had a disadvantage. But after having said that, what does it change ? Europeans were still technologically and culturally superior to the Aztecs.
Civilization are not closed spaces. They trade informations, technology etc. Nobody think Europeans developped by themselves, but at the end of the day, they're the ones who discovered the world, built colonial empires, started the industrial revolution.

>Europeans were still technologically and culturally superior to the Aztecs
not sure how you got to that point of the post simply disregarded the 2 paragraphs posted above

>Europeans were still technologically and culturally superior to the Aztecs.

>Tenochtitlan was founded on an islet in the western part of the lake in the year 1325. Around it, the Aztecs created a large artificial island using a system similar to the creation of chinampas. To overcome the problems of drinking water, the Aztecs built a system of dams to separate the salty waters of the lake from the rain water of the effluents. It also permitted them to control the level of the lake. The city also had an inner system of channels that helped to control the water.

>During Cortés' siege of Tenochtitlan in 1521, the dams were destroyed, and never rebuilt, so flooding became a big problem for the new Mexico City built over Tenochtitlan.

>Mexico City suffered from periodic floods; in 1604 the lake flooded the city, with an even more severe flood following in 1607. Under the direction of Enrico Martínez, a drain was built to control the level of the lake, but in 1629 another flood kept most of the city covered for five years.

>Eventually the lake was drained by the channels and a tunnel to the Pánuco River, but even that could not stop floods, since by then most of the city was under the water table. The flooding could not be completely controlled until 1967, with the construction of a Deep Drainage System.

>The ecological consequences of the draining were enormous. Parts of the valleys were turned semi-arid, and even today Mexico City suffers for lack of water. Due to overdrafting that is depleting the aquifer beneath the city, Mexico City is estimated to have dropped 10 meters in the last century. Furthermore, because soft lake sediments underlie most of Mexico City, the city has proven vulnerable to soil liquefaction during earthquakes, most notably in the 1985 earthquake when hundreds of buildings collapsed and thousands of lives were lost.

What's your point ? Nobody denies the Aztecs built great stuff considering their technology, but I don't think you can argue about the fact Europeans were more advanced technologically.

>Why is it now so hard to compare civilization and to judge some better than others?

It's not, but most people have a huge blind-spot when it comes to the deficiencies of their own civilization.

For example, look up any "top 50 universities in the world" article in any newspaper, and ask yourself why 40 of them are in the USA and 48 of them are in English speaking countries.

Of consider the fact that the Enlightenment was profoundly influenced by the discovery of the new world, and coming to terms with this new, freer, better way of living.

Or the fact that pic related is unheard of in many countries that consider themselves advanced first world countries, while most South American "shitholes" have cleaner asses and a much higher standard of living, despite lacking in comparative material richness.

If you want to honestly compare civilizations and come to understand the objective perfection of human existence, you're going to end up hating your own civilization after a while. It starts innocently enough, but at the end of the rabbit hole you end up that weird faggot eating dates with chopsticks while you smoke hashish mixed with coca leafs and listen to baroque concerts and Peruvian psychedelic rock on youtube.

How did I say they were "superior"? I said they had cannons, not that their cannons were superior. These cannons probably weren't as good as their European equivalents, but I said they had rockets which the Europeans didn't, which is true and you can't deny that.
The rest of your post is just ignoring the actual topic of technological superiority and talking about combat performance which in no way imparts technological superiority - plenty of armies which meet each other with equivalent technology have seen one get crushed and the other destroy the other. You're conflating better training and organization with better technology; it wasn't because British muskets were better than their Indian equivalents, but because they had better training, organization, and leadership.

You're furthermore literally claiming that the Mughal Empire was a solid body by the time of the late 18th century, when it had caved in and only had some mild spiritual importance left while successor states fought over its carcass. This is like if I said that the greatest challenge in conquering Europe was defeating the HRE, which doesn't even really exist at that time period due to decentralization. That's pretty startlingly ignorant if you are implying the Mughal Empire as a unified opponent.

Because what do you mean when you say 'better'?

Look at Europe during the industrial revolution, for example, against your typical native tribespeople from that (or really any) era. Industrial revolution Europe was by far more technologically advanced, sure, but average life expectancy for example was actually only a little higher in Europe at the time. Your average person at the time worked 60 or 70 hours per week. Many people were poor, struggling to make ends meet and feed their families. Diseases broke out fairly regularly. An average tribesperson probably lived on average a better life. They worked far less, had far more leisure time, and had little trouble getting basic necessities unless there was a really bad drought (which would also harm industrial revolution Europe).

I'm not saying it was all roses, but if you gave me a choice between being a random person in one of those time periods, I'd be pretty tempted to go to the place where I wouldn't have a 60 hour per week factory job from age 13, as a lot of people did.

Really? Maybe 99% of important events that you learned about, given that in 'western civilization' our education focuses largely on western civilization, but that's actually just wrong.

Also, statements like this and like
tend to see things from a modern perspective. If you looked at the world around the 1400s or so, it would have been pretty clear that the Chinese had clearly the best technology, and the better armies. Europe was, at best, a distant third or fourth behind them and the Arab world. Fuck, the Mayans discovered the concept of zero at least 1,400 years before Europeans had even heard about it (and they promptly called it heretical). It's one of the most important concepts in math.

(continued)

A lot of different cultures have been ascendant and have outstripped everyone else in the world.

It just so happened that Europe was on the upswing when technologies that would allow people to reach out and take over large chunks of the world were developed. It just so happened that Europe was on the upswing when technologies that would rapidly accelerate the discovery of further technologies were discovered. It could have been China that did it, but some essentially random turns of political fortune allowed Europe to take advantage.

It's silly to say that one civilization is 'better' than another, just because that civilization happened to, basically, luck out in terms of historical positioning, and then also went and made a pretty big mess of things (though of course we don't know how it would have turned out if it were different).

its not racist
its just stupid and not needed

who are you to decide if im inferior in my jungle while you swallow your anti depressant pills because you cant fuck any girls

t. (((Franz Boas)))

so if we had an education witch is not western civilization centric how much of important events would come from europe and how many from the rest of the world (in%)

>implying the polynesians and ethiopians had shit on the Aztecs

>western civilization can't figure out how not to turn its own environment into a shithole
>will inevitably not face the consequences of its own inferior poorly optimized methods
>doesn't give a shit that others' environments will be destroyed too

makes me think of neighbors throwing the trash haphazardly, being noisy with music and not caring about their neighbors
i'm sure you've had such neighbors

>Why is it now so hard to compare civilization and to judge some better than others?

Because the criteria is always going to be arbitrary and subjective. History and biology aren't like Pokémon where supremacy can be measured by discrete levels. That's why few people think other races besides their own are superior - they typically use a self serving viewpoint of their own accomplishments and advantages, and people are skeptical because historically this has been used to justify mass murder.

Ever studied systems dynamics? The more efficient a system is, the more likely a simple failure can bring it down, because it lacks redundancy to compensate for cascading failures. Compare that to how fragile modern society is in the face of nuclear war, economic collapse and environmental destruction - things made by our own hand. Tribes of niggers might not fly to the moon but you can bet their lifestyle could have persisted thousands of years longer with less self imposed existential risk than our society will. Cockroaches and bacteria are even "lower" in most people's mind than stone age nomads, and you can bet your ass they'll be around longer than modern society. Intelligence and technology aren't magic trump cards that will always save the day.

yes but stone age nomads cockroaches and bacteria arent civilizations

Actually most rich families lose their wealth within 2 generations, there's a 70% chance of them losing their wealth by the 2nd generation and a 90% chance of them losing it by the 3rd.

Because the ones that "do" only "do" by subjective metrics.

You missed the entire point. It's fine to measure things by subjective yard sticks. The problem is when you start using those yard sticks as objective proof, when it very simply is not.

If you are unable to compare from a western ethnocentrist point of view then you are a cuck.

Thats how far i can tolerate cultural subjetivism

Those on the Right, what people they are! They will dwell amid thornless lote trees, and clustered acacia with spreading shade, constantly flowing water, abundant fruits, unfailing, unforbidden, with incomparable companions We have specially created - virginal, loving, of matching age - for those on the Right, many from the past and many from later generations

—Qur'an sura 56 (al-Waqi'a), 27-40 [9]

>countries that consider themselves advanced first world countries,
>while most South American "shitholes" have cleaner asses
You have enlightened me. Truely the measure of a nation's greatness is the cleanliness of its citizen's butthole. I'm moving to bolivia tomorrow.

>today europe isn't top of the world anymore
Yeah, America is, you know, the nation founded by Europeans for their progeny.

Also, Europe isn't as powerful as it could be because the USA made Europoors give up all their colonies.

>Also, Europe isn't as powerful as it could be because the USA made Europoors give up all their colonies.

Th colonies were a HUGE burden post WW2 due to the strain of the war and the costs of repair user. How do you fucking forget that fact?

Well, the Europenises sure tried to hold on to their colonies in all those shitty colonial wars.

Europe didn't build the most efficent civilizations.

At the eve of 1st World War, 38% of all people in the world were of European ancestry.

So, Europeans "won" simply because there was so many of them.

This is called the demographic transition, which Europe did first.

Mongols were better militarily than China, Europe and the Muslim world for several centuries. Ws their civilization of illiteracy and rape better? Perhaps the Huns were a better civilization than the Romans? Or Turks than Byzantines?
It seems that your ''history'' starts at the same date as Europa Universlies game and your whole knowledge is derived from there.

>Truely the measure of a nation's greatness is the cleanliness of its citizen's butthole

I realize you're trying to be ironic, but isn't this fairly obvious?

No need to get so crusty about it.