In antiquity the Eastern Roman Empire was far more productive and wealthy than the Western Empire. Nowadays though...

*excess

Yeah because of silk road trade with China.

Trade used to be Europe-Asia. So East gets tariffs.
Later trade switched to Europe-Americas. So West gets tariffs.

Super simple stuff.

It was a pretty big deal because spices makes your food taste a lot better with only small amounts. A small physical volume of spices can sell for a lot of money. Consider that Vasco Da Gama's expedition. He lost half of his men and a ship, but the spice brought back on the two remaining trips sold for enough to cover the entire cost of the expedition and the next one.

Here's something else to consider. Europe was still pretty much feudal at the time. Income for the Monarchy consisted primarily of taxes on land, and that was a problem because the land was mostly held by vassal lords, which made crown income dependent on the nobility. Countries that had precious metal or a valuable royal monopoly could supplement this income. Far east trade income ended up almost entirely in the hands of the crown, since only they had the capital to fund such trade missions and the centralized nature made it easier to control.

Claiming that Europe surpassed the rest of the world around the 14th century is stretching it pretty far, especially considering the 14th century is when the black death happened. 16th century however is a statement I would agree with. I also have some doubts about that graph, and it shows China having decreased urbanization from 1600 to 1800, which is an absurd statement. not to mention the extrapolated graph has higher urbanization at 1400 than 1500.

Yeah this.

Europeans were stealing spices from China and then selling them to China. That's how they got rich.

Late Ming and Qing China were shit though. Population growth boomed but with little economic growth to show for it. Its no stretch to imagine the excess labor engaged in subsistence agriculture thus dropping the urbanization percentage.

>aside from a select few oil kingdoms,

No oil in Israel, m8.

The graph basically shows you have much farmers you need to support a city dweller.

The less farmers you need the richer a society will be. It's a very robust way to compare gdp per person throughout history.

Europe had surpassed the rest of the world by 1300 in this respect. Not surprising since every new invention from 1200 on came from Europe.

And yes, the black plague did wonders for GDP per person and innovation.

Why is this one super rough estimate cited over and over as if its gospel?

Its better than Madison and the rough estimates correspond to primary source material describing levels of wealth.

Its on par with aliens using Batman comics to get the population of Gotham City and approximate how many people live in real life Paris.

I've seen that table before and I'm still not altogether convinced it's that accurate, especially with regards to the far east.

Ian Morris writes popular history, but behind that he also has very good academic papers.

ianmorris.org/docs/social-development.pdf

He suggests that the best indication of economic activity is how much energy is utilized per person, and on that metric, east and west did not pull apart until the 1700. China was certainly not more productive between 1000 to 1120 than from 1400-1800.

How would China outdo places like Western Europe in terms of energy PP. The number of wind and water mills, draft animals and the like per capita was lower than places like Northern Italy or the Low Countries.

I laid the table alongside multiple first hand accounts of China and pretty much all of them agree that the majority of the population was poorer than in Western Europe.

The only answer you need OP.

BWOOOP BWOOOP
WRONG ALARM
WRONG WRONG
BWOOOP BWOOOP

He's talking about olive oil you total IDIOT

China utilized coal in a large scale much earlier than Europeans.

> Hartwell consistently likened the expansion of Chinese metallurgy to that in England between 1540 and 1640, and suggested that—like the English example—one consequence was the increasing substitution of fossil fuels for charcoal in iron smelting. If Chinese ironmasters had powered their foundries solely with charcoal, in 1080 they would have needed to burn 22,000 mature trees, far beyond what was available around Kaifeng. Instead, they learned to smelt iron with coke and turned to large-scale coal mining. By 1050 so much coal was being mined that it was 30–50 percent cheaper than wood for household cooking and heating. By 1075 Kaifeng had special markets that dealt in nothing but coal, and government documents from 1096 discuss the coal supply without even referring to wood as a heat source (Hartwell 1962: 159-60). Confirmation of this shift comes from recent analyses of iron and steel artifacts found in Mongolia, on the edge of the Song Empire, which show that coal replaced charcoal for smelting in the 10th-12th centuries (Park et al. 2007, 2008)

The other important thing to note is that "west" to Ian Morris includes central, southern, and eastern europe. Places that were not well off even into the 1800's. He acknowledges the advancement of specific parts of Western Europe in another graph.

I think the most damning point is that Spain, despite having access to oodles of free money from the Americas, did fuck all with that capital. The countries that had the most advancement were the ones who profited from the triangle trade rather than extraction.

China boos are Veeky Forums's most insufferable population

>I think the most damning point is that Spain,
Go and use Spanish coal if you wish.

Yea there's a lot of wewuzing, but do actually read Ian Morris's academic papers, they are quite good.

The increase of Chinaboos is going to be a continuing trend thou. As universities in the Far East get more prestigious, they are going to write more papers that have a far east focus. There are still thousands and thousands of eastern primary sources that are still un-translated into English, and are therefore unacceptable to western scholars. Few but the most dedicated sinologists can actually understand middle-old Chinese sources, and as the Chinese themselves translate more of their stuff to English, the new information is going to change some current beliefs.

A lot of European monarchs fell into the trap of thinking that land=wealth or gold=wealth.

Spain actually took measures to ensure gold wasn't exported which resulted in their coinage being so strong their export market was ruined and they had to rely on imports. They were worse off in the 17th century than in the 14th one.

China fucked up too going from the richest nation during the Song Dynasty to a place reduced to infanticide and selling child slaves because their parents could afford to raise kids.

China was still fabulously rich during the Ming and Qing dynasties, but it was heavily concentrated towards the top.

[place] was still fabulously wealthy during [medieval time], but it was heavily concentrated towards the top.