‘Content’ China vs ‘Hungry’ Europe: How Did West Develop Sooner than Others?

It is the geography of western Europe that played a key role in the development of the region.

To understand the rise of the West, it is crucial to understand what the West had and what other parts of the world lacked.

(Photo: Reuters)

The rise of the ‘West’ can be broadly seen in two ways. It can either be seen as the rise of the overall social development of humans, or it can be seen in relation to the rest of the parts of the world. Looking at the former, it is crucial to discuss the role of the overall social development of humans.

The rise of the West or, for that matter, the East, could not have happened if it were not for the rise of Homo Sapiens Sapiens. The increased brain size and optimum body mass helped humans gain better cognitive abilities to think and create technology. The brain’s optimum size allows humans to store and process information in a way that imparts us with pattern-recognition abilities and the creation of abstract ideas. This can be tracked closely with rich records of artefacts found in the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods. Improved cognitive abilities of humans were clearly apparent once the ice age ended around 13,000 BCE. This plain land, until now covered in snow, opened up the possibility of agriculture and changed the face of the earth. Agriculture creates a surplus, which is the cornerstone of every civilisation. And thus, the advent of agriculture is a major event that allowed the rise of humankind.

The Answer Is Not Biology, But Geography

The reasons for the rise of humankind do not account for the rise of the West in particular. Had agriculture been the only reason, the Hilly Flanks of Southwest Asia should have been ruling the world as they had the first-mover advantage. There were several factors, some more important than the others, that played a role in the rise of the West. Until a century ago, biology was believed to be the sole reason for the rise of the West since whites were assumed to have climbed higher on the evolutionary ladder. However, thanks to modern science, we know now that human brains are the same everywhere around the world.

An individual here and there can be intellectually advanced (partly because of genetics), but people in large groups everywhere are all much the same. The answer to the question of the West’s rise, then, lies not in the science of biology, but in geography.

It is the geography of western Europe that played a key role in the socio-economic and political development of the region. Europe is a huge peninsula. The climate and varied topography of Europe allows it to have a wide variety of seasonal crops. The extraordinary inland sea of the Mediterranean along with several navigable rivers such as the Rhine and Vistula, provide cheap and easy transport. On top of that, most of the land in Europe lies within 300 miles of the seacoast, which helped trade grow. These physical features allowed Europeans to have early agriculture, trade, and communication.

China Lacked a Crucial Thing – Incentive

To understand the rise of the West, it is crucial to understand what the West had and what other parts of the world lacked. It is no surprise that the American continent could not industrialise first. Even the invention of the wheel did not happen there. The necessity for transporting in bulk, which could have led to the invention of the wheel in Eurasia, was simply not there on the American continent. Only a rudimentary form of agriculture was practised in some places on the American continent. The reason for that lies in the simple fact that there were almost no big animals (more than 50 kgs) who played an important role in agriculture and transportation. And this was so because all the big animals were killed in a mass extinction that took place 12,000 years ago when Homo Sapiens Sapiens entered America through Alaska after the end of the last Ice Age. No wonder Columbus sailed from Europe to America in 1492, and not the other way round.

As far as the case of China not getting industrialised is concerned, it is a bit complicated. China had almost everything that was needed for it to get industrialised. After uniting in the 7th century CE, the building of the Grand Canal had linked Yangzi and Yellow rivers, which created an internal waterway transport in China like the Mediterranean. Be that as it may, China could not break the hard ceiling of development and industrialisation. The case of China is complicated, true, but China lacked something very crucial that the West had in abundance – an incentive. Centuries of attacks from the Mongols had led the Ming dynasty to build the Great wall of China.

The building of the Great Wall of China, among some other measures, was also aimed at cutting off Chinese society from the rest of the world. The fact that there is so much land, resources and people in China allowed the internalisation of the Chinese economy.

Chinese society did not have the incentive to go beyond that because they did not need it. The very idea of the Middle Kingdom under heaven reflects that there was nothing that China wanted to have from the world, and thus, they remained where they were, physically as well as mentally. They kept thinking that the ancients had the right knowledge because they did not come across new things that Europe did by witnessing the New World.

A Race for Colonisation

However, it is not as if the West consistently kept growing throughout history. In fact, from the middle of the 6th century CE till the middle of the 18th century CE, the East led the world in social development. Constant wars fought in the name of religion and kingdom resulted in poverty and backwardness in the region. Various small kingdoms kept fighting among them, and the major surplus earned through agriculture and trade was wasted in wars. However, there is a crucial role of this backwardness in the rise of the West, what Morris calls “the advantages of backwardness”. Constant wars and the fight for scarce resources led the European states to look outwards for ‘God, the Gold, and the Glory’ (Hutton 2015).

The outward-looking nature helped the rise of the West in two major ways. It led to the discovery of America, which happens to be 28.4% of the total land on earth. Vast amounts of virgin land and resources were harnessed in different ways that helped in the rise of Europe. A race for colonisation began among different European states. Spain and Portugal brought wealth in metals, while the Dutch and the British started building industries in colonies, which was an even more efficient way of extracting resources. Also, in the course of discovering and administering new lands, the West was forced to gain and apply modern science. The radical philosophical thoughts and scientific knowledge that may have been banned or ignored earlier started to be accepted by the states.

Patent Rights, Contracts and Capitalism

However, knowledge does not remain restricted to the fields where it is applied. Knowledge, by nature, seeps into unchartered territories. The printing press facilitated the spread of knowledge to the common masses in the West. The existence of species and cultures so different from their own also forced them to think that the knowledge imparted by their religion is not complete, if not entirely false. The need to know the world to not only understand it but also administer it led to the disenchantment of the world. By disenchanting the world around them, they opened the door to modernity.

A whole framework of rule of law and administration was charted out to create a safe atmosphere for inventions and industries to happen. Patent rights and contracts, which are the backbone of capitalism, were being introduced by the states.

The hunger for resources, the discovery of new land, the rule of law, and the disenchantment of the world, along with some other factors, led to the rise in per capita income of parts of Western Europe. This created an incentive for the industries to shift to machines. Material forces, along with the incentive to cut the cost, led the region into the industrial revolution.

(Harshit Sharma is a student pursuing Master’s in Diplomacy, Law, and Business at the O.P. Jindal Global University. This is an opinion article and the views expressed are the author's own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)