this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2024
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Yeah that whole theory of how Europe took control of the world always sounds so bogus to me. It's bogus because up until Europe started taking slaves from Africa and America, they weren't the most technologically or scientifically advanced or whatever. The middle east and India had already lapped Europe in terms of math, astronomy, medicine, etc.
The middle east in particular was so much more advanced that the Renaissance in part occurred because of Latin translations of Arabic texts from literally 400 years beforehand.
The arabic world was decimated by the Mongol invasions though, and the Islamic Golden Age was put to the sword. The reason they were reading 400 year old texts and not modern contemporary ones is because of this.
Honestly, the mountain ranges that held the mongols back from taking Europe and kept them relatively safe are a large part of the reason why Europe was able to catch back up.
By the way, it's also a myth that Mongols were technologically backwards. They were at the very, very start before they took over chunks of China and incorporated their technology. The mongols were extremely adaptable, and by the end of their conquests they were using the most advanced siege weaponry on Earth.
mongols were still expanding westward until they hit the carpathians and caucuses, and even sent some expeditionary scouting parties through and found there wasn't enough grass to sustain their horses and the land was too poor and backwards to bother with. One of their scouting parties nearly defeated a European army on its own and the Europeans thought they beat the Mongols for good but it was just a small detatchment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Samara_Bend
They made it as far west as Bulgaria and the Carpathian mountains, and could have easily continued had it been worth it and had there not been annoying choke-points and bottlenecks and rugged terrain - eventually the Mongols did take Bulgaria, but as I was saying, the mountainous terrain in this region is really what walled them off and led to them being ambushed and defeated at higher rates, and reduced the effectiveness and mobility of their armies.
But why did Europe go around the world capturing slaves in the first place? What necessitated their ability and desire to travel across the world dominating populations? Why didn't Africa or Asia colonize Europe first?
I don't propose a particular theory, but these are unanswered questions, surely?
I'm a big proponent of the "too many bored and trained military guys" theory. The tipping point was Spain funding expeditions out into the new world because they had amassed a military complex and were teeming with young guys who wanted to shoot guns somewhere. They had a ton of guys left over from the reconquista.
Why they got to the America first probably is down to geography, at least on this one. The most advantageous ocean currents facilitated back and forth travel to Europe better than from anywhere else. Then they discovered the wind currents to Africa.
that's just how they got the advantage in the first place. Why did they do it? Internal contradictions within feudalism that required expansion from the mercantile class. Stuff like that. The burgeoning capitalist class was feeling the restrictions of feudal land management and something was going to burst eventually. Europe just happened to be in a position where that capital expansion was done through domination of the ocean.