From a materialist perspective, why did the the global north, the western global north in particular, become so powerful it could loot the rest of the world with borderline impunity?
From a materialist perspective, why did the the global north, the western global north in particular, become so powerful it could loot the rest of the world with borderline impunity?
I've recently read"The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World" and want to hear what all of you think the answer is, because I feel like the book was missing something in its thesis and I am not very sure what that is.
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Availability of work animals gave much of Eurasia a significant edge compared to Africa (which generally only had access to them through Eurasia).
Idk how this applies to the Americas.
The americas had jack shit for work animals but thats sort of a guns germs and steel explanation. China had all the same materials and Europe and didn't go off to pillage the world.
As others have mentioned in this thread, China had the potential to be the birthplace of capitalism but got slowed down by other factors like the Mongol Empire.
None of the Chinese dynasties could ever get away with something like the Enclosure Act in England. Any attempt would've resulted in dynastic overthrow. Plus the economic collapse of the Ming dynasty caused by silver inflation from Spain's colonization of the New World did far more damage than the Mongol Conquests.
China would have to be in a permanent waring states period for centuries to develop the debt systems necessary to start capitalism. It had all the resources but none of the motivation. The Mongol Empire had little to do with that, unless you meant "returning China to dynastic rule". Honestly that theory just sounds like chinese nationalist cope.
fair enough (I did not mean due to dynastic rule)
also no work animals, most crops weren't great for massive-scale farming.
Corn and potatoes are notoriously great for large scale farming. Or are you talking about African yams?
that's two. farming caught on in those regions where those plants were grown on a decent scale. Most other farming was small scale.
You said there were no crops for massive scale farming yet we do massive scale farming with american crops. Also corn was grown at some scale all along the Mississippi and the deep south, thats how you get Cahokia. It wasnt just limited to Mexico.
The fact that those crops weren't used at such large scale as the Europeans is due to the societal structures of the Americans not the lack of capable plants. Europeans enclosed the commons and privatized land ownership, the Americans didn't. It has nothing to do with the lack of correct plants.