S'mon; it is not just historians who are myopic, all scholars tend to get so wrapped up in their tiny specialism that they forget the big picture. I know I have many times and will again
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So I get where he is coming from, it is just that it he seems to not understand the reverse and mpore traditional point of view which, while obviously flawed, is also a real part of the way the world unfolded.
I guess there have been a series of miscommunications taking place in this thread. I am not trying to say that the technological innovations of the West that occured as the result of the Industrial Revolution were meaningless. I am not trying to argue that there was no gap in knowledge and technology between East Asian societies and Western ones in the 18th century. It is pretty obvious that there was. China fell behind, that is a historical fact. The only big question is
why.
There is only one claim that I have been arguing against: that there are periods of hundreds or thousands of years where nothing of note happens in a civilization's history. There are two places where I see this sentiment appear commonly:
1) The idea that there was nothing major happening in the realm of technology, science, and intellectual development in Europe between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance. This is deeply mistaken belief, since significant technological progress took place in Europe at this time, and there were a lot of intellectuals who were actively seeking out knowledge from foreign sources and rediscovering lost knowledge.
2) The idea that Chinese civilization went completely unchanged from ancient China until Westerners came onto the scene in force in the 19th century. This vision of Chinese civilization completely ignores the deep and pervasive changes in culture and technology that occurred constantly as China transitioned from one dynasty to the next. I can state a number of major differences between each individual dynasty that reflect sweeping changes in Chinese culture. Similar arguments can be made for Japan and India.
Honestly, the charges that I am someone who "can't see the forest for the trees" is something that really bothers me, since my interest in History runs contrary to that. The reason I have never found Modern History that interesting is that I think it is too focused on minute details. I much prefer ancient history, where you can study how the civilizations of the world rise, change over time, an eventually fall. Furthermore, I have spent an equal amount of time studying both European history and East Asian history in college. So I don't consider my study of history and my understanding of history to be particularly "myopic". I
like looking at the bigger picture.
As a side note, my post where I made the handguns/knives analogy was completely unrelated to my main argument. That was just me nitpicking S'mon's particular claim that technology is something that can be easily compared. I saw some holes in his theory, so I pointed them out. I never meant to imply that my comments there were related to the rest of my argument.
