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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8340880" data-attributes="member: 82106">It is certainly one of the most profound questions one might ask about the history of the last 500 years or so. My personal opinion is that many areas of world have been at pretty similar points in their overall development all along. Certainly Eurasia. I would expect a lot of the reason IS cultural diffusion, any really significant advance in technology, society, politics, finance, etc. spread west or east within a few centuries at most. T'ang China had things like letters of credit, paper money, printing, etc. in the 9th and 10th Centuries. All of those things reached Europe by the 12th Century in some form. Likewise 11th Century Song China had gunpowder and blast furnaces, and these showed up in Europe too within 3-5 centuries. So, really what we see is that probably there was just some fairly minor variance in terms of exactly when each region might trip past the phase change to a post-agrarian state. The question then simply becomes analysis of the specific historical details of the period from around 1200 to 1600 when this transition was beginning. You may advance many hypotheses of course. China famously was more centralized, and its rulers had greater influence. They chose to quash certain advances, such as exploration and colonization, etc. but there are other pretty good possible reasons as well. None of them involve supposed 'primitiveness' or 'inferiority' in any practical sense. At least not any serious theories.The rise of 21st Century China, like 20th Century Japan, should really be no surprise to intelligent people. I guess Nixon certainly figured it out...</blockquote>

[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 8340880, member: 82106"] It is certainly one of the most profound questions one might ask about the history of the last 500 years or so. My personal opinion is that many areas of world have been at pretty similar points in their overall development all along. Certainly Eurasia. I would expect a lot of the reason IS cultural diffusion, any really significant advance in technology, society, politics, finance, etc. spread west or east within a few centuries at most. T'ang China had things like letters of credit, paper money, printing, etc. in the 9th and 10th Centuries. All of those things reached Europe by the 12th Century in some form. Likewise 11th Century Song China had gunpowder and blast furnaces, and these showed up in Europe too within 3-5 centuries. So, really what we see is that probably there was just some fairly minor variance in terms of exactly when each region might trip past the phase change to a post-agrarian state. The question then simply becomes analysis of the specific historical details of the period from around 1200 to 1600 when this transition was beginning. You may advance many hypotheses of course. China famously was more centralized, and its rulers had greater influence. They chose to quash certain advances, such as exploration and colonization, etc. but there are other pretty good possible reasons as well. None of them involve supposed 'primitiveness' or 'inferiority' in any practical sense. At least not any serious theories. The rise of 21st Century China, like 20th Century Japan, should really be no surprise to intelligent people. I guess Nixon certainly figured it out... [/QUOTE]

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