Why Europe?

get ready for azimuth's speech on the "rapid development of the Middle East"...

go to the thread about osama and oil to read what he has to say about it

you are talking like the "ancien greek and roman work" was pure greek or roman

they took it from the older Egypt and the persians

they took it developed it and Arabs took it from greek and developed it

arabs took many knowledge from the Indians

dont say Indians took your work too

and from your earlier post about being ontop

you dont know the future even with your crystal ball

and i didnt say the middel east is developing only i said the east 

i mentioned china and india too

or all you can read is the middel east???

dont worry 'if' we became strong we will be nice  

anyway this thread is about  Europe  not any other

i just put my opinion and it angered you for some reason

it is history man nobody keep that position when you reach the top there is no way but going down.

Thanks for that. It is an interesting topic but not one I can contribute to without rather more thinking about it.

Generally though I agreed with the rest of your post. However it was concerned with why various cultures flourish from time to time, and it didn't really get to the specific factors that triggered the age of European expansion and dominance.

it is true that there were periods where Asia was more powerful than Europe.  However, they did not dominate the world.  there power was excercised in their relative sphere of influences, which were sometimes rather large, but never close to a globabl scale.  for the 500 or so years that Europe has been powerful, in has dominated the world.  other powers, such as India and China, have recently begun to emerge.  it seems, however, that Europe (and America) has implanted itself so firmly into the global arena that, while other countries may increase their power, Europe will never completely removed from this position of dominance.  we have never seen anything similar to this so you cannot compare this to the "continual cycles of civilizations", no one has firmly established themselves in the position that Europe elevated itself to.

alright you're now free to critique and rip apart my statements

"for the 500 or so years that Europe has been powerful, in has dominated the world."

The mongol empire at their height controlled everything from Korea to Germany.  Is that not world-wide dominance?  Or China during the Ming dynasty where it's fleet patrolled and maintained outposts from Australia to East Africa?  When you speak of world-wide dominance, you have to realize that the civilizations of antiquity didn't have a full map of the earth as we have now.  Given their knowledge of the "known" world, many great civilizations have dominated the world.   In fact, the Earth was only fully mapped by the early 20th century.  A complete map of the world excluding antarctica was only obtained by the mid 19th century.  Prior to that time, nations only had incomplete maps of the world.  The Europeans dominated the world in the last 2 centuries(not 500 years), because, the technology need to explore, map, and colonize the inhospitable regions of the world only became available after the industrial revolution had occured.  And Europe just happend to launch the industrial revolution. 

"Europe will never completely removed from this position of dominance."

Let's suppose for a moment that for the next 500 years, Europeans maintain their demographic hold on the Americas and Austrialia, what could possibly happen?  Well, for one thing, the worlds of this solar system would well be colonized by man.  And if the civilizations of this colonization front just happens to be non-european cultures, what then happens to European dominance?  Will European cultures grow stagnant and backwards?  It could very well happen, it has certainly happend in the past(Dark ages).  History is cyclical, the same stories repeat themselves with different actors and props.

Murph has a point, though I would reduce his 500 years to merely 200. 

I disagree that you can argue against him because the notion "the world" changes - if Brudobert controls his village and has no knowledge whatsoever about the rest of the world - is he then dominating the world? Antarctica matters about as much as the centre of the moon, since the places are currently unhabitable. In these matters, I believe it's quite understood that "the world" means "the world populated by men". Using this as a counterargument is semanthics, IMHO.

PS,it would be nice if xenophon2000 could provide any evidence of permanent Chinese outposts in Australia and East Africa, because I've never heard of that.

PPS, half-fantasy books as "1421:The Year..." doesn't count.

Well the Chinese did have oodles of guns and cannons starting from the Ming Dynasty or perhaps even a few decades before (What? Did you think the Chinese fought the British Navy by throwing rocks?).

Some one made the comment that China did not have the power to dominate the world. During the Ming Dynasty, China had the ability to field millions of soldiers. The capital alone was defended by a million men and many of them were armed with gunpowder weapons. No European nation, or even a combined ethnicity, could field more than 30,000 men armed with swords and spears at the same time. The reason why China did not conquer the world, and they did have the power to do so, was because the world could not offer them. Everything they needed and wanted was already at home.

Someone else made the comment that Europe, and the west in general, will always be superior. The second, third, and fourth highest GDPs belong to China, Japan, and India, respectively. China has a GDP second only to the United States, larger than Germany, France, and the United Kingdom combined. Wealth = power. China and India have among the largest armies in the world, and it is no longer the case that they are armed with outdated equipment. China as well as certain other Oriental nations, have some of the most modern armies in the world. The whole of Europe will be hard-pressed to even keep up with China in the immediate future.

I'm not even Chinese and I realize how the west is fading. If the United States doesn't pull itself together, it might be surpassed as well.

Also remember not to treat the european sucess of the last 500 years as the definative world event, its not, and in the future people outside the western world will likley dominate again, just because something is in power now doenst mean it will be forever.  Just as people living in Tang dynasty China probably assumed China would always lead the world are were wrong, so are people who say the west will keep up its lead are wrong.

Also, anyone who argues the reasons power is where it is has a cultural explanation is a fool.  Aside from meaningless little things like how you eat your food which we call culture, people around the world are all the same, power hungry, greedy, commercial, and militant.