
How did Europe become the richest part of the world? - pepys
https://aeon.co/essays/how-did-europe-become-the-richest-part-of-the-world
======
ttsubotai
The article overlooks a very important factor, that only Europe had colonies
in the Americas, and that brought massive wealth to the continent since the
XVI century. Before that, the Middle-East, India and China were , in general,
more technologically and scientifically advanced than Europe.

~~~
jcranmer
Well, the key question is why did the Arab World and Asian civilizations fail
to do the colonization that the Europeans did. Also, the parity between Europe
and the rest of Eurasia was largely achieved around the 1400s, which is to
say, prior to the first wave of colonization.

~~~
bluedino
>> why did the Arab World and Asian civilizations fail to do the colonization
that the Europeans did

Perhaps because of the sheer size of Asia. Western Europe isn't exactly large.

~~~
clort
Western Europe? Do you mean the landmass that extends all the way from the
Atlantic ocean to the Pacific? You can walk all the way from the Bering strait
to the Atlantic Ocean, and down to the tip of Africa.. thats a pretty large
landmass and there was no gulf between Asia and Europe. (its pretty
inhospitable in parts I agree, but the Mongol Empire reached the
Mediterranean)

------
flukus
> The costs of European political division into multiple competing states were
> substantial: they included almost incessant warfare, protectionism, and
> other coordination failures. Many scholars now believe, however, that in the
> long run the benefits of competing states might have been larger than the
> costs. In particular, the existence of multiple competing states encouraged
> scientific and technological innovation.

I wonder if this is still true today and if globalism will ultimately make us
worse off?

~~~
anotherarray
So, should we give up on relative peace for the sake of scientific and
technological innovation?

Not an attack, but an actual question.

~~~
reacweb
About utopian world, this may interest you: [http://io9.gizmodo.com/how-rats-
turned-their-private-paradis...](http://io9.gizmodo.com/how-rats-turned-their-
private-paradise-into-a-terrifyin-1687584457)

------
mercer
While I only just got started, there's a Cousera course named "The Modern
World"[1] that, based on the introduction, explores this topic (among others).

[1]: [https://www.coursera.org/learn/modern-
world](https://www.coursera.org/learn/modern-world)

------
pan69
There is an interesting documentary series by Naill Ferguson on this subject.
In his series he discuses the "6 killer applications" that made the West
dominate the rest:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wR6SFLhD32Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wR6SFLhD32Q)

~~~
vyodaiken
Seriously, Naill Ferguson is a poor historian.

[https://global.oup.com/academic/product/before-european-
hege...](https://global.oup.com/academic/product/before-european-
hegemony-9780195067743?cc=us&lang=en&)

also
[http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/Pomeranz2000.pdf](http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/Pomeranz2000.pdf)

------
hugh4life
I remember coming up a book one time(maybe reviewed by Razib Khan) that made
this exact point that much of Europe's progress came from it's internal
conflict but I have not been able to find it again... does anyone have a clue
what I may be thinking of?

~~~
fbonetti
You might be thinking of "Guns, Germs, and Steel"

~~~
UncleMeat
Note that GGS is not actually held in high regard by academic historians. Its
pop history.

~~~
woodandsteel
That's really not true.

Do you have any specific arguments against it? Is it your view, for instance,
that non-euasian continents could have achieved the power of eurasia, in spite
of their lack of suitable plants and animals, and if so, what accounts for
what actually happened?

~~~
UncleMeat
This just comes with close personal association with a whole bunch of history
PhDs. I myself am not an expert on the topic, but they talk about this book
the way that psychologists talk about Gladwell. If you want an example of
respected history that follows this sort of geographic history model you
should read Braudel.

------
FreekNortier
Europe was great before she had any colonies. Living in Africa my entire life
I can see that Europe and the countries where her children settled(USA,
Canada, Aus, Nz) are the light of the world.

------
snambi
Simple, because they stole from the rest of the world.

~~~
pm90
Not that simple, I'm afraid.

~~~
Cuuugi
FALL IN LINE WITH THE NARRATIVE. WHITE MEN = EVIL INCARNATE

------
ThrustVectoring
The article does not even mention geography, which is extraordinarily
important for generating wealth. You need to feed people and ship goods in
order to make stuff, and it's way cheaper and easier to use navigable rivers
through arable farmland than any alternatives. This represents a huge chunk of
free capital, and the network in Northern Europe is one of the largest ones
(iirc, second to the Mississippi River).

------
woodandsteel
The author mentions that there were a great many lucky accidents involved in
the rise of the West. That is a factor that I think helps explain the Fermi
Paradox. It is not enough to have an intelligent species, what they produce
over the long term would seem to be civilizations that lack the sort of self-
perpetuating technology dynamics that we have had in the West.

------
lazyjones
Interestingly, they completely ignored the Hanseatic League, one of the most
powerful economic and political entities for centuries:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanseatic_League](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanseatic_League)

Perhaps it was one of the most important contributing factors to Europe's
success.

------
dzonga
Simply, the quest to kill your enemies or paranoia of getting killed by them.
Internet, GPS, Drugs etc to have an advantage in warfare

~~~
distances
I have a feeling you didn't read the article.

------
kartan
No. War is not progress. War has cost a lot to European countries, being WWII
one of the major loses in history in human lives and resources.

I have hear other, more plausible, explanations. Weather is one. The fact that
Eurasia is wide means that it has similar conditions in large portions of
land, so you can reuse technology for agriculture across all of it.

In Australia and Africa weather is not so good for agriculture. America is
rich, but being narrow you need to create new agriculture techniques as you
move south or north, as the landscape, weather and other factors are changing.

War is present in all cultures. So some more unique qualities should be looked
for. And luck can't be discarded.

~~~
arcanus
'In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and
bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the
Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of
democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.'

-Harry Lime, 'the third man'

~~~
rsync
"In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and
peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

Well, they also produced _switzerland_.

Have you been there ?

It's the best place in the world - and not just the scenery.

~~~
geodel
Best for those who are there. Others with wrong-{skin color, religion,
continent etc} must stay away.

~~~
rsync
That's not true at all.

I suspect that, unlike my own country, they enforce and respect the
immigration laws on the books - truly a shock.

However, even outside city centers you run into people of all types. On my
last trip I found myself in Gruyere and there were muslim families and east
asians touring at the rest stop.

Inside Zurich there's a roughly Minneapolis-level background of racial
diversity.

~~~
senthil_rajasek
"Minneapolis-level background of racial diversity" Here is what the
Minneapolis Fed bank president has to say about that,

[http://www.marketwatch.com/story/feds-kashkari-shocked-
black...](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/feds-kashkari-shocked-black-
unemployment-isnt-better-understood-2016-08-31)

~~~
rsync
He's talking about national statistics. He just happened to be working in MPLS
at the time:

"Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari said Wednesday he was “shocked” that
the persistently higher national black unemployment rate relative to the rate
for whites was not better understood."

People who live in MPLS know that it has a huge immigrant population of somali
and other east africans as well as (I think) the largest Hmong/Cambodian
population in the United States. That is, in addition to the inner-city
diversity of american blacks. Also, unlike many other cities, there are native
americans.

So it's not NYC or LA, but it's not Denver either. In fact, I think my
original comparison may be off - MPLS is probably more diverse than Zurich.

(I have lived in MPLS on two different occasions - 6 and 5 years each. I own a
business in Zurich.)

~~~
senthil_rajasek
I am saying having racial diversity without equity is not a desirable outcome.

------
pm90
> The Indian subcontinent and the Middle East were fragmented for much of
> their history, and Africa even more so, yet they did not experience a Great
> Enrichment.

eh what? The Indian subcontinent was one of the most productive regions of the
world, accounting for almost 25% of the world GDP right before being colonized
and having its creative/artisan class decimated. If no deliberate effort had
been expounded to destroy its artisan/merchant class, Enlightenment ideas
might have spread faster and created a much more dynamic economy.

------
fauigerzigerk
This sounds like little more than pure speculation.

Based on the exact same factors the article very selectively chooses to
highlight, you could just as well claim that it wasn't competition but a very
high degree of integration that has made Europe so successful and that all the
competition and war between states has just obscured this fact.

You could then go on and invoke the example of the United States to show that
even deeper integration without too much internal warfare resulted in an even
better outcome in terms of wealth.

This is nothing but fluff. You could pick and choose your variables to prove
anything and its exact opposite based on that sort of reasoning.

What's the empirical basis for any of this? Why should we believe this theory
and not some other theory? I don't see it.

~~~
hodgesrm
History is like that sometimes. The root causes are tangled and we have to do
the best with what we have. That said, I don't think this article is framing
the question well.

If you focus just on one part of the wealth, namely industrialization, it's
clear that different countries have done this in different ways. For example
if you compare England (first mover) vs. Japan (catch up driven in large part
by defense) the outcome was still quite similar in that both countries
successfully mastered mass production with corresponding economic benefits to
the country as a whole. Yet the details of the societies at the start could
hardly be more different.

It's hard to escape the conclusion that many regions would sooner or later
would have met the conditions for rapid economic growth. The question of why
it happened in Europe is not necessarily the most interesting one.

------
stuckagain
By defining "rich" in such a way as to put themselves at the top.

------
kenning
Welcome to the social sciences

~~~
dang
Please don't post snarky dismissals to HN. The comment you replied to was
fairly substantive, so your reply takes the thread in the opposite of the
desired direction.

We detached this comment from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13670932](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13670932)
and marked it off-topic.

------
vyodaiken
Go to any major European city. Look at all the loot in the museums. Figure it
out.

Mea culpa - too snarky. But there is a lot of research in this field and way
too much self congratulatory material. A look at the Opium Wars should be
enough to convince that more guns goes a long way to an explanation. Also
Graeber's "Debt" gives some sense of how Europe managed to construct an
economy that produced a desperation for loot that was quite remarkable.

~~~
mafribe
This begs the question: why didn't nobody else succeed in looting the
Europeans.

It's not like the other Empires around the world were Gandhian paradises of
peaceful coexistence. They were waging war on each other, looting, and going
on slavery raids just like Europeans. Go and look at Aztect ruins in
Mesoamerica sometimes and marvel the the monuments where the prists were
sacrificing humans.

Yet, despite the experience with war and violence, they (almost) never managed
to beat Europeans, and certainly never colonised Europe (after the Muslims
were thrown out of Europe ... Well ... depending whom you ask, the
(descendants of the) Ottoman Empire are still colonising parts of Europe today
... Just ponder why Constantinople is no longer called Constantinople).

Why? What did Europe have they didn't?

~~~
arjie
Does the question make sense? The idea of a unified Europe is modern. Rome
conquered Gaul, Serbia was in the Ottoman Empire, the Mongols traveled quite
far west. The idea that Holland invading and capturing Britain meant different
things then than it does now. Now they're both European nations. Then they
were just two different nations.

At least two books that provide hypotheses with some supporting evidence are:
_Guns, Germs, and Steel_ ; and _A Splendid Exchange_.

One thing that I found incredibly interesting in common was superior
technology and the positive feedback loop with that. By this, I mean financial
technology (loans, trade, financial derivatives) as well as weapons and mills.

------
skookumchuck
One explanation is the book "Triumph of the West" by Roberts. He makes the
case for it being the culture.

------
elevenfist
Looking at the comments in this thread, I'm really starting to get sick of the
stupidity and ignorance of the hn community. I hope you're all just paid
provacateurs.

War isn't some special attribute of european history or success. While some
people (mostly on the narc spectrum) are motivated by competition, many aren't

Historical Counterexamples:

Chinese warring states periods, Japanese warring states periods, post gupta
and mughal empires in India, west African pre colonial history, and there's
many more.

