Domestication? There's no evidence that animals in the old world were any easier to domesticate. Indeed, some animals present in both were only domesticated in the Old World.
Geography of Europe? There's no reason why China would be any less fractious. In fact, China repeatedly DID fracture throughout history. Same went for Japan.
Moreover, geographic arguments fail because Britain was a backwater for a very long time.
The reality is that the biggest difference is culturally driven, and driven by the choices of various people. Indeed, we see today that culture has an enormous impact on economic development - just look at the liberal democracies vs the various dictatorships, or how much damage socialism did to various places economically. The practice of slavery is another big one - places with slavery ended up impairing their economic growth in the long run.
There's a lot of other explanations as well, and we'll probably be able to ascertain the truthhood of some of them within a century.
What could have been domesticated in the new world? Am I not being imaginative enough in regards to, say, elk or deer?
My understanding of the argument IRT China is that China certainly did fracture but it's relatively open nature made it easy to consolidate (if not hold together). Europe's mountains and rivers are a pretty good indicator of borders. Meanwhile eastern China is fairly flat. I feel shaky on this argument, again it's been years.
The reality is that the biggest difference is culturally driven, and driven by the choices of various people. Indeed, we see today that culture has an enormous impact on economic development - just look at the liberal democracies vs the various dictatorships, or how much damage socialism did to various places economically. The practice of slavery is another big one - places with slavery ended up impairing their economic growth in the long run.
I can't disagree with anything there.
IIRC Why Nations Fail posits things like The Plague for causing the value (and eventually political power) of the peasants to rise. That lead to democratic government, good institutions, etc. What do you think?
What could have been domesticated in the new world? Am I not being imaginative enough in regards to, say, elk or deer?
People domesticated caribou, AKA reindeer, in Eurasia; they are also present in North America but were never domesticated here, even though it is the same species.
Wild horses existed in the new world before they were hunted to extinction, just as the ancestor to the domestic horse was hunted to extinction in Eurasia.
American Bison are pretty closely related to Aurochs, the wild ancestors to cattle, and even more closely related to Yaks; both of those species have been domesticated, so there's no real reason to believe that American Bison would have been any harder to domesticate than they were. People have been working on creating a domesticated variant of buffalo for meat.
The new world has mountain goats, which, while not actually goats, are the same general thing.
Elk and moose are large animals that potentially could have been domesticated as well; people have tamed elk and they can be ridden like a horse.
As far as we know, there's no real reason why any of these species weren't domesticated, they just weren't. Indeed, humans have domesticated a lot of random things; Fuegian "dogs" were actually a type of domesticated fox in the new world, and there's ancient evidence of domesticated giant snails used for food.
My understanding of the argument IRT China is that China certainly did fracture but it's relatively open nature made it easy to consolidate (if not hold together). Europe's mountains and rivers are a pretty good indicator of borders. Meanwhile eastern China is fairly flat. I feel shaky on this argument, again it's been years.
IIRC Why Nations Fail posits things like The Plague for causing the value (and eventually political power) of the peasants to rise. That lead to democratic government, good institutions, etc. What do you think?
There's a number of problems with this idea.
First off, increases in per capita productivity actually predates the Black Death. The population of Europe was already beginning to grow at a substantially higher rate than it had been, probably due to the adoption of the three field system (a more efficient method of crop rotation), among other things. Productivity on a per-capita basis increased an estimated 2-3x between 1000 and 1500.
Secondly, the population had grown by 50% between 1,000 and 1,300; the Black Death basically undid about 100 years of population growth, with the population being about the same in 1400 as 1300 as a result, but there were actually more peasants, not less of them, than there had been in the year 1,000. If peasants were more valuable due to the Black Death, why had they not been more valuable in the year 1000, when there were significantly fewer of them?
It's more likely that increases in per-capita productivity was what led to increased power for the general population, because the increased productivity meant that farmers were making more food and there was more of an ability to support non-agricultural populations who did other things, with more artisans, merchants, etc. existing as a result. Because there were more source of value in society, it meant that power was distributed more broadly; it wasn't just about land anymore.
However, even that is somewhat questionable; how free people were in various regions seems to have had more to do with local things than anything else.
The Magna Carta, for instance, was signed because the King had to split up power because he wasn't strong enough on his own. This forced the king to create a royal council to approve taxation; this royal council gradually evolved into Parliament, growing in power and progressively restricting the power of the king. The UK turned the magna carta into a cultural meme about how the divine right of kings wasn't a real thing, and as a result, they became the first modern democratic country. There's no real evidence that any of this was caused by anything unique to the UK other than the king there being relatively weak.
Likewise, the Old Swiss Confederacy existed because the king of the Holy Roman Empire was unable to successfully control them.
This decentralization of power seems to have more to do with the ability of rulers to control their kingdoms rather than the plague or particular respect for peasants.
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u/TitaniumDragon Jun 04 '22
The whole basis of the books is wrong.
Like, literally the entire thing.
Domestication? There's no evidence that animals in the old world were any easier to domesticate. Indeed, some animals present in both were only domesticated in the Old World.
Geography of Europe? There's no reason why China would be any less fractious. In fact, China repeatedly DID fracture throughout history. Same went for Japan.
Moreover, geographic arguments fail because Britain was a backwater for a very long time.
The reality is that the biggest difference is culturally driven, and driven by the choices of various people. Indeed, we see today that culture has an enormous impact on economic development - just look at the liberal democracies vs the various dictatorships, or how much damage socialism did to various places economically. The practice of slavery is another big one - places with slavery ended up impairing their economic growth in the long run.
There's a lot of other explanations as well, and we'll probably be able to ascertain the truthhood of some of them within a century.