Kenneth Pomeranz’s book arguing that the Great Divergence between the West and China only began around the 1700s/early 1800s has been such a damaging thesis (rectified by subsequent lit). In reality, it started in the 1500s because Western Europe didn’t suffer from steppe nomads
Kenneth Pomeranz’s book arguing that the Great Divergence between the West and China only began around the 1700s/early 1800s has been such a damaging thesis (rectified by subsequent lit). In reality, it started in the 1500s because Western Europe didn’t suffer from steppe nomads
Iberian travellers had a relatively positive impression of China into the 1600s and the early Qing years I think (please correct me if I’m wrong here), but Iberia itself had started falling behind to the Dutch and especially the English/British.
Anglo exceptionalism is absolutely real though (unfortunately): between about the late 1600s and 1900, the English (+Scottish) and later the British alone were literally producing more engineering and science than the rest of the planet combined.
@blob_watcher Yep, I just wrote a substack touching on this. In Michael Adas's Machines As the Measure of Men its clear the first Europeans to reach China after 1500 were more impressed with it than they were with anywhere else in Asia.
@blob_watcher The english didnt even know how to fight on land before the english civil war in the 1600s
@blob_watcher Iberia never exceeded per capita income of the coastal provinces of China that they would’ve seen until the late 1800s/early 1900s It’s really English’s and Dutch that were exceptional
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