Is it true that China could have industrialized before the West?

Yeah, but it didn't.

also your pic is dumb

Depends on your metaphysics son.
Could the past be anything but the way it was?

>>1374984
By "Africa" do they mean just the Mediterranean?

yes, I remember seeing a documentary about how China ALMOST invented electric circuits in the 1500s, but they regressed

same thing with the findings in the Library of Alexandria
it's a "what could have been..." situation

>>1374984
>Statistics in 1000 AD
>Africa produce more than europe until 1350AD
>Huge decline of Africa during the colonization

WE WUZ KANGZ OF ZE WORLD THEN EBIL WHITE MAN CAME AND DESTROYED OURZ EMPIRE

Roots of mechanization were in place in the West during the antiquities. Industrialization could have taken place in China or Greece back in 200 BC.

File: 1398451243994.jpg (173KB, 621x621px) Image search: [Google]

173KB, 621x621px

>counterfactuals

The latest 'Divergence' stuff contends that its mostly down to comparative issues and to problems of land intensive production.

The basic theory is that even in about 1750, Europe and China were roughly comparable as units, with parts of China (like the Yangzi Delta) roughly as advanced as parts of Europe (like Britain) in economic terms.

The problem was that the world was held back by the need for primary products, mostly food, and other land resources. What propelled Europe ahead was control of the Americas, providing a vast bounty of primary resources which allowed Europe to shift into capital-intensive manufacturing. Simultaneously America was stopped from moving away from its primary-production focus by instiutional systems (slavery amongst others) guaranteeing the provision of these resources as well as a captive market for European secondary production. This allowed for the upwards spiral of industrialisation to take off.

>>1375696

You are speaking from a place of ignorance, as usual.

Coulda shoulda woulda

>>1374984
No. Industrialization is a specific event with specific prior events and causes which spurred it. History isn't a video game with a "press to industrialize" button

>>1374984
no, European development was powered by arms race between several more or less equal powers.

Industrialization is as much a legal development as a technological development.

Britain had such active overseas trade that it developed adequate contract law and property rights, which combined with new technology to allow corporations to massively increase economic output.

>>1375720
Are you seriously arguing that this chart is anything other than bullshit?

>>1374984
Anything could have happened. Do you want to ask a better definied question?

>>1376214
If you'd give a less uninspired answer. So no.