What are commonly cited reasons for European supremacy?

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>>1677940
You tell me. Isn't it obvious?

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>>1677940
The Enlightenment. Even as a a reactionary that hates it, I can say it's the only thing that really made europeans supreme.

>>1678119
This.

Which was a result of earlier republics in European history, combined with a large trading class, multiple competing states, the end of slavery during the early Middle Ages, the Black Plague ending serfdom in the west, and the printing press.

>>1677940
Guns, Germans and steel

We Neither got devastated by the Mongols or burn our trade fleet.
The Chinks did both.

>>1677940
Muh Christianity (even though this selectively doesn't benefit say, Africa or the Eastern Churches)

>>1678136
>Zheng He.
>Trade Fleet.
Kys.

>>1677940
Usually the fact that were multiple small states fighting one another leading to a competitive edge.

Monolithic blocs like Rome and China tend to stagnate horribly.

Right makes might

>>1677940
How come when we make a thread about Europeans, it's relatively filled with good discussion but threads about Africans turn into memes and arguements about race and iq?

>>1678216
It's the history and humanities board and Africans past, present, and future need to write more

>>1678216
Because this board is predominantly /pol/ faggots LARPing as Catholics who like to pretend that this is "/leftypol/"

>>1678216
>>1678222

European history is more complex and better documented. There is simply more to talk about.

>>1678256
How does that justify derailing threads not about European history into a circle. Jerk about how great whitey is

>>1677940
They discovered an entire continent to personally exploit before anyone else.

>>1678277
What about natives?

>>1678198
You're sort of correct, except China didn't stagnate until late into the Ming-Qing era.

I think a lot of it has to do with the complacency of Chinese buerocracy that saw no need to invest into better technology. They were content with their image of China as the Middle Kingdom, an image that lead them to fall behind and allow non-Chinese to surpass them.

The Japanese had a similar world view and would have succumbed to the same fate had the Tokugawa regime kept its stranglehold.

>>1678290
They all died like bitches to plague.

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>>1677982
what is this meme trying to say? Poles cucked out of colonization or something?

>>1678272
Eurocentrism. This board consists mainly of Westerners. Ergo, Western history is more relevant for this board. I agree with you though. That shit can be really fucking annoying. I don't mind those discussions, but they can stay in their own fucking threads and not threads trying to have a learningfull discussion about something entirely different than whether blackies are dumerer than whiteys.

>>1678222
>Africans past, present, and future need to write more

Bu they do but it's just not really noted often because either it's irrelevant (in a language no one understands) or no one really cares about it even if it's written in a common language and/or small population (Does the Netherlands have any interest in Afrikaner literature let alone it's colonies literature in it's language?) some assortment of the 3. This is in regards to literature but in history there are many people within and outside the continent doing great research into the history of the continent.

>>1678198
If only African niggers had had small states instead of village-sized tribes...

As I see it:
-The Precolumbian populations both in North and South America lacked the technology to really get out of the continent. Only the conception of serious shipbuilding and the discovery of easy iron smelting could have saved them.
-What little I know about the African civilizations suggests a situation where there resources are there, but the population is too scattered and/or divided to really bring change. Not to mention that places like Ethiopia and Mali got fucked by climatic changes occurring during the Little Ice Age.
-Polynesians and Aboriginals... kind of were in a shitty situation from the get-go.
-The Asians had monolithic blocs that kept on stagnating and, to a limited extent, Confucianism stifled progress in China and Korea. had it disappeared, they would have been probably worthy foes to the Europeans even in the XIX century.

>>1677940
It was pretty much all due to weather and flora/fauna when you really think about it.

Smart people are and were everywhere, but only few of them were able to utilize their surroundings in such a way like it was possible in europe.

>Usually the fact that were multiple small states fighting one another leading to a competitive edge.
Also this

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>>1677940
Is pic related true?

>>1679690
Yeah. It's like a domino effect or chain reaction. Mesopotamia was the birthplace of civilization and it would eventually find its way west in the hands of the Greeks until it reached Western Europe.

>>1677940

Strife.

>>1677940
rome

Most of Europe has always been irrelevant.

>>1679690
This.

It's the West, not Europe.

And the answer is Catholicism.

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good agricultural land after innovations like the heavy plow and 3 field crop rotation

connected to trade and tech by the Mediterranean

>>1681197
Yup that would explain why did Europe got so much more powerfull after Cuckholics lost their power.

>>1681220
and slavery

>>1681220
>German "Holy Roman" Empire

Subtle.

>>1677940
Indo-Europeans were uniquely ruled by a class of free aristocrats grouped into war-bands that were egalitarian within rather than ruled by autocrats. These bands were contractual associations of peers operating outside strictly kin ties, initiated by any powerful individual on the merits of his martial abilities. The relation between the chief and his followers was personal and based on mutual agreement: the followers would volunteer to be bound to the leader by oaths of loyalty wherein they would promise to assist him while the leader would promise to reward them from successful raids. Indo-Europeans prized heroic warriors striving for individual fame and recognition, often with a ‘berserker’ style of warfare. This aristocratic culture was the primordial source sustaining the unparalleled cultural creativity and territorial expansionism of Western civilization. The Iliad, Beowulf, The Song of Roland, including such Irish, Icelandic and Germanic Sagas as Lebor na hUidre, Njals Saga, Gisla Saga Sursonnar, The Nibelungenlied recount the heroic deeds and fame of aristocrats. These are the earliest voices from the dawn of Western civilization.

The West has always been in a state of divergence from the rest of the world’s cultures, characterized by persistent creativity from ancient to modern times across all fields of human thought and action. Within every generation one finds individuals searching for new worlds, new religious visions, and new styles of painting, architecture, music, science, philosophy, and literature—in comparative contrast to the non-Western world where cultural outlooks tended to persist for long periods with only slight variations and revisions.

>>1679690
So it's Mediterranean master race?

>>1677940
Old shit that has survived a lot of wars. France is the worst about this.

>>1681259
slavery was practiced throughout the world and so doesn't explain what made Europe different

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>>1677940
The inquisitive and dynamic nature of Europe's Faustian culture.

>>1681268
the fragmented German states still comprised a large proportion of the blue region's economy and thus contribution to technology, let us not forget where the printing press was invented

>>1681259
Back then there really weren't "Free" people so if someone was a slave there was very little difference in how they were treated or what they did.

>>1681271
Mediterranean Master Trade hub. It was connection to the Mediterranean and it's trade goods that allowed major powers to prosper. It's the driving force behind the Crusades. Valuable trade routes to the Mediterranean.

>>1681225
When did that happen? The West is still thoroughly shaped by Catholicism and always will be.

>>1681283
aka Catholicism.

>>1681314
>implying the Atlantic isn't more important

>>1681274
well lets see now
egypt harvested africa
babylon/sumeria harvested the mid east
crete harvests both of these
greece picks up the reigns
rome picks up the reigns
so on and so forth


asia isolated from 2/3s of the world island at the time, couldnt compete to forced human labour movement & marching - harvesting

>>1679690
The Han heartland of China should also be marked and more of Persia.

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>>1681318
>When did that happen?

>>1681338
They barely contributed anything essential.

>>1681349
literally sweatshop of the world

humanity just so lacking in testosterone that the inmates are now running the assylum

too pussy whipped to PUT A NIGGER DOWN

>>1677940

europeans fought each other all the time, largely in a kind of isolated position, which, combined with some cultural/political idiosincracies, things like local mentality, ethics, schools of thought, etc... made them develop their systems over and over again never having the luxury to stop at one stage and just run it along for a few hundred years

opposed to that most other global powers that be displayed a tendency to form massive monolithic empire-like systems that would stagnate almost as a way to survive, and life sort of went on and on reproducing the same patterns for centuries on end like its some new wave sci-fy novel, like the ottoman empire where people in 1900eds basicaly still dressed like its the 1520is, life not changing much in centuries except for everithig slowly decaying

other than that it was a lot of luck, for example, india was allready going trough a period of political desintegration and civil war when the british started conquering it, while just a generation back it was a massive integrated superpower, china stagnated for a long time for specificaly chinese reasons, much of the central-southern american cultures were going trough a similar state of crisis + no immunity to old world disease, middle east was rather passive all in all, africa was already largely conquered by the arabs and north africans and there were whole systems allready in place that facilitated colonisation, asian nomad horde type khaganates etc... just seem to have ran out of steam after centuries of dominance, and the rest was realy just humans waving sharpened sticks at each other(no it wasnt, but, might as well have been) no big problem there for professional battlehardened fighters with steel and gunpowder

so realy, it was some conditions and recuring situations specific to european history that kept kicking europeans out of the stagnation and enthropy patterns that characterised most of the other human cultures

plus things like agriculture, and whatnot

>>1677982
are russians european?

>>1681338
Persia's core was actually Mesopotamia which is included. China... seems kind of a lot to include just for improving parchment.

>>1681378
they were before germarx came along

>>1681375
>1900eds basicaly still dressed like its the 1520is, life not changing much in centuries except for everithig slowly decaying
religion

>europeans fought each other all the time
vs anarchism

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>>1679690
It needs something to indicate how much impact Eurasian steppe nomads have had on world history.

Simplie Germany without Germany the EU where only a poor community with poor countries. Germany is the engine of the EU without it the whole system would collapse...

>>1681259

actualy europe was one of the few regions of the world where slavery wasnt a widespread practice

euro style feudalism wasnt realy compatible with slavery, neither were burgs and communes, slavery was mostly a southeast european thing and even then only a marginal part of the economy

slavery realy became a big thing for europeans from the 1600eds onwards, and theres a point in that 90% of slaves were imported from parts of the world where slavery was so normalised that slave trade was a foundation of local economy

>>1681391
setting back civilization every hundred or so year?

>>1681415

>setting back

back to tidy grassland, yes

>>1681410
yeah right cunt keep ur reading ur books

whole reason for the naval supremacy age was 50% slaves 50% metals

because what the fuckis a homoeconomicus ROI

t human action

>>1681429

thats pretty much 1600 onwards

>>1681429
>>1681442

unless you count galleons, these were like floating labor camps, hundreds of people chained at the ores, if you count that as slaves

but those werent reay that relevant outside the mediterran

>>1677940
Europe had a large number of warring states within it, but it was united by a single centralized religion that mediated conflict so as to avoid the kind of wholesale slaughter that you saw in other parts of the world.

So you got lots of war driving technological progress but not much real economic damage.

>>1681329
>[China] couldnt compete to [obtain] forced human labour

China had opportunities to take slaves from their neighbors like this

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miao_Rebellions_(Ming_dynasty)

I don't see anything to suggest a significant difference, also slavery was only a small part of the economy at the time, serfdom having largely replaced it by the 12th century

EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES IN HUMAN GROUPS

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>European
You mean Western. Until the 18th century Orthodox Europe was a separate civilization that accomplished pretty much nothing except get fucked by Latins, Turks and Mongols.

As for the West's dominance;
>Pre-Industrial technological development (I'm just going to look at guns and ships here, but more could be said here)
With the transmission of gunpowder from China, Westerners soon began innovating and developing new kinds of gunpowder weaponry such as heavy cannon and match/wheel lock muskets. Innovation in China and the Middle East also took place, but at a much slower rate and in India the focus was more on rocketry than guns. I'm not an expert on military history and can't fully explain this, but I'm assuming the West's generally militant society (compared to the likes of China or the Indian Ocean world), constant military competition between countless kingdoms, duchies, free cities, etc combined with the concentration on siege warfare encouraged development. In contrast, China experienced long periods of relative peace under the Ming and disdained of militarism, while the Middle East and India were dominated by steppe warriors and slave armies ruling large empires without as much need for innovation (though there was still some, hence the likes of the Gunpowder Empires).

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>>1681596
Western Europe lies between two oceans, the Atlantic and Mediterranean. Both have long histories of large scale naval warfare, such as the Vikings or the Hundred Years War in the Atlantic and the Greeks, Romans and Crusades in the Mediterranean. Thus, the West took part in two separate developments of shipping and naval warfare, which were combined into one as the two oceans were increasingly connected in the Late Middle Ages, giving rise to highly maneuverable caravels and carracks, which when combined with the West's highly developed gunpowder technology became like floating fortresses far in advance of what Asia possessed. The Indian Ocean in contrast had a far more peaceful history and was thus less militarized; ports were not defended with sea walls and cannon and ships were small and only armed to fight off petty pirates, not fight wars. East Asia did possess an old and highly developed tradition of naval warfare and were often able to fend off European ships, but this usually involved Chinese numerical superiority as they lacked the same mastery of cannon and naval warfare in general. This was noted in China by the likes of Zheng Zhilong who successfully Westernised his own ships and used them against the Dutch, but he was an exception as Western innovations were generlly rejected. One Ming official noted that "Dutch ships are like mountains; ours are like anthills".

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>>1681599
>Global empire-building
The West's geographic position, Christian proselytism and crusading ideology and its relationship with Islam encouraged exploration and empire-building, while the guns and ships mentioned previously gave them the means. In Late Medieval Europe trade with the Indian Ocean increased, but this trade was done through Egyptian and Venetian middle men who charged extortionate prices. Other Italians, the Spanish and Portuguese saw that bypassing these middle men would make them rich, so the Spanish tried to cross the Atlantic and found the Americas while the Portuguese rounded Africa. Land-hunger, precious metals and proselytism drove a rapid conquest of the Americas as the native population succumbed to disease while the Portuguese with their crusading spirit attempted (with limited success) to take over the Indian Ocean trade from the Muslims who dominated it. Soon the Iberians were followed by other Atlantic Europeans and an age of global imperialism took hold. In contrast, the Islamic world, India and East Asia all had direct access to the Indian Ocean, the Silk Roads and (in Islam's case) the Trans-Saharan trade and thus had no need to go exploring far off parts of the world, since they were already at the center of it as far as they were concerned. Westerners on the other hand saw the center of the world as lying to the East even long before the Age of Exploration; just look at the Crusades or legends of Prester John, or compare the writings of Marco Polo (describing a fantastic and wealthy east hardly known to the West) with those of Ibn Battuta (who could travel all over Eurasia and Africa while rarely stepping outside of the Islamic world). Furthermore, the large empires of Asia were far more focused on their land hold and borders that were often at risk of steppe invaders, with naval power generally being a peripheral concern, in contrast to small Atlantic European states where naval power was vital to survival.

>>1677940
Guns, germs and steel.

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>>1681604
>Intellectual development such as philosophy and science
The inheritance of classical civilization, both Greek and Latin as well as Islamic, gave the West an intellectual foundation that places like China and India lacked. Of course China and India had their own intellectual systems, but these were almost entirely self-created; they didn't have the advantage of inheriting from other and earlier civilizations. The fact that the Chinese thought the world was flat until the 17th century is an example of the effect this could have. Islam had the same foundation but for various reasons stagnated intellectually after the 13th century (the loss of al-Andalus, Turks and Mongols, increasing religious intolerance and dogmatism after the 11th century, focus on madrassahs instead of independent inquiry, etc). The invention of the printing press, along with the use of an alphabet (in contrast to countless Chinese characters which made printing extremely inefficient), was the real turning point as it facilitated a circulation of ideas on a greater scale and also with greater freedom than ever before, encouraging innovation. Thus over the next centuries ideas such as scientific theory, the idea of 'progress', human rights, classic economic thought, populist nationalism and democracy were developed and exerted massive influence over the direction of Western civilization and in many cases helped to facilitate its dominance.

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>>1681609
>Industry
Essentially the previous factors (technological innovation, empire building, economic thought, scientific theory, etc) combined with England's rich coal deposits, high population, small size and its agricultural revolution. I won't go too much into this since I'm not great with economic history, but it was essentially the final guarantee of Western dominance; before the West dominated the oceans and the Americas and had surpassed all the civilizations of Asia, but they were still nowhere near ruling the world. The Industrial Revolution lead to a near-total military dominance across the world, even areas that escaped colonialism like China or Persia ultimately being under the influence of Western powers. Finally, this forced the world to adopt from the West leading to the modern proliferation of Western-style nation states all across the world and the creation of a truly globalized world-civilization in the 20th century as Europe's central position declined.

This is a simplistic overview and there are plenty of other factors involved, such as agricultural innovations, high urbanisation, unique institutions and relative isolation from the Eurasian steppes (steppe conquerors were not only incredibly destructive in places like China and Iran/Iraq, but their cavalry-based warrior cultures could in some cases hold back innovation, such as with the Egyptian Mamluke's neglect of gunpowder).

>>1678272
>HE HE WHY DOES IT ALWAYS LEAD TO THE SAME RESULT

probably because people reach the same conclusions, don't ya think LeShawn?

>>1679690
>not muriga
>not china
>not sweden

4/10 try again

>>1681270
I dont see how "because they are indo-european" is an argument here considering that there are non-western indo-europeans like iranians,armenians and indians.

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>>1677940
I bet 100 American Dollars that OP is from Italy or Albania some other crumbling state and is pushing WE WUZ YURO meme too make up for it.

>>1681658
>bunch of literally whos