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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   37948 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 27, 2023

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An anonymous substacker has written up a good piece on the Rise of the West. Essentially, he comes to the conclusion that the divergence began in the 1000-1500 A.D. period and that subsequent colonisation efforts by Europe of the rest of the world was simply an outgrowth of those earlier advantages.

This of course upends the familiar trope of "the West got rich by the backs of the Third World" so popular with leftists in the West and in countries like India, across the political spectrum. I bring this up because if the poor countries of the world today have any hope of catching up, they should first re-examine honestly why they fell behind in the first place. Yet I see precious little of that, except mostly moral grandstanding about the evils of the exploitative West.

This also has domestic political implications because a lot of white guilt-driven narratives are sprung from the narrative that the West got rich by exploitation and thus the logical corollary is that evil white people should repent (preferably through monetary reparations). The narrative that colonisation was simply a natural outgrowth of European pre-existing advantages that grew over time naturally undermines it. One could also note that the Barbary slave trade, or the slave auctions in the Ottoman Empire, shows that the Third World was far from innocent. But of course these historical facts don't have high political payoffs in the contemporary era, so they are ignored or underplayed.

"the West got rich by the backs of the Third World" so popular with leftists in the West and in countries like India, across the political spectrum.

Additionally, southern colonies were significant poorer and worse off compared to Northern ones despite an abundance of unpaid manpower. brains and ingenuity seem to be the most important factors for creating wealth, and second to that, property rights and free markets. Colonialism didn't prevent Great Britain, Portugal, or France from declining either.

In fact northern settler colonies seem to have been wealthier than the mother country almost as soon as they were founded- both for catholic Quebec, puritan New England, Proto-liberal Pennsylvania and New York, etc. And that’s especially striking because Quebec was in most ways more poorly run than New England or Pennsylvania due to trying to preserve feudalism, and lacked the selection effects of New England(if anything they ran the other direction). It’s like European powers understood how to reach a local maximum and consistently set things up to do so when there weren’t preexisting institutions.

This assessment lines up more or less with Charles Murray's mapping of significant historical figures in his book Human Accomplishment, which shows disproportionate numbers of notable people being born in the European core i.e. Northern Italy, Western Germany, France, the Low Countries, and England starting in the late Middle Ages. This in turn lines up more or less with the Hajnal line, suggesting that changes in family structure and social organization in western Europe during the centuries between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance were the proximate cause. England in particular may have been making moves in this direction earlier than the rest of Europe (the loss of specific terms for extended family members in the English language and simplification of rules for blood money payments in the event of clan feuds seem to have happened there first).

the loss of specific terms for extended family members in the English language and simplification of rules for blood money payments in the event of clan feuds seem to have happened there first

This is very interesting to me, can you elaborate?

As far back as we can look, Old English seems not to precisely distinguish between the different types of cousins. It has been noted that:

the complete lack of specificity in terms for cousins of various degrees, which would be all-important in the operation of a wide-ranging bilateral system, suggests that these kin and the distinctions between them was not regularly of major significance.

This is quite unlike that of most continental Germanic systems at that time, in which such distinctions were of paramount importance in both criminal and inheritance law. Weregild payments in compensation for a crime, while present among the Anglo-Saxons (which is why we have the word), seem to have been a smaller-scale affair i.e. you pay the aggrieved party's immediate family, rather than one in which everyone out to your nth cousins had to pay blood money to every extended relative of the aggrieved party to the nth degree, with decreasing amounts based on your distance from the subject of the dispute. The latter system seems to have been in place among the Old Franks in France, the Old Norse in Scandinavia, and indeed in many modern tribal societies today.

All this would seem to suggest an earlier transition in England to living in nuclear families, in which it is both unnecessary and impractical to distinguish between cousins that are older or younger, male or female, paternal or maternal, or of increasing distance from oneself. It may also go some way towards explaining the cultural distinctiveness of the English and the broader Anglosphere as compared to other Europeans.

Most languages have different words for eg maternal and paternal uncles, brothers in law married to your sister and brothers in law related to your wife, maternal and paternal grandparents, 1st and 2nd cousins, aunts by marriage and aunts by blood, etc. I’m not an old Germanic scholar but my understanding is that old English was no exception- however, English today does not have those terms, and their disappearance is probably linked to the hajnal line setting in.

Likewise blood feud payments were drawn from an elaborate clan structure; each relative of the killer paid a certain amount based on how closely related to him he was(or else the killer was killed in turn) and each relative of the murdered man received his share of the payment, again, depending on how closely related to him he was. Where the law codes governing this survive, it’s possible to track the extent and closeness of extended families by looking at the codes- in laws and 3rd cousins being dropped indicates smaller extended families.

I am not sure that there is anything particularly new here. Even without analyzing Europe vs. the rest of the world between 1000 and 1500 CE, the most likely theory by far to explain why multiple different small European countries came to dominate most of the rest of the world soon after 1500 CE is that those European countries had massive advantages compared to the rest of the world. There is no other plausible explanation. The idea that Europe had no advantages but still somehow came to conquer almost the entire planet is so implausible that there is not much need to counter it. I think it would be pretty hard to find any leftist who is even in the least bit capable of intellectual thought who actually believes that Europe somehow conquered the rest of the world without having already had an advantage over the rest of the world. It is just that, for example, they generally do not think that the advantage was genetic.

Also, even if Europe was already wealthier than the rest of the world in some ways before 1500 CE, it is nonetheless true that Europe got part of its wealth through exploiting the rest of the world, so the case for reparations is not seriously affected by this line of argument. If a wealthy successful guy steals from a less successful guy, is the victim owed any fewer reparations as a result? Even if the wealthy guy later helps the victim to get richer than he would otherwise have been, is the victim owed any fewer reparations as a result? In my view, no. There is a perfectly logical line of argument that says that reparations are owed for the original victimization and it does not matter whether the victim came to later in some ways benefit from the victimization.

Even if the wealthy guy later helps the victim to get richer than he would otherwise have been, is the victim owed any fewer reparations as a result? In my view, no. There is a perfectly logical line of argument that says that reparations are owed for the original victimization and it does not matter whether the victim came to later in some ways benefit from the victimization.

If the "victim" has already been compensated, why would he deserve additional compensation? Furthermore, the situation here is very different, in that neither the "victim" nor the "wealthy guy" are still around; we're talking about the often-distant descendants of people who merely share a nationality.

those European countries had massive advantages compared to the rest of the world. There is no other plausible explanation. The idea that Europe had no advantages but still somehow came to conqu

What 'massive' advantages ? China was vastly richer and more populous.

During most of the era in question, the Ottomans were far stronger than western European countries.

About the only non-political advantages Europeans had was superior naval technology, which they invented themselves out of necessity, that promoted trade.

Later, Britain gave itself massive advantages by turbocharging the accumulated efficiency improvements over the rest through industrialisation, and thus got vastly richer. Nowhere in this process of increasing efficiency or use of fossil fuels the rest of the world mattered much.

Notably, the countries that obtained the most wealth from abroard, such as Spain, were least good at this and the most backward ones.

About the only non-political advantages Europeans had was superior naval technology

And cannon and other firearm technology, where Europe pretty quickly outstripped the rest of the world, post-1500. And the printing press, which was essentially nonexistent in the Ottoman Empire for centuries after its widespread use in Europe.

How curious that both of these are Chinese inventions too!

On print, China had a similar revolution of letters in the Early to High Middle Ages, and on cannon, not only did they first discover gunpowder and invent the cannon all the way back in the 12-13th centuries, they kept up with European advances at least until mid-late 17th century*!

So there must be something different here at play that either enabled Europe to dominate the world, and/or incentivised them to, that for one reason or another did not happen in other societies.

*Granted, mostly from importing European technology and specimens, though the Chinese would come up with e.g. composite metal casted cannons that Europeans would adopt. Albrecht Herport, a Dutch soldier fighting on Taiwan (against Ming dynasty remnants) noted that the Chinese “know how to make very effective guns and cannons, so that it’s scarcely possible to find their equal elsewhere” — likely an exaggeration, but indicative that the Chinese were not complete laggards in this regard. The original source is afaik Voyage to Java, Formosa, India and Ceylon (though I might be wrong), and the English translation of that quote is found in Tonio Andrade’s The Gunpowder Age.

Or, something that prevented China from taking complete advantage of their initial lead, which is the standard explanation.

Or both!

the most likely theory by far to explain why multiple different small European countries came to dominate most of the rest of the world soon after 1500 CE is that those European countries had massive advantages compared to the rest of the world. There is no other plausible explanation.

This is just kicking the can down the road though, from "What advantages did those nations have" to "Why did those nations have those advantages and other nations didn't" or "Why did those nations capitalise their advantages when other nations didn't?"

China had thousand-year-plus advantages over the West in terms of urbanisation and per capita GDP and raw population and paper money and yadda yadda yadda before 1000. "Having massive advantages" is clearly not sufficient to BTFO the world.

Another interesting piece of information that people don't particularly like to acknowledge is that colonisation might actually have benefited the colonised countries' economies and resulted in improved health and general wellbeing when compared with the counterfactual situation.

For example, countries like Kenya benefited from the establishment of a cash economy, the modernisation of infrastructure, and the spread of Western medicine. There’s a study which used height data as a proxy for nutrition and health to investigate how well Kenyans did under colonial rule. It notes that “however bad colonial policies and devastating short-term crises were, the net outcome of colonial times was a significant progress in nutrition and health.” Other numbers quoted in that article show improvements in the health infrastructure as well as a steep decline in infant mortality during the colonial period.

This article, in trying to explain the end of colonialism, speaks of a population explosion that occurred pretty much everywhere in the colonised world, and notes that while sometimes this was a result of immigration, in most colonies it was a result of population growth. "[P]opulation increase during the colonial period presumably was not an exogenous event, but rather a result of changes produced by colonialism itself —specifically, increased employment opportunities and decreased mortality due to the introduction of European technologies." The author suggests the increased population resulted in more subversive activity and extralegal appropriation of profits which might explain decolonisation.

Interestingly, it was not during colonialism, but during independence that the situations of many of the colonised countries became how it is today. This World Bank report notes "Almost every African country has witnessed a systematic regression of capacity in the last thirty years; the majority had better capacity at independence than they now possess. Many countries have lost professionals with valuable skills to more prosperous neighbors or to the developed world because of poor motivational practices, poor governance, internal conflicts, and civil wars. Guinea presents the most classic example of this decline. At independence, Guinea had a highly motivated public service, with clear rules on recruitment, promotion, and appointments to senior positions. Public sector infrastructure - roads, telephones, and so on-were adequate and well functioning. All these have broken down today."

And once the "colonisers" left, African politics became quite the corrupted hellhole. "[O]nce the political imperative of independence was achieved, the tools of nation building became a double-edged sword, increasingly coming to serve the ends of patronage in the struggle to retain and consolidate power. In this struggle, economic logic was the loser, resulting in factories located miles from critical inputs, paved roads extending into useless bush, while areas of high agricultural output were left unexploited for lack of transport. The heavy and often corrupted and corrupting hand of the centralized autocratic political system reached into all branches of the public service, controlling public administration, the judiciary, the private sector, and civil society."

Even the worst example of colonial exploitation, the Congo, had a better deal under colonisation then it does now. The Congo Free State under Leopold II was pretty bad, yes. On the other hand, the Belgian Congo was... okay, relatively speaking. Infrastructure was built, and living standards improved to a degree that would not be seen there at any point after. I think Moldbug makes a convincing case for it here, and it's notable that some Congolese after independence expressed a wistfulness for the days of colonialism. This Time article details such a perspective from a Congolese man.

"We should just give it all back to the whites," the riverboat captain says. "Even if you go 1,000 kilometers down this river, you won't see a single sign of development. When the whites left, we didn't just stay where we were. We went backwards."

“The river is the artery of Congo’s economy,” he says. “When the Belgians and the Portuguese were here, there were farms and plantations — cashews, peanuts, rubber, palm oil. There was industry and factories employing 3,000 people, 5,000 people. But since independence, no Congolese has succeeded. The plantations are abandoned.” Using a French expression literally translated as “on the ground,” he adds: “Everything is par terre.”

This is not necessarily a case in favour of colonialism and colonial policy, but if someone wants to claim that whites should feel some sort of endless historical guilt for the plight of third-world countries today and subject themselves to a system of racial reparations, they’ve got another thing coming.

This anti-colonial argument often underpinned by a willful ignorance of how basic economics works.

Even where the Europeans (I am talking about 18-20th century Asian and African colonialism) engaged in basic resource extraction like mining (and the economies of colonies were generally far more sophisticated in reality than one might think) it still results in substainal economic development for the locals. Europeans had to build massive amounts of infrastructive to support these economic activities, to say nothing of the associated colonial administration like hospitals, schools and law enforcement. But the most important part is that the local workers were paid for their work and there was wealth flowing to the natives of the colony. The anti-colonial (typically Marxist) persective sees economy activity has necessarily zero-sum. If someone is making money, someone else must be losing money (or having their labour 'stolen'). This is obviously wrong.

Now, were these colonial economic arrangements as fair as they could have been? Maybe not, though once you factor in the expenditures on colonial administration and that colonialism generally speaking a money-losing venture for the Europeans it becomes a lot less clear.

But the counter-factual of no colonialism is that there would have been no economic development at all, and most economic activity that did exist would have continued to be conducted under local slavery (or similar economic structures) which is far less fair than the colonial arrangements.

South Africa is going particularly badly. I read a book review here: https://thepsmiths.substack.com/p/review-south-africas-brave-new-world

The most interesting sections:

…in the Khayelitsha squatter settlement, outside Cape Town… the DA [Democratic Alliance, an opposition political party] had made inroads thanks to the tireless activism of township workers fed up with the warlord-rule of local ANC councillors… One ANC councillor, De Putch Elise, held a meeting where his DA opponents attempted to speak about Elise’s alleged abuse of his housing allocation powers to punish DA supporters. Elise drew a gun and in full view of the crowd shot six of the DA activists, wounding five and killing one… the police declined to lay charges against Elise.

He (Mandela) declared that the solution to continuing violence in KwaZulu-Natal was for everyone to join the ANC… In 1995 he told a May Day rally that if the IFP continued to resist the ANC he would cut off all funding to KwaZulu-Natal, the most populous province. This was a completely unconstitutional threat which had to be quickly retracted. Similarly, when he dismissed Winnie from government he failed to read the constitution and thus had to reappoint her and later dismiss her again. Visiting Tanzania, he announced that: “We are going to sideline and even crush all dissident forces in our country.”

That's one hell of a villainous statement, even if something is lost in translation.

Mandela also made a lot of genuinely very big-hearted speeches pitching a “rainbow nation” vision of South Africa and begging whites not to flee the country, but every time the interests of justice conflicted with those of the ANC, he showed himself to be a party man first and foremost. The most revolting examples of this are two incidents in which independent prosecutors were investigating ANC atrocities (in one case a massacre of dozens of protestors, the other case an incident where some Zulus were kept in a cage inside a local ANC party HQ and tortured for months), and Mandela staked the full power of his moral authority on blocking the inquiries. In the case of the massacre, Mandela went so far as to declare that he had ordered the gunmen to shoot, which everybody knew to be a lie, but which meant that any attempt to pursue the coverup would mean taking down Mandela too. Nobody had the stomach to face that prospect, so the prosecutors dropped the case.

Who could've guessed that former terrorist leader Mandela was not a very nice fellow? It then mentions South Africa's staunch support for Zimbabwe during its problem-period of economic collapse, ethnic cleansing and so on. This was under Mbeki's de facto leadership of South Africa.

The second, even more catastrophic event that caused the South African government to lose the sheen of respectability was the AIDS epidemic and their response to it. The story of how Mbeki buried his head in the sand, embraced quack theories on the causes of AIDS, and condemned hundreds of thousands of people to avoidable deaths is well known at this point, but Johnson’s book is full of grimly hysterical details that turn the whole story into the darkest comedy you’ve ever seen.

For example: I had no idea that Mbeki was so ahead of his time in outsourcing his opinions to schizopoasters on the internet. According to his confidantes, at the height of the crisis the president was frequently staying up all night interacting pseudonymously with other cranks on conspiracy-minded forums (an important cautionary tale for all those… umm… friends of mine who enjoy dabbling in a conspiracy forum or two).3 These views were then laundered through a succession of bumbling and imbecilic health ministers such as Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma4 or Mantombazana Tshabalala-Msimang who gave surreal press conferences extolling the healing powers of “Africanist” remedies such as potions made from garlic, beetroot, and potato.

I wonder if there are any dictators posting on /pol/ or whatever the modern conspiracy forum is. And of course there's the tacit encouragement of victims of child rape getting HIV:

The horror of it all is that by this point there were very good drugs that could massively cut the risk of mother-child HIV transmission and somewhat reduced the odds of contracting the virus after a traumatic sexual encounter. There were a lot of traumatic sexual encounters. A contemporaneous survey found that around 60 percent of South Africans believed that forcing sex on somebody was not necessarily violence, and a common “Africanist” belief was that sex with a virgin could cure AIDS, all of which led to extreme levels of child rape. The government then did everything in its power to prevent the victims of these rapes from accessing drugs that could stave off a deadly disease. At first the excuse was that they were too expensive, then when the drug companies called that bluff and offered the drugs for free, it became that they caused “mutations.”

After Mbeki disappears, we get Zuma as a new interesting personality. He's basically the South African Trump, except more based.

The last chance to stop Zuma was a credible-seeming rape accusation from a family friend. The ANC pounced on this, and initiated a high-profile criminal trial. This incensed Zuma’s supporters, who insisted that the prosecution was politically motivated (given that over the past decade the ANC had all but stopped prosecuting rape cases in society more broadly, they may have had a point). The trial was a total debacle. Countless thousands of young activists showed up outside the courtroom wearing t-shirts with slogans like “One hundred percent Zuluboy,” “Burn the bitch,” and “Zuma was raped.” When summoned to the witness stand, the president-to-be performed war dances and led the crowds in song. The prosecution collapsed after the accuser's story was found to be inconsistent on numerous points, and a triumphant Zuma rode the backlash all the way to the presidency.

Another interesting piece of information that people don't particularly like to admit to is that colonisation might actually have benefited the colonised countries' economies and resulted in improved health and general wellbeing when compared with the counterfactual situation.

It's irrelevant even if it's true. Colonization is being argued as inherently immoral.

Yes. It is relevant, however, in the context of demanding reparations and other forms of coercive political action as remedy. Without proving that colonisation is the reason for the poor state of any given population of people it's about as pertinent to anyone's present plight as the Norman Conquest.

One can easily make the case that reparations are owed one way or another for the original act of victimization and that whatever happened to the victim afterward is irrelevant to the matter. If someone kidnapped you and turned you into a slave for 10 years but while enslaved you spent more time than before reading books and so after you escaped you became richer than you had been before I kidnapped you, it would not invalidate the argument that the person who kidnapped you owes you something.

Given that both colonists and colonised are all dead now, who would be paying the reparations to who?

the person who kidnapped you owes you something

So ... that's a "yes chad" to the question of Norman Conquest reparations? If so, there's going to be a long line behind the Anglo-Saxons.

Perhaps a statute of limitations of mere decades isn't the best idea, but isn't punishment at least a little tricky if you and the person who kidnapped you have both been dead for a century or two? We tend to laugh at the idea of posthumous execution in modern times, but that at least seems more just than "take it out on the great grandkids".

If someone kidnapped you and turned you into a slave for 10 years but while enslaved you spent more time than before reading books and so after you escaped you became richer than you had been before I kidnapped you, it would not invalidate the argument that the person who kidnapped you owes you something.

Firstly, your hypothetical isn't exactly analogous to the situation under discussion, since in your hypothetical it is not the act of victimisation that directly caused the richness of the slave, whereas when it comes to colonialism it was what the colonisers did which ended up improving health and living standards (and it did so while the colonisation was happening, which is yet another dissimilarity to your hypothetical).

Secondly, in line with your stated moral principles, I hope you are in favour of Arabs compensating the Assyrians and approx 50 other ethnic groups for the 7th century Muslim conquest of the Levant. Or hey, as mentioned, the Norman Conquest of 1066. According to this article people with Norman surnames today are overrepresented at Oxbridge and elite occupations like medicine, law and politics. Reparations sure seem to be in order.

Alternatively, we could let bygones be bygones, instead of demarcating a special class of victims and making grievance inheritable. But that's just what my preference regarding public policy is, as a person who grew up in a post-colonial country themselves.

I believe that @Goodguy is arguing not that reparations should be paid, but rather that, if an act is immoral, the fact that victims ultimately benefited from that act does not imply that the perpetrator is immune from responsibility for that act. To change their hypothetical very slightly: " If someone kidnapped you and turned you into a slave for 10 years but while enslaved [taught you to read] and so after you escaped you became richer than you had been before [they] kidnapped you, it would not invalidate the argument that the person who kidnapped you owes you something."

My comment was specifically created to address the arguments of people demanding reparations. I appropriately scoped my point for making the claims I did in my original comment: "This is not necessarily a case in favour of colonialism and colonial policy, but if someone wants to claim that whites should feel some sort of endless historical guilt for the plight of third-world countries today and subject themselves to a system of racial reparations, they’ve got another thing coming." As a result, any supposed "counter" to my original point which is not related to the discussion of reparations is attacking a point which I did not make. I would also add that I do not necessarily believe colonisation was moral, but I also do not believe responsibility for colonisation is inherited, and thus the hypothetical still fails. The way people argue for intergenerational guilt is to claim that the effects of colonisation still persist, but if negative effects attributable to colonisation aren't demonstrated, that argument isn't an effective counter.

Furthermore, I would also dispute your characterisation of the reply to me. The argument that was being forwarded by my interlocutor was that reparations should, in fact, be paid. To quote: "One can easily make the case that reparations are owed one way or another for the original act of victimization." The user's other comment in this thread is also pretty clearly forwarding a case for it.

EDIT: added more

I see the key part of that quote as "one way or the other."

Regardless, it does seem to be that the argument that reparations are unjustified because "the colonized benefited from colonization" does not really address the argument that colonization was an inherent wrong (an argument, BTW, which which I completely disagree: As far as I am concerned, it is an argument manufactured (or adopted, since it is really a Western idea) by local elites and foisted upon the hoi polloi; it is essentially, "Your oppression by outsiders is immoral! It is we who should be oppressing you!"). Arguments re inheritance of responsibility are much stronger, in my view.

More comments

I was reading about technology in Sub-Saharan Africa the other day. They bought up the University of Sankore which was apparently very big and prestigious, scholars from there blitzed their Islamic brethren in terms of erudition. Some fellow there had a very big library. Yet nobody seems to know specifically what they discovered or taught in any specific sense.

There was also metalworking in the Kongo, which was apparently very advanced. Apparently they had very good iron-working, competitive with 18th century Europeans:

"The Portuguese foundry at Novas Oerias utilized European techniques was unsuccessful, never becoming competitive with Angolan smiths. The iron produced by Kongo smiths was superior to that of European imports produced under European processes. There was no incentive to replace Kongo iron with European iron unless Kongo iron was unavailable."

I'm not terribly confident in the reliability of the source African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter. Eventually they explain that there was an ecological disaster and cheap, inferior European steel was imported anyway. Nevertheless, Kongolese slaves made good steel when they were taken to America!

But why were Kongo people being dispatched as slaves if their steel was so good? Why were the Portuguese coming to them as opposed to the Kongolese coming to Europe? For that matter, the Portuguese somehow took control of maritime trade routes all over the world from as soon as they showed up. A small kingdom like Portugal directly ruled half of Ceylon/Sri Lanka, various parts of India (Goa is still the richest Indian state), swathes of the African coast. They eventually had issues defending their global empire - but only from other Europeans like Britain, France and the Dutch. The natives weren't capable of beating back the Portuguese alone, they usually had to get help from the Dutch or somebody else. It's like the whole non-European world were NPCs, unable to withstand even small forces from Europe. They were usually in a passive position, regardless of whether they had better or worse technology.

Time after time, tiny European armies show up and dominate. Pizarro, Cortes, Clive... They usually exploited divisions amongst the locals - yet nobody manages to do the same against Europe. When the Ottomans attacked, half of Christendom united to fight at Lepanto. Later on the Poles launch the largest cavalry charge in history to save Vienna from the Turk. Only the perfidious French actually worked with the Ottomans and it was a fairly loose alliance.

The natives weren't capable of beating back the Portuguese alone, they usually had to get help from the Dutch or somebody else.

The real answer is because, generally speaking, the natives had no reason to 'beat back' the Portugese, or any other colonial state. They benefited from colonial contact, especially in the 18th century onwards. Colonial states had legitimacy and widespread local support until the mid-20th century.

It was less the natives 'getting help from the Dutch or somebody else' but more 'Europeans getting the help from the natives' to kick out their European rivals.

But if the British or Portuguese rule a territory, it means that the locals don't. The pre-industrial world was largely a zero-sum affair, the pie was growing very slowly. This was the age of mercantilism, where you fought hard to control markets. The Europeans certainly fought hard against eachother, they invented the concept. The same competitive dynamics should apply for everyone else vs the Europeans. If the Portuguese have the trade, it meant the Muslims don't. That's taking money directly out of their pockets. And then there's a big culture clash and religious clash.

Plus, as I mentioned below, the Portuguese were on an absolute rampage in the Indian Ocean. They were directly taking on Indian principalities and the Ottoman Empire, a gigantic country with far more resources than Portugal. Most of the time the Portuguese won and they were fighting on the enemy's home turf!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Diu_(1538)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Cannanore_(1507)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capture_of_Malacca_(1511)

But if the British or Portuguese rule a territory, it means that the locals don't.

The vast, vast majority of people working in Indian colonial administration were native Indians, to say nothing of the local Rajas who had significant influence. This is generally true of all European colonial states in Africa and Asia in the 1800s onwards. In a large sense, the locals did rule themselves, even if guided by European thought and colonial administrators.

It's really only through the power of ideologies such as nationalism that to a native in Cochin/Kochi that rule from London (not matter how hands off) is illegitimate but rule from New Delhi is legitimate.

The pre-industrial world was largely a zero-sum affair

Colonialism in the context being discussed (that is, Africa and Asia reperations) is a mostly post-industral or at the very least a proto-industrial phenomeon. A bunch of Portugese trading posts scattered around Asia and Africa isn't really colonialism proper. Only in the latter part of the 1800s (as with most European powers, scramble for Africa) did Portugal really gained substantial control over what we would call colonial states (e.g. Mozambique and Angola).

Regardless, I also object to the claim that pre-industrial trading was zero-sum. It was obviously not zero-sum, or else the participants (e.g. Portugal and costal Indian kingdoms) wouldn't have participated in it! Portugal got their spices, the Indians got their silver. The actual participants in the trading mutually benefit. The fact that traders might seek to monopolise that trade doesn't change the fact that the people actually doing the trading are mutually benefiting. They're looking to gain an economic advantage over their trading competitor not their trading partner. This is no different to modern economics - the fact that some business try to monopolise or engage in anti-competitive behaviour today isn't evidence of economic activity being zero-sum!

The actual participants in the trading mutually benefit.

But they make sure that the profiting participants are all Portuguese as opposed to Dutch or Muslim, that's the whole point! The Portuguese took control of the key ports and entrepots, they ensured that they were in control of the lucrative trade routes. They buy spices in Asia, sell them in Europe and the vast majority of the profit goes to Portuguese traders and eventually back to the state. They find ways to ensure that nobody else can challenge their control of the region. Maybe their ships go missing at sea, maybe their warehouses burn down, maybe they charge tolls and duties that render them uncompetitive.

On a strategic level, from the point of view of the state or state-like companies such as the EIC or VOC, global trade is zero sum in this period. That's why they fought wars to control it. There's a big difference between what we call anti-competitive behaviour today and companies waging full-scale war to secure monopolies on trade, to secure strategic bases and oceans. They often annexed various islands and ruled directly.

Trade itself isn't zero-sum. That is, the very act of exchanging goods and services between mutually consenting and informed parts is not zero-sum, and is in-fact mutually beneficial.

The issue is 1) rentseeking behaviour by organisations and individuals which is self explanatory, 2) goods, particularly exotic commodities are finite, so there is competiton and an incentive to monopolise. But this doesn't change the fact that trading in of itself is mutually beneficial. Preventing someone else from trading because you traded with a third party and they did not is still a net benefit overall. You and the third party trading partner benefit. The trading competitor who was muscled out of the market doesn't lose anything except the opportunity to trade and benefit themselves, destroyed and captured ships notwithstanding.

Time after time, tiny European armies show up and dominate. Pizarro, Cortes, Clive... They usually exploited divisions amongst the locals - yet nobody manages to do the same against Europe.

A simple potential answer - put forward in Empires of the Weak iirc is that most of Europe's alleged advantages (e.g. centuries of conflict sharpening state power and the military) were secondary to one particular one: in seafaring.

This gave Europe the strategic initiative. Europeans did lose (like the Romans they won the last battle). Did get pressed. Often couldn't really bring their full might like they did against their closer European competitors (which is allegedly where their main advantage was). But they could always choose to return and fight again. They could choose where they fought or reinforced.

I personally don't know. I think the Great Divergence question might be unanswerable, useful more as a sort of intellectual version of a barbershop question like "Jay or Biggie?" or "Lebron or Kobe?". At least for a layman like me.

Some fellow there had a very big library. Yet nobody seems to know specifically what they discovered or taught in any specific sense.

I have tried looking into what exactly is in the manuscripts at Timbuktu myself and my conclusion was that the material within is mostly translations of works we have from elsewhere (both Greco-Roman and Islamic), with many of the original works being of dubious interest to a modern audience i.e. books about astrology and lists of magic spells. There may be some novel contributions to Islamic jurisprudence and accounts of historical events as well, but I remain unconvinced that there are brilliant philosophical insights or scientific discoveries waiting to be unearthed from this particular collection.

It was a great surprise to me the first time I realized that certain societies could be literate for centuries with relatively little to show for it in terms of great works. The literary output of classical Athens in a single century was easily better than the previous three thousand years of Egyptian writing combined. Even accounting for the difference in literacy rates (and just look at China to see what you can do without an alphabet), the contrast is stark.

It was a great surprise to me the first time I realized that certain societies could be literate for centuries with relatively little to show for it in terms of great works. The literary output of classical Athens in a single century was easily better than the previous three thousand years of Egyptian writing combined.

When I first read the Bible, I noticed the Old Testament got way more interesting at Job, Ecclesiastes, and Songs. You can read and love these even as an Atheist. They're great. Later, I discovered these books were probably written during the Hellenistic period. There was something uniquely awesome and fertile about Greek culture at that particular moment.

Should this be surprising? Calculus might have been invented by many algebraically literate cultures for hundreds of years. Then, two separate Western Europeans invented it within a twelve year period. Along with a million other discoveries, dug up in a frenzy during the Enlightenment. It takes a special combo of cultural forces to produce amazing intellectual advancements.

The literary output of classical Athens in a single century was easily better than the previous three thousand years of Egyptian writing combined.

I don't really know much about this topic. But my first assumption here would be Hellenism's spread via Alexander and the Roman adoption of Greek mores would be first to blame for Greek prominence.

Alexander appeared afterwards. The Romans arrived after him.

I generally agree, but have a quibble about the "Portugal directly ruled" parts of India and Sri Lanka. They had a lot of trade outposts, but they didn't conquer and rule in the way you imply. When you say " The natives weren't capable of beating back the Portuguese alone, they usually had to get help from the Dutch or somebody else" it's not really accurate. Most of the kingdoms making up India were quite capable of defeating the outnumbered Portuguese in a fight: they had good steel weapons, and guns, and cannons themselves. The Portuguese worked with the various Indian powers in order to create their trading empire, and the Dutch came in and swept them off their feet not only with sword and gun but also by making better deals and friends among the local elite.

This is in contrast to the conquistadors in the New World who genuinely had a major technological advantage in terms of steel weapons, armor, war horses, and cannons. The West dominated India and China in the end, but when the Portuguese arrived Europeans and India arguably had parity when it came to weaponry and technology. Which just makes it more incredible that within 200 years the Europeans had left them all behind.

I asked chat-GPT4 and this is what it had to say on firearms:

Late 15th century (1480s-1490s):

The Portuguese began exploring new maritime trade routes under the leadership of Prince Henry the Navigator. At this time, firearms such as hand cannons were in use in some Indian states, while the Portuguese had also started to adopt early firearms like the arquebus. The disparity between the two was minimal during this period.

Early 16th century (1500-1530):

The Portuguese, under the leadership of Vasco da Gama, reached India in 1498, and they established their first trading post in Calicut in 1500. During this period, the Portuguese had a clear advantage in firearms technology, as they were using arquebuses with a range of 100-200 meters, while most Indian states still used hand cannons with a range of 50-100 meters. This disparity in firearms technology persisted throughout this period.

Mid-16th century (1530-1560):

The Portuguese consolidated their power in Asia, establishing more fortified trading posts and securing strategic alliances with local rulers. The Indian states began to adopt matchlock guns (toradar or bandook), which were similar to the Portuguese arquebus in terms of range and accuracy (100-200 meters). The disparity in firearms technology decreased during this period, as Indian states started to adopt European-style firearms.

Late 16th century (1560-1600):

The Portuguese began to use muskets, which had a range of 200-300 meters, providing them with a renewed advantage in firearms technology. At the same time, Indian states continued to adopt and adapt European firearms, with some producing high-quality matchlock guns. The disparity in firearms technology during this period varied, depending on the specific Indian state and its capacity to produce or acquire advanced firearms.

Early 17th century (1600-1650):

The military advantage of the Portuguese began to decline as other European powers, such as the Dutch, English, and French, entered the Asian trade arena and established their own trading posts. Indian states, including the Mughal Empire and the Maratha Empire, continued to adopt and improve upon European military technology, further narrowing the disparity between Indian and Portuguese firearms.

--

In other areas the Europeans had greater advantages. In regards to firearms specifically there was a period of relative parity in the early part of the 17th century before the Europeans pulled ahead again with the introduction of flintlock firearms (and then pulling ever further ahead).

The Portuguese did rule Goa though, as I mentioned. They also handed over parts of Mumbai to the British as a wedding dowry. These are fairly substantial territories we're talking about:

Several colonies were also acquired from the Sultan of Guzerat in the north Konkan region: Damaon was sacked in 1531 and ceded in 1539; Salsette, the seven islands of Bombay, Chaul and Bassein (Vasai) in 1534; Diu ceded in 1535. These would jointly come to be known as the Northern Province of Portuguese India. It extended almost 100 km (62 mi) along the west-coast from Daman to Chaul, and in places 30–50 km (19–31 mi) inland.

There's stuff like this where the Portuguese withstand forces that outnumber them immensely: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Cannanore_(1507)

The Portuguese garrison was on the verge of being overwhelmed, when on 27 August a fleet of 11 ships under Tristão da Cunha, the 8th Armada, coming from Socotra, appeared. The fleet landed 300 Portuguese soldiers, forcing the lifting of the siege and relieving the fortress.

They were defending against 40,000 Indians, if not more!

Portugal managed to fend off the combined power of Gujarat and the Ottoman Empire, fighting so far from home, outnumbered by far: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Diu_(1538)

As well as just defending against overwhelming numbers, the Portuguese had no trouble attacking against overwhelming numbers too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capture_of_Malacca_(1511)

They simply attacked an enemy on the other side of the world, outnumbered 20:1 and won! Maybe they just made up the numbers to sound more impressive. Even so, Malacca is a pretty rich area, that's where the spices are. India surely had plenty of manpower. They could surely field large armies. But apparently none of them could hold a candle to Portugal when it comes to combat power.

I don't fully agree that these narratives are sprung from the theory that whites got rich from exploitation.

The founding cause is the notion that we are all equal. It logically follows that if one group got 'ahead' of another, that they did so at the expense of someone else. How else could you explain the fact that one group has so much whilst another has so little? And it seems to be an unfortunate case of basic human intuition to suspect foul play whenever two sides get widely divergent results, especially if they are supposed to be equal.

When you get into the weeds of debunking theories that arise from being logically necessitated you are just slamming your head into a concrete wall. A logically necessitated theory can't ultimately be untrue. It can't be false. It's logically derived from a greater truth. It's necessitated. It has to be true in some way.

So long as you don't engage with that greater truth you will never get anywhere. In fact, people are more likely to hate you for casting aspersions on their theory since any theory you have, that doesn't align with what is logically necessitated, has to be, in some way, untrue. A lie, a play on words, a twist on reason. And what kind of a person would do such a thing?

The larger problem is that the greater truth isn't always derived at via the same way. So you might have a person who believes because their teacher said all human beings are equal. And from there the Grand Theory of Evil Whitey intuitively followed. Or you have a person who was exposed to Civil Rights propaganda as a child and started seeing black people as inherently more virtuous than white people. Or a person who simply adopts and believes in the dominant opinion of their environment for no other reason than it being that. What science man says must be true.

I think these sort of articles act as a cross between two worlds. The activist HBD types, that frame themselves as challenging a hegemony of environmentalism or whatever. And the 'I'm just doing research' types, who make contradictory theories to the 'hegemony' but don't make explicit 'the hegemony is wrong' arguments.

There is a tendency to excuse the 'just doing research' types in 'rationalist circles' for being more 'pure of heart', along with the general appeal of stats and graphs. But I think ultimately the instincts of those who decry both types of HBD enjoyers as nazis are more correct than not. You can't entertain these ideas without abandoning the idea that everyone is equal. And regardless of your motives or intent, abandoning the idea of equality will inevitably lead to the same kind of logically necessitated truths that we find in those who embrace the notion of universal human equality.

And regardless of your motives or intent, abandoning the idea of equality will inevitably lead to the same kind of logically necessitated truths that we find in those who embrace the notion of universal human equality.

Agree with everything you said but I think the meaning is unclear on this last sentence. Embrace should be reject. Or maybe those who embrace the rejection of equality.

Or do you mean that they're like mirror images of eachother? 'Favorable image of whites' camp vs the 'favorable image of blacks' posse?

I mean the latter. Not to make the 'debate' out to be too contrived or anything. There's still an objective truth out there. But people undeniably behave in this way.

It's not really useful to compare small geographies and populations in Europe to the entirety of China; if you split up Europe into lots of small pieces and focus on the best performers, it gives a misleading representation of development.

Separate out China into smaller, comparable regions (e.g. the Yangtze Delta) and you start seeing the Great Divergence/Europe as a whole outpacing China as a whole happen significantly later than 1300 (more like 1500 or even 1600).

Yet I see precious little of that,

I'm one of those Third Worlders.

Honestly: we discuss this constantly. I remember hearing from a Muslim intellectual that it's also a constant topic of conversation around the Arab dinner table how they went from the Umayyads to...this.

The West gets blamed but it's not all external - Islamism for example often centers the problems (in line with the Deuteronomist view) on the moral decay of Muslims. This does implicate the West but often their loathing is vastly more intense for the "near enemy" and the people resisting the imposition of Islamic law. Don't get the average African ranting about the corrupt elites either.

This also has domestic political implications because a lot of white guilt-driven narratives are sprung from the narrative that the West got rich by exploitation and thus the logical corollary is that evil white people should repent (preferably through monetary reparations). The narrative that colonisation was simply a natural outgrowth of European pre-existing advantages that grew over time naturally undermines it.

Not really. There's two easy counters:

  1. Colonization was a product of advantage that may have reinforced said advantage (e.g. Roman advantage in manpower allowed them to conquer which then led to more manpower) and thus was to the benefit of the West so something is owed regardless.

  2. It was still wrong. Rome being able to conquer Gaul doesn't change that allegedly enslaving a million Gauls is wrong.

What it does debunk is the view that Westerners are uniquely evil or cruel. But that is a view that hardly needs debunking for any serious interlocutor - one need only look at the empires of "PoC" when they had the capacity. Or how some of the ills they later perpetrated were already common (e.g. sub-Saharan Africans selling slaves to lighter skinned, monotheistic foreigners)

It persists due to some mix of the need for slave morality to sooth the ressentiment in the "PoC" losers in the Great Divergence and to help the PoC elites to harangue or outcompete their colleagues in the West. And for the whites with some guilt to center themselves in some inverted version of white exceptionalism. EDIT: or cowed by DEI commissars.

None of these impulses seem particularly soluble to argument.

Islamism for example often centers the problems (in line with the Deuteronomist view) on the moral decay of Muslims.

Cousin marriage, which if practised serially reduces IQ by perhaps ten points deviation was internally never proposed as a major cause of the backwardness of middle East, right ?

Yeah, that one never comes up AFAICT.

To the point where, if I hadn't seen it in the BBC first, I might have thought it was a far right thing (not the only case of this - see "Muslamic ray guns")

And I grew up in a Muslim country - albeit not a Middle Eastern one.

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