Re: ...the inability of Africa, as a continent, to improve its lot as other continents have done -- and despite wars and other pestilences which you have mentioned. Don't think I haven't given this serious consideration as also I have given thought as to why I view the world the way I do? Are these differences, in fact, genetic? Are they due to dietary differences or maybe diseases? Conditioning? Education? I regret I am unable to give a satisfactory answer.
BOOK REVIEW
"THE WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS"
by
David S. Landes
The determinants of modern economic prosperity are geography and key characteristics of Western culture.
This is plainly obvious, of course. However, because of the efforts of certain "politically correct" revisionist scholars to obscure or even deny the leading role of Western civilization in shaping the modern economic world, David S. Landes has felt obliged to emphasize the obvious in his thoroughly researched, impressive history of the last 1,000 years of economic development. His book covers all the most important and secondary regions of the world, and provides a wealth of detail and insight.
Writing prior to the end of the 20th century, Landes explains:
How Japan developed so fast while China stopped developing, and why India had so much trouble developing, although both Chinese and Indian expatriates were thriving in nations all around the world;
Why English nations led the charge into the modern economic world while Spanish and Portuguese lands floundered;
The economic problems posed by geography and climate in tropical regions; and,
The impact of iron tools on European development, and of the lack of iron tools on Asian development.
Landes provides an unblinkingly realistic, harsh indictment of those scholars who, for ideological reasons, are striving to grossly distort economic history. Rejecting political correctness, he traces modern economic development to two European characteristics, one geographic and the other cultural.
Geography has clearly played an important role in determining which societies and nations have progressed and which have lagged behind. Landes points out that peoples in tropical and semi-tropical zones have obviously been severely handicapped by the climatic and weather patterns of those regions.
Hot climates are enervating. They breed a wide variety of dispiriting and incapacitating diseases. When not dominated by deserts, their weather patterns alternate between drought and torrential downpours that are inimical to farming. While modern medicine and technology now offer some hope for overcoming these natural handicaps, it is still grossly stupid to ignore or deny the problems.
The author points out that Europe, too, had its geographic limitations - until the development of iron tools. These permitted the clearing of the great hardwood forests that dominated Europe and restricted the area suitable for farming.
The pertinent geographic difference between Europe and other temperate regions was the fragmented nature of European topography. Overland transportation and communications were simply too difficult. It proved impossible, after the fall of the Roman Empire, for any one nation or autocrat to conquer all of Europe.
However, they kept trying. The obvious downside was 1500 years of interminable and bloody conflict.
Landes asserts that nations dependent on irrigation systems from great rivers inevitably fall under the despotic authority capable of organizing, constructing and maintaining great irrigation projects. Autocrats inevitably smother individuality and economic freedom - characteristics essential for modern economic development. These characteristics can also be smothered by powerful fundamentalist religions.
The differences for Europe cultural development - especially within Western Europe - involved the relationship of the individual to the ruler or the state. There was a pervasive sense of property rights, and that god is above - rather than on a par with - the ruler.
People felt free to be - discreetly - judgmental with respect to the conduct of kings and aristocrats. They had a sense of what was proper and what was improper. These principles arise from diverse sources, including the Judeo-Christian bible and ancient works on Greek and Roman philosophy. All of these works were published and became widely accessible in the vernacular in the 16th century, simply because there were always some countries in Western Europe where people were free to publish as they wished.
In addition, in Western Europe, with its variety of nations, principalities, and semi-autonomous commercial cities, Landes points out that people could "vote with their feet" and opt for the location where enterprise was possible and knowledge could be pursued. With the variety of political powers existing within the confines of Western Europe, and within individual states as well, commercial interests became important players in political power struggles, bringing with them concepts of contracts and individual rights.
Competition provides good results in politics and religion as well as in economics. "Political rivalry and the right of exit made all the difference."
Ultimately, fragmentation also allowed competing religious attitudes to carve out places for themselves, with similar beneficial results. "Europe was spared the thought control that proved a curse in Islam," Landes asserts. At each moment, there were political and religious leaders in much of Europe who tried to control events and throttle dissent or innovation. However, there were always some places in Europe where innovation and enterprise and dissent were permitted to flourish.
The wealth, power and influence of such places inevitably forced changes throughout Europe, as it now does throughout the world. Wherever people could work for their own interests instead of for the interests of overlords, inventiveness and commercial development flourished.
In 1000 A.D., Europe was a barbaric backwater, well behind the civilizations of China, India and the Islamic world. There were flourishing centers of trade and industry in many regions of the Asian landmass and around the Indian Ocean. Muslim and Chinese traders crisscrossed the Indian Ocean from East Africa to Southeast Asia. Muslim trade in slaves from East Africa flourished for centuries before the coming of Europeans (and for a century after the ending of the European slave trade).
However, invention and commerce were limited by the absence of freedom. As Landes points out, in China and India, there was "an absence of incentive to learning and self improvement." In the Islamic world, there was religious opposition to anything new. In China there was a lack of competitive pressures on the autocratic rulers.
The peasant belonged to the emperor. He had only very limited rights in land or personal property, and no incentive to improve the land or productive tools. With China usually a single, unified, great empire, there was no exit for those who felt stifled in their economic ambitions. India, too, suffered from religious taboos, autocratic governments, and lack of rights in land or personal property. Any wealth could be expropriated.
"In short," says Landes, "no one was trying. Why try?"
Early in the 15th century, China launched grand fleets, with hundreds of great ships and tens of thousands of men, that cruised the Indian Ocean all the way to East Africa, decades before the coming of the Portuguese. But these were imperial displays, at vast cost. Although they did conduct trade, the emperor felt little economic incentive. Ultimately, a new emperor came to power, and the Chinese expeditions ended. The emperor felt no need for these expensive expeditions. (Note the similarities with the NASA moon landings.)
However, the European expansion was profit-driven, and thrived. By the 15th century, Europe had the upper hand in economic power and weaponry. With the cruel attitudes of those times, they drove forward towards empire, with disastrous results for native peoples in the backward regions of Africa and the Americas.
Landes spreads before us the great bloody tableau of expanding European imperialism, providing perceptive insights into the successes and failures of the various players. At each point along the way, the nations where men of enterprise were most free to pursue wealth and/or knowledge slowly pulled ahead of those autocracies and theocracies that stifled individual ambitions.
Repeatedly, in Asian nations like China, Japan and India, and then in European nations like Spain and Portugal, governments and religions demonstrated that their first priority was control of the minds and bodies of their subjects and flocks, even though that meant slow descent into economic and military weakness.
Europeans conquered empires because those empires were despotic and oppressive in nature, with no real interest or loyalty extending from the subjects to their rulers. Their strength might be hard, but it was always brittle. Repeatedly, the populace welcomed and assisted the strangers who came to overthrow the indigenous tyrants. Frequently, the populace was tyrannized as badly by the newcomers.
The advantages bestowed by geography and freedom on such nations as England and The Netherlands were also decisive in their rapid industrialization.
The Industrial Revolution was the result of European cultural characteristics.
In addition, there was the Protestant Reformation that gave Northern Europe an important intellectual advantage over Catholic Southern Europe.
"It gave a big boost to literacy, spawned dissents and heresies, and promoted the skepticism and refusal of authority that is at the heart of the scientific endeavor. The Catholic countries, instead of meeting the challenge, responded by closure and censure."
Landes constantly does effective battle with modern revisionist economic history. For example, he skewers those who challenge the accelerated growth rates that define the "Industrial Revolution." He points out that the revisionist statistical analyses leave much to be desired. Just adding in the advances in quality (and variety, too) such as improved metals and improved engines, etc., greatly increases growth statistics.
Ignoring the dictates of modern political correctness, the author emphasizes the cultural factors that, for centuries, held back Chinese and Indian development, and hindered development where Catholicism and Islam were strong. He is rightly dismissive of modern victimology propaganda, which seeks to blame continued third world economic failure on European and American political and economic domination. He characterizes such victimization as "a self-defeating escapism."
Landes explains the Industrial Revolution as the result of European characteristics that permitted intellectual autonomy, the development of the scientific method of analysis, and the development of research as a routine human activity, with its own language and methods, developed and accepted across national boundaries and independent of religious considerations.
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