AH Challenge: Maintain the Mediterranean Economic Core

So, today in my human geography class we were talking about the emergence of capitalism and the modern global economic system, and I remembered something that I've wondered about for a while. Why did, between the 17th and 19th centuries, the European and maybe even the world economic core shift from the Mediterranean to northern Europe? There's probably several factors, like the Reformation, the textile industry of Britain and the Low Countries, the Enclosure movement in England pioneering the idea of private property in Europe, etc, but was all that really inevitable for northern Europe to emerge as the hub of the industrialized world?

My challenge to you is to find a way to keep the Mediterranean the trade and economic hub it had been for almost a millennium with as little slowing of technological progress as possible.

I would say the biggest factor was the shifting of trade from the Mediteranean to the Atlantic. The biggest factor that prompted that was the exploration for new trade routes by the northern europeans because Constantinople, and therefore the traditional east/west trade route, was controlled by the ottomans. Keeping the Byzantines the dominate force in Anatolia would delay this shift. If you were to combine this with a scenario where the northern europeans are weaker than OTL, for instance a reoccuring plague or a continent even more fractured into smaller kingdoms, then the mediteranean could remain the center of the european economy for a much longer time.

Yelnoc said:

I would say the biggest factor was the shifting of trade from the Mediteranean to the Atlantic. The biggest factor that prompted that was the exploration for new trade routes by the northern europeans because Constantinople, and therefore the traditional east/west trade route, was controlled by the ottomans. Keeping the Byzantines the dominate force in Anatolia would delay this shift. If you were to combine this with a scenario where the northern europeans are weaker than OTL, for instance a reoccuring plague or a continent even more fractured into smaller kingdoms, then the mediteranean could remain the center of the european economy for a much longer time.

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It's climate determinism right? Countries with colder climates always do better than those with warmer.

Because the Northen states had been backward and isolated they was forced to strengthen and streamlining their political, military and economical structure. When was hit by the agricultural revolution, they suddenly had the population to compete with their southen neighbour and superior structures.

MNP said:

It's climate determinism right? Countries with colder climates always do better than those with warmer.

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Not really, he's just saying that control of the oriental trade routes determined commercial importance. The Silk Road used to come via land to Constantinople and the Middle East, but after the Age of Discovery, new way sof getting to the East were discovered, not to mention new commodities, and so the Mediterranean declined in importance.

Perhaps have a strong Egyptian state with a Suez Canal or at least a very good line of communication across Sinia, and then have it powerful enough to dominate east-west trade. It's shorter than around Africa, so the Portuguese etc. are in a worse position and it still goes through the Med, making that the main depot for all bulk oriental commodities.

Trees had a lot to do with it. Or the lack of them because of people cutting them down. Soils eroding of the land, lowering fertility. Lower abundance of fuels. And they yield a host of products required for production of tools and buildings. Make someone with authority realise that his land is loosing its forest. Or just make him like looking at forests. Anything to insure he plants them, lots of them. Then force his people to live with them.

Early agroforestry, instead of slash-burn-farm.

And yeah, their is that whole sailing around the horn thing.

MNP said:

It's climate determinism right? Countries with colder climates always do better than those with warmer.

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Not necessarily, one of the main bits is the frost line - if the ground freezes for a few days a year you'll kill off over 2/3rds of the insect load, but apart from that the temperature isn't much of a big deal until you get to Subsaharan africa temperatures.

More importantly northern Europe was much wetter (giving higher yields and less management) and just had more fertile land than the med basin, and the new American crops provided much more advantage to the northern climes as well as arriving there first.

Northern Europe did have a considerable number of resource advantages that allowed capitalism and industrialisation, perhaps even the most favoured.

However the challenge is easily enough answered - have the Mongols rampage across northern europe but spare the south .

Nugax said:

Not necessarily, one of the main bits is the frost line - if the ground freezes for a few days a year you'll kill off over 2/3rds of the insect load, but apart from that the temperature isn't much of a big deal until you get to Subsaharan africa temperatures.

More importantly northern Europe was much wetter (giving higher yields and less management) and just had more fertile land than the med basin, and the new American crops provided much more advantage to the northern climes as well as arriving there first.

Northern Europe did have a considerable number of resource advantages that allowed capitalism and industrialisation, perhaps even the most favoured.

However the challenge is easily enough answered - have the Mongols rampage across northern europe but spare the south .

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I diagree North European climate was a lot worse than South European climate, it was one of the primary reason for the norths backwardness, it simply lay on the northen borderland the Jared Diamond Euroasia east-west axis. What changed in early modern day was the adaption of several mediterranean crops to the cold northen climate together with the more carbon rich soil and wetter climate North Europe had suddenly hit the jackpot, and at the same time new American crops hit the scene, crops like the potato which was perfecty for North European climate and superior to all existing crops. So suddenly we see a double jackpot at the same time better government structures has been build.

wilcoxchar said:

So, today in my human geography class we were talking about the emergence of capitalism and the modern global economic system, and I remembered something that I've wondered about for a while. Why did, between the 17th and 19th centuries, the European and maybe even the world economic core shift from the Mediterranean to northern Europe? There's probably several factors, like the Reformation, the textile industry of Britain and the Low Countries, the Enclosure movement in England pioneering the idea of private property in Europe, etc, but was all that really inevitable for northern Europe to emerge as the hub of the industrialized world?

My challenge to you is to find a way to keep the Mediterranean the trade and economic hub it had been for almost a millennium with as little slowing of technological progress as possible.

Click to expand...

IMHO this really was a less sudden shift, politically the centre was already shifted to the north, which can be traced to the fall of the western Roman Empire. And even after the development of certain areas in Northern Europe, some mediterranean regions remained more (or in some cases just as) important, which actually makes sense since this would have stimulated trade. When trade shifted from the mediterranean to the Atlantic, some mediterranean regions declined, but the economically important regions of Northern Europe (well I at least know about the Low Countries) started to develop before that. So concluding IMHO it is more like a process than a sudden shift.

Age of empire, world trade, better shipbuilding etc

If you're trading with the Med, then being in Britain or the Netherlands is a disadvantage

If you're trading with India then its a big advantage

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

Grey Wolf said:

If you're trading with the Med, then being in Britain or the Netherlands is a disadvantage

If you're trading with India then its a big advantage

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I'm sorry, but I fail to see how that makes sense.

Haaki said:

I'm sorry, but I fail to see how that makes sense.

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Britain and the Netherlands are not in the Mediterranean, but Italy is. So Italy has a better position for Mediterranean trade.

A sea route from Italy to India, however, has to pass through the Gibraltar bottleneck (pre-Suez, at least). British trade is not so constrained.

Codae said:

A sea route from Italy to India, however, has to pass through the Gibraltar bottleneck (pre-Suez, at least). British trade is not so constrained.

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That still doesn't restrict Spain or Portugal, who are on the Mediterranean (sort of) and are considered part of the Med economic sphere. Keeping Iberia as the main powers in western Europe would keep the political centers near the Med.

They say that in times of peace, rivers unite, but in times of war, rivers divide. Perhaps the Mediterranean is something like that. If North Africa, Anatolia and the Levant were still part of Christendom, the Mediterranean would unite them. So long as the clash of Islam and Christianity continues, the Mediterranean will divide them. So the best way to keep the Mediterranean as a primary hub would be to either have no/reduced Islam, or a more successful Islam that controls Southern Europe as well. The key is to keep the Mediterranean as a lake, if you will, contained within one, normally peaceful, civilisation.

I agree that with the discovery of the New World and the introduction of new crops that Northern Europe is better positioned in many ways. However, sea travel is still a lot faster than land travel at this time. We would not see the Christendom Mediterranean as the central core of Europe, there would be two cores, one around in the Mediterranean and one around the North Sea/Baltic Sea. Any powers that can exploit both, France and Spain, probably, would be well set. As for the New World, a lot of the trade around this time was also with the East Indies. The North Sea core is well positioned for both, but the Mediterranean core is quite well positioned to reach out to the East Indies, through the Red Sea, and possibly through the Persian Gulf, depending how far this core extends. Ships from the Mediterranean would not be able to travel directly to the East, no Suez Canal, but they would not be well suited to the open seas anyway.

Climate change is a part of it.
Age of human civilization too.

The Mediterranian area was once a hell of a lot more fertile than it is today. Soil erosion, the warming of the earth, shifting rainfall patterns, etc.... got rid of that.
Meanwhile northern europe was warming up. Our winters became steadily milder. And we were the first civilization using much of the land.

This though is more a reason for why the med fell than why the north rose. That was of course down to the northerners dominating international trade, being at the front of advances, etc...

Tyr said:

Climate change is a part of it.
Age of human civilization too.

The Mediterranian area was once a hell of a lot more fertile than it is today. Soil erosion, the warming of the earth, shifting rainfall patterns, etc.... got rid of that.
Meanwhile northern europe was warming up. Our winters became steadily milder. And we were the first civilization using much of the land.

This though is more a reason for why the med fell than why the north rose. That was of course down to the northerners dominating international trade, being at the front of advances, etc...

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The problem are that the shift happen while northern Europe was colder than it had been in millenniums under the the Little Ice Age.

wilcoxchar said:

That still doesn't restrict Spain or Portugal, who are on the Mediterranean (sort of) and are considered part of the Med economic sphere. Keeping Iberia as the main powers in western Europe would keep the political centers near the Med.

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I was in a rush.

Portugal benefitted from trade to the Indies, and at one time had a whole mass of trading posts in Arabia and India.

Spain was more focused on the Americas IIRC

What I was referriing to was the arteries of global trade, rather than the main powers involved in them. Once these shifted to the Atlantic sea route, then it gave Britain and the Netherlands a substantial boost, 1) because they could now properly compete, and 2) because it was their main focus.

Before the Atlantic was the main trade route (except in so far as it was a route to the Med, or from the Med) then the more Northern countries were at a disadvantage.

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

Hmmm, I was hoping it would be possible to do this while keeping large Christian and Muslim presences on the Mediterranean coast but it doesn't look like that's possible. Now that I think about it more, it does seem like the shift to Iberia as the economic core during the early Age of Discovery was an intermediate shift between the Med. and the North Sea area (Britain, Low Countries, Germany).

Nugax said:

Northern Europe did have a considerable number of resource advantages that allowed capitalism and industrialisation, perhaps even the most favoured.

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One thing that struck me. Does northern Europe really have that much advantage over southern Europe in terms of things like iron and coal reserves? I know that Germany, Britain, and the Czech Republic had huge coal reserves and probably were much more poised for using it that Spain or Italy, but what about iron?

A functional continental blockade, maybe a french victory at Trafalgar (more realistically a draw; let's assume Villeneuve gets the white light not to leave port under bad weather, Nelson died at Copenhagen, at which point you don't have naval parity yet but french and imperial-allied shipbuilding is on the way to outbuilding Britain - not that it ever stopped the british, who were thankful for the beautiful 74s the french kept building for them ). IOTL, even with an imperfect blockade, you had a situation where the old sea routes (Baltic, Med) were starting to replace the new oceanic ones for continental trade... However it probably ends when one of the two economic blocks breaks, or when Napoleon dies and the french marshals and vassal princes decide to play it à la Alexander.

wilcoxchar said:

Hmmm, I was hoping it would be possible to do this while keeping large Christian and Muslim presences on the Mediterranean coast but it doesn't look like that's possible. Now that I think about it more, it does seem like the shift to Iberia as the economic core during the early Age of Discovery was an intermediate shift between the Med. and the North Sea area (Britain, Low Countries, Germany).

One thing that struck me. Does northern Europe really have that much advantage over southern Europe in terms of things like iron and coal reserves? I know that Germany, Britain, and the Czech Republic had huge coal reserves and probably were much more poised for using it that Spain or Italy, but what about iron?

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Heheh yes indeed northern Europe has a lot more iron, and mineral resources in general due to the way the subcontinents plates work, there are significant materials in the Balkans and Northern Spain but the mountains are twisted up and deposits are hard to find and require deep industrial methods (and even then we are talking only about half the stocks of the UK). Even in 2008 Sweden produced 1/3rd the amount of iron ore of the whole of Russia.

Another thing to remember is how accessible the resources in Northern Europe were - sure China and other places have shittons of coal, but is it a) near the surface or b) near the sea or pre-railroad transport networks (answer:no).