China and steppe people vs Europe

RousseauX

Donor
Hello everyone,

I had a thought I'd like to discuss.

It's often said that Europe got an advantage in tech because there were competing states and the wars helped them hone each others' skills. On the other hand, China stagnated because they didn't have "serious" enemies for a while.

I'm simplifying but I see it often, and then people coming and said "oh but if China had reformed earlier/was more powerful/etc... we'd say unity is the great factor".

But I was thinking, China still had massive advances in tech and warfare, and a lot o it came from their fight against steppe people. So my thought was this: can we equate the threat of steppe people with the interstate wars of Europe in term of drive to innovate or is China's drive for tech an actually different model?
The problem is that once you hit a certain techological level the steppe peoples cease to be a threat and can be defeated permanently.

China hit this point in the 1740s when the Qing marched a gunpowder based infantry army into Xinjiang, defeated and imposed a "final solution" on the Dzungar Mongols who were the last great nomadic empire on the planet. At the same time, the Russians marched down south and east and between those two empires they were able to close the steppes and bring its people who had invaded sedimentary civilization for mellenias under its control. Afterwards the Qing settled into a long period of peace in which little was done to improve the military.

So by the mid 1800s the Chinese military was definitely behind that of Europes. The only sustainable scenario in the early modern era where you get continuous wars driving innovations are inter-state wars between relative equals.
 
I misread your point as saying Europeans outcompeted Chinese with their "superior" technology. Apologies. But the bigger issue is this: you're presenting theory as fact. The theory that Chinese wages were lower remains extremely heavily contested. Read Kenneth Pommeranz's Great Divergence, which remains the most eloquent argument for high wages in China comparable to that of Europe. Pommeranz is not alone. Among others, Robert Allen, who specializes in British economic history in the 18th century, also accepts that lower Yangzi wages were high even for European standards, although in his view wages were stagnant or even fell during the Qing era. Of course, this isn't consensus either - but that's the thing. There is no consensus and you shouldn't make it sound like there is.


This is a very nineteenth-century view of Qing history. In 1684 the Kangxi emperor established some 134 maritime customs houses where foreigners could trade (24 in Jiangsu, 18 in Zhejiang, 20 in Fujian, 72 in Guangdong). Unlike Song times when only nine ports were
Could you please provide a source?I am asking because this runs in contrary to what I've read.
 
Could you please provide a source?I am asking because this runs in contrary to what I've read.
See edit, I'm in mobile and saved too early (that book is from the University of Hawaii, not exactly a nutter). But besides that, I felt William Rowe's The Great Qing: China's Last Empire written for the Harvard History of Imperial China provides a balanced interpretation of Qing maritime history.
 
See edit, I'm in mobile and saved too early (that book is from the University of Hawaii, not exactly a nutter). But besides that, I felt William Rowe's The Great Qing: China's Last Empire written for the Harvard History of Imperial China provides a balanced interpretation of Qing maritime history.
Fantastic,I have a copy of this book in my shelf.I ordered the entire series,it just so happens that I haven't had time to read this one.
 

scholar

Banned
Right, so the general argument that China's unity was a massive factor in development is actually wrong because they did leave in a divided region?
No, not at all. China more or less perfected the hegemonic stability thesis. Vietnam and China only rarely went to War, Korea and China almost never went to war, and Japan and China went to war four times if you include the Mongols throughout their entire history. China's consistent rivalries were disorganized and less developed foes that did not strain China technologically. Those that were closest to China technologically, often fell into the Chinese tribute sphere and for the most part act peacefully. During the Ming-Qing period, war between civilized (based in city civilization) parties was almost unheard of. Basically there is just the Imjin War and the Ming occupation of Vietnam. China's wars were to the north and west.
 
There is no consensus and you shouldn't make it sound like there is.

Fair enough, it was just the tone I disagreed with. Although I do think that an economic reason for China's technological tardiness is the only one that makes sense as I haven't seen any compelling social or political arguments for their lack of technological advancement. As people above have pointed out, China was a leader in innovation but in the early modern era those innovations stopped being adopted widely even when the ideas where available. I think that Greco-Roman clockwork is a good Western comparison. Well refined and understood but with no driving economic motivator it was never widely adopted and saw only specialized uses.
 
Fantastic,I have a copy of this book in my shelf.I ordered the entire series,it just so happens that I haven't had time to read this one.
I believe it's mostly in the "Commerce" chapter, but I have it as a PDF so it's hard to flick through. He has a takedown of the outdated tribute trade model for Qing commerce and a section on the Canton system, but for the purposes of sourcing my claims Rowe states that "In 1685, immediately upon his legalization of private maritime commerce along most of the empire’s coast, Kangxi established a network of maritime customs stations in major coastal ports. Each arriving vessel had to register at the customs house and pay duty on its cargo prior to sale. The station at Canton (Guangzhou) quickly became one of the most active." The number of stations is, however, drawing on Opening.
 
Regarding the wage issue, doesn't have anything and everything to do with the trade imbalance?

My point is that, in term of adoption, it is partly a non-issue. For a very long time, China could rely on trade to get bullions as it was the main supplier of the whole world, as part of the Indian Ocean networks.
Europe on the other side was bleeding silver and gold and so started a substitution industry, for indian cloth and porcelain for example.

That hemorragy is IMO a major cause of industrialisation, it was a matter of financial survival.

And @My Daichingtala , yes, I meant the XVIIIth century earlier, it was a typo
 
I think the whole argument that anything put Europe ahead is rather lacking. Europe didn't get ahead of the rest of the world until the 1700s. I think the bigger issue was that Europe liked to fish, so they needed good boats, and they were stuck on the far end of trade routes so wanted to cut out the middle men. Combining that meant they realised sailing around Africa/the Americas to Asia was a good plan. That let them tap into what China, India, and others were doing and basically leach discoveries. That combined with lots of money flowing from a lucky break in the New World set them up. The division/unity thing is fairly irrelevant (India was divided a lot of the time too after all).

You're ignoring the fact that the Europeans developed firearms, something the Chinese never did with "their" invention of gunpowder for fireworks (their "rockets" were less powerful than today's fireworks and less effective as a weapon than "Greek fire", so lets call them what they are- pyrotechnics). This idea that the Chinese were ahead of the game all the way to the 1700s is laughable and has been out of academic circles since we've learned to be impartial and not upgrade non-Europeans simply for the effect of being "fair". Firearms had been on their way before Columbus and would have continued to advance technologically in the hands of Europeans, West Africans, and Ottomans long before the Chinese could play catch-up. Plus your idea of Europe having better boats- Chinese junks were superior vessels. So you got pretty much everything ass-backwards on why the Europeans dominated.
 
You're ignoring the fact that the Europeans developed firearms, something the Chinese never did with "their" invention of gunpowder for fireworks (their "rockets" were less powerful than today's fireworks and less effective as a weapon than "Greek fire", so lets call them what they are- pyrotechnics). This idea that the Chinese were ahead of the game all the way to the 1700s is laughable and has been out of academic circles since we've learned to be impartial and not upgrade non-Europeans simply for the effect of being "fair". Firearms had been on their way before Columbus and would have continued to advance technologically in the hands of Europeans, West Africans, and Ottomans long before the Chinese could play catch-up. Plus your idea of Europe having better boats- Chinese junks were superior vessels. So you got pretty much everything ass-backwards on why the Europeans dominated.

A) I didn't say the Chinese were ahead until the 1700s. I said the Europeans weren't ahead until the 1700s. I consider Eurasia to have been relatively equal before the Industrial Revolution hit Europe.
B) Junks might have been better at some things, but the Europeans were definitely dominating the seas by the late 1600s (hence their having trading posts everywhere), and there's a reason the Japanese built there own Galleons.
C) All the stuff I've seen says firearms were pretty clearly a Chinese invention (the Europeans obviously had some innovations, though many of these were roughly mirrored elsewhere in Eurasia).
 
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