Probabilities of World Domination (once we reach Industrial Age)

In this closely related thread, Somes J summarizes the points exactly!



This in a nutshell is why European Domination has IMHO an 80% chance even with a POD as far back as 5000BC.
I think it also depends on how we define Europe.

Would an empire with its capital in the Middle East count as Middle Eastern even if it controls Spain (e.g. the Rashidun Caliphate)?

What about a situation where Europe is divided into various states, but many of them see themselves as part of a cultural continuum with e.g. North Africa (like the Romans; a Roman Spaniard would have seen someone from Carthage or Antioch as much more akin than someone from Denmark or Germany)?

And so on and so forth.

The geographic divisions in the OP are more projecting back from this world than based strictly on geography. There are plentiful examples, some fairly long-lasting, that straddle those divides.
 
Wasn't Europe one of the more backward regions of the world until the 13th century. I seem to remember figures showing that Europe suffered from a shocking lack of urbanization compared to the Middle East, India, China and elsewhere up until the 13th century when cities such as Paris and London began to see significant growth. It seems to me that a Europe where urbanization is even further delayed, or thrown off course by the Mongols may stay relatively backward for quite some time. Seeing as how urban centers seem to be the basis for advancement and what not.

Remember that in some ways, the Americas were more advanced than Europe. Equals to Tenochtitlan could be found in the Islamic world or in China, but not in Europe. The tricky bit is that the Americas were in the middle of an apocalypse at the time due to Europeans bringing disease.

Or the Roman Empire doesn't fall and the west urbanizes a thousnd years earlier. The iron plow was developed early enough.
 
The idea of the Americas developing a civilization almost on par with European ones is pretty much ASB. Humans got there much later than elsewhere, the people that got there were pretty isolated from the rest of humanity and geography and lack of various resources and animals meant it would always be held back. Because of late arrival, it also more or less guarantee that it would have less immunity to Old World diseases.

As impressive as the Inca, Maya, Aztec, etc civilization were, they were still Stone Age technology cultures for the most part.

Yes it is possible that Europe gets held back and things go "right" in Asia so that Asia gets to the Americas first. But it would have to be held back a lot and Asia would have to have a lot of things go "right" for it to conquer the Americas first. The reason is simply geography. Due to distance and wind direction, the Americas are effectively 4x as far away from Asia!

There's a few parts to this. One is the wealth extraction from the Americas itself back to the Old World. Another is the spreading of European civilizations to the New World by building colonies and later independent states that would become powerful in their own right and extend "European" domination.

But a third part is that it jump started European domination of the oceans. This is the key to world domination and is still true today. Once European nations start to colonize the Americas, it start to build bigger and bigger navies for growing oceanic trade and to explore and conquer more lands. And this growing naval power will reach the point that Europeans collectively will be able to project power anywhere on the globe through its navy dominance and make contact with the land powers on their terms (which is exactly what happened IOTL). OTOH the land powers will be "trapped" on land and will not develop the naval forces to project power outward.0

(Also as for Spain, it could have easily become a world hegemon like the British Empire under different culture and leadership. Remember that Spain conquered the Philippines (and named the place after King Philip of Spain!) halfway around the world. People forget about that.)

And Spain was in Cambodia, Formosa, Siam, Marianas, Carolinas, Salomon, Marshall, Borneo, New Guinea etc etc etc... I can understand people knew nothing about the Spanish campaigns in Vietnam, Cambodia, Siam, Borneo or Java... or Tunis, Libya, Argel, Cyprus, Rhodas, Greece, Bulgaria, Anatolie etc etc.´.but one thing is to ignore it and another one to say that the Spaniards were only in America ... this is false ... Why do you think people in Guam are their names and surnames in Spanish? :rolleyes: Have you ever listen about the Spanish campaign in Low Countries, Germany, Moravia, Hungary, Bohemia, Italy, Balkan... I don´t think so...

The greater European Empires: British, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Dutch. Russian is a continental Empire as the Ottoman.
 
In this closely related thread, Somes J summarizes the points exactly!
Yes, but there was another thing I said in that post. In a China-dominated world I might be writing about how China was the only place with geography favorable to the formation of a stable megastate, the stability of which would then promote easy trade and spread of ideas within its borders and economic growth while the challenges posed by governing such a large area would naturally encourage more advanced institutions (basically the flipped version of the "fragmentation = advantage" idea that is brought up OTL). In a Middle East dominated world I might be writing about how the Middle East's "middleman" position would naturally insure that would it get rich and make it a natural crossroads of ideas, stimulating innovation, and about how civilization started there so it had a head-start.

I do think Europe had some geographic advantages and was in a good position, but... Well, let me put it this way: imagine a world with five major regions each equally likely to come to dominate, with different advantages and disadvantages, but overall none worse or better, so which one actually does come to dominate will depend on a lot of coin tosses of human interaction. I bet, whichever one actually comes to dominate in that world, historians afterward will write geographical determinist analysis about how it had to be that one, because of its unique geographical advantages. I don't think that world is our world, but I do think it's easy to overestimate how much correlation equals causation in ambiguous situations.

It not so significant that other regions can't reach world domination first but its significant enough that other regions would dominate only if Europe sets itself back because if Europe doesn't get setback significantly, it will always race ahead.
My impression from reading Ian Morris's Why the West Rules - For Now was that this in fact did happen OTL; OTL was a case of the West (Middle East + Europe) starting ahead of the East (which developed agriculture later), falling behind it because of the Bronze Age and Roman collapses, and then overtaking it again.

Incidentally, that makes it occur to me that you could take your question a step back: what are the odds of agriculture developing first in one region vs. another? The odds on your question might look very different in a world where agriculture started first in somewhere other than the Middle East, changing the whole lay-out of who had a head-start on who.
 
In 1750, Benghalese products represented 75% of World trade. They were mostly textile which is how the Industrial Revolution started in England.

Actually, it started because of this: once the East India Company bought the Diwali from the clueless leader of Benghal and got the right to basically manage the country as they saw fit, England placed a ban on finished goods from India, allowing only fabric, which had to be transformed in England. This led to more industrialisation and the rest, as you might say, is history. Basically, if anything happens to the East India Company (not being able to buy the Diwali, losing the 7 years war, Dupleix stays in post, they can't beat the VOC, etc...), Europe doesn't end up dominating everything.

I think the importance of the New World discovery is waaaaay overstated. Otherwise Spain would still be a world power. Land based economy was less important after the XVIIth century and the end of feudalism. That's the reason why the Dutch are still a powerful country and actually got better after they lost all their colonies. Even more so, during the XIXth century, France didn't have any colony in America (except Guyane and St Pierre et Micquelon, but seriously, do we count those?) and was a leading power.
 
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I wonder why people always talk about the geographical advantages that kept Europe disunited while apparently China is always united. China isn't a huge plain. It had plenty of geographical obstacles that could have kept it disunited (just like it was a loooooot of times during history). Europe with a large Roman Empire could have very well have an history similar to the Persian and Chinese Empire, slowly sliding into apathy and decadence. Just like China could have stayed disunited at come point in it's history.
 
I'm not sure I buy the idea of being disunited being an inherent advantage myself.

Yes, unity means a single point of failure in government policy.

On the other hand, disunity means more barriers to travel, trade, and the spread of ideas, more money sunk into militaries, and more wars with the destruction they bring.

"Disunity = advantage" really strikes me as an idea that is so popular because of hindsight bias (and the way it resonates with capitalist "competition is good and big government is inefficient" ideology).
 
I think one notable effect is that different stages of industrialisation require different natural resources, and that while commerce can bring those in a number of scenarios what it cannot do is bridge the gap between some of the stages.

For example IRAQ clearly had what was needed to birth civilisation in the first place - rich soil being primary in this. It also has oil, vital for civilisation today.

But without coal it cannot bridge the gap.

Britain without the first, once the coal becomes important can burst forth and though it did not have any (easy) oil, its poistion was so strong that it could buy it in, rule over areas where oil was to be found.

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I wonder why people always talk about the geographical advantages that kept Europe disunited while apparently China is always united. China isn't a huge plain. It had plenty of geographical obstacles that could have kept it disunited (just like it was a loooooot of times during history).

Good point - the north and central China plain is a large cultivatable mass, but it is only about the size of France or Germany before you hit the mountains of Shansi, the deserts of Inner Mongolia and the Yangtze gorges leading into Sichuan. Southern and western China all have a lot of mountains.

The geographic divides increase even more in East Asia once you go beyond China. Southeast Asia is divided by many mountain ranges and jungles (note that ancient Indian cultural transmission to China had an easier time reaching China through Central Asia rather than through the shorter, Burmese route). Korea and Japan are compact and maintained cultural continuity.

Arguably, the Indo-Gangetic plain is the largest contiguous fertile area of the world.




Europe with a large Roman Empire could have very well have an history similar to the Persian and Chinese Empire, slowly sliding into apathy and decadence. Just like China could have stayed disunited at come point in it's history.

Or, when it reached a tipping point in technology, it might just come to dominate the Americas, then every other continent, even faster than than a Europe dealing with centuries of migrations and internecine warfare.
 
I wonder why people always talk about the geographical advantages that kept Europe disunited while apparently China is always united. China isn't a huge plain. It had plenty of geographical obstacles that could have kept it disunited (just like it was a loooooot of times during history). Europe with a large Roman Empire could have very well have an history similar to the Persian and Chinese Empire, slowly sliding into apathy and decadence. Just like China could have stayed disunited at come point in it's history.

The problem here is that while China has some geographic obstacles, these don't form the basis of large, stable and prosperous states like European ones and most of them would be landlocked and isolated and backwards.

I mean sure an independent Yunnan or Sichuan might be possible but they were never going to become analogues of France or Spain but backwards primitive areas.

Its not enough to have China divided up into competing states but also into competing states that are viable and strong and prosperous and seafaring. The problem is that unlike Europe, China has a small coastline relative to its total area. OTOH Europe has tons of countries surrounded on three or four sides of sea or ocean.

The key thing is that you need naval power to project world power which is simply not possible in a country with a relatively small coastline like China's.
 
I mean sure an independent Yunnan or Sichuan might be possible but they were never going to become analogues of France or Spain but backwards primitive areas.
Random data points:
population around 1740-1760. Sichuan 2.5MM, Yunnan 1.9MM, England 5.7MM, France 24.6MM. Shangdong 24MM, Henan 12.8MM, Jiangsu 20.9MM, etc. etc.

With China there are many many entities that could become a stable and dominant state, even in the absence of full unity. The geographic obstacle idea is questionable anyhow - what is the dominant European power through modern history? France - which has not exactly been geographically separated from its enemies.
 
Random data points:
population around 1740-1760. Sichuan 2.5MM, Yunnan 1.9MM, England 5.7MM, France 24.6MM. Shangdong 24MM, Henan 12.8MM, Jiangsu 20.9MM, etc. etc.

With China there are many many entities that could become a stable and dominant state, even in the absence of full unity. The geographic obstacle idea is questionable anyhow - what is the dominant European power through modern history? France - which has not exactly been geographically separated from its enemies.

France? The same France whose capital was conquered by English, Spaniards, Russians, Prussians, Germans, Americans...the same France surrended to Germany in 40 days? :confused: Are you talking about the Crecy, Azincourt, Cerignola, Garegliano, Pavia, Valenciennes, Minden, Neerwinden, Baylen, Leipzig, Dresde, Sedan.. France? :rolleyes:
France didn´t rule Europe in XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX or XX Centuries..
 
isn't part of Europe's 'geographic advantage' not just the presence of resources, but where they're located? As in, close together? Britain had iron, coal, and water power all conveniently close together. Someone on here once noted that India had all of those too, but not close by each other, and that the coal in India isn't good quality. Which puts India at a disadvantage right out of the gate. Not sure about China, maybe someone on here knows. And, yes, the Americas are out of the running simply because of late human arrival and disadvantages in domestic plants and animals available.
None of which says that Europe is the guaranteed winner, but it certainly has a big head start. The middle east might be able to give them a run for their money, but again, how are resources spread around there? Is there anywhere there that industrialization has everything it needs in one place?
 
France? The same France whose capital was conquered by English, Spaniards, Russians, Prussians, Germans, Americans...the same France surrended to Germany in 40 days? :confused: Are you talking about the Crecy, Azincourt, Cerignola, Garegliano, Pavia, Valenciennes, Minden, Neerwinden, Baylen, Leipzig, Dresde, Sedan.. France? :rolleyes:
France didn´t rule Europe in XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX or XX Centuries..

I hope you're being sarcastic. France certainly had its day in the sun, and had things gone differently it would have continued.
 
The inherent difficulty in claiming any numbers resembling probability is that we currently have a sample size of one. Just like we can't say with any authority how probable it is for a planet to develop advanced, sentient life, we cannot possibly assert probabilities of various regions dominating the world. That's what probability is - study of sample cases and estimating, based on them, how likely various results are. You can't analyze a single case and extrapolate probabilities based on that.

We can conjure up various scenarios and assess how likely they are. For example, we can say China was on the verge of its own industrial revolution at one point, and in some parallel universe it actually went through with it. But we cannot possibly assign these completely arbitrary percentages to how likely that is.
 
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