White People are... Better?
- Thread starter Clearing the Eye
- Start date
Recommended Videos
I noticed someone mentioned Guns, Germs and Steel, which I have yet to read. However, Jared Diamond wrote another book called The Fall of the Third Chimpanzee. He explains/suggests Europeans lucked out on resources and actually had far more plants and animals that were able to be domesticated. This in turn allowed societies to grow and specialise at a faster rate than others. It is a very interesting book, us whiteys aren't better (not that I ever thought so) just luckier.
The OP needs to take a closer look at his books, up until recently the most civilized cultures were mesopotamian/mediteranean, not northern european or "white" as he calls it. From about 30,000bc to around 1500ad the most civilized societies were Sumerian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Arab. In fact for the majority of Roman expansion, northern european tribes were the primary source of slaves to the empire.
but still, the European cultures had already dominated most of their portion of the world even before the industrial revolution. While not exactly efficient at it, they did an excellent job at pushing their power over the world before having bigger guns and faster boats to get them thereXiado said:
.The Almighty Aardvark said:
Nope, you're using too recent of an example. To instance, in the 16th-17th century Portuguese trade with India and Indonesia was basically having Portuguese ships act as bloody pirates. They also raised a tax on trade for no reason except for their cannons on their ships, and that's how they got filthy rich. It's also why they kept Indian and Indonesian port cities around, like Cochin and Malacca.
Fast forward to late colonization stage, they were basically making massive plantations of luxury goods off shore on free land. They got the manpower through enslaving the locals but mostly from trading for slaves in Africa. (Central America didn't see many African slaves, but South America and North America saw plenty that worked in their sugar, tobacco ,cotton and coffee farms (did I forget anything?). So you basically create massive money making machines with cheap labor and free land. That's how they got filthy rich. Also, monopolies - if you have one trading company working under a charter of the crown, they don't suffer from competition and can have maximum profits while paying some taxes to the crown. See British, Dutch and Swedish East India Companies, I'm sure there are more of those around.
The Europeans exploited whatever they saw, really. They had ""free"" land, ""free"" labor and the force to pull it. If you think that European superiority is all in this here discussion, you should see what fight the Zulu put up. With all due respect to fire-power, the true killers of war was disease until the second half of the 20th century. Europeans in tropic climates with deadly diseases around = lots of Dead Europeans.
.Mr C said:
He's right, Europeans had horses (YAY!) and wheat (YAY!). You also got Potatoes (YAY!) and Tomatoes (YAY!) from the new world, but you only got Llamas (NAY!) to carry around your heavy stuff in the new world.
Yeah, if the world ended right now than I guess white people would. But that doesn't happen. Time marches on and things change.Herzog Wyrmsyn said:
If centuries from now we find that most of Mars is Chinese because they got there first I guess America would be in the relative shitter.
For along time the East was the pinnacle of civilization.
But to answer your question, I imagine its more than being in the right place. Something about the culture nurtured innovation to allow the people to advance.
I, for all intensive purposes, think that it was a situation of "Right place, right time and right equipment" rather then a matter of "their white thus better."
Of course I still think people who believe that such a thing as "white privilege" is crazy. However "White, christian privilege" is a thing that I can agree with.
Of course I still think people who believe that such a thing as "white privilege" is crazy. However "White, christian privilege" is a thing that I can agree with.
Slavery is hardly a practice started by Europeans to get ahead. Just off of the top of my head, Egypt had much more extensive and frivolous use of slaves. Nor is aggressive expansion and conquest, I'm not sure how accurate the map on wikipedia is, but the Mongol Empire had taken over a considerable chunk of Asia, and a fair bit of Europe by the looks of it, at their height.TheIronRuler said:
The things you describe don't sound at all exclusive to European countries, they just did it more recently with better technology.
You're the first person I've ever heard put forward that notion. Quite an interesting theory. I've gotta look into that some.psijac said:
I think what this thread comes down is not why Europe took over the world, (that's obvious, guns, steal, germs, and merchant banking) but Europe seemed to get all of those things and then thought to use them on the rest of the world to build empires that they are still benefiting from. (that or this is blatant attempt to troll the forums with thinly veiled racism) The answer to that gets down to a fundamental difference in how societies are formed and change. The best answer I've ever read to this, and which i will now try to summarize for you, comes the book "My Ishmael" by Daniel Quinn which I highly recommend reading.
Basically there are three types of land that a society can develop in. There's land where resources are plentiful, for a reasonably sized populace, then there's land where resources are too scarce, and finally there's land where resources are almost, but not quite, plentiful enough.
Africa is an example of the first kind of land, its very easy for small groups of people to live there by hunting game or gathering roots and nuts to eat. Small bands of hunter gatherers can thrive there and never really need to develop more complex systems for living, life is good there. They don't produce large technically complex societies because they don't need to. Almost all societies will only develop as far as they need to, because if were honest, humans are lazy gits and if you give any man the choice between spending six hours screwing his wife and spending six hours doing back bending labor to plow a feild which one do you think he's going to chose?
Mongolia is an example of the second type of land. Living there is very hard, to hard to be honest. People in these types of lands spend all their time just trying to meek out a meager existence and have no resource left over to invest and develop.
Europe is an example of the third, as is China, central America, the Andes Mountains, Egypt, India, and Mesopotamia. In these kinds of lands there is almost enough food. Enough food to be hungry, but not starving, to live but not thrive. To survive comfortably in these places takes effort, seeds and animals must be domesticated and once new resources are produced they must carefully managed. Managing resources requires government, which soon creates taxes and writing systems to keep track of its taxes as well as laws to maintain good order and prevent waste. Management of resource allows for investment, and experimentation, which leads to innovation, and development. Eventually such societies improve their food production to the point that they now have a surplus which can be traded or used to pay for tradesmen, such as smiths or scientist who lead to further innovation.
If a societies starts genuine food production through agriculture and resource management that society will inevitably begin to develop and create more and more complex systems. Eventually though societies settle down into a life style that is practically self supporting and comfortable, usually around 15th century technology. I.E. blossoming middle class, dwindling slave populace, early simple industrialization (mainly textiles and grain mills) under the rule of an absolute Monarch. Europe, however, is the exception to this, it never really settled down, in fact it kind of exploded around the point when is should've settled down. Why? in my opinion 2 reasons.
1st: In most areas the people who start doing all of this first gain a huge advantage over the neighbors and take over. Examples: The Han, the Assyrians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Aztecs, the Inca, and the Iroquois. They build large empires, develop to the point where their needs are satisfied and they just continue to exist until another society that went a little further comes along and takes their place.
In Europe the line of empires went like this, Assyrian, conquered by Babylonian conquered by Persians conquered by Greeks conquered by Romans conquered by Germans. But here's the kicker, the Germans were a technically inferior society to the Romans. The Roman empire was so rotted and bankrupt that they could be over whelmed by several less powerful states. This left the Germans with Roman technology (Steel and farming) in Roman infrastructure (Roads and cities) while lacking Roman superstructure (no emperor). So the Germans got to spend the next thousand years developing the absolute Monarchies to manage all their infrastructure only to then realize that now their were several different kings all more or less equal and all eyeing each other lands.
This turned Europe into a land of competition and warfare preventing them from ever feeling satisfied with their accomplishments and spurning them onward to new innovations. And it was that unending competition that eventually forced Europe to look out to the rest of the world for resources to burn on their internal conflicts.
2nd Europe is a mostly Christian area and Christianity is a weird religion. It's a Noble Aggressive religion. See Christianity draws you in with promises of how all you need to do is ask a Zombie Jew so save you from God and he will and you'll get to go to heaven when you die. Then as you spend more time studying the word of God you realize just how much of an asshole you've been to God all your life and how momentous and huge a sacrifice that Zombie Jew made to save you. And you feel really grateful to him, and so wonder if there's something you can do for him and your pastor tells that's really simply you just have to become perfect in every thought and deed. Which of course you can never actually do this side of the grave, but by that point you're all but in love with that Zombie Jew so you'll try to be perfect anyway.
The end result of which is that most Christians know that no matter what they could be better, and that they should be better. This is a powerful mindset. Give it to an engineer and the steam engine goes from being a child's toy (which is what the Greeks thought of it in the second century) to being the key to world conquest. Give it to a soldier and it become perfectly reasonable that he and his three hundred followers can conquer a city of millions. Give it to a banker and he'll start wondering what happens if he forecloses on a sub continent.
Add in to this the fact that the Zombie Jew also ordered all Christians to spend their lives convincing other people to put their faith in a Zombie Jew and you get a dangerous combination. Because priest also know that they can do better than just converting all of Europe, now they need to try to convert all the other continents too.
Ultimately what this all leads to is Jesuits insisting that even the head hunter tribes of the amazon need to be converted and the Conquistadors following them to keep them out of trouble and look for gold along the way. That's basically why Europe won.
Of course now Europe has been United into a single nation state with a unite currency and a governing body the promotes economic cooperation. And thanks to two world wars a 40 years of cold war division has heightened Europe natural pessimism and driven down church attendance in favor of a more nihilistic agnosticism. It's also technically stagnant, socially divided, and nearly bankrupt. While Christianity now finds its strongest base in the southern half of Africa where a group of technically equal peoples try to hammer out a functional government system out of tribal division and religious turmoil all while constantly eyeing each others land. So with any luck in the next three hundred years France should get colonized by the grand and glorious empire of South Africa. Which I think would be fucking awesome.
Basically there are three types of land that a society can develop in. There's land where resources are plentiful, for a reasonably sized populace, then there's land where resources are too scarce, and finally there's land where resources are almost, but not quite, plentiful enough.
Africa is an example of the first kind of land, its very easy for small groups of people to live there by hunting game or gathering roots and nuts to eat. Small bands of hunter gatherers can thrive there and never really need to develop more complex systems for living, life is good there. They don't produce large technically complex societies because they don't need to. Almost all societies will only develop as far as they need to, because if were honest, humans are lazy gits and if you give any man the choice between spending six hours screwing his wife and spending six hours doing back bending labor to plow a feild which one do you think he's going to chose?
Mongolia is an example of the second type of land. Living there is very hard, to hard to be honest. People in these types of lands spend all their time just trying to meek out a meager existence and have no resource left over to invest and develop.
Europe is an example of the third, as is China, central America, the Andes Mountains, Egypt, India, and Mesopotamia. In these kinds of lands there is almost enough food. Enough food to be hungry, but not starving, to live but not thrive. To survive comfortably in these places takes effort, seeds and animals must be domesticated and once new resources are produced they must carefully managed. Managing resources requires government, which soon creates taxes and writing systems to keep track of its taxes as well as laws to maintain good order and prevent waste. Management of resource allows for investment, and experimentation, which leads to innovation, and development. Eventually such societies improve their food production to the point that they now have a surplus which can be traded or used to pay for tradesmen, such as smiths or scientist who lead to further innovation.
If a societies starts genuine food production through agriculture and resource management that society will inevitably begin to develop and create more and more complex systems. Eventually though societies settle down into a life style that is practically self supporting and comfortable, usually around 15th century technology. I.E. blossoming middle class, dwindling slave populace, early simple industrialization (mainly textiles and grain mills) under the rule of an absolute Monarch. Europe, however, is the exception to this, it never really settled down, in fact it kind of exploded around the point when is should've settled down. Why? in my opinion 2 reasons.
1st: In most areas the people who start doing all of this first gain a huge advantage over the neighbors and take over. Examples: The Han, the Assyrians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Aztecs, the Inca, and the Iroquois. They build large empires, develop to the point where their needs are satisfied and they just continue to exist until another society that went a little further comes along and takes their place.
In Europe the line of empires went like this, Assyrian, conquered by Babylonian conquered by Persians conquered by Greeks conquered by Romans conquered by Germans. But here's the kicker, the Germans were a technically inferior society to the Romans. The Roman empire was so rotted and bankrupt that they could be over whelmed by several less powerful states. This left the Germans with Roman technology (Steel and farming) in Roman infrastructure (Roads and cities) while lacking Roman superstructure (no emperor). So the Germans got to spend the next thousand years developing the absolute Monarchies to manage all their infrastructure only to then realize that now their were several different kings all more or less equal and all eyeing each other lands.
This turned Europe into a land of competition and warfare preventing them from ever feeling satisfied with their accomplishments and spurning them onward to new innovations. And it was that unending competition that eventually forced Europe to look out to the rest of the world for resources to burn on their internal conflicts.
2nd Europe is a mostly Christian area and Christianity is a weird religion. It's a Noble Aggressive religion. See Christianity draws you in with promises of how all you need to do is ask a Zombie Jew so save you from God and he will and you'll get to go to heaven when you die. Then as you spend more time studying the word of God you realize just how much of an asshole you've been to God all your life and how momentous and huge a sacrifice that Zombie Jew made to save you. And you feel really grateful to him, and so wonder if there's something you can do for him and your pastor tells that's really simply you just have to become perfect in every thought and deed. Which of course you can never actually do this side of the grave, but by that point you're all but in love with that Zombie Jew so you'll try to be perfect anyway.
The end result of which is that most Christians know that no matter what they could be better, and that they should be better. This is a powerful mindset. Give it to an engineer and the steam engine goes from being a child's toy (which is what the Greeks thought of it in the second century) to being the key to world conquest. Give it to a soldier and it become perfectly reasonable that he and his three hundred followers can conquer a city of millions. Give it to a banker and he'll start wondering what happens if he forecloses on a sub continent.
Add in to this the fact that the Zombie Jew also ordered all Christians to spend their lives convincing other people to put their faith in a Zombie Jew and you get a dangerous combination. Because priest also know that they can do better than just converting all of Europe, now they need to try to convert all the other continents too.
Ultimately what this all leads to is Jesuits insisting that even the head hunter tribes of the amazon need to be converted and the Conquistadors following them to keep them out of trouble and look for gold along the way. That's basically why Europe won.
Of course now Europe has been United into a single nation state with a unite currency and a governing body the promotes economic cooperation. And thanks to two world wars a 40 years of cold war division has heightened Europe natural pessimism and driven down church attendance in favor of a more nihilistic agnosticism. It's also technically stagnant, socially divided, and nearly bankrupt. While Christianity now finds its strongest base in the southern half of Africa where a group of technically equal peoples try to hammer out a functional government system out of tribal division and religious turmoil all while constantly eyeing each others land. So with any luck in the next three hundred years France should get colonized by the grand and glorious empire of South Africa. Which I think would be fucking awesome.
.The Almighty Aardvark said:
You missed it. Really. You just picked some aspect I described which wasn't even a reason I talked about but was a part of a bigger picture. Are you doing this on purpose? Yes, we know you're all so clever that Slavery wasn't a new deal, but I never said "Europeans were successful because of slavery".
I didn't say that Europeans succeeded because of slavery. Where did I say that? I said that the ""free"" labor helped in the formation of cash crop plantations that made them filthy rich. What other nation on earth did that before them? Found a new land, enslaved the locals and made it into a massive money printing machine (literally, just look at the silver mines Spain had in their colonies).
Conquest and expansionism are indeed something which contributed to the success of the Europeans. if you wanted something Exclusive to the Europeans, I did provide it - the new world. You also ignored it.
.empirialtank said:
A great read!
It's also funny in certain points.
I would like to note that Africa wasn't in its current condition all of the time... There were great Swahili City-States which benefited greatly form the Indian ocean trade and the trade with the Muslims (Which also spread Islam down there via Trade).There were ancient African cultures of massive stone cities... they were huge, marvelous, but deserted. What happened to those people? The river dried up. Aye, there was a massive river which covered most of East Africa that dried up a few thousand years ago. The structures are still there, mind you. So Africa was like Europe in some sense in some time in the past.
Just putting it out there.
Notice what binds all of them together - Massive and/or many Rivers, and/or the Ice Age.
Erhm... Y'know, you did have Carl the Great, right? The Frankish Empire and all that... One
Competition always drives ingenuity, as we learn new ways to kill each other more efficiently.
Oh you got me, my brilliant plan to deliberately ignore your points and look like an idiot has been foiled!TheIronRuler said:
No, you were referring to my first point which was about how Europeans really didn't do anything worse than what had been done in the past. Which is why I focused on your mention of slavery and conquest. I didn't say that Europeans got ahead because of slavery either, I said that it helped them get ahead. I'm pretty sure that you said something to that effect as well.
I apologize if I'm misinterpreting your post greatly, but when you say they got manpower through enslaving the locals and trading for slaves in Africa I assume you're implying it helped them get ahead.
Anyways, my point was that they didn't do anything that set them apart as reaching a new degree of cruelty. Regardless how well they managed to utilize it, and how much that helped them get ahead doesn't really matter, and wasn't what I was trying to get at. I was assuming that was what you were arguing against, hence why I brought up similar acts done by other cultures.
.The Almighty Aardvark said:
Woo, what a riot. Sorry then.
Thing is - I'm not saying that what the Europeans mostly did was unique... (But seriously, dude, seriously, slave ships. Have you seen drawings of those? Have you? That's cruel.) But you did have such a high mortality rate for African slaves in South America that Portugal had to continue slave trading for a longggg time (It's one of the last nations in Europe to ban Slavery) for more manpower. Conditions were just abysmal.
Anyway, like I said earlier - cash crops, baby. Europeans succeeded by leeching off trade or monopolizing it.
You just reminded me to punch the next person who attacks Christianity over the Dark Ages in the throat (for mostly unrelated reasons, but this doesn't help).
OT: Because luck.
Really, that's it. Because the Anglo-Saxon civilizations managed to strike it rich. It also helped that they lived in some of the most human-friendly environments (compare to the Amazon or Sahara) and thus didn't have to fight as hard to survive, lowing for more exploration of intellectual concepts.
OT: Because luck.
Really, that's it. Because the Anglo-Saxon civilizations managed to strike it rich. It also helped that they lived in some of the most human-friendly environments (compare to the Amazon or Sahara) and thus didn't have to fight as hard to survive, lowing for more exploration of intellectual concepts.