I personally call this stuff geographic determinism and I view it as a pseudoscience because a lot of it originated with the gun germs and steel book placing an overimportance on geography. Instead of scientific racism, its “hwite ppl are superior because cold winters forced them to develop complex society because otherwise they would freeze to death le natural selection”
Im not saying that the south wasnt the region where slavery was the most prominent, but the south was in no way more disposed to slavery because hundreds of millions of years ago plate tectonics caused there to be a ridge formed in the south that just so happened to cause rivers to end abruptly, and people built mills there, and it’s more fertile, and oh uh a bunch of whites imported actual people as slaves because the land was just so good for slavery.
So what explains the graphic im malding about in the first place? Not geography. I dont got a fucking answer, I just know the answer isnt geography.
a lot of it originated with the gun germs and steel book placing an overimportance on geography
I mean, there’s something undeniably influential about geography on certain cultural and economic trends. It isn’t a coincidence that England and Japan both became globe-spanning naval powers. And the impact of herd animals on the cultivation of disease is as undeniable today as it was a thousand years ago.
Im not saying that the south wasnt the region where slavery was the most prominent, but the south was in no way more disposed to slavery because hundreds of millions of years ago plate tectonics caused there to be a ridge formed in the south that just so happened to cause rivers to end abruptly, and people built mills there, and it’s more fertile, and oh uh a bunch of whites imported actual people as slaves because the land was just so good for slavery.
I think you’re reading a bit too much into the graph headlines. The plate tectonics creating a fertile region had a political consequence because it concentrated agricultural workers in a well-defined strip of land. Those agricultural workers had a socio-economic interest that was sharply distinct from the urban shipping centers along the coast and the ranch land to the north.
This doesn’t guarantee slavery. The Lakes of Minnesota and the California Valley were both fertile agricultural lands that failed to produce an active slave trade. But it does guarantee a concentration of particular industries. Not coincidentally, Minnesota and California have larger and more active labor movements concentrated in the areas where dense populations of agg workers live.
So what explains the graphic im malding about in the first place? Not geography.
Absolutely geography. That was the ahem bedrock of the split in regional concentrations of population, economic activities common to the region, and subsequent political formations within these regions.
Where the theory ultimately falls apart, though, is in assuming the political divides need to be this sharp or the populations this heterogeneous. Alabama doesn’t have to be a western-oriented state scarred by settler colonialism. That strip of tectonic activity didn’t summon Columbus from the ether or split the Democratic Party over desegregation. It didn’t foster a slave markets in Manhattan or on the banks of the Potomic and it didn’t drive the native tribes west of the Mississippi.
The shape we’re seeing in the data is human history crashing like a wave on the shores of the coast and depositing individuals in the cracks left by geography. A different history would have brought different people with different socio-economic fate. But you’d still see farmers congregating along the rich soil, and those farmers would share a common interest, and that would mean something for the strip of land that wasn’t as true outside it.
think you’re reading a bit too much into the graph headlines. The plate tectonics creating a fertile region had a political consequence because it concentrated agricultural workers
It didn’t concentrate them only in that area though. There are a lot of farms outside of that band. There were a lot of slaves outside of that band as well. Those regions had political consequences too and it wasn’t because plate tectonics created the exact same conditions there. You’re seeing labor struggle in a fertile area and drawing the conclusion that the fertile area was an ultimate cause to the struggle. Rather, there is struggle between slaves and slave-owners no matter the soil conditions. If this struggle happens anywhere, then the plate tectonics were coincidental, not causal.
Yeah that whole theory of how Europe took control of the world always sounds so bogus to me. It’s bogus because up until Europe started taking slaves from Africa and America, they weren’t the most technologically or scientifically advanced or whatever. The middle east and India had already lapped Europe in terms of math, astronomy, medicine, etc.
The middle east in particular was so much more advanced that the Renaissance in part occurred because of Latin translations of Arabic texts from literally 400 years beforehand.
The arabic world was decimated by the Mongol invasions though, and the Islamic Golden Age was put to the sword. The reason they were reading 400 year old texts and not modern contemporary ones is because of this.
Honestly, the mountain ranges that held the mongols back from taking Europe and kept them relatively safe are a large part of the reason why Europe was able to catch back up.
By the way, it’s also a myth that Mongols were technologically backwards. They were at the very, very start before they took over chunks of China and incorporated their technology. The mongols were extremely adaptable, and by the end of their conquests they were using the most advanced siege weaponry on Earth.
mongols were still expanding westward until they hit the carpathians and caucuses, and even sent some expeditionary scouting parties through and found there wasn’t enough grass to sustain their horses and the land was too poor and backwards to bother with. One of their scouting parties nearly defeated a European army on its own and the Europeans thought they beat the Mongols for good but it was just a small detatchment
They made it as far west as Bulgaria and the Carpathian mountains, and could have easily continued had it been worth it and had there not been annoying choke-points and bottlenecks and rugged terrain - eventually the Mongols did take Bulgaria, but as I was saying, the mountainous terrain in this region is really what walled them off and led to them being ambushed and defeated at higher rates, and reduced the effectiveness and mobility of their armies.
But why did Europe go around the world capturing slaves in the first place? What necessitated their ability and desire to travel across the world dominating populations? Why didn’t Africa or Asia colonize Europe first?
I don’t propose a particular theory, but these are unanswered questions, surely?
I’m a big proponent of the “too many bored and trained military guys” theory. The tipping point was Spain funding expeditions out into the new world because they had amassed a military complex and were teeming with young guys who wanted to shoot guns somewhere. They had a ton of guys left over from the reconquista.
Why they got to the America first probably is down to geography, at least on this one. The most advantageous ocean currents facilitated back and forth travel to Europe better than from anywhere else. Then they discovered the wind currents to Africa.
that’s just how they got the advantage in the first place. Why did they do it? Internal contradictions within feudalism that required expansion from the mercantile class. Stuff like that. The burgeoning capitalist class was feeling the restrictions of feudal land management and something was going to burst eventually. Europe just happened to be in a position where that capital expansion was done through domination of the ocean.
Instead of scientific racism, its “hwite ppl are superior because cold winters forced them to develop complex society because otherwise they would freeze to death le natural selection”
A lot of skull measurer bros do say that though. Funny thing though I’ve spoken with Afrocentric people who think the same thing but take it to a different conclusion. They think that white people’s behavior throughout history is the result of the harsh winters that they evolved in. They think that going through harsh winters made Europeans more cruel and violent than people of color. Now I don’t put much stock into race science, even if it’s punching up at whites, but it was admittedly amusing to listen to.
What is the reason that Europe colonised the world and not the other way round though?
Other countries had similar levels of ore in the ground and so on, so theoretically they could’ve advanced at the same time and decided to invade the rest of the world.
I definitely don’t put the answer down to whites being genetically smarter, and I don’t have a decided answer, but I read read a book by Yannis Varoufakis where he states that Europe’s invasion and colonisation of the world comes down to the need for surplus in colder countries.
Paraphrasing, in colder countries you need to stockpile grain and so on for the winter, while in warmer places there’s an abundance of food around you at all times, especially in times when populations weren’t so big.
The existence of the stockpiled grain then necessitated debt, as in winter time you’d feed people your grain at a cost - a cost that they could not pay at that time. To enforce the debt, you then need a bank of sorts with the backing of force to make sure the debt is repaid. Money and force begets more money and force, and eventually there becomes a high concentration of power in the hands of the few with great armies, with the mind to get more money through force.
From my own thoughts, geographically, your country might also have an advantage if you’re by the sea, because you would create a Naval force, a key instrument in the ability to go around the world plundering.
What would you give as an alternative answer? I don’t think this answer dictates that white people are inherently smarter back then or today.
They took over because they chose to go and take it instead of develop the ability domestically. That is they exploited their domestic capacity until they couldn’t, and then went to other places for more exploitation.
If your society wasn’t organized that way, where you could cultivate your environmental capacity in balance with your needs, through cooperation and diplomacy, then there was no need to conquer. Needing more stuff doesn’t make conquest inevitable.
But what’s the underlying cause of that in the first place? The society structure/organization surely correlates to environmental factors, not just people randomly selecting.
I know it’s frustrating to be endlessly epistemological, but why did Europe exceed their capacity and choose to go and take it elsewhere? What makes societies develop in ways of stewardship with the land rather than in ways of exploitation?
They weren’t the only ones to “win” they just happen to be the winners in our historical moment and in the context of our culture. Other civilizations did go pillage and conquer. Europe did it to themselves first. We just happen to be living in the moment where we all consider it the most important and consequential outcome. If humanity continues under capitalism, there will be many more and someday someone will wonder why the US won in the 20th century if not for them reacting to the dust bowl.
It’s not that Europe was uniquely equipped to be imperialist, it’s that they’re the biggest and most recent example (other than the US) that we’re familiar with. Also what makes them unique is European Industrial Capitalism, of which we’re the living most immediate result. Mayans didn’t have industrial capitalism. Neither did China or Japan. None of them even had capitalism.
Every society in history has their own contradictions. Every moment in history has a dominant contradiction. We’re used to analyzing the contradictions of capitalism, and that is indeed what Marx wrote about. So to understand European history in pre-capitalist times, you have to look the contradictions of the time which may or may not be the same as under capitalism. England vs France is a contradiction. Monarchy vs Subject. Lord vs Serf. These things drive what happened.
Contradiction 1: Humans vs environment. Humans depend on the environment and yet we alter it when we gather resources for production. If you cut down most of the forests in the UK, for example, this contradiction comes to the forefront of those who depend on lumber. Whether it’s a business, an artisan, a merchant, a monarchy that needs boats, or a peasant that needs a house.
Contradiction 2: Monarchy vs Subject. The monarchy needs its subjects for production and defense and legitimacy. If subjects are overexploited, they revolt, and this becomes the dominant contradiction.
Contradiction 3 to infinity: Monarchy vs Monarchy. Monarchies fight over territory and whatever ways that expresses itself in the culture (ie honor, religion, etc). At some point the two can no longer afford to keep fighting over a boarder that isn’t moving. There is no one left to conquer. So you have to develop the cultural idea of a treaty or truce. Then you team up and go conquer new territory because that may come with wealth that the other kingdom doesn’t have.
These contradictions are the underlying cause and which one specifically depends on the moment in history and the society in which the contradiction exists.
It’s important to stress that even peaceful societies have contradictions. They are unavoidable as they are the result of existence. Even indigenous societies had contradictions and they were also resolved by war. Even a perfectly communist society will have contradictions, it’s just that we will have resolved the contradictions of capitalism specifically.
I don’t mean to be pedantic or defend the theory I talked about, but imperialism and capitalisms existence is surely precluded by a number of factors, and the fact that Europe reached the stage of capitalism/imperialism at the time they did is reflective of history that predates that period (obviously, I know). It’s that history that the theory attempts to decipher. It’s the why of, why didn’t China develop a capitalist system at that time?
Another poster mentioned Spain, which I think pokes a hole because it’s not cold there and they still were some of the earliest mercantile expeditionaries to South America.
No, debt didn’t originate in Europe (Varoufakis mentions the earliest debts on record are not European), but it was apparently on a wider scale in non-surplus countries because stockpiling a necessity like food in a place where food is scarce leads to more people entering debt to gain access to it.
‘The problem with all these authors is that they are utterly unaware that Northern Europe was a backwater from the end of the Roman Empire to about 1750 AD’ - What do you mean by this? What’s the implications of Europe being in the muck for that time period? Again, not trying to combat, just trying to understand.
I personally call this stuff geographic determinism and I view it as a pseudoscience because a lot of it originated with the gun germs and steel book placing an overimportance on geography. Instead of scientific racism, its “hwite ppl are superior because cold winters forced them to develop complex society because otherwise they would freeze to death le natural selection”
Im not saying that the south wasnt the region where slavery was the most prominent, but the south was in no way more disposed to slavery because hundreds of millions of years ago plate tectonics caused there to be a ridge formed in the south that just so happened to cause rivers to end abruptly, and people built mills there, and it’s more fertile, and oh uh a bunch of whites imported actual people as slaves because the land was just so good for slavery.
So what explains the graphic im malding about in the first place? Not geography. I dont got a fucking answer, I just know the answer isnt geography.
Jared Diamond being full of shit doesn’t make the material conditions irrelevant.
I mean, there’s something undeniably influential about geography on certain cultural and economic trends. It isn’t a coincidence that England and Japan both became globe-spanning naval powers. And the impact of herd animals on the cultivation of disease is as undeniable today as it was a thousand years ago.
I think you’re reading a bit too much into the graph headlines. The plate tectonics creating a fertile region had a political consequence because it concentrated agricultural workers in a well-defined strip of land. Those agricultural workers had a socio-economic interest that was sharply distinct from the urban shipping centers along the coast and the ranch land to the north.
This doesn’t guarantee slavery. The Lakes of Minnesota and the California Valley were both fertile agricultural lands that failed to produce an active slave trade. But it does guarantee a concentration of particular industries. Not coincidentally, Minnesota and California have larger and more active labor movements concentrated in the areas where dense populations of agg workers live.
Absolutely geography. That was the ahem bedrock of the split in regional concentrations of population, economic activities common to the region, and subsequent political formations within these regions.
Where the theory ultimately falls apart, though, is in assuming the political divides need to be this sharp or the populations this heterogeneous. Alabama doesn’t have to be a western-oriented state scarred by settler colonialism. That strip of tectonic activity didn’t summon Columbus from the ether or split the Democratic Party over desegregation. It didn’t foster a slave markets in Manhattan or on the banks of the Potomic and it didn’t drive the native tribes west of the Mississippi.
The shape we’re seeing in the data is human history crashing like a wave on the shores of the coast and depositing individuals in the cracks left by geography. A different history would have brought different people with different socio-economic fate. But you’d still see farmers congregating along the rich soil, and those farmers would share a common interest, and that would mean something for the strip of land that wasn’t as true outside it.
It didn’t concentrate them only in that area though. There are a lot of farms outside of that band. There were a lot of slaves outside of that band as well. Those regions had political consequences too and it wasn’t because plate tectonics created the exact same conditions there. You’re seeing labor struggle in a fertile area and drawing the conclusion that the fertile area was an ultimate cause to the struggle. Rather, there is struggle between slaves and slave-owners no matter the soil conditions. If this struggle happens anywhere, then the plate tectonics were coincidental, not causal.
Yeah that whole theory of how Europe took control of the world always sounds so bogus to me. It’s bogus because up until Europe started taking slaves from Africa and America, they weren’t the most technologically or scientifically advanced or whatever. The middle east and India had already lapped Europe in terms of math, astronomy, medicine, etc.
The middle east in particular was so much more advanced that the Renaissance in part occurred because of Latin translations of Arabic texts from literally 400 years beforehand.
The arabic world was decimated by the Mongol invasions though, and the Islamic Golden Age was put to the sword. The reason they were reading 400 year old texts and not modern contemporary ones is because of this.
Honestly, the mountain ranges that held the mongols back from taking Europe and kept them relatively safe are a large part of the reason why Europe was able to catch back up.
By the way, it’s also a myth that Mongols were technologically backwards. They were at the very, very start before they took over chunks of China and incorporated their technology. The mongols were extremely adaptable, and by the end of their conquests they were using the most advanced siege weaponry on Earth.
deleted by creator
mongols were still expanding westward until they hit the carpathians and caucuses, and even sent some expeditionary scouting parties through and found there wasn’t enough grass to sustain their horses and the land was too poor and backwards to bother with. One of their scouting parties nearly defeated a European army on its own and the Europeans thought they beat the Mongols for good but it was just a small detatchment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Samara_Bend
They made it as far west as Bulgaria and the Carpathian mountains, and could have easily continued had it been worth it and had there not been annoying choke-points and bottlenecks and rugged terrain - eventually the Mongols did take Bulgaria, but as I was saying, the mountainous terrain in this region is really what walled them off and led to them being ambushed and defeated at higher rates, and reduced the effectiveness and mobility of their armies.
But why did Europe go around the world capturing slaves in the first place? What necessitated their ability and desire to travel across the world dominating populations? Why didn’t Africa or Asia colonize Europe first?
I don’t propose a particular theory, but these are unanswered questions, surely?
I’m a big proponent of the “too many bored and trained military guys” theory. The tipping point was Spain funding expeditions out into the new world because they had amassed a military complex and were teeming with young guys who wanted to shoot guns somewhere. They had a ton of guys left over from the reconquista.
Why they got to the America first probably is down to geography, at least on this one. The most advantageous ocean currents facilitated back and forth travel to Europe better than from anywhere else. Then they discovered the wind currents to Africa.
that’s just how they got the advantage in the first place. Why did they do it? Internal contradictions within feudalism that required expansion from the mercantile class. Stuff like that. The burgeoning capitalist class was feeling the restrictions of feudal land management and something was going to burst eventually. Europe just happened to be in a position where that capital expansion was done through domination of the ocean.
A lot of skull measurer bros do say that though. Funny thing though I’ve spoken with Afrocentric people who think the same thing but take it to a different conclusion. They think that white people’s behavior throughout history is the result of the harsh winters that they evolved in. They think that going through harsh winters made Europeans more cruel and violent than people of color. Now I don’t put much stock into race science, even if it’s punching up at whites, but it was admittedly amusing to listen to.
What is the reason that Europe colonised the world and not the other way round though? Other countries had similar levels of ore in the ground and so on, so theoretically they could’ve advanced at the same time and decided to invade the rest of the world.
I definitely don’t put the answer down to whites being genetically smarter, and I don’t have a decided answer, but I read read a book by Yannis Varoufakis where he states that Europe’s invasion and colonisation of the world comes down to the need for surplus in colder countries.
Paraphrasing, in colder countries you need to stockpile grain and so on for the winter, while in warmer places there’s an abundance of food around you at all times, especially in times when populations weren’t so big.
The existence of the stockpiled grain then necessitated debt, as in winter time you’d feed people your grain at a cost - a cost that they could not pay at that time. To enforce the debt, you then need a bank of sorts with the backing of force to make sure the debt is repaid. Money and force begets more money and force, and eventually there becomes a high concentration of power in the hands of the few with great armies, with the mind to get more money through force.
From my own thoughts, geographically, your country might also have an advantage if you’re by the sea, because you would create a Naval force, a key instrument in the ability to go around the world plundering.
What would you give as an alternative answer? I don’t think this answer dictates that white people are inherently smarter back then or today.
They took over because they chose to go and take it instead of develop the ability domestically. That is they exploited their domestic capacity until they couldn’t, and then went to other places for more exploitation.
If your society wasn’t organized that way, where you could cultivate your environmental capacity in balance with your needs, through cooperation and diplomacy, then there was no need to conquer. Needing more stuff doesn’t make conquest inevitable.
But what’s the underlying cause of that in the first place? The society structure/organization surely correlates to environmental factors, not just people randomly selecting.
I know it’s frustrating to be endlessly epistemological, but why did Europe exceed their capacity and choose to go and take it elsewhere? What makes societies develop in ways of stewardship with the land rather than in ways of exploitation?
They weren’t the only ones to “win” they just happen to be the winners in our historical moment and in the context of our culture. Other civilizations did go pillage and conquer. Europe did it to themselves first. We just happen to be living in the moment where we all consider it the most important and consequential outcome. If humanity continues under capitalism, there will be many more and someday someone will wonder why the US won in the 20th century if not for them reacting to the dust bowl.
It’s not that Europe was uniquely equipped to be imperialist, it’s that they’re the biggest and most recent example (other than the US) that we’re familiar with. Also what makes them unique is European Industrial Capitalism, of which we’re the living most immediate result. Mayans didn’t have industrial capitalism. Neither did China or Japan. None of them even had capitalism.
Every society in history has their own contradictions. Every moment in history has a dominant contradiction. We’re used to analyzing the contradictions of capitalism, and that is indeed what Marx wrote about. So to understand European history in pre-capitalist times, you have to look the contradictions of the time which may or may not be the same as under capitalism. England vs France is a contradiction. Monarchy vs Subject. Lord vs Serf. These things drive what happened.
Contradiction 1: Humans vs environment. Humans depend on the environment and yet we alter it when we gather resources for production. If you cut down most of the forests in the UK, for example, this contradiction comes to the forefront of those who depend on lumber. Whether it’s a business, an artisan, a merchant, a monarchy that needs boats, or a peasant that needs a house.
Contradiction 2: Monarchy vs Subject. The monarchy needs its subjects for production and defense and legitimacy. If subjects are overexploited, they revolt, and this becomes the dominant contradiction.
Contradiction 3 to infinity: Monarchy vs Monarchy. Monarchies fight over territory and whatever ways that expresses itself in the culture (ie honor, religion, etc). At some point the two can no longer afford to keep fighting over a boarder that isn’t moving. There is no one left to conquer. So you have to develop the cultural idea of a treaty or truce. Then you team up and go conquer new territory because that may come with wealth that the other kingdom doesn’t have.
These contradictions are the underlying cause and which one specifically depends on the moment in history and the society in which the contradiction exists.
It’s important to stress that even peaceful societies have contradictions. They are unavoidable as they are the result of existence. Even indigenous societies had contradictions and they were also resolved by war. Even a perfectly communist society will have contradictions, it’s just that we will have resolved the contradictions of capitalism specifically.
mmm, thanks for the write up
yeah that does make sense
deleted by creator
I don’t mean to be pedantic or defend the theory I talked about, but imperialism and capitalisms existence is surely precluded by a number of factors, and the fact that Europe reached the stage of capitalism/imperialism at the time they did is reflective of history that predates that period (obviously, I know). It’s that history that the theory attempts to decipher. It’s the why of, why didn’t China develop a capitalist system at that time?
Another poster mentioned Spain, which I think pokes a hole because it’s not cold there and they still were some of the earliest mercantile expeditionaries to South America.
No, debt didn’t originate in Europe (Varoufakis mentions the earliest debts on record are not European), but it was apparently on a wider scale in non-surplus countries because stockpiling a necessity like food in a place where food is scarce leads to more people entering debt to gain access to it.
‘The problem with all these authors is that they are utterly unaware that Northern Europe was a backwater from the end of the Roman Empire to about 1750 AD’ - What do you mean by this? What’s the implications of Europe being in the muck for that time period? Again, not trying to combat, just trying to understand.