I’ve recently read"The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World" and want to hear what all of you think the answer is, because I feel like the book was missing something in its thesis and I am not very sure what that is.
I’ve recently read"The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World" and want to hear what all of you think the answer is, because I feel like the book was missing something in its thesis and I am not very sure what that is.
The americas had jack shit for work animals but thats sort of a guns germs and steel explanation. China had all the same materials and Europe and didn’t go off to pillage the world.
As others have mentioned in this thread, China had the potential to be the birthplace of capitalism but got slowed down by other factors like the Mongol Empire.
China would have to be in a permanent waring states period for centuries to develop the debt systems necessary to start capitalism. It had all the resources but none of the motivation. The Mongol Empire had little to do with that, unless you meant “returning China to dynastic rule”. Honestly that theory just sounds like chinese nationalist cope.
fair enough (I did not mean due to dynastic rule)
None of the Chinese dynasties could ever get away with something like the Enclosure Act in England. Any attempt would’ve resulted in dynastic overthrow. Plus the economic collapse of the Ming dynasty caused by silver inflation from Spain’s colonization of the New World did far more damage than the Mongol Conquests.