So returning to Darwin, I’m well into his analysis of the 1800s now. And, while I truthfully don’t particular get his specific argument for why NW Europe was able to exploit easily accessed raw materials and capital to industrialize while NW China remained trapped in a high-level pre-industrial equilibrium,
In any case, I really do need to read some Indian history sometime soon. But it’s interesting how contingent he views British domination of India as, essentially the result of Mughal power collapsing just as European capability was beginning to significantly increase (being totally honest my knowledge of the region and period is entirely limited to my reading the first three Sharpe books when I was like 14. Which is to say, not quite nonexistent).
But anyway, I’m really intrigued by his argument that what he calls ‘generic liberalism’ and the limited European peace between Vienna and Sarajevo were vital to total European global dominance from the later 1800s on. Or at least, the idea that all the disparate global empires are only even slightly possible in a context where blockades and naval interdictions form other major powers aren’t a constant worry, that the massive flow of colonists (especially to America) wouldn’t have been anywhere near as large without open sea lanes or with stricter conscription, that a century of more-or-less regular peace allowed for the real development of specialization and interdependance necessary for industrialization to really work, and that real European conflict would have meant various Afro-Asian state-builders would have found much more genuine allies in their modernization program and bought them some breathing room from major colonial invasion all make a lot of sense to me. Also, it tracks with the anecdote I’ve had buried in my skull since forever about Russian debtors continuing to provide timely payments to the Anglo-French creditors even as their respective nations had armies killing each other in the Crimea.
