It’s become trendy to bash Western Civilization lately. Americans in particular have a self-loathing streak. It’s cool to hate on America. “Smart,” people from college campuses and Starbucks the world over love to remind themselves and everyone else who will listen of the country’s umm, checkered, past. Western culture has a pretty extensive list of atrocities to answer for, from the crusades, to chattel slavery, to Justin Bieber. And while we can debate the merits and morality or lack thereof, of colonization, religion and economically motivated wars, one simple fact remains: Western culture is far and away the dominant culture the world over, and it has been for almost five-hundred years.
I know, I know, you’re an anthropological cultural history major and you just know soooo much about Buddhism, and you can’t believe how culturally ignorant I am! Right? Look, I’m not saying that other regions don’t have their own culture. Indeed, many of those cultures are wonderful, and in some ways I’d even say superior, or at least more attractive to me than Western culture. But you can’t argue against Western cultural imperialism. It exists. It’s pervasive. English is the international language. Hollywood movies play in every theatre, everywhere in the world. If you’re going to a business meeting in any country in the world, you sure better be in a three piece suit, and have your iPhone ready to take notes. Whether by force or by choice, Western cultural forms have conquered the world, and the real question is: why?
Why did Europeans and not anyone else reach out to colonize and cover the globe in Empire? This question becomes even more complex when we look at the world as a whole on the eve of Europe’s leap down the African coast, and eventually across the Atlantic.
In many ways, it’s hard to imagine a less likely candidate for world domination than Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries. Compared to many other regions, Europe was still an intellectual and political backwater at that point. The French and English were were locked in the Hundred Years War intermittently until 1453. Even worse, in that same year, the Ottomans finally took Constantinople, a bastion of the Byzantine Empire for over a thousand years. Although, it had intriguingly enough been sacked before, in 1204 by, (who else) wayward crusaders. By 1529 the Ottomans would be knocking on the gates of Vienna itself and would harass much of Austria until the treaty of Karlowitz in 1699. How did a continent plagued by infighting, religious warfare, and subject to invasion by larger, more organized powers come to rule the world?
While Europe was burning its witches, and putting down peasant revolts, across the globe, China looked much more like a power poised to bring the world to heel. Between 1405 and 1421, the Yongle Emperor of Ming China sent his right hand man, a Muslim admiral by the name of Zheng He, on diplomatic missions from Indonesia to East Africa. The Emperor sought to “display his soldiers in strange lands in order to make manifest the wealth and power of the Middle Kingdom,” as well as to “go to the foreigners’ countries and confer presents on them so as to transform them by displaying our power, while treating distant peoples with kindness.” Zheng’s fleets were massive, comprised of huge treasure ships that would have dwarfed Columbus’ puny fleet that would cross the Atlantic seventy one years later. The fleets would pick up diplomats and dignitaries from as far away as Somalia, and bring them to the magnificent Celestial Court in Beijing. Each one stayed in his own custom stateroom on the treasure ships, a far cry from the cramped quarters that would characterize transatlantic exploration for centuries.
It’s important to look at the Emperor’s words carefully here. The word China is as foreign to China as McDonald’s and Hollywood. The Chinese word for the country is composed of two characters, translating as zhongguo, the Emperor’s “Middle Kingdom.” This is probably the most important concept in understanding Chinese history and development. The Middle Kingdom ideology suggests that China stands at the center of the great cosmic order. Surrounded by martial foreigners and subject to frequent invasion by nomadic warriors, the Han culture maintained an ideology of cultural superiority. They might get invaded from time to time, but the invaders invariably adopted, and submitted to, the superior Han culture, even if they ruled over Han peoples, like the Yuan dynasty of the Mongols, or the Jin of the Jurchen. As such, the Middle Kingdom doctrine dictates that all cultures and peoples exist in relation to the Emperor and the Celestial Court. In line with Confucian principles, the Emperor acts as the benevolent father to his earthly family of “All Under Heaven.” Consequently, foreigners were expected to pay tribute, and acknowledge the suzerainty of Chinese rule.
And at the time, it would be hard to argue with Chinese cultural and technological superiority. As I mentioned, their naval power far outstripped what the Europeans would have been able to muster. China also had a seemingly massive advantage in manpower. By 1500 the population of Ming China was already 125 million, compared with about 60 million in all of Black Death stunted Europe. It’s important to remember too, that that number comprises all of fractured and squabbling Europe, while the 125 million under Ming rule comprised a much more cohesive political entity. China’s population grew in large part because rice cultivation is much more calorie rich than other staples like wheat and barley, grown in Europe. That surplus of calories enabled Chinese populations to grow much more quickly. It also freed up labor from mere subsistence farming, to form a more economically diverse and complex society. China had already constructed and maintained its massive Grand Canal, over 1000 miles of interconnected canals that economically integrated much of the Empire, and is still in use today. It makes Venice’s Grand Canal look like a trickle.
Greatly aided by a strong central state, and a long tradition of respect for writing, China developed its famed bureaucracy. Applicants gained access to this bureaucracy based on merit, and were evaluated with extremely rigorous examinations. Candidates slept in their cubicles for days on end, and only a handful out of thousands had any hope of passing and entering the Imperial bureaucracy. The examination system allowed for meritocratic advancement, hitherto unseen in Europe. The Emperor needed the best advisors and administrators for one simple reason. In Chinese thought, just as the Heavenly “Middle-Kingdom,” would necessarily draw in barbarians and convert them by virtue of its superior culture, the Emperor would draw the best and most reliable ministers and administrators to his court, by virtue of his own moral perfection. Thus, a well qualified and efficient administration was seen as proof of the Emperor’s divine moral example. The system was not perfect of course. Especially since wealthy landowners and merchants were likely to have the excess time and money needed to study for the examinations. However, it contrasted sharply to a Europe still governed by local landowners and hereditary nobility.
With all these advantages, we have to ask the question: “what happened?” Why did China fail to conquer the globe when it outstripped tiny and fractured Europe in almost every regard? The answer lies in the dual nature of China’s apparent advantages, and Europe’s apparent weaknesses.
We talked about Europeans warring with each other constantly in the beginning of this post. While war certainly does untold damage in terms of property and human life, it also sparks ingenuity and creativity. The English and French spent the Hundred Years War intermittently killing each other, but the war yielded important military breakthroughs. In 1415 the English longbowmen at Agincourt rendered France’s cavalry charge of knights a disaster. Once unsaddled, the French knights in their heavy plate armor were quickly cut down by the lightly armored English. It was clear that the age of the armored knight was coming to an end. It was survival of the fittest, and such clashes spurred much military innovation.
China may have been the first culture to develop gunpowder, but the Chinese mainly used it for psychological weaponry. The Europeans, faced with each other’s castles, quickly adapted gunpowder and saltpeter for use in cannons to break down each other’s walls. China of course faced countless invasions, and dynasty changes, but while the Europeans were confronted by massive fortifications, China was often facing the swift and agile cavalry of their steppe neighbors. Cannons wouldn’t have made much sense against these enemies, but because of this, the Chinese lagged behind for centuries in ballistic technology. This is but one example of how Europe’s fractious nature necessitated ingenuity, which produced technologies that would later aid Europe, and the United States in dominating the world, especially as they engaged in gunboat diplomacy with China and Japan.
But what about China’s fleets? Why didn’t they go out and conquer the waves in the name of the Emperor? The sad truth is that soon after Zheng He’s missions, the great treasure ships were allowed to rot, and deep water shipping was outright banned. While various internal and financial pressures played a role in this turn inward, in the end, it was the same concept of zhongguo that sent the fleets, that would let them rot. The Chinese certainly set up missions abroad, but the fleets were not sent to colonize. The world was seen to revolve around the Middle Kingdom. Once the foreigners had paid their tribute, and seen the glory of the Empire, they would surely recognize its superiority. There was no need to bring China to the world. The world would necessarily be drawn to the Middle Kingdom, the Celestial Court and the Emperor’s personal virtue. In 1793, the Qianlong Emperor told Queen Victoria’s emissary that China had no use for English trinkets like cannons and guns, although they were far more technologically advanced than anything China could muster by then. With no ideological motivation for colonization, the expense of the treasure fleets became unjustifiable to the conservative Confucian bureaucracy, and consequently the great junks were left to rot on China’s coast.
The Europeans could not have been more different. Far from content to let the world come to them, the Europeans actively sought out new lands. For one, Europe had God on its side. Or at least they thought so. Missionaries were often the first into new territories. In fact, the Jesuits were some of the first Europeans to reach China and Japan in the 1500s. The crusader mentality had not entirely abated, and Europeans were not shy about proselytizing and saving souls, regardless of if those souls really wanted saving or not.
Europeans also had a more earthly reason to seek out colonies and new markets: money. China was not ideologically disposed toward a market economy. Both Buddhism and Taoism look askance on earthly attachment consisting of money and property. Confucianism downplayed the social standing of merchants in China. Even wealthy merchants ensured that their children obtained a first rate education in the Confucian classics. The end-goal was always to sit for the examinations that would allow them to enter the bureaucracy, not to acquire more capital and expand the business. Thus, China never developed capitalism the way Europe did. With its never ending thirst for new markets, capitalism pushed the Europeans beyond their borders in search of new goods, and new people to buy sell those goods to. The mercantile system adopted by the Europeans encouraged the spread of empire as well as new colonies trading with the mother country, to the mother country’s benefit of course.
Even China’s venerable population posed a problem for the Chinese. With such a massive labor pool, and a powerful centralized government, it was comparatively easy to engage in massive projects, like the Grand Canal and the Great Wall. Consequently, China had less incentive to invent labor saving technology, i.e. machines, that would ignite an Industrial Revolution. Even something as horrible as the Black Death had benefits for Europe. WIth such a dramatically reduced labor pool, indeed, the plague killed about 30% of Europe’s population, rages rose steadily, because of a reduced supply of labor. Consequently, Europeans had great incentive to develop labor saving machinery.
Finally, that meritocratic examination system also came back to bite China. While it was meant to select the most capable ministers, it did so on the basis of their knowledge of the Confucian classics. Thus, study of mathematics and science were passed over in favor of study of Master Kong’s words. (Kong-fuzi, Master Kong, later Latinized to Confucius.) The bureaucracy was inherently conservative in this respect. Ministers could remonstrate with the Emperor, but any form of political organization was looked upon with extreme suspicion. China’s golden age, the Tang, had been torn asunder by regional power factions, and later Emperors would see to it that any political organization was quickly stamped out In line with Confucian paternalism, the Emperor was the father of Middle Kingdom, and to question him would be a grave breach of filial piety, Confucianism’s cardinal virtue. This meant that, although Europe was frequently torn apart by rebellions put on by regional land-holders, those land holders were planting the seeds of democracy. By 1215, the English gentry would force King John into signing the Magna Carta. Such an act would have been unthinkable in China, but the Magna Carta put a crack in the edifice of royal authority, that would allow democracy to take root.
So what have we learned? Things aren’t always what they seem. Apparent weaknesses can quickly turn into strengths, and apparent strengths, may be covert weaknesses. Europe’s latent strengths would propel it to world domination. The Europeans won the battle of cultures in purely geopolitical terms, and indeed, they did what they wanted. By the mid 1800s, Europe would be dictated the terms of treaties to Qing China, and even encroaching on its territorial sovereignty by partitioning off parts of the country. Finding itself woefully behind, China would eventually embark on modernization programs, but by then, it was too little too late. China would endure decades of embarrassment before its recent resurgence. In doing so, they’ve embraced much of what made Europe so successful from a geopolitical standpoint. Capitalism, and investment in science and technology have become mainstays of China’s economic surge. But as we’ve seen, nothing is set in stone. Weaknesses can turn to strengths, and strengths to weaknesses, as suddenly and erratically, as the wind changes directions.
