Economy as Interaction of the Man and the Environment, which
Unfolds in Space and Time. The Western and Eastern Approaches
Lucy Badalian, PhD
Victor Krivorotov, PhD
Millennium Workshop, USA
lucy@quantumart.com
“Those who do not forget the past are the masters of the future.”
Sima Qian,
China’s first great historian (ca 145-86 BCE)
Abstract. East and West – the two dissimilar ways of using one’s environment for supporting the demographic growth. The path forward may lie through their merging.
It is a well known fact that many technological innovations that are associated with the West, such as gunpowder, printing, compass etc originally came from the East, mostly from China and the Arabic world. While they eventually led to the military and technological dominance of the West, they failed to produce comparable results in the East. We show that this was rooted in the fundamental dissimilarity of relationships between the technology and the society. In the West technology ruled, while in the East preservation of social balance was of utmost importance.
Historically, both East and West evolved to solve the same problem – feeding their respective demographic growth. However, their solutions differed, perhaps, with geoclimatic specifics accounting for the major part of their divergence (Diamond, 1996). Thus, successive western societies were shaped around the dominant technology of the time – witness, for example, the dissimilarity between the modern consumer society, US-style, an offshoot of the oil-based economy; and the industrial Britain, where King Coal ruled. Meanwhile, the eastern-style societies tended to be fairly conservative, oftentimes sacrificing the technological advance for the sake of social stability. Thus, the Mughal India easily coexisted with the earlier caste-system.
Up to the 16th century the Eastern-style development led to a generally higher degree of evolutionary success – as it could support considerably higher levels of demographic density. However, as shown by a number of authors (Clark, 2007, Findlay, O’Rourke, 2008), starting from the 1850s, the Western-style development proved to be more successful. After a leap in labor productivity achieved through higher energy expenditures, the industrial society managed to break through Malthusian constraints. This was accomplished via significant efficiencies of scale and the growing use of non-renewable resources, often procured from colonial and post colonial territories of East.
Today, the amazing success of China attracts renewed interest in the Eastern model and stresses its profound differences from West.
1. Power versus precision. Historically, instead of increasing its energy expenditures western-style, East relied on its ample resources of manpower. Thus, any new need for increasing mechanical power was traded for more precision in energy applications.
2. Big versus small. With the demographic growth not channeled away via primogeniture – in the West, the entire inheritance was passed to the oldest son pushing the younger sons towards territorial expansion – the size of land holdings in the East tended to get smaller with time. This contrasts the prevailing Western trend towards reaping scale efficiencies by increasing the size of an average enterprise. In China, its tiny holdings led to remarkable nimbleness in using peculiar features of any natural niche.
3. King of nature versus its temporary servant. East and West differed also in their attitude towards their environments. It is a sad fact that any known type of economic activity leads to irretrievable ecological changes. For example, deforestation and the resulting erosion were typical both in West and East. However, the eastern-style reliance on growing a variety of interdependent cultures proved to be more preservation minded than the monoculture-based agricultural style of West. In China, the erosion from initial deforestation was in fact gradually reduced via terracing and other forms of accommodation to minute peculiarities of their environment.
4. Staying put versus territorial expansion. In China, expenditures in labor were never spared if they helped in improving one’s plot for handing it down to the next generation in accordance with Confucian values. Meanwhile, in West, uniformity of terrain was urgently needed for more efficient mechanical applications. Within the governing paradigm of the man as the king of the nature, there was always more open land beckoning on the horizon after exhausting the older plots.
5. Monoculture economy versus a carefully selected blend of multi-cultures. The monoculture-reliant large scale western economy presents thus a striking contrast to the eastern multicultural small-scale model, which thrived on the cultivation of many mutually complementing cultures within its highly specialized economy on tiny plots.
One would argue that standardization, machines and reliance on monocultures opened the way to much higher productivity, needed to feed the surging population of the planet. However, mounting resource shortages, on the background of global warming and pollution, point at the exogenous limit for the Western-style development. We show that switching back to the mode of small scale production may lead away from monocultures, with their heavy demand on land, energy and resources. This may prove feasible again in our near future by merging the western and eastern styles of development. Modern precision tools, nanotechnology and robotics, these newest creations of the western technological evolution, may be opening up an innovative option for a brand new economy of super-productive small series. It may lead to domestication of under-populated lands, unsuitable for horticulture. Eerily resembling eastern-style production, but on a much higher technological and organizational level, usually associated with West, this new style of small series of production may lead to considerable gains in productivity through increase in precision as compensation for lesser expenditures of power. We argue that this may put a renewed stress on the importance of social stability, which is currently taking main hit from the mounting imbalances of globalization.
Keywords: oil, economy, energy, demographic density, globalization, East, West, Malthusian pressures.
1. Part One. The Western Path.
1.1.The exogenous limits of oil-based economy and what it portends for our future.
The mounting shortages of oil, the dominant inelastic resource of our times, are producing inflationary pressures, first and foremost, on resources and food. This raises concerns about the exogenous limits of the current oil-based economy along with doubts on its ability to provide sustenance for the billions of the emerging world.
In this context, it needs to be noted that this situation is hardly unique. In the West, there were at least 5 other instances of similarly dire shortages of the dominant resource of the time.
The latter ranged from:
1. The alluvial mudsoils in the tiny area of the deltas of the great rivers, which served as the basis of the irrigation agriculture of the first civilizations;
2. Suitable land in the arid Mediterranean for cultivating the olive and the vine, the economic foundation of the classic antiquity of Greece and Rome;
3. Fertile clay soils for the subsistence economy of the medieval era in Western Europe;
4. Timber and hydropower in the early modern era with its early manufactures, bulk trade and long distance seafaring, including to the Americas;
5. Coal in the industrializing Britain, and;
6. Currently, oil.
The authors (Badalian and Krivorotov, 2006, 2007) showed that, up to our days, in the West, resource related pressures were always resolved via territorial expansion. After a considerable turmoil and bloodletting, a new, much more productive economy, complete with its unique, more powerful technologies, social/power institutes, types of property, forms of ownership etc, was created in a new location. The virgin resources of the new space under domestication fueled a jump to a much higher level of energy consumption. This opened up, for innovative productive uses, the unique features of a new geoclimatic zone, which previously could be used only barely.
Historically, in the West, there was a well defined progression of energy sources, which, by supplying more power, helped in domesticating ever larger and less hospitable territories.
They ranged from:
1. The muscle power of large work-gangs of the first civilizations in the tiny area of the deltas of the great rivers;
2. The ox of the antiquity, which was centered in the Mediterranean;
3. The horse of the medieval Europe;
4. Wind/water powered mills and oceangoing ships of the early modern era in Europe;
5. Coal of the industrial era that started in Britain and gradually encompassed global regions of the temperate climate; and, finally;
6. Oil that opened up the immense territory of the US, which was mostly situated in the region of extreme climate, previously out of the reach of the farmer.
The historic rise in energy consumption levels enabled considerable gains in efficiency, mostly achieved through labor saving – the size of an average landholding generally grew throughout eras. This promoted the drive towards uniform, monoculture style large scale cultivation.
Today, however, this tried and true path to resolving resource shortages seems to be hitting a snag. A leap to the next energy consumption level along with an increase in monoculture-style efficiencies seem to be closed – the ongoing global warming puts strict exogenous limits both on future energy expenditures and the further expansion into the remaining wilderness.
1.2.West and East – power versus precision.
However, the situation might be far from hopeless. As a matter of fact, the basic laws of physics state that an increase in the energy level can be substituted for by a commensurate increase in the precision of its application. It turns out that the Western path to creating more wealth via seminal leaps in energy expenditures had also a quite dissimilar historic alternative in East. For example, the evolutionary line of the Chinese development emphasized precision of its mostly manually based production. According to physical laws cited above, a labor intensive, but energy and resource saving model based on the extensive use of power-tools may be representing the only viable alternative to the Western path of development, which, in contrast, grew ever thirstier for energy and resources.
1. It is a well known fact that China eschewed notable increases in levels of energy, characteristic for the western lineage. For example, in agriculture, China never adopted the horse, which remained confined mostly to military applications. Of course, possessing the extremely productive “wet rice” culture it made no sense to support the horse at the cost of 5-6 laborers. Instead, the Chinese economy was run mostly on its widely available manpower and oxen. Indeed, the Chinese levels of demographic density achieved on large territories were unprecedented in history. They can be only compared to densities at the time of first civilizations, albeit the latter were attained in the much tinier area of super-productive deltas of the great rivers. Thus, in a notable contrast with the energy-thirsty West, the eastern economy could extend into wilderness, turned productive by increasing the level of precision in its power applications.
2. Also, there were other notable outcomes of relying on the increase in the level of precision. Thus, instead of pursuing western style monocultures by incessantly increasing the size of land holdings, in China we see its direct opposite. With the growth of population came ever smaller holdings, promoting the evolution of highly specialized, small scale enterprises. As the time went, their diminishing size made them nimble. Uses were found for many dissimilar small geoclimatic niches in the richly varied Chinese territory. Thus, terraced rice paddies were used for aquaculture. The mulberry trees for sericulture, where mostly females were employed, were grown on their embankments.
3. It needs to be stressed that this highly specialized economy placed specific demands on its society. The tiny plots couldn’t satisfy the full range of needs of their owners, thus, the functioning of the entire economy depended on its ability to maintain advanced levels of exchange and trade. And indeed, this trade, mostly carried by the mighty Yangtze, evolved during the era, nearly synchronous to the European age of explorations. The related increase in land productivity added to efficiencies of specialization led to a great population surge, with the Chinese population trebled within two centuries (1650-1850). Obviously, such an extensive level of trade was quite demanding and could be supported only through a significant degree of political unification. Thus, China of multiculture economy prospered, when unified, and suffered during the times of disunity. Notably, communication between distant parts, which evolved their mutually incomprehensible dialects, could be maintained seamlessly, using a unique Chinese adaptation. Its writing system was unrelated to the sound of the speech and could be shared across the terrain.
4. While both models of development caused significant deforestation in the territories under cultivation, both for agricultural needs and for fuel, the Eastern way, which found a way to benefit from any minute peculiarity of its environment by finding an appropriate plant benefiting from it, proved to be much more conservation minded. For example, the deforested hills in Southern China would have been much more erosion prone if cultivated in the western mode as uniform fields for monocultures. In China, at a great cost in labor, they were elaborately terraced, mostly for rice paddies. The embankments were strengthened by planting mulberry trees and other beneficial cultures. Such kind of preservation is, in fact, a trademark feature of multicultural labor-extensive approach as the opposite of monocultural labor-saving approach typical for technologically minded West. See, for example, the cultivation of the “three sisters” (mutually supportive cultures of maize, squash and climbing beans) by Native Americans or “terra preta do indios”, the artificially enriched and extremely productive soil of Mesoamerica. According to recent research, it could have provided sustenance to around 50 million people on the extremely poor soils of the Amazon. Amazingly, it preserved its fertility up to this day.
5. We need to stress that, despite its considerable sophistication, the Chinese economy never advanced past manually tended gardens, classical-antiquity-style. I.e., it never found appropriate uses for lands unsuitable for horticulture. Thus, it substituted its scarce animal proteins with plant proteins, mostly derived from soybeans. Meanwhile, in the case of West, domestication of the marginal “wastelands” pushed to technological advance, which indirectly led to its current dominance. First, it was the Atlantic coast, with its animal husbandry as the base for early industrial applications fueling the large scale bulk trade. Then, starting from the Industrial Revolution, there were found uses for the landlocked areas that could now be connected via railroads and steamships to the rest of the world economy. Finally, the modern oil-based economy further improved the access to remote areas, such as California, the Great Plains and Florida, mostly in the zone of extreme climate, making them economically important. As a side effect, its spread abroad during the ongoing globalization also increased the level of consumption worldwide – many peoples, including the Chinese, are now switching from grain-based consumption to a more varied diet. Clearly, the time has come for domesticating the huge wilderness, still abundant in China and elsewhere, by using environmentally friendly, technologically advanced means for producing more proteins.
As we see, both the western and eastern ways are currently facing strong headwinds and may be in need for a totally new style merging their approaches in a mutually beneficial way.
In this paper we argue that these notable features – namely, substitution of power with precision of power applications and the high sensitivity to natural surroundings, with productive uses for any smallish geoclimatic niche suitable for cultivation – may be the underlying cause of the current Chinese success. Meanwhile, up to this date, they managed to escape the attention of researchers. Also, further development of these features, perhaps, by blending the beneficial traits both characteristic for West and for East, may provide a suitable way out of our current predicament. It may involve both trading more power for an increase in precision and finding new ways of using territories inhospitable for horticultures, both in China and elsewhere.
It can hardly be coincidental that China, feeding on its historic strengths, managed to develop the most successful economy of our days. However, it never domesticated the areas inhospitable for horticulture, perhaps because of its failure to accommodate the pastoral peoples inhabiting them. Today, the country walks a difficult tightrope between adopting western industrial technologies, which already showed their limitations, and preserving its competitive advantage of “small series” production within its specialized and richly varied economy. The latter served as its trademark in the past and, perhaps, is currently pointing to the future, promoting both the conservation of the environment and social stability through fuller employment of population. Meanwhile, currently China is considered one of the worse pollutants, as it eagerly acquires western technologies greedy for resources and energy.
1.2.The ecological catastrophes of the past.
We need to stress that the current situation of dire shortages and acute imbalances is far from unique. Such drastic periods, when it became painfully obvious that the existing economy can’t be stretched any further in order to feed many more people, had happened before. Encouragingly for us, up to this date, each and every time, despite the related considerable hardship, death toll and suffering, the Malthusian shortages and ecological constraints were somehow resolved.
Within the European line of development, most historians distinguish at least six grand periods, each of which evolved in its own distinct geoclimatic zone. They were on the scale of:
1. The first civilizations in the tiny area of the deltas of the great rivers;
2. The classical antiquity in the arid Mediterranean;
3. The Medieval Era in Western Europe;
4. The Age of Exploration of the Atlantic;
5. The Industrial Era of the British Empire and colonialism;
6. The current oil-age of the US-style mass production now spreading worldwide.
Each of them was unique, with a notable break of continuity in-between – more or less prolonged and destructive “dark ages”. While there was no shortage of wars in history, events between these periods were so extraordinary and accompanied by such great upheavals and mass migrations on the scale of Völkswanderungen that they stuck in the memory of generations.
1. The historic accounts and archaeological data testify of the fury unleashed during the Catastrophe of the Bronze Ages between the 13-12th centuries BC.
2. Its devastation was amply matched by the one wrought by the immense tide of barbaric invasions, surging in destructive waves from the fall of Rome in the 4th century and up, until the Normans settled in Europe following their raids of the late 8th-9th century.
3. Then, there stands out the lengthy tumultuous period between the 1348 Black Death and the end of the wars of Reformation, the so called religious wars of the 16th Century. The latter redrew the map of the Atlantic coastal regions, previously considered of little use.
4. The French and British competition in the 18th century, oftentimes carried out far away, by proxy, in the North America, was an important, often overlooked factor of the American Revolution. It was followed by the bloody French Revolution, brought forth by the related overextension and famine. It ended with the Napoleonic wars, often called the world war of the 19th century. With the loss of their American colonies, the British hopes on obtaining timber etc from overseas were extinguished, pushing them instead towards industrialization
5. The rise of the mass society of the 20th century was announced by a series of great revolutions and two world wars
6. Most recently, we are facing a wave of terrorism that may be announcing the start of another period of insecurity on the background of massive human movements, with entire countries supported by cash sent home by migrant-workers.
1.3.The inner logic of the switch to a new resource.
Historically, a society usually collapsed in a giant upheaval after being overstretched to its utter limits. At its end, dire shortages of a particular dominant resource were especially daunting, causing unbearable inflationary pressures. Ecological upheavals followed as people were pushed to cultivate wastelands. Among examples of such inelastic resources: coal at the start of the 20th century or alluvial mudsoils for the irrigation agriculture of the first civilizations.
Amazingly enough, the successor society was usually effectively weaned off the stranglehold of this formerly inelastic and exceptionally dear/scarce item. I.e., from the 1950s, after the debacle of two world wars, the prosperous consumer society US-style still used significant amounts of coal, but only as one of the many substitutes of its own main inelastic resource, which was and is, of course, oil. The industrial society lessened its dependence on timber, previously grown in the so called coppice woods. Or, the classical antiquity of Greece and Rome thrived on its olive and vine, in the arid Mediterranean, mostly unsuitable for irrigation style grain farming. Grain, meanwhile, was procured from Egypt, rich with alluvial mudsoils. This area was suitable for irrigation agriculture, still worked in the fashion of the first civilizations. There were also other striking examples of similar switches of dominant inelastic resources between eras. Here it was – the dominant resource of a fading era, the most dear and wanted thing – causing inflation and wars. Soon, after a fortnight of huge suffering, while a brand new economy was being formed around an altogether different resource, it would end up out of limelight and mostly forgotten.
For example, at the start of the 14th century, practically all suitable lands in Europe and even a good deal of barely producing wastelands on its outskirts were already cleared off from forests and placed under cultivation at a great cost to ecology. Then, there came the sad moment, when, in the situation of acute shortages of productive lands, the medieval subsistence economy failed to support any additional demographic growth. The latter was somewhat channeled away during the territorial expansion from the 10th to the 13th centuries: to the Palestine; conquest of the Slavic lands; the Albigoan crusade, which placed the lands on the south of France, previously part of the earlier olive/vine economy of the Mediterranean, under the French king, within the reach of the medieval grain-based subsistence economy etc. Nevertheless, there was significant overpopulation and famines became more acute and damaging.
At the start of the 14th century, the recent prosperity, still fresh in people’s memories, was replaced by the lingering suffering. An ecological disaster of a prolonged bout of cold weather accompanied by a decades-long rain led to widespread hunger and thoroughly weakened the population immunologically. This increased its susceptibility to the 1348 Black Death, which, according to some estimates, killed from one third to one half of all people living in Europe.
1.4.The formation of the next economy, based on a totally new resource.
One would expect that, after such a drastic cull, the medieval economy, newly flush with depopulated but still sufficiently producing lands, would be restored anew, in a more or less the same shape. Amazingly, this never happened. The next economy (of the early modern era) was in fact based on a totally different foundation. The lands that only recently were deemed so dear that people would till them for the mere hope of bare survival were left fallow and gradually morphed into meadows.
The landscape of Europe was thus totally changed – it shifted from dense forests typical up to the 9th century to open grasslands that prevailed after the 14th century. Animal husbandry, wool production and other value added occupations more than filled the need for nourishment, which couldn’t be obtained anymore at a reasonable cost in labor closer to the end of the failing subsistent economy of the medieval era. Meanwhile, the disappearance of forests, cleared off from the 10th century, created needs unknown before. Fish, meat and timber, which previously could be obtained in the neighboring forest or creek, turned into valuable commodities to be bought and sold. In its turn, starting from as early as the 12th-13th century, the rise of markets fueled the large scale shipping and the so called bulk trade. Of course, this caused a dramatic power-shift – including, for example, the formation of the modern nation-state and the early forms of banking. The Genoese merchants participating in the annual Champagne market in France could operate so far of their home due to annual revolving lines of credit within the rising global financial system of the Latin Christendom, which stretched from France to the Palestine.
Thus, it was perhaps only fitting, though, no doubt, controversial, that Eleanor Carus-Wilson (1941) considered the 13th century as the starting point of the early industrial revolution. She justified her conclusion by pointing to a dramatic increase in commercial uses of the mill. The switch in energy sources was especially visible in the Atlantic. This area was on the far periphery of the medieval economy, being mostly unsuitable for its subsistence style grain production. During this immense technological and social transformation, the Atlantic acquired new economic importance as the center of the rising early modern economy and its long distance bulk shipping. The products of animal husbandry, first and foremost, wool, gave rise to the early modern manufacturing, powered by the mill, gainfully absorbing a large labor force dependent on grain coming from elsewhere, mostly from Eastern Europe. This new economy, in its infancy, was serviced by the Hanseatic League, starting from the 13th century. Perhaps, not surprisingly, the halcyon years of this monopoly, which started with salted fish trade at the start of the 13th century ended with the killing rampage of the 1348 Black Death in Europe.
The happy outcome of feeding and gainfully employing many more people on the Atlantic coast would only come much later, after other, much more pressing concerns were successfully resolved. First among them, was, of course, the question of ownership over the newly valuable land! The new importance of the previously marginal Atlantic territories led to substantial social and political tensions as these lands were carved up in the course of desperate and prolonged wars. Amazingly enough, the so called religious wars of the 16th century, while quite stringent regarding the division of property rights, were much more lax and accommodating as to the faiths of the warring sides. Among other examples, Cardinal Richelieu was a major figure, the fundraiser and the supporter of protestant armies, aimed against the all-Catholic Habsburgs.
The growth of population in France could be resumed only after 1715, after all questions of ownership of the newly rich and important lands were dutifully resolved. The rising economy was based on a newly built infrastructure for large distance trade, which was based on an extended system of water based transportation. Water bodies, ranging from rivers to seas and oceans, were joined in a sophisticated, fully navigable network via manmade canals. These were amazing engineering feats built at a great cost. They were supported by an extensive system of taxation, which would make a modern state proud, and served as the foundation for the sophisticated production of luxury goods at royal manufactures etc.
There are more examples of a dramatic shift between economies. The most recent was much closer to our times. It is a well known fact that the inflationary peak of prices on coal was reached in 1913. In the grip of an inflationary spiral, eerily resembling our times, there was a desperate search for coal as the chief inelastic resource. People had to reach deeper and/or extract thin shallow coal deposits that, only recently, weren’t considered worthy of the effort. This created new needs, such as ventilation for deep shafts, and lifts and conveyor belts for moving people and coal. Open fire and coal-powered steam were used at the start, but had to be replaced, as too dangerous in the mine. New sources of power were urgently needed, which, in time, led to electric generators ran on diesel. Meanwhile, in strip coal mining it was necessary to expose the thin shallow layers of coal. This greatly exceeded the capacity of steam, which couldn’t be used without costly railroad tracks. Thus, it was necessary to develop diesel-powered excavators and bulldozers and powerful explosives, while also much increasing both the reach and might of mechanically applied power.
Along with prices on coal there was also a rampant inflation on food fueled by the migration to cities caused by industrialization. Even though the rise in food prices was quite steep, it, similarly to our times, was singularly outmatched by a parallel rise in the cost of fertilizers. Just as today, fertilizers were badly needed for increasing the land’s productivity.
Both these daunting needs, in cheap fertilizers and explosives, were eventually satisfied by a single brilliant invention that earned F. Haber a well deserved Nobel Prize. The first commercial production of nitrates out of air started working in 1913 and changed the course of the 20th century. First and foremost, the sudden easy availability of this chief component of explosives broke the British control over the trade in nitrates. Regardless of the underlying reasons for WWI, its prolonged battles would hardly be possible without this new abundant source of cheap gunpowder. Everything that followed may have been a mere consequence. Powerful, long-range cannons required aerial observation. After an unsuccessful attempt to use dirigibles, there was a furiously paced evolution of planes – 4-6 generations in the course of the five years of the war. Britain entered the war with 600 Lorries, ended it with 60,000. Thus, WWI led to the mass entrance of the internal combustion engine and its speedy refinement to commercial prototypes. This placed an indelible mark on the world, first in the West, then, gradually, elsewhere.
John Roberts (1989), a noted historian of the 20th century, once famously noted that the most daunting legacy of wars may be not the ruins, which are comparatively easy to clear off and rebuild, but rather the rise of wartime industries. They can’t be shut off at one’s will. What must follow after the war is their long and painful assimilation to peace. Thus, he described the period between the two world wars as a wholesale shift from coal to oil, building a brand new society around the winning technology of the internal combustion engine and its dominant resource, oil. The political system dominated by Britain was replaced by the post WWII Pax Americana. A great deal of new wealth was created, as California, the Great Plains, Florida and other territories of the extreme climate, previously out of the reach of the farmer, were successfully domesticated within the heavily mechanized agriculture based on petrochemicals, the US-style.
2. Part Two. The Chinese way.
2.1.East and West: parallelism in development despite differences in means.
In the West, history is seen as linear, while the Chinese worldview visualizes time in a cyclical manner. “When what is below moves up, what is above moves down, ready to rise again”. (Shaughnessy, 2000). Despite this and many other fundamental differences, many observers note that subsequent stages of the Chinese history more or less mirrored those in the West.
This parallelism becomes especially visible, if we look at the functionality accomplished during particular periods both in China and West. It seems that in both cases the development was driven forth by the same means, through domestication of new territories. Only, in West, they were opened up by using new, more powerful sources of energy. Meanwhile, in China new land was made sufficiently productive with the coming of the next horticultural staple, which could support great levels of human density in a new place.
Thus, after the first spurt of growth in the delta of the Yellow River, which mostly followed the familiar Mesopotamian patterns, from the 8th century AD upward, the next demographic burst was brought in by the new culture of “wet rice”. The development was shifted south, gradually domesticating the difficult, forested, swampy and hilly, but also incredibly productive valley of the Yangtze River. This process, in full force after the 10th century, resembled synchronous great forest clearances of the medieval Europe. It was followed by the wholesale drainage of swamps and water management projects, which had its parallels in Europe, starting from the Netherlands in the 16th century. The much slower but steadier pace of domestication of the Yangtze valley can be attributed both to its more difficult conditions and the absence of the horse in economy.
Then, there was the huge demographic growth of the 16th –early 18th centuries, trebling the population. It is usually attributed to the effects of globalization, of the 13th-17th Centuries (Findlay, O’Rourke, 2008), which greatly increased the volume of trade. Females could now be employed almost exclusively in sericulture and other semi-industrial occupations within the family farm, leaving the agrarian tasks to men. Even more importantly, the additional hands producing luxury silks, tea, cotton and sugar for exports found abundant new sources of food. Globalization brought important new cultures, especially the maize and the potato, from the Americas. This allowed domestication of the hilly terrain in the inner provinces, previously of little use. Financially, the Chinese version of the early modern era, with its much greater specialization of households on tiny family plots was enabled by a surge in the universal means of exchange. Silver came from Japan and from the Spanish possessions in the Americas, through the Manila trade. The switch to the negative balance in the global trade starting from 1825 was caused by the European (mostly British) effort to staunch the debilitating loss of silver by selling opium from India. This ruined the Chinese exchange balance, which was finalized by the infamous Opium wars. After the 1850s, China was in decline. This is vividly shown by numbers. From 1741 to 1840 population rose from 143 million to 430 million, “… a gain of around 200 per cent while the amount of arable land grew by only 35 per cent.”
2.2.The military driven development of West versus the agrarian pursuits of East.
If we were to pick a single one out of a multicultural range of Chinese cultures, there can be no doubt it would be the wet rice, a singularly productive staple food. Its enormous productivity explains the centuries-long reliance in China on muscle power, with technology taking secondary positions. There was simply no agricultural land left for draft animals. Instead, we oftentimes see early usage of such, seemingly more advanced power sources as coal, natural gas and the mill. In the course of Chinese history, a precarious balance was slowly established. Technologies were let in, but only when they didn’t overly disturb the social order. They were suppressed mercilessly, as soon as they did. “Rice culture, with its greater inputs of water and labor, until recent times yielded more than twice as much food as wheat-growing.” (ibid, p.11) Along with the distrust to technologies came also distrust to the military, generally deemed perhaps more dangerous than the possible foreign invaders. The An Lushan rebellion of 755-763 thus marked “the permanent shift southward of the center of Chinese civilization to the Yangtze river” (p. 35). Unlike West, the main goal of the Chinese Empire wasn’t in conquering any exterior lands, which had few productive uses, but rather in defending its borders from the northern barbarians.
Meanwhile, in the West the technological development was driven forth by the need in conquest and, thus, military applications. This especially concerns the trend towards increasing energy expenditures, noticeable from the medieval Europe. The horse, for example, was first used by the knight. Pushed by the laws of primogeniture out of their ancestral lands, the young sons had to gain their holdings elsewhere by the strength of their arms. The agricultural applications also greatly benefited from the availability of the baron’s stallion and his blacksmith. Likewise, the European age of exploration, otherwise known as the early modern era, was enabled by the ocean-going ship, with its substantial firepower. It withstood the ocean gale, the hostile fire and the recoil of its own cannons. At around the 1750s, advances in line-shaft driven machinery and better cutting tools of the early modern era led to the appearance of cast bronze muzzle-loading cannons. The skills learned in the production of its successor, the carronade, the cast iron gun, preferred by Nelson, were later used in boring tight fitting cylinders for the steam engine of James Watt. Then, Bessemer invented a new, more powerful firing shell, which, however, required stronger cannon barrels. The invention of cheap steel by Bessemer was aimed at satisfying this new urgent need. (Merson, 1990, 193). Further development brought in steel cannons of Krupp. Similarly to the Watt’s steam engine, the internal combustion engine, with its thin uniform walls, benefited from steel working technologies, first developed for military uses.
The dichotomy between West and China was well understood by the Japanese. “In the sixteenth century, when contact was first made with the Europeans, the Tokugawa clan were keen to use western military technology and advisers to help them win control of the country. However, to manage the peace, they turned, as Japanese rulers had always done, to the model of Confucian China.” (Merson, 1990, 166)
Bibliography.
Badalian L. Krivorotov V. 2007, Russia and China: Prospects of Interaction in New Fuel-and-Energy Conditions. Far Eastern Affairs. Vol. 35-2. East View.
Badalian L. Krivorotov V. 2006, Applying Natural Sciences to Studying History: Regarding the Example of England and the Industrial Revolution. Part I, II, III. Santalka. Filosofija. Vol. 12, 14. Nr.1, 3.
Braudel, F. 1984. The Perspective of the World. Civilization & Capitalism, 15th-18th Century. Volume 3. Harper&Row, Publishers.
Carus-Wilson, Eleanor. 1941. “An Industrial Revolution of the Thirteenth Century,”’ Economic History Review, 1st series 11, reprinted in her Medieval Merchant Venturers: Collected Studies (London, 1954), pp. 183-211
Clark, G. (2002). The Agricultural Revolution and the Industrial Revolution: England, 1500-1912. UC Davis.
Clark, G. (2007). A Farewell to Alms. A Brief Economic History of the World. Princeton University Press.
Diamond, J. (1997). Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. W.W. Norton & Company
Diamond J., (2005).Collapse. How Societies Choose to Fall or Succeed. Viking.
Dosi Giovanni, Freeman Christopher, Nelson Richard, Silverberg Gerald and Soete Luc (Eds) (1988), Technical Change and Economic Theory, London, Pinter
Drews, Robert.(1993). The End of the Bronze Age: Changes in Warfare and the Catastrophe ca 1200BC. Princeton University Press.
Duncan-Jones, Richard. (1982). The Economy of the Roman Empire: Quantitative studies. Second Edition. Cambridge University Press.
Engels, Frederick. 1850. The Peasant War in Germany. London. First published in Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Revue; http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/peasant-war-germany/index.htm
Findlay, Ronald; O’Rourke, Kevin. (2007). Power and Plenty. Trade, War, and the World Economy in the Second Millennium. Princeton University Press. The Princeton Economic History of the Western World.
Egan, T.( 2006).The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl. H. Mifflin.
Engerman, Stanley (Ed.), Gallman, Robert (Ed.)( 2000). The Cambridge Economic History of the United States, Vol. 3: The Twentieth Century, Cambridge University Press
Findlay, Ronald; O’Rourke, Kevin. (2007). Power and Plenty. Trade, War, and the World Economy in the Second Millennium. Princeton University Press. The Princeton Economic History of the Western World.
Fischer, D. (1996).The Great Wave. Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History. Oxford Univ.Press.
Freeman C. Schumpeter’s ‘Business Cycles’ Revisited GLOBELICS, Working Paper Series, No. 2007-05.
Freeman, C, Louça, F.( 2001). As Time Goes By: From the Industrial Revolutions to the Information Revolution, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Freeman, C, Soete, L. (1997). The Economics of Industrial Innovation, 3rd edn. Pinter, London.
Garner, Richard, (1988). Long-Term Silver Mining Trends in Spanish America: A Comparative Analysis of Peru and Mexico. The American Historical Review, Vol. 93, No. 4 (Oct.1988), pp. 898-935.
Goldstone, J.A. (1991) Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World. Berkeley, CA, University of California Press.
Haalmeijer en D. Haalmeijer and D. Vuik. 2002. Fluiten, katten en fregatten . Vuik (2002). Whistling, cats and frigates. De Boer Maritiem, Haarlem.
Haigh J D (2004) Fundamentals of the Earth’s atmosphere and climate. In Solar variability and its effects on the Earth’s atmospheric and climate system ed. J Pap, C Fröhlich, H Hudson, J Kuhn, J McCormack, G North, W Sprig and S T Wu. AGU Monograph, 141.
Harrison, John, (1973). The Birth and Growth of Industrial England (1714-1867). Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.
Hobhouse, H, (1986). Seeds of Changes: Five Plants that Changed Mankind… Harper&Row, London.
Liebeschuetz, John Hugo Wolfgang Gideon. (2001). The Decline and Fall of the Roman City. Oxford University Press.
Nefedov, S.A. (2004). A model of Demographic Cycles in a Traditional Society. Social Evolution & History (3):69-80
Kindleberger, Ch, (1996) World Economic Primacy: 1500 to 1990 Oxford University Press.
Linden, Eugene. (2006). The Winds of Change. Climate, Weather, and the Destruction of Civilizations. Simon&Shuster.
Mathias, Peter, (Ed.), Pollard, Sidney (Ed.) (1989). The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, Vol. 8: The Industrial Economies: The Development of Economic and Social Policies Cambridge University press.
Mitchell, Brian R. (Editor). (2000) International Historical Statistics: Europe, 1750-1993, Palgrave Macmillan; 4th edition.
Nemet-Nejad. Karen Rhea. (1998). Daily Life in Ancient Mesopotamia. The Greenwood Press.
Olmstead, Alan L. and Rhode. Paul W. (2001). Reshaping the Landscape: The Impact and Diffusion of the Tractor in American Agriculture, 1910-1960. The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 61, No. 3 (Sep.2001), pp. 663-698
O’Rourke, Kevin H and. Williamson. Jeffrey G. (2005). From Malthus to Ohlin: Trade, Industrialisation and Distribution Since 1500. Journal of Economic Growth, 10, 5–34.
http://www.tcd.ie/Economics/staff/orourkek/offprints/JEG%202005.pdf
Perez, Carlota, (2002). Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages, Edward.Elgar Publishing, UK.
Pirenne, Henri, (1937). Economic and Social History of Medieval Europe. HBJ Book.
Pollan, Michael, (2006). The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. The Penguin Press.
Postan, M. (1973). Essays on Medieval Agriculture and General Problems of Medieval Economy. Cambridge
Rathbone, Dominic. 1997. Prices and Price Formation in Roman Egypt. Economie antique. Prix et formation des prix dans les economies antiques (Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges: Musee archeologique departmental). pp. 183-244. Cited from Peter Temin. A market Economy in the Early Roman Empire.
http://sshi.stanford.edu/Seminars/Papers/classics/temin.pdf
Roberts J.M.. 1989. Europe. 1880-1945: A General History of Europe. Longman Group UK.
Reinhart, Carmen M. Rogoff, Kenneth. March 12, 2008. This Time is Different: A Panoramic View of Eight Centuries of Financial Crises. http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/rogoff/files/This_Time_Is_Different.pdf
Schumpeter J. 1939. Business Cycles: A theoretical, historical and statistical analysis of the Capitalist process.
Steinbeck, John. 1997. The Grapes of Wrath. Penguin Books.
Stiglitz, J&Charlton, 2005 A. Fair Trade for All. How Trade Can Promote Development. Oxford Univ.Press..
White, KD. 1970, Roman Farming. Cornell University Press
Wrigley, E.A. 2004. Poverty, Progress, and Population, University of Cambridge
Guano extraction became economically important in the second half of the 19th century, when it was the chief cause of the economic boom in Peru. However, around 1910, these resources controlled by Britain were severely depleted, causing significant shortages and inflation. The importance of guano is underscored by the U.S. Guano Island Act of 1856, which provided American entities the power to claim for the US government any uninhabited guano islands in its oceans.
In other words there were 3.86 mu (one mu = one sixth of an acre) per person in the 1750s and only 1.86 mu in the 1850s Arable land was distributed in the following way: 50-60 per cent belonged to rich gentry; 10 per cent – to government officials; 30 per cent – to the 400 million, who worked the land, 60 per cent of these had no land at all. (Merson, 1990, 168)
For example, the system of so called fubing or military settlements on the borders during the Sui and Tang dynasties was intentionally weakened by imperial officials. They frequently shuffled their troops being vary of any possible attachment between soldiers and their commanders. It turns out their fears were quite justified. After the system was altogether abandoned in the early eighth century it was replaced by permanent garrisons, one of which incited the famous An Lushang rebellion.
After easily advancing their gun production to the industrial level, the Tokugawa clan, after gaining control over the country, just as easily got rid of them. First, they centralized the production at Nagahama in 1609. By 1673 only 53 matchlocks and 334 small guns were produced in a year. The gunsmiths of Tanegashima, most of them former swordsmiths, returned to making swords. (Merson, 1990, 163)
