North Carolina A&T State University

Greensboro

The Rise of the West: China’s Fall from Grace and the West’s Triumph

By

Jonathan Jackson

Course: HIST 633: Independent Study

Section: 01

Instructor: Dr. Thomas E. Porter

Semester: Spring 2016

I. Introduction

How did the West rise to dominate the world economic trade system that has largely been

dominated by China for more than two millennia? Western Europe and particularly Britain were

determined to compete especially with India and China. Europe was still dependent on India for

the cotton textiles and on China for the ceramics and silks that Europe re-exported with profit to

its colonies in Africa and the Americas.1 That question has puzzled many scholars for decades as

it had led to fierce debates that has led to many different theories about how is it that a

technologically anemic society like Western Europe could overpower and kick China out of the

top spot in the world economy. Technology, culture, geography, Eurocentric Superiority, Luck,

Contingent vs Conjuncture, and the fragmented European society that enabled them to achieve

and acquire more than the Chinese ever could. Scholars have argued that these wide number of

reasons were individually responsible for why the West was able to muscle their way into the

world economy and take over.

The concept of the rise of the West provides both a rationale and a story line that purports to

explain not just the modern world, but why it is defined by primary European features.2 The rise

of the West was brought about because the number of reasons that scholars argued led to the

major paradigm shift in the world, were not the sole option—but really a complex mix of all of

those reasons. The Authors: Robert B. Marks, Andre Gunder Frank. Sidney W. Mintz, Jared

Diamond, and Ian Morris each put in their own unique interpretation for why the West was able

to take center stage on in the global economic market. The world was not connected in the period

of 1400-1900 the way the world is connected today. Asia, Africa, Europe, North and South

1 Frank, Andre Gunder. “ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age.” Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998: p.316.2 Marks, Robert B. “The Origins of the Modern World: A Global and Environmental Narrative from the Fifteenth to the Twenty-First Century.” United States: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2015: p.2.

America, and the Middle East were all separated geographically but there was an existing

economic market that they all were involved in and a series of events led to the major tipping of

the scale the brought down China and brought up the West. Currently, that scale seems to be

tipping back down, but when it does the scales will have leveled out and the playing field will be

leveled for everyone. Whatever happens after that can be anybody’s guess, but the world will

forever be changed possibly for the better and possibly for the worse.

II. Technology is the cause?

Most people when asked, “How do you think the West rose to dominate the global economic

trade system?” would answer that technology was the central reason for why the West was able

to rise above all other countries. With weapons, like guns and cannons, and navigational devices,

like the compass, enabled the West (specifically the British) to overpower their enemies and

allow them to muscle their way into the existing global economy. Ian Morris surmises that, “In

the eighteenth century British Entrepreneurs unleashed the energies of steam and coal. Factories,

railroads, and gunboats gave nineteenth-century Europeans and Americans the ability to project

power globally; airplanes, computers, and nuclear weapons allow the twentieth-century

successors to cement this dominance.”3

Preserved writings of the first millennium B.C. show that ethnic Chinese already tended then

(as many still do today) to feel culturally superior to non-Chinese “barbarians….”4 The

Easterners were not impressed with the Westerners. They had essentially written the West off as

a group of barbaric people. Paul Bairoch points out that, “… the superiority specifically of

China, India, Japan, Korea, Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and the 3 Morris, Ian. “Why the West Rules—for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Revel about the Future.” United States: St. Martin’s Press, 2011: p.11-12.4 Diamond, Jared M. “Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human societies.” New York, NY: Norton, W.W & Company, 1999: p.331.

Ottomans.5 The Chinese specifically, called the British “Barbarians”, and refused to trade with

them because they viewed them as backwards. Some Chinese officials admired Westerners’

ingenious clocks, devilish cannons, and accurate calendars, but they saw little worth emulating in

these otherwise unimpressive foreigners.6 The Britons had nothing but fur pelts and skins to trade

and it was nothing that the Chinese even wanted, so they just hoped the British would go back to

their little island. Gunpowder and cannons had been invented by the Chinese in a process

beginning around 1000 CE…Unfortunately, for the Chinese, the Mongols gained access to this

new technology, improved it with the development of early cannons called “bombards.”7 The

Mongols used these devices in their attacks against the Europeans in the 1200s as well, and some

enterprising (or frightened) European stole or bought the technology from the Mongols.8 The

compass, a Chinese invention, allowed the Europeans to circumnavigate around the world in the

fifteenth century led Christopher Columbus to the New World. The discovery of silver in the

New World by the Europeans gained China’s attention as it was the one thing that the Chinese

wanted. The possibility of the Europeans discovering silver in the New World was slim to none

and the probability that the natural resources they found in the New World would be something

the Chinese would be interested in would be astronomical.

The Chinese had created a lot of technology that Europeans used to explore and colonize

different parts of the world. Coal and steam engines breathed life into the industrial heart of

Britain, allowing them to grow and expand the size of their cities and population. Before 1800,

Britain were buying its clothing and textiles from localized individual merchants. After the

5 Frank, Andre Gunder. “ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age.” Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998: p.12.6 Morris, Ian. “Why the West Rules—for now….” United States: St. Martin’s Press, 2011: p.13.7 Marks, Robert B. “The Origins of the Modern World: A Global and Environmental Narrative from the Fifteenth to the Twenty-First Century.” United States: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2015: p.59.8 Marks, Robert B. “The Origins of the Modern World….” United States: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2015: p.59.

discovery of coal and applying it to steam engines, replacing wood as a fuel source, which

allowed the British to out produce the Indians and lower the price of cotton clothes in the textile

industry to put the Indians out of work and virtually deindustrialized India as a whole, and

forcing them to have to buy British clothes at higher prices. The cultivation of sugar played a

major role in the deindustrialization of India, as the introduction of sugar into the diet of the

British was used to give the British worker more energy to work longer. Sidney W. Mintz

remarked that, “On the one hand, given that the working-class diet was calorie-short, sugar

doubtless provided at least some of the needed calories. It meant sweeter tea (which it came to

accompany almost as a matter of course), more biscuits, and more desserts, hence affording

variety as well as more calories.”9 The British then went in and colonized India creating textile

factories employing the unemployed Indians and paying the low wages for high priced clothes

that will be sold all across Europe and the New World and making Britain wealthier. Once the

colonization of India was underway, the British heavily cultivated the natural resources that was

in India at the time: cotton, tea, and opium. Highly addictive and easy to abuse, the British

shipped the Opium to the Chinese to force them to buy it. That maneuver started the First and

Second Opium Wars which resulted a major defeat of China at the hands of the British. British

ships brushed aside China’s defenses and Qiyang signed a humiliating treaty, opening China to

trade and missionaries.10

III. Culture

The argument that culture could be factor in the rise of the West because the British and the

Chinese have two very diametrically opposed cultures: a culture of competition versus a culture

9 Mintz, Sidney Wilfred W. “Sweetness and Power: The lace of Sugar in Modern History.” New York: Penguin Group (USA), 1986: p.146.10 Morris, Ian. “Why the West Rules—for now….” United States: St. Martin’s Press, 2011: p.9.

centered around Confucianism. The culture that the Europeans had that was built upon

competition had been developed after centuries of fighting against one another. The Hundred

Years’ war had at this point provided the soldiers of the West with a Ph.D. in warfare after years

of medieval, gritty, fierce hand-to-hand combat. The Chinese and China, as a whole, lived in

relative peace as opposed to the Europeans, who scrambled to one-up the other kingdoms.

Unified under the teachings of Confucianism, the Chinese believed in the humanistic ethical

virtues of not taking more than what you needed from the environment and seek knowledge for

the desire of self-actualization.

Just like when Chinese Emperor ordered admiral Zheng He to sail to other countries in the

Bay of Bengal, Arabian Sea, and the Indian ocean; trading and exchanging ideas with Indian,

African, and Arabian peoples. Then when the Chinese felt that they had acquired all of the

knowledge and resources that they felt they could get, they called back their maritime voyages

and retreated inwards feeling that they were self-sufficient. The Chinese felt that they were

culturally far superior than any other country out there in the world until 1800. Centuries of

Isolation, population growth, and heated division between the traditionalists and the reformers

led to China becoming a stagnant country. The social development in China between 1435 and

1800 were beginning to break down after reaching the apex or top ceiling of their social

development. Ian Morris explains the breakdown of social development as followed:

“People confront, and solve, such problems every day, which is why social development has generally kept moving upward since the end of the last ice age. But as we will see, at certain points the paradox of development creates tough ceilings that yield only to truly transformative changes. Social development sticks at these ceilings, setting off a desperate race. In case after case we will see that when societies fail to solve the problems that confront them, a terrible package of ills—famine, epidemic, uncontrolled migration, and state failure—begins to afflict them, turning stagnation into decline; and when famine, epidemic, migration, and state failure are joined by further forces of disruption, like climate change (collectively, I call these the five

horsemen of the apocalypse), decline can turn into disastrous, centuries—long collapses and dark ages.”11

The Chinese experienced internal problems with the conservative Confucian traditionalists,

who are in power, fighting with the reformers, who want to bring about change in Chinese

society for the improvement of the standard of living for all Chinese inhabitants. While China

has largely benefitted from a highly centralized government to uphold law and order, maintain

peace, and provide for the commonwealth of the average Chinese people. The rigid government

looked down upon competition and actively pushed to stamp down anything that went against

Confucianism, expeditions that could have brought untold wealth to China were quickly rejected

because it would create a race to see who would acquire more resources and that was something

the Chinese government was not willing to allow to happen. Whereas in the West, the various

kingdoms of Europe, battled each other fiercely be the sole hegemony of the Europe, and they

fought even harder to remain on top. The Western culture that had always been center around the

undeclared form of capitalism, whether it was the Scandinavian Vikings launching raid on the

Franks and the English or the Anglo-Saxon desire for a unified England by conquering the

smaller kingdoms under a single king, the Europeans saw the world as fair game and however

way you get to the top is allowed.

Christopher Columbus had submitted his proposed voyage to the kings of Portugal and

England, but was both turned down. He went to the King and Queen of Spain to petition for them

sanctioning and funding his expedition and it was finally approved. Because of the West’s

competitive nature most ideas of innovation could be fund by one monarch or aristocrat should

another turn them down, in hopes of one-upping their rival. The decentralized nature of the

West’s kingdoms enabled ideas and innovations to flourish fairly easily. Their constant warfare

11 Morris, Ian. “Why the West Rules—for now….” United States: St. Martin’s Press, 2011: p.28-29.

gave them ample opportunity to experiment with different military tactics and strategies,

efficient use of weapons and newer technology, and gaining valuable leadership experience. The

culture of both the Chinese and he West had a profound effect on their decision making abilities,

because they choose to go along with what their culture dictated them to do because it had been

engrained in them from an early age. That led to them growing up and pushing for the ideas and

methods that benefitted them.

IV. Geography

Some have argued that the Rise of the West was dependent on their geography, lines of

latitudes that enabled the West to rise above all the rest, while the Chinese sunk into a

substandard position in the global economy. Jared Diamond explains that,

“I have been dwelling on latitude, readily assessed by a glance at a map, because it is a major determinant of climate, growing conditions, and ease of spread of food production. However, latitude is of course not the only such determinant, and it is not always true that adjacent places at the same latitudes have the same climate (though they do have the same day length). Topographical and ecological barriers, much more pronounced on some continents than on others, were locally important obstacles to diffusion.”12

Looking at China, as a whole, the entire region was home to very fertile land that produced an

abundance of food the population of China and the large percentage of Chinese peasant were

often farmers, who were able to grow their own subsistence to feed themselves. The Chinese

could produce their own nourishment that was beholding to their insanely efficient dietary

knowledge and maintenance of their health. The Chinese did not have to travel far from their

own country to acquire newer sources of food because they knew exactly what they could out of

the foods that they grew in China to sustain their level of energy.

12 Diamond, Jared M. “Guns, Germs, and Steel….” p.189.

The virtually did not have much in terms of food production and when they did they food

were mostly grains. Mintz explains that, “All other foods, including meats, dairy products,

vegetables, and fruits, were subsidiary to grains. I t was poverty of resources, not plenty, that

made them accessories to the starch-based diet…Western Europe set to cover virtually every

transaction, grain was the core of the diet of the poor.”13 The Europeans had to sail to other

countries to acquire more foods that could sustain them, taste better, and supply them with more

calories to enable them to work longer. Arriving in the new World, the Native Americans had to

show them how to plant and cultivate squash, maize, and cocoa and even how to cook it so that it

is edible. The geography and latitudes allowed for potatoes and yams to be grown in South

American and the harvesting of sugarcane was the primary resource that they could acquire.

The sugar extracted and manufactured from the sugarcane was filled loads of calories that

could be added to food and improve not only the nutritional value, but also the taste. Tea, which

replaced beer but ultimately was poor for the English diet because it replaced several key

nutritional ingredients, would be combined with sugar to make the average British worker work

longer and harder. Here it was both a sweetener of the tea itself and a fundamental ingredient of

many of the foods that accompanied the tea.14 Geography may have served to help the Europeans

in their quest to get to the top of the existing global economy at that time, because they not much

of anything except for fur trading and timber. But a second stroke of luck intervened: Britain,

aloe in all the world, had conveniently located coalfields as well as rapidly mechanizing

industries.15 Ian Morris also reasons that, “the fossil-fuel revolution had begun, ecological

catastrophe had been adverted ( or at least postponed into the twenty-first century), and the West

13 Mintz, Sidney Wilfred W. “Sweetness and Power….” p.75. 14 Mintz, Sidney Wilfred W. “Sweetness and Power….” p.121-122.15 Morris, Ian. “Why the West Rules—for now….” United States: St. Martin’s Press, 2011: p.21.

suddenly, against all odds, ruled the globe…It was all just a recent, freakish accident.”16 Coal

was a major game changer was in Britain as it was supplant wood as a fuel source in powering

their steam engines.

V. Luck is on Britain’s side?

The theory that the Europeans were just plain lucky, is predicated upon a narrative that may

or may not true. But Ian Morris surmises that,

“Kenneth Pomeranz…As he sees it, the fact that there was an industrial revolution at all was a gigantic fluke. Around 1750, he argues, East and West were both heading for ecological catastrophe, Population had grown faster than technology and people had already done nearly everything possible in the way of extending and intensifying agriculture, moving goods around, and reorganizing themselves. They were about to hit the limits of what was passable with their technology, and there was every reason to expect global recession and declining population in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries…The reason, Pomeranz explains in his important book The Great Divergence.is that western Europe, and above all Britain, just got lucky.”17

The theory of Europe bumbling into the new World and suddenly, discovering silver and coal,

which allowed them to rapidly industrialize and push China out of the way seem far reaching.

The variety of short-term explanations of the Western industrial revolution, stretching from

Pomeranz’s fluke that averted global disaster to Franks temporary shift within an expanding

world economy, is every bit as wide as the gulf between, say, Jared Diamond and Karl Marx on

the long-term side.18 The West was at the right place at the right time to take advantage of the

resources they found in far distant lands, where there was a possible chance of not every actually

finding anything.

“The idea that luck had something to do with the rise of the West is not something to be

discounted, but also it is not a concrete reason. The Europeans could not sail to any country and

16 Morris, Ian. “Why the West Rules—for now….” United States: St. Martin’s Press, 2011: p.21.17 Morris, Ian. “Why the West Rules—for now….” United States: St. Martin’s Press, 2011: p.20.18 Morris, Ian. “Why the West Rules—for now….” United States: St. Martin’s Press, 2011: p.21.

hope that luck is on their side 100 percent of the time, when the percent of getting lucky

decreases by large margins every time they hit it big. Luck would not be an appropriate method

for determining explain how the West rose to become one of them most dominate force in the

world even to this day. “Why did China also lose its head? Its falling behind is initially surprised,

because China enjoyed undoubted arise of food productions nearly as early enjoyed undoubted

advantages: a rise of food production nearly as early as the Fertile Crescent; ecological diversity

from North to South China and from the coast to the high mountains of the Tibetan.”19

VI. Eurocentrism

Martin Bernal, in Black Athena (1987), has shown how, as part and parcel of European

colonialism in the nineteenth century, Europeans invented a historical myth about their

allegedly purely European roots in “democratic” but also slave-holding and sexist Greece.20

The idea of Britain being able to maneuver itself in such a way that they could muscle their

way into the global economy is a complexity. The Europeans believed themselves to be more

superior than the rest of the world and that the rest of the non-European world was

“barbaric”. Andre Frank attempts to explain the rise of Eurocentrism by saying, “As

observers like Lach and Said have noted, this European high regard for Asia did not really

change until the nineteenth century, after the inception of European industrialization and

colonialism, which then profoundly altered European perception and pronouncements,

including their historiography and social science.”21

The Industrial revolution and colonialism must have made a profound impact on the

psychology of the Europeans. The rapid integration of newer machines into their labor force

19 Diamond, Jared M. “Guns, Germs, and Steel….” p.411.20 Frank, Andre Gunder. “ReOrient….” Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998: p.8.21 Frank, Andre Gunder. “ReOrient….” Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998: p.11.

and seeing the increased output of production must have fueled the fire for acquiring more

and more wealth and resources to maximize profits. The maximization of profits could have

created a hyper-predatorily desire to stamp out any competition that could have gotten in the

way of Europeans jumping to the front of the pack and becoming the alpha wolf of the global

economy. Colonialism must have given them an experience of total domination of a peoples

who at first outnumbered them, but with the right political maneuvering and the appropriate

application of technology and tactics allowed them to destroy a once proud people. That

experience may have instilled in them that if they could do it to one, they could do it to all.

The Europeans saw their Eurocentric superiority complex grow even more with the

domination and colonization of the Native Americans, Africans, Indians, and finally the

Chinese. Robert B. Marks explains a critique of Eurocentrism as,

“Eurocentric views of the world see Europe as being the only active shaper of world history, its “fountainhead,” if you will. Europe acts, the rest of the world responds. Europe has “agency”; the rest of the world is passive. Europe makes history; the rest of the world has none until it is brought into contact with Europe. Europe is the center; the rest of the world is its periphery. Europeans alone are capable of initiating change or modernization; the rest of the world is not.”22

The West embraced Eurocentrism as it was a powerful tool of overseas expansion of colonial

ambition and imperialism. Eurocentrism is not just a belief in the past or present superiority of

Europe, but is “a matter of…scholarship” (i.e., of established: fact”).23 Eurocentrism being made

into a matter of scholarship illustrates that Eurocentrism is becoming part of the educational

curriculum of the European world. That academia will go on to create collections of literary

work Eurocentric in its view.

VII. Contingent, of Accident, and Conjuncture

22 Marks, Robert B. “The Origins of the Modern World….” United States: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2015: p.9.23 Marks, Robert B. “The Origins of the Modern World….” United States: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2015: p.9.

One very powerful implication of the story line of the rise of the West, though it is seldom

made explicit, is the way the world turned out was the only way possible…this interpretation

implies that the rise of the west was inevitable. It might have taken some twists and turns, had

some fits and starts, but sooner or later the West would rise above all other parts of the world.24

As a historian, things being predicated on the belief that things are inevitable is quite foolish,

because when it comes to history nothing is ever inevitable. History is made by individuals who

make choices that have irrevocable consequences, both good and bad, upon the world. Nothing is

ever pre-destined to happen, sometimes things just spontaneously happen for no apparent reason,

that is outside of the control of others. The point is that the rise of the West was not inevitable

but was highly contingent...On the one hand, if history—and our view of it—is contingent, then

the actions that we take in the here and now25 do indeed have the possibility of changing the

world.26 The first contingency was China deciding in the early 1400s to abandon its naval

domination of the Indian Ocean, the crossroads where the wealth of Asia was traded for raw

materials (including gold and silver) from the less developed parts of the worlds, and to

remonetize its economy using silver, creating a new global demand for silver that would soon be

met by New World Supplier.

Historical accidents are accident that are unpredictable and beyond human control. Things

that just happen for no apparent reason. Robert B. Marks explains a historical accident as,

“Coal deposits were laid down hundreds of millions of years ago by geological processes, and where they were in terms of where people lived is purely accidental…Some coal deposits turned out to be near to where people both needed and know how to use them, and some were far away and hence unusable…The distribution of coal deposits thus is accidental as far as human 24 Marks, Robert B. “The Origins of the Modern World….” United States: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2015: p.11.25 Marks, Robert B. “The Origins of the Modern World….” United States: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2015: p.210-211.26 Marks, Robert B. “The Origins of the Modern World….” United States: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2015: p.12.

history is concerned, but it certainly had a dramatic impact on which countries industrialized and which did not.

The Coal deposition were in the area for hundreds of millions of years, but a group of people that

moved there was able to by pure accident and some knew how to use the coal and some did not.

The idea of accidentally stumbling upon something profound that could change the entire way of

doing things is absolutely 1-in-a-million. A conjuncture happens when several otherwise

independent developments come together in ways that interact with one another, creating a

unique historical moment.27 Robert B. Marks says,

“An example of a conjuncture, would be how after shipping textiles, rum, and manufactured good to Africa, Europeans kidnapped African slaves and shipping them across the Atlantic Ocean the West Indies and the Caribbean to work the sugar plantations, after the Native American population virtually died off, they worked those plantations to produce the sugar that is sent back across the Atlantic and that sugar would be sold to British customers to put in their tea.”28

Those three actions laid the foundation for what would come to be known as “The Triangle

Trade” something that had a profound effect on the history of the world. For our purposes, one

way to think about this is to consider the world as having several regions that were more or less

independent of one another, thus having their own histories. 29 Conjuncture can also occur within

a given region when several otherwise independent developments reach critical points with one

another.30

VIII. In-depth section

The rise of the West is only one side of the issue, if there is a rise in the West, then there

must also have been a decline in the East. What could bring down the East, specifically China,

27 Marks, Robert B. “The Origins of the Modern World….” United States: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2015: p.13.28 Mintz, Sidney Wilfred W. “Sweetness and Power….” p.43.29 Marks, Robert B. “The Origins of the Modern World….” United States: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2015: p.13.30 Marks, Robert B. “The Origins of the Modern World….” United States: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2015: p.13.

after more than 2 millennia of being at the top of the global economy? The Chinese had

experienced a period of stagnation when it retreated from the world. Internal conflicts between

the traditionalists and reformists has led to the fracture of the fracturing of China’s economy. The

retreat form the world also cut China off from military innovation, which was evident in two

humiliating defeats at the hands of the British in the First and Second Opium Wars. The West

was able to capitalize on the fact that China had created the weapons that the British were using

but they did not have the years of experience to apply those weapons in many unique and

different ways. Europeans were able to sell very few manufactures to the East, and instead

profited primarily from inserting themselves into the “country trade” within the Asian economy

itself.31 Strong arming their way into the global economy, it proves that there had been an

existing market before the British got involved and it was well established over a long period of

time.

When the Chinese fell following the Opium Wars and the subsequent civil wars the resulted

in the deaths of millions, China had been pushed towards military modernization, but Japan, after

completing its embrace of European culture, set its imperialist desires the vulnerable China, like

a wolf stalking the wounded stag. The Europeans looked to destroy the competition by the using

very shrewd and savvy political maneuvering or deindustrializing them. The Europeans did that

to the Native Americans and the Indians before colonizing the country. The Europeans wanted a

monopoly over the entire global trade. The Europeans were flexible in the uses of their

technology, they went to great lengths to maximize as much production through the use of

technology as they could. The culture of competition allowed the Europeans to fight to get to

where they want to be. The Chinese Confucian-based culture led them to pulling away from the

world because competition is a huge violation of the tenets of Confucianism. 31 Frank, Andre Gunder. “ReOrient….” Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998: p.177.

Geography played a large role in the sense that Europe virtually had nothing except for

starch-based diets and were forced to travel across the Atlantic Ocean in search of fertile lands

for farming. The Chinese did not have to go anywhere because the land was plentiful enough to

be able to be cultivated where the Chinese covered extensible the health benefits of the foods that

they could cook from the crops that they grew. Luck may have been on the side of the Europeans

when they landed in the New World, and it was a second stroke of luck as they discovered huge

stores of silver in the New World, silver that the Chinese wanted. Eurocentrism developed as a

result of industrialization and colonialism, where the British were beginning to believe that they

were superior than any other part of the world. To that extent, Eurocentrism is a way of knowing

that establishes the criteria for what its practitioners deem to be “the facts. It is thus a paradigm,

a set of assumptions about how the world works, that generates questions that can be answered

by ferreting out “the fact.”32 The concept of contingent is works off of the condition that if we

make decisions right now, then they could affect world in an everlasting way. Historical

accidents are things that happen that is outside the realm of man or even outside of man’s

control. The concept of conjuncture is that several different developments are happening in one

specific region of the world all at the same time to create a unique historical event.

The analysis of this topic has been a difficult and interesting experience as I was forced to

look at the work in a different way than usual. Investigating the rise of the West is a major test of

my abilities as a historian to think in the abstract and theorizing what possibly could have

happened to have caused that to happen. The rise of the West is a complex issue that has a lot of

other interconnected issues that was going on at the same time. The interconnectedness of these

ideas are what keeps the debate between the scholars about how was it the West was able to rise

about the East and totally dominate. The number of texts that cover this topic have all been 32 Marks, Robert B. “The Origins of the Modern World….” United States: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2015: p.9.

complex, thorough, and open-ended to encourage abstract thinking and thinking-outside-the box.

The rise of the West came about as the result of many different things happening at the same

time (technology, culture, geography, contingent, accident, conjuncture, etc.) and those things

chipped away at the East’s ability to maintain its hold on the global market. Is that something

will last a little while longer? Or will we see another tipping of the scales only this time the

scales will be evened out, allowing for a free-for-all.

Those different reasons all have been argued by scholars to explain, “how was it that the

West rose to dominate the global economy?” My answer for that question would be that all of

these reasons have contributed to the rise of the West. They all have contributed because all of

those reasons could not have worked piece-wise, but you combine all of them together and look

at the major tipping point of the scale where Europe was lower and China higher, but you throw

those weighted reasons on to the Chinese side of the scale, you will find China sinks deeper and

deeper down and Europe rises triumphantly. This independent study of “The Rise of the West”

has tested my abilities to their absolute limit, because this is a conceptual assignment that was

designed for graduate students who would devote themselves to studying in graduate school and

to do this type of work is about as upper-division work as it can get.

The rise of the West topic is a topic must be that is constantly asked in school, there are

mounds upon mounds of information that people do not know about when it come the way the

world was prior to the industrial revolution. The master narrative when centered around this

topic is that Europe was always the dominating force that and that England had it all in terms of

natural resources and wealth. The truth is that Europe had absolutely nothing and the Chinese

wanted nothing to do with the Europeans because they called them “barbarians.” The West was

desperate to trade with the Chinese and they were merely given a few items and told to be on

their merry way. The discovery of silver was a major game change in the relationship between

the Chinese and the European. They wanted to maintain their economy with silver because silver

was very valuable, the Europeans had come into a huge supply of silver in the free world.

The English knew that they were outnumbered by the Chinese, but superior technology and

effective military strategy destroyed the Chinese army enabling them to force China to open its

markets up to the rest of the West and buy opium that was highly addictive and highly

dangerous. After the 1800s, The West maintained the farthest reaches of their colonial empire

and while the English are going to desire flooding the Chinese markets with goods manufactured

from England. The goods manufactured in European and sold to the Chinese were meant to be a

way of putting Chinese workers out of business. Just like with the Indians, it will create more

and more unemployed workers, where they will have to work in European-based factories to

make a living they would have to do it with a low wage. The European’s would maintain their

hold on to the China until they formally gave it back in my contemporary life. Just like the

“Scramble for Africa,” “the Carving up of China’s ports” saw Western domination by the

occupation of key city ports so that they had a piece of the pie that China had become. It’s

disheartening to think that a country, like China, which had held a position at the top of the

global economic system for more than 2 millennia could have fallen so hard.

In this current age, we hear talk of China possibly on its way back to become the center of

the world economy as the West is beginning to crumble away. The Question is, “how bad are

things going to get before that fall reaches the United States and the Western allies. This topic

can teach us about how actions in the past can still resurface and the problems that brought about

China’s fall from grace can happen to any country in the world today. The same conditions, like

technology, culture, some form of centrism, war, politics, greed, contingents, accidents, and

conjunctures are all the necessary things that would be needed to bring down a giant country like

China in this day and age. It is also quite possible that the tactics and conditions have become

much more sophisticated than what the British was doing back in the 1800s. The Rise of the

West came about in a time were expansion and imperialism was the primary way of acquiring

massive amounts of land and wealth. Colonization from the 1600-1968 saw the domination of

oppressed peoples to being used and exploited for the benefit of those who stand to profit from

their misery. The text that covered this topic were very well written and exceptionally good

reading material that was very entertaining as well as informing. They all tied into the theme but

also were unique in their own way.

IX. Conclusion

The rise of the West was brought about because the number of reasons that scholars argued

led to the major paradigm shift in the world, were not the sole option—but really a complex mix

of all of those reasons. Technology, culture, geography, Eurocentric superiority, Luck,

contingent, accidents, and conjuncture; the fragmented European society that enabled them to

achieve and acquire more than the Chinese ever could. These arguments were shaped by the

authors to solve the mystery for the rise of the West; individually, they could not definitively say

that they were the real reason for how the West was able to kick China out of the center of the

world economy, but line them up together and unleash them upon China could yield some results

where a major paradigm shift would occur. China had existed for almost 4 millennia and

dominated the global economy for nearly 2 millennia, only to be supplanted by a smaller nation

that they once considered to be “barbarians”

The West had used its ability to apply smart tactics to be extremely reliable with the new

technology that can work for you. The West deindustrialized India and colonized it to expand its

sphere of influence across the world. Then they shipped opium to the Chinese in hopes of getting

them addicted, which started the First and Second Opium Wars, which resulted in China’s defeat

both times. China had been dislodged from the world economy in the nineteenth century and it is

only now in twenty-first century where China is on the path to regaining its spot as the top

economy in the world. The confrontation between China and the West has restarted again

allowing for them battle over trade, currencies, and positions of strength. The West vs the East

has been going on since 700 B.C. The West and the East have always been rivals in the power

struggle for the wars between the two civilizations. Only one could have come out on top and the

rise of the West is a story that has a number of issues and problems that still are not resolved

today.

Bibliography

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Marks, Robert B. “The Origins of the Modern World: A Global and Environmental

Narrative from the Fifteenth to the Twenty-First Century.” United States: Rowman &

Littlefield Publishers, 2015.

Mintz, Sidney Wilfred W. “Sweetness and Power: The lace of Sugar in Modern History.” New

York: Penguin Group (USA), 1986.

Morris, Ian. “Why the West Rules—for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They

Revel about the Future.” United States: St. Martin’s Press, 2011.