This blog post looks at how Europe took advantage of its scientific, climatic, and geographical advantages to form a powerful empire.
The empire contributed to the fusion of numerous small cultures into a few large ones. Within the empire, ideas, people, goods, and technology spread more easily than in politically fragmented regions. The usefulness of information sharing, ease of commercial activity, and the unification of goods, which were cemented by the formation of the empire, helped to unite people. As a result, the imaginary system of the empire was maintained. Those who led empires did not stop at forming such a system. They intentionally spread ideas, institutions, customs, and norms for the sake of ease of governance, making the imaginary system that people had built even more solid. For 2,500 years, the empire, which was recognized as the most common form of political organization in the world, has continued to exist to this day based on its ease and convenience. In modern times, empires have been formed mainly in Europe. European countries have conquered and colonized other countries to dominate the world until recently. In particular, considering that the United Kingdom, which was called the “land where the sun never sets,” owned many territories around the world, no one would dispute that Europe had hegemony as an empire. However, one question arises here. Why was it Europe that was able to grow its empire and conquer the world?
If the European empires had been influential and powerful worldwide since the concept of empire began to take shape, the answer to this question would be easy. “Europe was able to conquer the world because it had the economic and military superiority that it gained from its strong power at the beginning of its empire,” one might answer. But this answer is not very convincing. This is because the balance of power at the beginning of the empire was not in Europe. Yuval Noah Harari, in his book ‘Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind,’ says the following.
“The emergence of important military and political empires in Europe only occurred at the end of the 15th century. However, even after the emergence of the empires, Europe was no match for the Asian powers, and the only reason Europe was able to conquer the Americas was because the Asian powers had no interest in the region.”
As such, Europe did not have much influence as an empire. In 1775, Asia accounted for 80 percent of the world’s economy, showing that Europe was just a fringe. So how on earth was Europe able to conquer the Americas in just 200 years and take over the world’s economic zones and territories?
Yuval Noah Harari cites science and technology as the basis for this question. In the 1800s, the Industrial Revolution, which marked a turning point in human history, took place in Europe. Europe accepted the mass production made possible by the Industrial Revolution and the rapid development of science and technology, and overcame the gap. Harari explains that the reason why China has not been able to accept science and technology is due to differences in social structure and perceptions of society. Europe, they say, had scientific and capitalist thinking and behavioral habits even before it enjoyed a technological advantage, while China and other regions did not. However, this claim has some shortcomings. First, the habit has not been objectively and scientifically proven. It is unreasonable to claim that there is a habit of thinking scientifically simply based on the social structure. In addition, there is no specific mention of what the “habit of thinking scientifically” is, which makes it less convincing. Even if we assume that Harari’s words are true, there is a problem. Even before the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s, people have made progress through scientific discoveries. In Harari’s view, it is impossible to explain why China was ahead in pre-industrial development. The inventions that changed history, such as paper, gunpowder, and the stirrup, all came from Asian countries, and Europe made constant efforts through trade to import these technologies. If Europeans had the habit of thinking scientifically, they should have been more advanced than Asian countries even before the Industrial Revolution. However, they failed to do so, and in fact, they had inferior technology compared to Asian countries. In other words, it can be inferred that there were other reasons as well as the Industrial Revolution of the 1800s for Europe to expand its empire.
There are two additional reasons for Europe to spread its imperial hegemony around the world, in addition to the scientific revolution presented in “Sapiens.”
The first is the climatic and geographical impact. The climatic impact allowed the empire to spread rapidly in an east-west direction. On Earth, the tropical climate, temperate climate, and cold climate are distributed in the direction of the equator. Due to the influence of the sun, there are generally similar climate zones in the latitudinal direction. As a result of the similar climate zones being distributed horizontally, the crops that people eat as staple foods were able to spread much more easily in the horizontal direction. Jared Diamond, author of “Guns, Germs, and Steel,” said, “Biological or cultural organisms have evolved to suit the climate and natural environment of a region, so migration within a climate is easy, but migration between climates is much more difficult.”
The movement of crops within similar climates eventually led to the spread of crops that people used as staple foods, which brought about cultural unity in terms of eating habits. Based on this cultural unity, empires were able to quickly occupy the Eurasian continent and other continents. Even with this cultural unity, the reason why Europeans were able to surpass the Chinese was due to the difference in the crops they used as staple foods. The Chinese lived in the warm temperate zone of the continent and ate rice as their staple food in a humid climate. Rice could only grow in areas with a lot of rain, so it was difficult for it to spread westward to dry regions such as Europe and Africa. On the other hand, wheat and potatoes, which were the staple foods of Europeans, had fewer climatic constraints than rice. Wheat and potatoes could be cultivated even with little precipitation, so they could spread to various regions.
In addition, geographical influence was the reason why Europe surpassed China. Even if crops could spread due to climatic influence, if it was not easy to advance into new regions, the growth of the empire would be slow. China is a country located in the middle of the Eurasian continent, with the vast Pacific Ocean to the east, which prevented it from expanding further. The desert in the central and western regions prevented the spread of staple crops, which can be seen as the reason for the relatively slow pace of expansion. In contrast, Europe had favorable conditions for spreading into similar climates to the east. To the west was the Atlantic Ocean, but its narrowness allowed the spread of crops and the expansion of the empire after the discovery of the Americas. Moreover, unlike China, which had no continent around it because it was adjacent to the African continent, it had the environmental conditions to spread. In other words, not only the development of science and technology, but also the geographical advantages that occurred by chance helped Europe dominate the world.
Even when considering the development of science and technology, climate, and geographical requirements, the conquest of the Americas by Europe was accomplished in an incredibly short period of time. Another factor played a role in the growth of the European empires in the Americas. That factor was disease. Living organisms contributed to the growth of the empires, not economic or scientific factors. As Europeans privatized their livestock, they naturally had many opportunities to come into contact with animals. In the process, they were exposed to the diseases of the animals and developed immunity. However, this was not the case for the people of the Americas. They had never come into contact with livestock before the arrival of Europeans, and had no opportunity to build up their immunity. It was not science and technology, nor geographical or climatic conditions, but disease that caused the Europeans to come to the Americas and slaughter the indigenous people. Jared Diamond said this.
“Among the Native Americans who lost their lives after Europeans set foot on the American continent, the number who died from diseases caused by pathogens brought from Europe was much higher than those who died on the battlefield. Between 100 and 200 years after the discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus, the entire Native American population was reduced by 95% due to diseases brought from Europe.”
In the blink of an eye, 95% of the indigenous population had lost their lives to diseases brought from Europe, including smallpox, measles, malaria, and tuberculosis. It was easy for Europeans to occupy the vacated areas. The disease was an unintended consequence of the European empires’ conquest of the Americas and other regions.
It is not enough to say that the foundation for Europe to form a world-conquering empire as a great power was simply the development of scientific knowledge. It can be seen that the formation of the empire was influenced not only by technological capabilities but also by factors that seem completely unrelated (topography, disease). In that respect, the growth engine of the empire presented in “Sapiens” is logically quite lacking. As you can see in the example about the growth of the empire in this essay, there is not just one cause for an event to occur in history. Many aspects work together to create history, and those aspects may be something we never expected. Of course, it may be impossible to predict all these aspects and interpret history. However, what we should be wary of is interpreting history based on only a fragmentary aspect. When explaining history, there should be sufficient analysis of economic, scientific, and environmental aspects to interpret history fully and correctly.
