Europe and the world… sins of the past… what could have we done to avoid our current situation?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

5 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Aren't those things that Western society has done (or is at least aiming to do)

Yes on both sides of the equation.

[LongRider]

8 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Aren't those things that Western society has done (or is at least aiming to do)

Crumbs, but not fully, and what has been given is easily taken away.

[Heartofice]

1 minute ago, LongRider said:

Crumbs, but not fully, and what has been given is easily taken away.

Hardly crumbs.

[Zorral]

Counterfactual historical speculation is useless.

Alas.

As we never learn anything from history, except how to become ever more effective log jammers against creating anything positive for anyone who isn't A or The Power -- see Gingrich and Atwater and all those of their ilks who have assiduously studied the history of effective protest in the causes of real justice, such as the Civil Right Movement, who have learned to bollox up the works politically and keep anything productive from happening while advancing like tsunami their own agendas to erase liberty and equality and justice for All -- particularly by erasing, and now even, criminalizing history all together -- see Texas and Florida, for instance.  Not to mention tolerance, equality and matter-of-factedness for LGBTQ.  And women.  And anyone who is a white, wealthy male.

 

[SeanF]

I don’t think that historically, genocide, slavery, and imperialism,  have been more pleasant when carried out by non-Europeans than when they’ve been carried out by Europeans.

Fortunately, the Industrial Revolution gave us all the chance to improve living standards without plundering our neighbours.

Our ancestors were living in a world of far greater scarcity than our own.  The average standard of living in Western Europe, 2000 years ago, was probably around twice subsistence.  Vast disparities in wealth meant that most people lived just above subsistence, while a small minority enjoyed a wonderful life.  1500 years ago, after the fall of the Western Empire, the average standard of living had dropped sharply.  Even the rich lived badly, compared to their counterparts at the height of the Pax Romana.  1000 years ago, living standards had perhaps recovered to twice subsistence. Six hundred years ago, following the Black Death, living standards had jumped upwards, to perhaps four times subsistence.  And, there they remained, shifting up and down a bit, but creeping up to five or six times subsistence, by 1800.

Now, our standard of living is forty to fifty times subsistence.  That makes our world a very different place to that which our ancestors inhabited.  We can afford the luxury of criticising them, We can pretend that we would have had all the liberal values that we profess today, had we lived hundreds of years ago.

But, we'd be lying to ourselves. A world of scarcity is a world where people are ruthless and pitiless.

 

[Zorral]

2 hours ago, SeanF said:

the Industrial Revolution gave us all the chance to improve living standards without plundering our neighbours

Not true.  At all.  Look at the Oil revolution -- it's all about plundering others to take control of their petroleum resources.  And so much else.  What do you think went on in African throughout the British and other Euro empires throughout the 19th century?  In India? In China? In South America.

[Larry of the Lawn]

27 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Not true.  At all.  Look at the Oil revolution -- it's all about plundering others to take control of their petroleum resources.  And so much else.  What do you think went on in African throughout the British and other Euro empires throughout the 19th century?  In India? In China? In South America.

Yeah the IR just shepherded in an era wherein we exploit places on the other side of the world instead of plundering our immediate neighbors.  

[SeanF]

9 hours ago, Zorral said:

Not true.  At all.  Look at the Oil revolution -- it's all about plundering others to take control of their petroleum resources.  And so much else.  What do you think went on in African throughout the British and other Euro empires throughout the 19th century?  In India? In China? In South America.

Sure, but the point remains that the world is - on any metric - a much richer place than it was 200 years ago.  That gives us all options that we did not possess in the past - including the option not to plunder others.

[sologdin]

What could we have realistically done differently?

who's we? i see a lot of counterfactual identification with prior aggressors in the feverish attempt to exculpate them and thus those who identify with them.

[Rippounet]

14 hours ago, SeanF said:

I don’t think that historically, genocide, slavery, and imperialism,  have been more pleasant when carried out by non-Europeans than when they’ve been carried out by Europeans.

How many examples do you have of massive (i.e. with death tolls reaching the millions) non-European "genocide, slavery, and imperialism" before the Europeans started plundering the world?

As a European, I'd love to think there was really nothing unprecedented about the way Europeans sought to subjugate, enslave, and kill, in the wake of their exploration of the world, but I doubt the historical record allows us such a thought.

Don't get me wrong, previous civilizations were very brutal. But it's difficult to see any systematic campaign of conquest and plunder on that massive a scale before the Europeans had the means to start theirs. The Mongols come to mind, but in terms of brutality and ruthlessness, the Europeans still somehow went a few steps further.
It seems what historians are showing these days is that before Europeans there was genocide, but on a much smaller scale. There was slavery, but far less brutal. And there was imperialism, but no one had been insane enough to want to dominate the entire world. As far as horrors go, it seems Europeans cranked everything up to the max, because their ideologies had no respect for other cultures/civilizations.

14 hours ago, SeanF said:

Fortunately, the Industrial Revolution gave us all the chance to improve living standards without plundering our neighbours.

This is factually incorrect on several levels, but the biggest mistake is to assume the Industrial Revolution improved living standards.
It's the other way around: the IR was possible because living standards had already seen a huge improvement. Agricultural production had increased several fold in the previous centuries; Europe was pretty much already moving beyond subsistence farming when the IR started.
Which begs the question: was it actually an improvement? In the short-term, there's everyone reason to think it wasn't, given how nasty the life of factory workers was. And int he long-term, the IR was the beginning of a productivist ideology that we can safely blame for destroying our environment.
So when did the IR improve the "standards of living" ? Well... The working class only started becoming the middle-class (thanks to socialism and Marxism btw) early in the 20th century didn't it? That's about one "good" century (during which we experienced two World Wars though).

Was it worth it?

[SeanF]

27 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

How many examples do you have of massive (i.e. with death tolls reaching the millions) non-European "genocide, slavery, and imperialism" before the Europeans started plundering the world?

As a European, I'd love to think there was really nothing unprecedented about the way Europeans sought to subjugate, enslave, and kill, in the wake of their exploration of the world, but I doubt the historical record allows us such a thought.

Don't get me wrong, previous civilizations were very brutal. But it's difficult to see any systematic campaign of conquest and plunder on that massive a scale before the Europeans had the means to start theirs. The Mongols come to mind, but in terms of brutality and ruthlessness, the Europeans still somehow went a few steps further.
It seems what historians are showing these days is that before Europeans there was genocide, but on a much smaller scale. There was slavery, but far less brutal. And there was imperialism, but no one had been insane enough to want to dominate the entire world. As far as horrors go, it seems Europeans cranked everything up to the max, because their ideologies had no respect for other cultures/civilizations.

This is factually incorrect on several levels, but the biggest mistake is to assume the Industrial Revolution improved living standards.
It's the other way around: the IR was possible because living standards had already seen a huge improvement. Agricultural production had increased several fold in the previous centuries; Europe was pretty much already moving beyond subsistence farming when the IR started.
Which begs the question: was it actually an improvement? In the short-term, there's everyone reason to think it wasn't, given how nasty the life of factory workers was. And int he long-term, the IR was the beginning of a productivist ideology that we can safely blame for destroying our environment.
So when did the IR improve the "standards of living" ? Well... The working class only started becoming the middle-class (thanks to socialism and Marxism btw) early in the 20th century didn't it? That's about one "good" century (during which we experienced two World Wars though).

Was it worth it?

[SeanF]

Between 1211 and 1241, the population of Northern China was cut from 30 m to 9m, due to the Mongol invasions (there are census figures for both years).    The An Lushan revolt, in 8th century China, killed between 7% and 15% of the world’s population.  Abbasid and Ottoman slavery was horrific.  Timur, Nadir Shah, The Heavenly King, Babur, etc. left pyramids of heads in their wake.  The Assyrians had a passion for torture, and deported entire peoples.  Slavery and mass extermination looks pretty similar, regardless of the ethnicity of those who carry it out.

Was the IR an improvement?  Well, imagine what it is to live like a person in a pre-industrial world.  Your life expectancy would be about 30, clean water would be a luxury, half your children would die before reaching ten, electricity and gas are unheard of.  Free education and medical care are almost unheard of, and while you're probably not starving, your diet is a good deal worse than that of modern people.  Smallpox, syphillis, influenza, plague are endemic threats. What do you think?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

2 hours ago, sologdin said:

What could we have realistically done differently?

who's we? i see a lot of counterfactual identification with prior aggressors in the feverish attempt to exculpate them and thus those who identify with them.

Frankly, the “we” I conceived was the western imperialist powers.  But, I should expand that to humanity at large. 

We see people claiming imperialism is natural to humans.  Is it?

[SeanF]

11 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Frankly, the “we” I conceived was the western imperialist powers.  But, I should expand that to humanity at large. 

We see people claiming imperialism is natural to humans.  Is it?

It’s natural to some animal species, as well as to humans.

[Heartofice]

What’s your definition of imperialism?

[sologdin]

yeah, obviously not natural.  it's not even a cultural universal.

[Rippounet]

55 minutes ago, SeanF said:

Between 1211 and 1241, the population of Northern China was cut from 30 m to 9m, due to the Mongol invasions.  The An Lushan revolt, in 8th century China, killed between 7% and 15% of the world’s population.

Indeed, the Mongol invasion is the one undeniable counter-example.

The An Lushan revolt I'm not deeply familiar with, but I finished a recent - and rather big- book on Chinese history like, two days ago, and I just didn't see anything even close to such a death toll. A quick glance at wikipedia tells me the figures here are rather unreliable and controversial (they could reflect a breakdown in the census system rather than a massive death toll).
In fact, the higher death toll seems to come from Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of our Nature, a book that is notoriously riddled with inaccuracies, exaggerations, and methodological errors, all in the service of a rather dubious thesis. I definitely wouldn't trust Pinker when it comes to Chinese history; his credentials in the field are basically inexistent.

55 minutes ago, SeanF said:

Abbasid and Ottoman slavery was horrific.

See, this is where historical perspective should change our views a bit.
I understand that the Abbasid and Ottoman empires would have enslaved between 12 and 15 million people over twelve centuries.
Europeans enslaved over 20 million people in about three centuries.
The figures alone should give one pause.

55 minutes ago, SeanF said:

Timur, Nadir Shah, The Heavenly King, Babur, etc. left pyramids of heads in their wake.  The Assyrians had a passion for torture, and deported entire peoples.  Slavery and mass extermination looks pretty similar, regardless of the ethnicity of those who carry it out.

But that's the thing, they don't. There are plenty of atrocities in humanity's past, but the scale just isn't the same. "Pyramides of heads" may sound like much, until you realize we may be talking about thousands - not millions.

The key difference being that the Europeans seem to be the only ones who developed new motives to commit atrocities in faraway lands, and everywhere at the same time (or close enough).
It's quite ironic that we tend to celebrate the fact as some kind of genius achievement too. It adds a level of cruelty to the entire process.

55 minutes ago, SeanF said:

Well, imagine what it’s to live like a person in a pre-industrial world.  Your life expectancy would be about 30, clean water would be a luxury, half your children would die before reaching ten, electricity and gas are unheard of.  What do you think?

That everything you just said is wrong.
As I said, life on the eve of the IR was not as hard as you make it to be. Life expectancy wasn't actually 30, the average was about 35. Huge difference, because it was child mortality that brought the average down ; the actual life expectancy on the eve of the IR was considerably higher, around 55 in most places.
In fact, there's a pretty big question as to how you define the "Industrial Revolution." Many of the developments you would ascribe to the IR were not direct consequences of it. Some may have been helped by it (the spread of electricity), others may not (I do believe life expectancy for the working classes went down at the beginning of the IR).
If the IR was about new manufacturing processes, then its main contribution was producing more stuff.  If you think in terms of social progress, that took a bit longer. For instance, life expectancy in Britain only rose dramatically around the end of the 19th century (as I said, the working class only started becoming the middle-class in the early 20th century). And I don't see why the public health measures that brought child mortality down, and thus life expectancy up, should be credited to the IR, would you care to explain how that is supposed to work?

I'd say it's -very- easy to make the case that the IR only became a contributor of social progress once its main effects (exploitation and pollution) had been mitigated by laws, regulations, and social programs.

[Heartofice]

6 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

See, this is where historical perspective should change our views a bit.
I understand that the Abbasid and Ottoman empires would have enslaved between 12 and 15 million people over twelve centuries.
Europeans enslaved over 20 million people in about three centuries.
The figures alone should give one pause.

Kind of missing the point that Europeans developed the means to expand far further than others, and the means to take over other areas. So comparing numbers doesn’t mean the Ottomans are ‘better’. It’s not like they thought ‘oh we have enough slaves now, let’s stop’
 

Had other civilisations found themselves in the same position would they be incentivised to act the same? I can’t see many reasons why not. 

[DMC]

42 minutes ago, sologdin said:

yeah, obviously not natural.  it's not even a cultural universal.

To suggest imperialism is human nature is to effectively throw all social contract theory out the window.  That's a large chunk of political philosophy right there. 

[Denvek]

2 hours ago, SeanF said:

Your life expectancy would be about 30, 

Average life expectancy being about 30 in pre-modern societies usually doesn't mean your life expectancy would be about 30, it usually means there's a lot of infant mortality, but if you survived that and made it to 20 you'd have a good chance of making it to 60.