explain why after around 1500 Eurasia conquered Native Americans,
Aboriginal Australians and Sub-Saharan Africans, rather than vice versa, why
then did some parts of Eurasia (Britain, France) develop faster than other parts?
Diamond explains this in terms of the political fragmentation of Europe and
unification of China. All societies undergo fads or customs that make no
economic sense. These are usually abandoned when their inefficiency is
demonstrated by their successful adaptation elsewhere. The innovative
economic dynamism China had established by the beginning of the fifteenth
century was later lost (see Chapter 7). The fleet of hundreds of ships and more
than 20,000 crews was abandoned in 1432 by the decision of a single emperor
and was effective because China was unified under one emperor and one law.
By comparison in fifteenth-century Europe Christopher Columbus was turned
down by six different monarchs, dukes and princes before another took a chance
and supported his 1492 trip to the Americas. Columbus had a choice of patrons
in Europe; in China when the Emperor said no there was nobody else to ask.
Europe was not less conservative, argues Diamond. Numerous European
princes have said no to pioneering inventions and many Catholic countries tried
to suppress the ideas of Galileo. But, as Diamond notes, because Europe was
always divided (into 2,000 principalities after the fourteenth century), inventors
had many opportunities. There was always competition – when one state tried
something that worked it was adopted by other states. In 1492 when the pros-
perous Jews were expelled from Castile and Aragon (Spain) they sought refuge
in Venice and the Ottoman Empires and carried on their commerce and trading.
In 1685 when the Protestant Huguenots were expelled from France they sought
refuge in England, Holland and Switzerland where they established textile
production. Gutenberg hoped to monopolize his development of moveable type
(as the Chinese state had done successfully) after the 1450s,but within a few
years it had spread across Europe and by 1524 there were nearly 1,000 printing
presses in Germany alone (Ferguson, 2012:61).
Diamond does offer an explanation for the China–Europe difference but not
for changes within China. Why did the Chinese state switch to an inward-look-
ing and conservative anti-innovation ideology after the fifteenth century? The
Chinese state had a long history of leading technological change. During the
Han period (221 BCE to 220 CE) governments provided peasants with the
tools and draft animals to boost agricultural productivity and actively
promoted the use of better ploughs. In the eleventh century state officials
promoted the adoption of faster-ripening and more drought-resistant strains of
rice introduced from South-east Asia. After 1000 CE the Chinese government
established huge state-owned iron foundries that promoted the use of iron
implements (Mokyr, 1990).
This leads us to a second question. Why was Europe fragmented and why is
it still? The answer, according to Diamond, is again geography:
Europe has an indented coastline, and each big indentation is a peninsula that
became an independent country, independent ethnic group, and independentGeography and Economic Resources 241