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The history of human civilization originated in the Mesopotamia region, where the Euphrates and Tigris rivers are located in the two river basins of the Middle East. Here, for the first time, agriculture appeared, metallurgy, writing, and cities, with far-reaching influences that continue to this day.
But this highly developed, world-advanced region has fallen behind in the transition from ancient to classical. Instead, it was more marginal regions that came to the fore, such as India, China, and Europe. In 500 B.C., when the "Axial Age" of mankind appeared, the most brilliant were the Hundred Schools of Thought in China, the philosophers of ancient Greece, and the Shakyamuni of India. During the classical civilization of mankind, through the effective use of iron smelting, coinage and alphabet, the Middle East lagged behind other civilizations.
Beginning in 1500 AD, a technological revolution originating in Europe overcame all other civilizations and forcibly united them into an almost worldwide society. Westerners replaced "grassland" with "ocean" as the main medium of communication around the world. The West conquered the four seas first with sailing ships and then by steamship, unifying the entire inhabited and habitable Earth. Six hundred years ago, it has been an era of European and American civilization.
In the general history of the world by historian Stavrianos, this "law of containing the lead" is introduced: the most successful societies in times of transformation are precisely the most difficult to change and maintain their leading position; a temporary lead is not necessarily always ahead.
To use a big Chinese saying: The emperor takes turns to do it and comes to my house next year.
2
The scope of human activity on Earth is determined by the level of technological development. The more primitive the technology, the more limited the scope of activity; the more advanced the technology, the wider the scope of activity. For example, just mastering a skill of drilling wood for fire can make people go out of Africa and appear in cold places like Siberia.
From 500 to 1500 AD, a thousand years after the decline of Egyptian civilization and the collapse of the Roman Empire, the great center of technological innovation was China. In 1620, the English philosopher Francis Bacon was pleased to praise the changes brought about by the great Chinese inventions:
"Printing, gunpowder and compass." These three great inventions, first in literature, then in war, and finally in navigation, changed the face and state of many things in the whole world, and resulted in countless changes. So that no empire, no faction, no planet can have a greater power and influence on human affairs than these technological inventions. ”
In addition to the three major inventions, papermaking was introduced to Europe and replaced sheepskin; stirrups were introduced to Europe, allowing knights wearing heavy armor to be produced; chest strap harnesses were introduced to Europe, so that horses could pull things with all their might, without being strangled by themselves as they had been under the neckband harness... Compared with these inventions, both silk and porcelain seem insignificant.
So although the Vikings of Northern Europe discovered the Americas four centuries before Columbus, after Columbus landed on the New World in 1492, Europe began an unstoppable invasion of the Americas, Australia, Asia, and Africa. Europe opened the prelude to the recent history of mankind with the Age of Discovery, and it has continued strongly to this day.
In contrast, in 1433 AD, almost sixty years before Columbus landed in the Americas, Zheng He died of illness on his seventh voyage back to the West, and China's maritime career came to an abrupt end. If the Ming Dynasty had maintained its outward expansion like the West instead of imposing a sea ban, the world today would not have been like this.
3
But history has no ifs. Technological inventions that had an explosive impact in the West did not make a splash in China. China's Confucian civilization was deeply rooted, highly developed and at the same time a high degree of self-esteem: printing was used to spread the Eight Strands and Theory, not to new ideas and new ideas outside the territory; gunpowder strengthened the emperor's rule rather than giving power to the emerging merchant and civic classes; the compass was not used for exploration and trade as in the West after going to the West.
The "law of containment of leadership" plays a role in silence. Traditional culture has brought unprecedented stability to Chinese society, making Chinese civilization the only one of the four major civilizations that has never broken off and lasted to this day – but the price of this stability is the rejection of change. Therefore, the Sui and Tang Dynasties are actually the continuation of the Qin and Han Dynasties, and the Ming and Qing Dynasties are the continuations of the Tang and Song Dynasties. For fifteen hundred years, it seems that there has been a change of dynasty, but the essence has not changed.
So although new technologies and inventions arose in great China, their role was swallowed up by the old rule, and it was impossible to produce an explosive effect like europe. In the sixty years from the end of Zheng He's voyage to the West to The landing of Columbus in the Americas, the Ming Dynasty implemented a policy of sea ban, and then further developed into the Qing Dynasty's closed country, until the cannons of the Opium War sounded.
China missed these sixty years, and thus the next nearly six hundred years. It was the fundamental differences in the structure of the state and the outward thrust that enabled China, the turning point of human civilization, in 1433, to leave the world's oceans to the Westerners.
Recognize this background before you can begin to read General History of the World: The World After 1500. History is important because it can be learned from the past. Although the only lesson that human beings often learn from history is that they simply cannot absorb any lessons.