After the First Opium War in 1840, the door of the Qing Dynasty was knocked open for the first time by the Western powers, and it has been in a backward and beaten position since then.
It turned out that the Qing Dynasty always thought that we were the kingdom of heaven, and there was a British delegation visiting the Qing Dynasty during the Qianlong period, when the Qianlong Emperor did not take this small country in his eyes at all, and the feeling of looking at the British was like looking at a group of barbarians, but just a few decades later, they could not defeat the British at all, which made the Qing Dynasty court unable to figure out how to figure it out.
Since modern times, our attitude toward Western countries has been looking up to western countries for a long time, thinking that their economy is also developed, the system is good, and the quality of the people is also very high, especially after the reform and opening up, due to more and more contact with the outside world, many people with study abroad experience have begun to advocate how good the West is, and by the way, our country is demeaned.
Of course, in recent years, this view has not become popular, one is that our economic strength is getting stronger and stronger, and we are more confident, and the other is that various information sources are becoming more and more abundant, and our understanding of the whole West is becoming more and more comprehensive, especially during this period of the epidemic, the anti-epidemic performance of Western countries has completely extinguished our only illusions about Western countries.
However, it is still necessary to understand why the Western countries have suddenly risen, and it can almost be said that they have surpassed the East in an explosive way, and if we understand this matter, many situations will be understood.
One Ecological pressure
Some people say that as soon as they talk about Western countries, they have inherent advantages, such as the spirit of innovation, the spirit of cooperation, the spirit of contract, and so on, and it is precisely because they have great advantages in quality or race, so development is natural. Most of these people are either well-known or brainwashed by public knowledge, and it is impossible to make great breakthroughs in economic development alone.
Before the outbreak of the Industrial Revolution, both western and Eastern countries were mainly agricultural, and in terms of productivity, the technology of many Western countries was transmitted from Asia.
Compared with the basic conditions, there is no obvious evidence that the Western countries have an advantage over the Eastern countries from the beginning.
Whether it is in terms of population size, life expectancy or the level of science and technology, the world at that time was similar, and it was facing huge ecological pressure.
Why talk about ecological pressure alone? Because in the old world, the biggest problem restricting the development of the country is the ecological pressure, because to meet the huge growth of the population, it is necessary to consume more natural resources, and even more than 200 years ago an economist named Malthus proposed a theory of population growth, he said that the growth of the population is exponential, but the natural growth consumed is arithmetic, so the population increase to a certain extent will always be consumed by some reason, in order to maintain the entire ecological balance.
Most of the dynasties in ancient China could only end after two or three hundred years, and one of the important reasons was that as the dynasties prospered and the population continued to develop, the land became more and more insufficient, the grain produced could not feed so many people, and a large number of people who were about to survive organized to overthrow the upper rulers, in the process through war to achieve population reduction, so that the population and land could reach a balance again, and the new dynasty could be stable for a period of time.
From the eighteenth century onwards, both eastern and Western countries entered a new round of population outbreaks, and the ecological and environmental pressures faced by both sides suddenly increased, and the huge differences in development between the East and the West began from this period.
First look at the situation in China, because the Qing Dynasty implemented the tax system reform of dividing the land into acres, the peasants' taxes were cleared a lot, so the population that could feed the same fields became more, so the population of the Qing Dynasty rose rapidly, and by the end of the Qianlong Period, the population reached 300 million, which was unprecedented in the entire history of China, and by the end of the Qing Dynasty, it reached 400 million.
The growth of so many people, the first consumption is land resources, to feed so many people, it is definitely necessary to grow food, the original land will soon be insufficient, the only way is to open up the land, a large amount of forest land into arable land, or fill the lake, anyway, more arable land can be built.
Moving borders is also a way to migrate people to the frontier areas to reclaim wasteland.
One of the biggest drawbacks of this is that it destroys the ecological balance, the forest cover area is reduced rapidly, and the soil erosion is very serious, so by the late Qing Dynasty, natural disasters became more and more frequent, especially floods, because all the trees originally used to fix the slope were cut down.
In addition to the reclamation of wasteland need to cut down trees, the people in order to obtain heat energy also need to cut down trees, at that time is not like the modern can use a lot of ore fuel to provide heat, burning firewood or charcoal is the only source of heat energy, cooking to burn, ironmaking, porcelain, etc. need, the two reasons are superimposed, forest resource consumption is more serious.
Especially in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, where the economy is most developed, the forests have been almost cut down, and many people say why the Qing Dynasty did not develop the navigation economy, which has always been the reason for the system at that time, and another reason is that at the price of wood at that time, the cost of building large navigation ships was very high, which indirectly hindered the development of the maritime economy.
This is the case in China, and the neighboring regions of Japan, India, and Southeast Asia are all facing this situation, and the European countries in the west are also facing the pressure of less and less land, less and less forest resources, and even the pressure facing the West is even greater.
Bonus
Ecological restrictions here, whether it is European countries or Asian countries, are looking for a breakthrough, and it is precisely the way to solve this ecological restriction is different, resulting in a huge difference in the later economic development.
Western countries have at least two unexpected gains in their quest for a breakthrough.
The first is the use of coal resources. Whether it is the needs of life or the needs of production, energy is absolutely the focus, and this is the case now, and it was the same two hundred years ago.
The initial energy for the production of life is to burn firewood or charcoal, with the increasing demand for metal smelting, the amount of charcoal needed is also greatly increased, the demand for wood will also be greatly improved, wood this thing in the early use of a very wide range of uses, in addition to providing heat, building houses, shipbuilding, etc. need wood, so in Europe and some economically developed areas of Asia, wood resources are very tight.
At that time, the traffic was extremely backward, unless you were nearby materials or relying on the waterway port, the cost of timber transportation would be very high, the resource limit was rigid, and many times there was no way to reconcile.
Later people learned to use fossil fuels, first of all, coal, China developed coal mining technology at a very early age, at least hundreds of years earlier than the Western countries, this can be seen from the iron production, there is a data, China's iron production around 1080 is equivalent to all European iron production except Russia in 1700.
But in the subsequent development, the use of coal is less and less, one is because most of our coal mines are distributed in the north, and the economically developed areas are in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, the location of the coal mines is generally underdeveloped, and the products that are basically produced by land transportation are not affordable, and the second is that the north is often in war, and many coal mining technologies have been lost in the war, which has also affected the production of coal.
The Western countries are just the opposite of our situation, and the coal mines they found in the later period are very good, especially close to the economic center, and in the early period of the Industrial Revolution, the steam engine has appeared, and the production of coal has been greatly increased due to the application of the steam engine.
Here to say more, although the steam engine is fully used in the textile industry, but the first rise is in the mining industry, because the first invention of the steam engine is very large and dangerous, relatively easy to blow up, so for a long time this thing has been regarded as a new type of machine, but the use is really not much.
Other places may not be used, but it is still very suitable for coal mining, the coal mine found in the West also has an advantage that it mainly faces the difficulty of the pit is easy to seep water, unlike the coal mine found in China at that time is mainly prone to explosion, so the use of steam engines to pump water efficiency is very high, and itself is in the coal mine, so the power source of the steam engine is also convenient and cheap, and the volume size of these in the coal mine is basically not a big impact.
And in the process of use, the steam engine has also been continuously improved, and it has been more than one thing.
It is precisely because of the large use of cheap fossil fuels that the pressure on timber resources in Western countries has been greatly alleviated and production efficiency has also been improved.
The second windfall was the discovery of the New World. This harvest was much more important to the rise of the West than the heavy use of coal. The fact that European countries have seized a large amount of wealth from the American colonies is one of the reasons, and the more important reason is that through the use of American resources, the ecological pressure of Europe itself has been truly solved and the ecological limits have been broken.
Columbus discovered the Americas in the 15th century, and then the whole Of the West set off a seafaring boom, what did they run to the Americas? Of course, it is not for tourism, the most important purpose is to engage in resources.
Isn't there enough land in Europe? Isn't wood enough? So from the Americas.
At that time in the Americas is mainly growing sugar cane, cotton, coffee beans and other things, sugar cane is mainly to provide sugar, can greatly improve the calorie intake of Europeans, so after the discovery of the Americas, The intake of sugar in Europeans has increased a lot, coffee intake has increased greatly, and the increase of these calorie sources can reduce the intake of cereals, meat, etc., because people need so much energy every day, and what source has nothing to do with it, indirect Europe itself needs to grow food or raise livestock can be reduced accordingly, The need for land is so urgent.
There is also a lot of silver in the Americas, these silver mines are basically used to china in exchange for goods, since the Beginning of the Ming Dynasty China began to use silver as the main trading currency, but China's silver mines are relatively small, a large amount of silver have to rely on imports from abroad, silver mines found from the Americas just flow into Our country, the corresponding tea, silk, porcelain and other items we produce flow into the West, indirectly accumulating a lot of wealth for the West.
Without the discovery of the Americas and the plundering of resources, Western countries will most likely not be able to escape the limitations of ecological bottlenecks.
Three different roads
Those who have some understanding of history know that at the end of the Ming Dynasty, China actually had the early buds of capitalism, and there were some primitive handicrafts, which were actually a social phenomenon that naturally appeared after the development of productive forces to a certain stage.
However, only Western Europe first crossed the stage of primitive handicraft industry and transformed into modern industry, dominating the world for a long time.
Of course, the reasons are manifold, but the most important reason is the above-mentioned reason, Europe accidentally discovered the New World of the Americas, through another way to solve their own ecological limitations, specifically to see how this thing is a process.
After the Discovery of the Americas, of course, all they had to do was colonization and conquest, and in the process formed a huge slave trading market.
A few more words about this slave trade, the Americas actually have indigenous Indians, but among the slaves in the entire Americas, the Indians are very few, basically black slaves bought from Africa, which is obviously a long way to go, and many people don't quite understand what is going on.
The reason is also very simple, that is, the Indians died too many after the Europeans came, on the one hand, they were slaughtered when they were suppressed, on the other hand, some infectious diseases brought by the Europeans at that time caused a large number of Indian deaths, this infectious disease is not to say that the Europeans used any biological and chemical weapons, and these diseases are completely absent in the Americas, so the Indians have no resistance at all, as long as they are infected with most of them can not survive.
The news of the previous period was not about the discovery of Indian bones in Canada, which was not uncommon in that era, every conquest was accompanied by bloodshed, and the history of European development had nothing to do with civilization, although they had always advertised themselves as representatives of civilization.
So many slaves were sold to the Americas for labor, and the basic livelihood still had to be guaranteed, although slave owners usually made a lot of deductions, and even in this case, a huge demand market was formed in the Americas.
Gradually formed a stable model, Europe itself imported a large number of primary products from the Americas, these products include grain, timber, cotton, etc., in turn will be the production of daily necessities exported to the Americas, in the process of continuous market-oriented transactions, capitalists began to think of improving the process, low cost, the Slave owners in the Americas began to think of specialized planting according to the needs of Europe, the transportation industry also began to flourish, the cost of transportation is getting lower and lower, European mother countries can also collect taxes from their colonies for secondary exploitation.
The problem of insufficient use of the original means of production such as land and timber that had been restricted in Europe, and the problem of the inability to feed the population explosion has now all been solved, and there is no need to increase local consumption, and what is missing is directly imported from the Americas, saying that it is trade, this extremely unequal trade and robbery are no different, after the problem of the source of the means of production is solved, there can be a large number of laborers left, these labor forces can just be transformed into industrial workers, and the primitive accumulation of capital has been successfully completed.
To improve industry, then the investment in the research of new machines must be increased, the research on new technologies must be accelerated, science and technology will also develop, and when there is money, it is natural to develop the military; after the military strength is strong, the colonization of the Americas alone can no longer satisfy the Western powers, and there is still huge wealth in Eastern Asia to grab.
Moreover, the eastern world was originally a market that the West has always valued, and before it was too weak to fight, and now there are guns and cannons to do it, so the gap between the entire Western countries and the Eastern Asian countries is getting bigger and bigger, and it has become a crushing situation.
After clarifying the logic of Europe's development, let's go back and see why we didn't go down this path at that time.
The reason is not that we were too backward at that time, but precisely that we had a certain advantage in all aspects, so we did not follow this route.
We know that the whole continent of Europe is very scattered, and each country is very small, Western Europe and Eastern Europe are not the same in terms of institutions and so on, so when the resources within a country are about to run out, it is difficult for them to obtain through internal allocation, that is, they can only go to places outside Europe, so having a spirit of adventure is a characteristic of Europeans, and they happen to find the New World of the Americas, and the route behind is different.
And China is not the same, from ancient times to the present, although the dynasty has changed, but eventually will form a unified country, and the heavenly dynasty is rich in products, the resources of the core economic zone are almost exhausted, then to the border of the empire to develop ah, only need to invest more people, do not need to look for anything outside, it is easy to form a self-sufficient society, so although there is pressure, but it is not enough to survive, the basic living security of the people can still be satisfied.
In this way, in modern China, a path towards the development of labor-intensive industries has been formed, and those craftsmen who have already sprouted up will return to the agricultural field when the pressure to survive is increasing, and it is even more unlikely that there will be an industrial revolution like Europe.
Endgame
To sum up, the rise of the West is simply in the process of seeking to break through ecological restrictions, Europe accidentally found a new continent, through colonial expansion to solve the domestic resource dilemma at the same time, released a large number of stable labor force, in the face of the huge demand for commodities in overseas colonies, through the continuous improvement of production methods, and constantly promote the process of industrialization, to achieve the ultimate economic explosive growth.
Although europe's explosive development has the blessing of luck, there are still some places that can be enlightened from this development process.
First of all, the market demand, only under the strong market demand, can stimulate the continuous development of economy and technology, now the country has been talking about the internal cycle, stimulating domestic demand, common prosperity, the fundamental purpose is to keep the demand does not decline, or even to improve, only there is demand will be created, in order to achieve economic growth without deceleration.
The second is the importance of ecology, ecological resources are limited, what we can eventually develop is still limited by ecology, in recent years more and more stringent environmental protection measures are to maintain a balance of ecology, breaking through this balance is bound to be detrimental to development, now there is no other American continent waiting for us to discover.
To say more, in order to break through the ecological restrictions, it is necessary to pay attention to scientific and technological innovation, the use of ore fuel has greatly reduced the loss of wood, the improvement of cotton weaving efficiency has reduced the use of flax, indirectly saving land, only science and technology continue to move forward, in order to improve the utilization rate under limited resources.
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