Asalamu Alaikum.
The discourse from racists, Islamophobes, and the generally misinformed is that Europe, England, and the US became international super-powers by virtue of being “white” people’s.
The logic then becomes that all non-European people’s of the world are inherently inferior because we were unable to develop the heavy industry that gives the US and Europe military and economic dominance over the rest of the world.
As usual, for a concept of this scale there is not enough space in this blog to answer this entirely. But some basics can be kept in mind.
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1. Before the America’s were discovered, European civilization was considered the backwater of the world. Between the fall of Rome (in the 400’s CE) and 1492, Europe was in the “Middle Ages” or “Dark Ages” during which society not only stagnated, but became retrograde. For 1000 years, European civilization had been brought to its knees.
This is an important observation, not only in reference to this blog post, but also to Marx’s concept what must eventually happen to all civilizations: Revolution or Mutual Destruction. But more on that another time…
2. The Islamic Empire that would spread and exist from the 600’s CE right up to the end of World War I (the Ottoman Empire) would actually go on to find and save texts written in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. One of the most interesting historical twists is that the Islamic civilization actually saved Western civilization’s poetry, art, architecture, philosophy, etc. by translating it into Arabic and storing it in their libraries.
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But now, on to why Europeans were able to industrialize, while the rest of the world was not.
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Before the discovery of the Americas, the civilizations of Europe, Africa, The Middle East, Central Asia, the Subcontinent of Southeast Asia, and East Asia had pretty settled boundaries. These boundaries would shift, and some civilizations would rise and fall, but generally speaking the “Old World” had been carved up and settled. Civilizations basically fought back and forth over the same chunks of land, never able to acquire a unique excess over anyone else.
Reminder, this is a blog post, so this is a simplified explanation.
The “Old World” primarily relied on a few different political economic models: feudalism, slave aristocracies, hunter-gatherer societies, peasant economies, etc.
Each economic model had its corresponding social relations. Some were proto-communist, some collections of peasants, some were divided by slaves and slave owners, some were divided by some form of “nobility” and their subjects.
Some of these were more or less democratic than others.
(Please note that capitalism did not exist yet).
The discovery of the America’s and its impact on human history can not be overstated. The fresh and abundant resources that the America’s provided was like winning the lottery for the European economies.
The one thing standing between previously unprecedented wealth and a return to the Old World struggle over the usual territory were the Indigenous People’s of the Americas.
The solution to this problem was something that had never existed before: race.
The social construction of race became necessary for the first time in human history. The purpose of constructing race was to then create racism.
Europeans had never met people like those of the Americas. There was no historic connection, unlike with other People’s of the “Old World.” It was easier to create race and racism against them, than it was to do so against other People’s of the world. This racism would be used to commit mass genocide and steal both human resources and natural resources from every part of the Americas.
AN ENTIRE HEMISPHERE’S WEALTH WOULD GO TO EUROPE. This wealth was what would end up catapulting Europe economically and militarily ahead of the world. The new wealth would couple with the new precedent of racism to then spread European imperialism to other parts of the world, particularly in the pillaging of Africa.
This scale of wealth, power, and blood would be used to create early capitalism. Early capitalism would give way to the Industrial Revolution. The industrial revolution was funded by the genocide and theft of the America’s and the world, through the vehicle of racism. This would create modern capitalism and the birth of the Working class.
For the first time, instead of just fighting over old territories in the Old World, fresh territories could be exploited. And, unlike before, the birth of race and racism would allow for genocide, so that maximum amount of wealth could be stolen.
That is a brief history lesson on the rise of Western imperialism.
It was not that Europeans were in any way better, smarter, or more ingenius. All human beings are created equal.
It was that the resources necessary to make the leap from the old sources of wealth and modes of production were not possible until the discovery of the “New World” and the brutal exploitation of all of its resources.
