The Beginning
The year that was chosen as a starting point of the analysis and a base of comparison, is a purely arbitrary one. It was on the threshold of the Industrial revolution but not yet part of it. Paul Kennedy quoted in his book 'Preparing for the 21st century' from an article of P. Bairuch, 'International Industrial Levels from 1750 to 1980' which appeared in the Journal of European Economic History (II. 1982, p.294) stating that in 1750 the level of industrialization of the United Kingdom and India was about equal. By 1900,the level of India's industrialization was one-hundredth of that of the United Kingdom.
Nothing is surprising in it. In 1750 the steam engine was still in the future. The experiments of Papin and Watt were already done, the principles were known, but using steam power is not only a question of principles. It is also a question of technology. No steam engine can work without a sufficient tolerance of the steam pistons, otherwise the power will just escape at the seams. So, steam power was probably at an experimental stage, maybe was already used in some deep coalmine, but industry was still a manual cottage industry. In this respect, there could not have been much difference between the industrialization of the United Kingdom and India.
There were other differences though, which framed their future relations. Not in the far future, as this study is concerned. Clive's victory at Plessey was barely seven year ahead. However, all participants saw that victory, entirely correctly, not as the victory of the English over the Indians, but a decision of which European nation will be the ruler in India. The seven-year war, which was a particular European conflict, was used by the British to grab valuable properties from the French. They did so in India, in Canada and elsewhere.
So, the rule of the world in 1750 was already an internal European decision.
The importance of the year 1750 is not in the level of industrialization but in the level of the spreading of wealth and the measure of political power that allowed it to happen. In this respect, Russia was part of Europe, not only geographically but politically too, although Russian history with its Mongol domination was greatly influenced by Oriental Despotism. That heritage still lingers on.
Until the Renaissance in Europe, the center of the world was in the Middle East. The known world had then 5 members: Europe, Middle East, Africa, India and the Far East. Apart of possible connection between the Far East and India, all connections had to go though the Middle East. The North African Islamic states were between Europe and Africa, and of course the Middle East was between Europe and India and the Far East. Whatever Europe needed from the east, was carried by Middle Eastern caravans to the Mediterranean trading ports, picked up there by Genoan or Venetian ships.
The Renaissance, the exploratory journeys of the Portuguese and the discovery of the New World, changed this world-picture entirely. It was a slow process, but by 1750 it was already obvious to all who looked objectively at the map of the world. The center of the world was Europe and all intercontinental or intercivilizational communications were done through Europe. The Middle East was relegated from the position of the center of the earth to a region of backwater. Probably the Far East was the exception to the rule, but even there it was lack of real interest from Europe and not their strength, which allowed them to remain out of the world pattern. When the interest of Europe required it, the countries of the Far East were opened to the world and no local resistance could change it. The following sentences explain how it all came about.
It was shown that the estimated population of the world which was 310 millions in the year 1000 AD, had increased to 790 millions in the year of 1750 AD, 480 millions in 750 years. It was a mild increase by later standard but important enough to tilt the balance to the favor of Europe. At the beginning of the period, Europe was still in the dark ages. The Muslim world, Europe's next-door neighbor, was much stronger than the West. India and the countries of the Far East were out of the universe, as far as Europe was concerned. They were aware of their existence and products, mainly luxury items and spices, but their only contact was through Muslim merchants.
Let's assume that the increase of 480 million people between the years 1000 Ad and 1750 AD was in the same proportion as the populations of the total. In the East, where the ruling political system was Oriental Despotism, then, before and after, including today, the additional people only increased the number of slaves. It does not matter under which name they were known; but the participation within the ruling elite was always reserved to the members of the clans who had held the rule. No one, outside the clans, could break into the ranks of the ruling elite, except maybe by internal putsches or assassinations. In no cases was the ruling elite replaced by wider social classes or even allowed new people to participate in the rule. Even the so-called urban middle-classes, the merchants and the clerks, were subordinates to the central power, just as the serfs in the villages. There were no safeguards whatsoever against the whims of the rulers.
In the West it was entirely different. There were absolute rulers in the West too, but their absolutism was very far from the Oriental Despotism. Russia was probably nearer to the Eastern standard because the long rule of the Mongols over Russia. In the West there were always checks and balances. They might not stand up to scrutiny of the standards of the late 20th century, but even in their worst excesses they were far from the standards of the Oriental Despotism.
The feudal system of the Middle Ages assigned the land to the vassals of the king, which was subdivided again to the vassals of the vassals and to the knights. At the bottom of the pyramid were the serfs, who worked directly for the landowners or paid rent for the use of the land. With the demographic increase in the 12th –13th centuries, there were two possible routes to take. In the eastern part of the continent, the additional people were offered free land to settle and work. This already freed them from serfdom. It was for Germans, who were settled in Hungary, Transylvania and east of the river Elbe, in West Slavic territories. The Russians had similar solutions. They also moved south and east, and settled people in the new territories, until they reached the Pacific in the 17th century.
In Western Europe there were no open frontiers to settle additional people, apart maybe the attempt of the English to settle the wild Celtic peripheries of their islands. The western European solution was to increase the population of the towns, which automatically freed them, and built a base for future industrial and commercial expansion. As far as for Europe's future role as world leader, the western solution was more significant than the eastern one. The results can be seen even today on the map of the world. Germany and Russia are more populous than the West European countries, because with the extension of their land, they extended their population as well. However, when expansion by sea to the rest of the world is examined, then France, Italy, Spain and England had much larger share than Germany and Russia.
The chances for social equality for those who reached urban centers were greater than those who became free peasants in the expansion of their country to the east. The reason for the difference should be quite obvious. The Germans and the Russians had a social order, where the great landowners formed the aristocracy, who were the ruling elite; the free peasants were beneath them and the serfs were always at the bottom. There was no easy way for a free peasant to rise to the level of the aristocracy, so despite being free, he remained a peasant. The pattern was different in countries where the additional population was accumulated in urban centers.
Let's compare the chances of a knight who received for his services an estate of 20000 acres, with villages and serfs who paid him rent, and the chances of an enterprising man, who owned a small workshop where he made candles for the households in some western town. It is the story of the knight and the candlestick maker. When the town grew, the candlestick maker became richer because he had more customers, while the knight still had his 20000 acres. It did not increase. Any change in his holdings was to the favor or the detriment of some other knight. Eventually, the candlestick makers became important.
When we look at the map of Europe in 1750, we can see that each country had to have some solution for the two groups; the aristocracy, the descendants of the knights, and the urban bourgeoisie, the descendants of the candlestick makers. In England, the candlestick makers became part of the aristocracy. In Spain, they found outlet in the American colonies, and so did in the Low Countries. It was mainly in France where they did not find ready solution. In 1750, there was a rich urban bourgeoisie and an impoverished aristocracy, who demanded more and more social and legal privileges, as a compensation of their being impoverished in comparison to the rich bourgeoisie. This was the background of the coming revolution.
By 1750, Europe was the master of the known world. This statement should be read with caution. Europe was master of that part of the world where it had important interests. The millennium long struggle with Islam was decided to the favor of Europe. The long war was waged on two fronts and the Ottoman Empire has lost on both.
The most important front was on land and the defeat on that front was quick and unexpected. In 1683, the Turkish Empire led a siege against Vienna. It failed, but then the two sieges had different background and should be separated. The first siege was in 1529; it was the last stage of the westward drive of a victorious empire. It failed too, because of the short fighting period, which was dictated by the long distance from the center. Still, it was the high-water mark of the Islamic challenge in Europe. The second siege was a local matter and not a strategic challenge. The failure of the first siege has shown the limits of the Ottoman power in Europe, the second failure has shown that they do not even have the power to hold on to what they have. The siege of 1683 was followed by the Peace of Carlowitz in 1699, where the Ottomans have evacuated all of Hungary.
In 1750, Turkey was well under way to be the 'sick man of Europe'. The fact that they survived as a multinational empire to the 20th century, was more the result of the competition between their enemies, who both wanted to deny the rule over the Balkan to their competitor, than to their strength. The long period that Turkey had at least the nominal rule over the Balkan, left Europe the Balkan question which troubles the peace ever since.
All that happened on land, with difficulties of distances, transport and supplies. The difficulties were on both sides, so the decisions came slowly. There was another side of the East-West conflict, that of the naval warfare. There the Ottoman Empire was decisively defeated much before its defeat on land, despite the fact that they were much richer than its enemies, and in naval warfare wealth was an important factor. They had three war aims in the naval strategy and they were decisively defeated in all three.
The first aim was to have a free hand in the Aegean, the Adriatic and the Black Sea. The second aim was to threaten the west, especially Spain, by sea. For that they needed an advanced naval base in the west, which they had in the ports of North Africa, and needed a secure staging area in the eastern part of the Mediterranean. For that they had to control the channel between Sicily and Tunis, and neutralize Malta. Malta was not only the entrance point to the eastern basin of the Mediterranean. Malta was also the base of the Maltese order of St. John, who were pirates themselves and preying on Muslim shipping in the Mediterranean.
The third aim was commercial in nature. In the 15th century, the Portuguese reached India and the Spice Islands in Indonesia. It meant that the Muslim monopoly to supply Europe with spices and other tropical products was broken. The direct contact between the Portuguese and the suppliers in the east, damaged Venice too, but for the Ottomans it was fatal. They had to stop the Portuguese at all cost, but they could not. They had forts and naval bases all along the route of the Portuguese had to take from the African shore, the harbor of Alagoa, to reach Goa in India . Aden was one of their bases, Hormuz at the entrance of the Persian Gulf was another.
The Ottomans lost the naval war on all fronts, and that was much before they lost the war on the land. They failed in their siege of Malta, so the eastern Mediterranean did not turn into a Muslim lake, and the pirate fleet of Algiers was left alone. They lost the naval battles of Pereza and Lepanto, both along the Albanian coast. The western, mainly Spanish and Italian fleet had a free hand in the Adriatic and the Aegean. They lost the battle for the Black Sea too, when the Russian captured Azov and Kerch and established their naval bases in the Krim and along the north shore of the Black Sea.
The earliest Muslim naval defeat was on the Indian Ocean, and there it was a victory of Western science and technology over eastern lethargy. In the Mediterranean the Ottomans could use the seafaring traditions of the Greeks and the Phoenicians and that gave them at least a chance to stand up to the western navies. In the Indian Ocean they had nothing like that, and the small Arab dhows were no match to the huge Portuguese caravels. The Portuguese ships could travel unhindered to and fro the Indies and that was the end of Muslim monopoly of the spice trade. At about the same time, the empire of the Moghuls in India was destroyed and so was the Safavid dynasty in Persia. The Muslim power in Asia and in Europe dissolved into small warring states, which were later occupied one by one, either by the British or the Russians.
So, by the middle of the 18th century, Europe had no competition in all those fields and territories she was interested in. It should be taken into account that by the middle of the 18th century, Europe was still before the Industrial Revolution and also before the demographic explosion that was directly connected to it. It was a period when its needs were still limited. It needed tropical products, like sugar, coffee, tea, etc. which were supplied by its direct colonies, mainly in the Caribbean, or they could be traded in the new trade ports of Africa, where together with slaves, tropical products were supplied by local rulers. They needed naval supplies and furs, which were supplied by American settlers or by the Russians, who already reached the Pacific at that time.
In simple terms, in 1750 Europe ruled directly whatever it was important enough to rule directly, had a total control over the sea routes, and acquired the rest through trade and barter. The needs were limited, so the expansion was limited too. As it was still before the Industrial Revolution and the mass production of cheap wares, there was no need to find new markets. The Far Eastern countries were too big and too far away, so they were left alone for the time being. When the conditions changed and the factories started mass production, they were opened fast enough and without undue difficulty,
There was an interesting side to the European expansion. Since the treaty of Westphalia in 1648, it was agreed that all interstate relations only state organizations could act. The era of mercenary armies in Europe was over. The lessons of the Thirty Years War, with the private armies of Wallenstein, were well learned.
The practice outside of Europe was different. The East India Company waged the war against the French in India, the Dutch had their company for Indonesia, and even the fur trade was managed by the Hudson Bay Company. It was another century or so, until the states took responsibility for their activities in the colonies, but even at the end of 19th century, there remained at least one more colony under control of a company, that of Belgian Congo.
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