The Post-American World - Fareed Zakaria [35]
Europe’s waterways were also a blessing. Its rivers flowed gently into sheltered, navigable bays. The Rhine is a wide, slow-moving river that can be used as a highway for goods and people. The Mediterranean is calm, almost a lake, with many big ports. Compare this to Africa. Despite being the second-largest continent, Africa has the shortest coastline, much of which is too shallow to build major ports. Most of its big rivers—fast-moving, dramatic, vertiginous—are not navigable. Add to that the tropical heat and propensity for disease and food spoilage, and you have a compelling geographic explanation for African underdevelopment—surely not the only factor, but a significant one.
These grand explanations may make it seem as if things could not have turned out any other way, but in fact, such structural factors tell you only a society’s predispositions, what the odds favor. Sometimes, the odds can be beaten. Despite its geographic diversity, Europe was once conquered by a great land empire, Rome, which tried—with diminishing success—to keep the empire centralized. The Middle East did well at one point under a vast empire. China prospered for centuries despite its flat geography, and India also had its periods of effervescence. European advantages, so clear in retrospect, were initially small and related mostly to the weapons and techniques of war. Over time, however, the advantages multiplied and reinforced each other, and the West moved further and further ahead of the rest.
The Spoils of Victory
Contact with the rest of the world stimulated Europe. The discovery of new seaways, rich civilizations, and strange peoples stirred the energy and imagination of the West. Everywhere Europeans went they found goods, markets, and opportunities. By the seventeenth century, Western nations were increasing their influence over every region and culture with which they came into contact. No part of the world would remain untouched, from the lands across the Atlantic to the far reaches of Africa and Asia. By the end of the eighteenth century, even Australia and the small islands of the South Pacific had been marked for use by Europeans. The Far East—China and Japan—at first remained insulated from this influence, but by the mid-nineteenth century they, too, fell prey to Western advances. The rise of the West led to the beginnings of a global civilization—one that was defined, shaped, and dominated by the nations of Western Europe.
Initially, Europeans were focused on finding products that people might want back home. This sometimes took the form of plunder; at other times, trade. They brought back furs from the Americas, spices from Asia, and gold and diamonds from Brazil. Soon, however, their involvement became more permanent. Their interests varied, depending on the climate. In temperate regions, starting with North and South America, Europeans settled, re-creating Western-style societies in far-off places. That was the beginning of what they called the New World. In lands they found uninhabitable, often tropical climes like Southeast Asia and Africa, they created a system of agriculture to produce crops that would be of interest in domestic markets. The Dutch set up vast farms in the East Indies, as did the Portuguese in Brazil. These were soon eclipsed by the French and English plantations in the Caribbean, which used Africans as slaves for labor.
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