document updated 19 years ago, on Jun 18, 2005
"The
Rise of the West" suggests that as important as the Columbian Exchange and the subsequent rise of European Imperialism/Colonialism was, that it
was much more significant that the
West embraced and benefit from the Industrial Revolution, because it gave the West
actual power over the rest of the world (contrasted with
China and Japan's isolation during the same time). This power
difference became most evident in the occurance of gunboat diplomacy.
That covers asian comparisons to the West. For the middle east, it's seems somewhat reasonable that they were very powerful at one point, because
before Christopher Columbus came along, they were literally at the center of the world, they
were directly on the crossroads of international
trade. After Columbus, they were not involved in international trade to any extent compared to before.
Perhipherally-related "big events" that came before and after, that tell the story of the slow
rise of international communcations, from 1AD to present:
- 90,000BC: Homo sapiens sapiens evolves and begins spreading from africa
- 18,000BC: first signs of goats being domesticated
- 9,500BC: humans discover agriculture
- 7,000BC: social cooperation reachs the point where distinct civilizations emerge
- 6,000-2,500BC: The first boat is made
- 3,500BC: humans begin to write (presumably human language was invented long before this, but since speech leaves little historical evidence, we don't know much about how/when it developed)
- 3,000BC: Humans begin living together in the first settlements/cities
- 2007BC: the first egyptian pyramid is constructed (it's the first large-scale stone structure built)
- 2,000BC: horses begin being used for transporation
- 525-400BC: the Achaemenid Dynasty stretches from Iran to Egypt
- 200-100BC: humans cross the Bering land bridge and settle North America and then South America
- 16-11BC: Egyptians control areas as far away as Syria (2000km wide)
- 4BC: Alexander the Great's Empire stretches across Rome, Greece, Egypt, and India (4000km wide)
- 2BC: Chinese junk ships invented
- 5BC-15AD: silk/spice trade
- 13-14AD: Genghis Khan's Mongol Empire stretches from Korea to eastern Europe (7000km wide, 4000km tall)
- 15AD: columbian exchange
- european imperialism
- 18AD: industrial revolution