Wasteland, Eurocentrism, and a petition for an expansion focusing on Africa

[paulatreides0]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Opium_War

It's still a single European state utterly humiliating China at least fifteen years before he said Europe, clustered as a whole continent, became important.

Of course the Opium War was at least as much about Chinese decay as it was about British ascendancy.

If you thin that somehow invalidates my point, I recommend you read my post again, more carefully this time.

You do realize that war was fought in 1840, right? Practically in the period in which paulatreides0 says "Europe became important", though I'd consider it a bit of an overstatement myself.

It's not that Europe became important in that time period. It was, especially to Europeasn and people in the Middle East, Nofth Africa, and the New World. It's simply that relative to China, Europe was small beans up until that time period.

 

[BBMorti]

If you thin that somehow invalidates my point, I recommend you read my post again, more carefully this time.

I did, you pulled too many 'facts' out of your ass. Even with your edit, you are simply setting yourself up.

 

[Red_warning]

You have no idea what you are talking about.

Europe didn't become important until the mid-to-late 1850s. Even at the beginning of the 1800s, China far eclipsed Europe in it's entirety. China was by and far the largest producer goods on the planet and had a comparatively modern army capable of challenging European powers with ease. The majority of the world's trade goods came from China or were channeled through China for pretty much the entirety of the period. As was much knowledge and science, as China was one of the world's main innovators until the late 18th and 19th centuries.

What really killed China's position as the greatest world power was the industrial revolution which allowed Europe to compete with China in terms of production.

The Mughals as well, far outclassed any nation in Europe, and they fell more to internal issues than anything else.

Yes, in the long run Europe turned out to be "more important" (although even this was itself after centuries of feeding off of China and knowledge passed down through trade and the silk road), but most of that didn't even take place until nearing the very end/just after the EUIV time period.

This is just a bunch of nonsense. Already in the 1600s European military technology and tactics were far ahead that of China (see the red barbarian cannon and the flintlock mechanism), and per capita production eclipsed China's already in the 1300s (see Maddison). Neither can it be said that much innovation took place compared to Europe, any attempt to quantify innovation tends to put even individual European nations several magnitudes above countries such as China. It is true that the trade flowed from the east to the west but that's mainly a result of Chinese disinterest with the rest of the world.

Edit: this post by frolix42 is very educational

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/terrible-historical-inaccurate.900375/page-3

 

[mudcrabmerchant]

Yeah, you can't really argue for the importance of China beyond a regional level aside from serving as a source of goods. So, yes, economically China (and the Mughals) were hugely important for the entire world, but culturally and politically, they really weren't, while Europeans drastically altered the history of the Americas, Africa, and eventually the Middle East.

 

[radiatoren]

China was a large trading nation, but they were relatively isolated from the rest of the world and didn't do much to expand their trade. As Europeans acquired colonies in the rest of the world, the european trade became much more important because of the diversity of materials they acquired. It may be true that China had a quantity of trade that is far, far superior to Europe in the EUIV period, but diversity counts and the middle east and India had that going for them too!

The reason why this isn't represented in-game is because it would require too much processing power to implement a dynamic trade system as in EU3 with the fancy animations and graphics the EU4 system has. The system had to be further simplified in Art of War as the map was expanded. We will probably have to wait for Paradox to add proper multi-core support if we want such a mechanic to appear in EU5 or any other Paradox game, and even then, that may not be enough to propel Paradox over this technical barrier.

I know and that is one of the most significant flaws in the game. The trade railroad is a very low cost simulation of trade relatively and the several mechanisms in trade merely acts as a low level interaction with that system.
I am not advocating EU3's system since that had several downfalls on its own, Victoria 2 is even worse in that regard.
I am happy that the trade good supply/demand valuation is gone since it was far too taxing and more involved than need be. But trading may be better represented by setting up caravan/sea-routes instead of the railroad-map (a hybrid approach with some user-control and some development-related advantages to keep the history somewhat represented). While the load will increase to some degree as the game goes by, the trade routes restricted by a "merchant"-type limited ressource can be kept under control. Also, we are likely talking something like EUV here, where the developers will have had enough time to work it out and the technical restrictions are less severe to start with. An improved SMP for the Clausewitz engine will be very much appreciated to better use modern 4+-core machines, but may not be needed to handle trade in the game,

 

[Caewil]

To be fair, the Chinese had no idea what they were dealing with in the first opium war. It less like a war to them than a viking raid on steam-punk steroids. Fortifications on the rivers were minimal, no cannon, etc. Their armies were geared toward dealing with a completely different type of enemy and were out of position, being mainly on their northern and eastern borders.

 

[ZomgK3tchup]

Yeah, you can't really argue for the importance of China beyond a regional level aside from serving as a source of goods. So, yes, economically China (and the Mughals) were hugely important for the entire world, but culturally and politically, they really weren't, while Europeans drastically altered the history of the Americas, Africa, and eventually the Middle East.

China had a third of the human population.

Ming and Qing China had a larger percentage of the population than modern-day China and a larger percentage of the world economy than the modern-day United States. It's only unimportant if we pretend that what went on in China was irrelevant which, again, is hard to justify when one in three people lived there.

 

[tuareg109]

China had a third of the human population.

Ming and Qing China had a larger percentage of the population than modern-day China and a larger percentage of the world economy than the modern-day United States. It's only unimportant if we pretend that what went on in China was irrelevant which, again, is hard to justify when one in three people lived there.

Did you even read the meat of his post?

 

[Chieron]

China had a third of the human population.

Ming and Qing China had a larger percentage of the population than modern-day China and a larger percentage of the world economy than the modern-day United States. It's only unimportant if we pretend that what went on in China was irrelevant which, again, is hard to justify when one in three people lived there.

So what? The held massive influence over their neighboring countries, but beyond that? Nothing much. China was important, but for most of the world, it was much less important than many other powers. China is a world unto itself.

 

[mudcrabmerchant]

China had a third of the human population.

Ming and Qing China had a larger percentage of the population than modern-day China and a larger percentage of the world economy than the modern-day United States. It's only unimportant if we pretend that what went on in China was irrelevant which, again, is hard to justify when one in three people lived there.

You mean that China was important to the people who lived in China? Thank you for providing such a deep insight.

My point stands. The 1/3 of humanity that lived in China was only important to most of the other 2/3 as a place to buy goods from.

 

[frolix42]

During the EU4 time frame era China, and, although slightly less so, the Mughals, had a much bigger impact on the world, including Europe, than Europe.

The way this is worded, you're saying you believe that China's impact on Europe was bigger than Europe's impact on Europe. Hyperbole is your enemy if you want to be taken seriously.

Europe didn't become important until the mid-to-late 1850s.

You believe that it "wasn't important" when the British established hegemony over India (1819) and humiliated China in the Opium War (1841). China's population was massive and China's population grew at a faster rate than Europe's through the 17th century, but technologically China stagnated relative to Europe. Corollary to this, China (after 1433) and Japan (after 1637) had a very explicitly inward-facing policy toward the outside world, in stark contrast to West-Europe. The ruling bureaucracy of China once thought as you do now, and thought that that the ROTW was not important, I think to the severe detriment of East-Asia's development.

Obviously I disagree with you, but this thread is about sub-Saharan Africa. Measuring the importance of Europe against China is off-topic.

 

[ZomgK3tchup]

Did you even read the meat of his post?

I read it again to see if I missed anything, and it was just as ridiculous the second time.

So what? The held massive influence over their neighboring countries, but beyond that? Nothing much. China was important, but for most of the world, it was much less important than many other powers. China is a world unto itself.

>Much less important
>Third of the population
>Third of global GDP

How are you measuring important?

When we're talking about human history, an entity that commands that much of humanity and its production is certainly important. Unless you think that a third of the population is somehow less important than the rest of it?

For what reason would a country with that much power and wealth even want contact with significantly less populated and less wealthy parts of the world? The "outside world" is an arbitrary distinction when this "outside world" encompasses three whole continents whose combined population doesn't add up to China's.

So, again, how are you measuring important? By people and the impact that an entity has? By land and how an entity manipulates it? By technological advancement and development? Some combination of the three? China was the most important by far for the first two metrics and far from the least important for the last.

More importantly, what do you mean by influence over their neighbors? China's neighbors spanned the entirety of East Asia whereas plenty of German states only influenced their immediate neighbors in Central Europe. If you compare China to any single European state, you're going to find that many of them had even less contact with the "outside world".

You mean that China was important to the people who lived in China? Thank you for providing such a deep insight.

My point stands. The 1/3 of humanity that lived in China was only important to most of the other 2/3 as a place to buy goods from.

So, somehow this entire third of the population was less important? How are you defining importance because, again, commanding that many people, regardless of how many others you interact with, sounds pretty important to me.

 

[yezhanquan]

What does Ming/Qing have in scientific/technology advances which is significant?

 

[Sun_Wu]

This is just a bunch of nonsense. Already in the 1600s European military technology and tactics were far ahead that of China (see the red barbarian cannon and the flintlock mechanism), and per capita production eclipsed China's already in the 1300s (see Maddison). Neither can it be said that much innovation took place compared to Europe, any attempt to quantify innovation tends to put even individual European nations several magnitudes above countries such as China. It is true that the trade flowed from the east to the west but that's mainly a result of Chinese disinterest with the rest of the world.

Edit: this post by frolix42 is very educational

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/terrible-historical-inaccurate.900375/page-3

doesn't it seem a bit dodgy that despite massive changes China managed to stay perfectly stagnant for five hundred years? Not to mention the vast changes in size between the Yuan dynasty, to the Ming dynasty and then to the Qing dynasty. To compare a country both larger and populous than Europe with only the richest portions of Europe is dubious at best, it'd be like comparing the Yangtze Delta to Eastern Europe on the basis of GDP per capita and concluding that all of Europe was a third world cesspool for the entire duration of EU4 compared to China.

 

[Chieron]

>Much less important
>Third of the population
>Third of global GDP

How are you measuring important?

When we're talking about human history, an entity that commands that much of humanity and its production is certainly important. Unless you think that a third of the population is somehow less important than the rest of it?

For what reason would a country with that much power and wealth even want contact with significantly less populated and less wealthy parts of the world? The "outside world" is an arbitrary distinction when this "outside world" encompasses three whole continents whose combined population doesn't add up to China's.

So, again, how are you measuring important? By people and the impact that an entity has? By land and how an entity manipulates it? By technological advancement and development? Some combination of the three? China was the most important by far for the first two metrics and far from the least important for the last.

In a game about modelling history where the actors are nations, importance is not necessarily measured by population but more diplomatic influence and military exploits. China's success in staying alive should not be undervalued, but it was not that active in foreign affairs.

More importantly, what do you mean by influence over their neighbors? China's neighbors spanned the entirety of East Asia whereas plenty of German states only influenced their immediate neighbors in Central Europe. If you compare China to any single European state, you're going to find that many of them had even less contact with the "outside world".

Are you comparing China to some minor German states? Of course it was globally more important than quite a few countries, but it was surpassed by a handful of others.
China's influence was not global, however, and that makes it a regional power. Even though it utterly dominated a large region.

 

[BrokenSky]

In a game about modelling history where the actors are nations, importance is not necessarily measured by population but more diplomatic influence and military exploits. China's success in staying alive should not be undervalued, but it was not that active in foreign affairs.


Are you comparing China to some minor German states? Of course it was globally more important than quite a few countries, but it was surpassed by a handful of others.
China's influence was not global, however, and that makes it a regional power. Even though it utterly dominated a large region.

One could argue cultural impact. Where would that put china?

 

[Sabotage13]

Are you comparing China to some minor German states? Of course it was globally more important than quite a few countries, but it was surpassed by a handful of others.
China's influence was not global, however, and that makes it a regional power. Even though it utterly dominated a large region.

Is there an actual point to this argument? Less than a handful of tags in EU4 fall in the category of "global influence during the time period".

 

[BrokenSky]

We've been arguing about this for 2 pages now. Has it actually achieved anything? Has anybody been convinced to changed their opinions or learned anything new and interesting?

I'm serious btw, I'd like to know.

 

[RedBstrd]

Personally, I think that this debate over the relative importance of Europe to China/India/Japan and China/India/Japan to Europe is a bit unprincipled because it misses one incredibly important fact: economies are/were interdependent (yes, even at the time). Europe during EU4's time frame began conquering the New World and undergoing some critical processes that enabled European imperialist domination of the globe during Victoria's time frame, but China and India were actually influencing those directions and possibilities.

To explain, some European nations were dynamic and beginning to explore new modes of economic life (capitalism and the formation of corporations, first wave British industrialization, etc.), but one of the major drives for these changes was a desire for Chinese and Indian luxury goods (tea, Chinaware, silk, and spices). Generally speaking, European medieval economies weren't that different from what we see in China, Japan, Korea, the Muslim world, etc. Standards of living, life expectancy, and tons of other indices of quality of life - as well as patterns of economic behavior - were basically equivalent in any of these places. It's commonly known that the Portuguese and Spanish embarked on exploration in the New World and the African coast out of a desire for East/South Asian goods, but I'm less certain that wide swaths of people generally are aware that Spanish (and later British) desire for silver from the New World was encouraged by the fact that European traders, mercantile companies, and monarchies wanted goods from the extended Chinese market but had limited buying power for them because China only accepted silver as a currency. European nations were largely reliant upon gold backing for their currencies, and as they didn't find much gold but found relatively large amounts of silver, a significant measure of European profitability from New World ventures came from European-Chinese trade.

In other words, not only did the East/South Asian economy encourage Europeans to find and explore the New World, it made the conquest of places like Mexico and Peru economically advantageous to European nations in a way that otherwise wouldn't have been immediately the case. These economic impulses did not end during EU4's period either, encouraging British expansion into China during the Opium Wars, plus British incursion into Afghanistan (for opium) and India (in part to start tea plantations) as a way of establishing an opium-tea-silver triangular trade to circumvent Chinese trade policies/barriers. A critical side effect of European expansion into the New World to obtain Chinese and Indian goods was the introduction of products like sugar cane, coffee, corn, spices, and potatoes into the European economy (at least in forms or volumes not before easily obtainable), which then facilitated urbanization, capital accumulation, and industrialization in Western Europe, allowing some European nations to break free from the mold (or what historian Kenneth Pomeranz dubbed "economic cul-de-sacs") characterizing pre-industrial economies.

Note that I'm speaking somewhat in generalities here because we're discussing several nations over centuries of time. Also, obviously, European colonial expansion in the New World (and some places in Africa) included an essential ideological (largely religious) component that I don't wish to deny. Btw, I'm basing my perspective here on books like Kenneth Pomeranz's "The Great Divergence" and Sidney Mintz's "Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in World History."
---------
TL;DR version: Let's please get away from (IMHO unproductive) claims of either Europe or China being more important during EU4's time frame because they were not acting in a vacuum. Europe was starting to do new and important things in the global economy and the conquest of the New World but China and India were helping influence these possibilities. Our world would probably look a whole hell of a lot different if Europe from 1444-1820 didn't exist or was radically different, as it would if China from 1444-1820 didn't exist or was magically different.

 

[tuareg109]

I read it again to see if I missed anything, and it was just as ridiculous the second time.

The posts immediately above and below your own put it more succinctly than I could.