Multiple factors went into play before the Europeans claimed dominance over world trade routes and conquered vast lands outside Europe. With a particular interest in the fact that the Chinese boasted better navigation tools and sea vessels than the Portuguese and the Spanish did by the fifteenth century (World Shrinks17mins), the rise of the West benefited greatly from the lack of competition. In other words, if the Chinese had maintained their desire to show their military prowess to other nations, then the West would have taken longer if not failed to come into power.
A view of the animated documentary dubbed Zheng He supports the given claim by detailing China’s maritime advances and superiority years before the rise of the Portuguese. Apparently, under Emperor Zhu Di, Zheng He became the “Admiral of the Western Seas” before proceeding to oversee voyages that went “beyond the horizon” (Zheng He, 2mins). With an estimated twenty-eight thousand men and three hundred ships, the Chinese had the power to dominate nations; however, that was not the aim of He’s journeys. On the contrary, since there was “no equivalent power” to that of the Chinese, the people had no need for conquests (World Shrinks 17mins). China's Greatest Fleet & Biggest Blunder captures the assertion that the West owed its rise to power to China’s option for isolationism entirely. According to the narrator, the death of Emperor Zhu Di in 1424 and that of Zheng He in 1433 hindered China’s fleets from expanding the nation’s economy (China's Greatest Fleet [1], 7-8mins). That was especially so with the rise of Confucianism that not only rendered trade “unnecessary” but also encouraged the new emperor to be self-sufficient and shun foreign relations (China's Greatest Fleet [1], 8mins).
Meanwhile, Europeans were keen to maintain the benefits of global trade. After all, in the views of Europe’s forces, while there was “gold, spices, and silk” in Asia and Africa, the indigenous persons in the two areas and that of the Americas were in need of Christian teachings (World Shrinks14-15mins). Religion and trade formed a perfect combination of the foundations on which Empires such as that of the Spanish, Portuguese, French, and the English could dominate other civilizations.
Voyage across the Atlantic
In perhaps Europe’s primary stepping-stone to power, trade across the Atlantic paved the way for the acquisition of not only raw materials but also the free and hard labor needed for production. With the estimated “10,005,770” Africans taken to the Americas and the Caribbean between 1650 and 1900 and the “10,000” metric tons of Brazil-grown sugar exported from1697 to 1702 in mind, plantation systems and slavery formed the grounds on which the West claimed its powers (Sugar 1-4mins). Case in point the Triangle trade route that saw to the mentioned production of sugar: slaves from Africa availed labor for the cultivation of sugar plantations in the Caribbean and Latin America before the exportation of the plant to England for processing (Sugar 16mins). The obvious use of extra resources and time stemmed from two factors: sugarcane required a tropical environment to grow, and the processing phase required a lot of skill that was otherwise discouraged for the enslaved masses.
A perfect illustration of the presented assertions is available in the differences between the 1826 depiction of a “Field Gang [in] Martinique” and that of the “Interior of [a] Boiling House” in the 1823 territory dubbed Antigua (Sugar 25mins; 31mins). On the one hand, the “Field Gang” shows a row of slaves tiling the land in preparation for planting (Sugar 25mins). In contrast, the number of slaves in the “Boiling House” is both limited and whites make up part of the total number of people inside the building (Sugar 31mins). The slaves that appear to dig are many because any person of color could work the lands regardless of his or her skill; in fact, slave owners prohibited literacy among their human chattels. However, in the processing stage, the masters needed competent and responsible slaves for the “difficult and dangerous” work in the boiling house (Sugar 30mins). In that sense, rather than educate the men and women in bondage, most Europeans opted to use industries back at home. In other instances, where sugar production took place in the conquered areas, exportation of sugar was in the form of “molasses and rum” (Sugar 33mins).
In the end, the Atlantic Ocean played a significant role in the rise of European countries as world superpowers. Even today, the West remains dominant in the world.
Muslim Empires: A Challenge to Europe
Interestingly, the Chinese were not the only ones capable of posing a possible threat to the rise of the European powers Muslim Empires had a similar potential. Still, and in another bizarre similarity to China, as the Islamic Monarchs lost command the Portuguese were gaining momentum.
Central to the fall of the Muslim Empires was the failure of the people to embrace one culture. For the sake of precision, one could consider Christianity as the driving force behind European conquests before looking at the divisions that permeated the Islamic societies from as early as 632 A.D., when the Muslim Prophet Mohammed died (Sullivan 3). Apparently, disparities emerged over who was to succeed the Prophet, and a division of the Muslim community appeared. On the one hand, the Shia supported one “Shi’at Ali”; on the other, the Sunni supported “Abu Bakr” as the first Caliph (Sullivan 4). Subsequently, what began as opposing ideologies over succession paved the way for two communities in the Muslim Empires that went on to affect the political, social, and economic spheres of the Middle East even today. For instance, Saddam Hussein was a Sunni, and during his dictatorship, Shia religious leaders were “tortured, killed [and] imprisoned” for speaking against his government (Sullivan 5).
The disparities among the Muslim highlighted the same factors in the Mongolian Empire that broke up in the late thirteenth century (Muslim Lecture Part 1, 3-4mins). Evidently, the acceptance of different religious practices encouraged disunity before forming the grounds on which smaller Empires such as that of the Chinese emerged. Subsequently, the dissolution of the Mongolian Empire created a “political vacuum” in which previously allied nations became enemies and left room for the rise of a different power, the Europeans.
Works Cited
Burlingham, Kate. “World Shrinks.” YouTube, 21 Jan 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tvbt7wiweI
—. “Sugar.” YouTube, 28 Jan 2015,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUvwQGZtZmY
—. “Muslim Lecture Part 1.” YouTube, 16 Sep 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAc0HIydSuc
“China's Greatest Fleet & Biggest Blunder.” YouTube, uploaded by triggersots4686, 31 Aug 2009,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NzWPH5FioY&feature=youtu.be
Sullivan, Paul. "Who Are the Shia?" 2013. History News Network.
http://hnn.us/article/1455
“Zheng He.” YouTube, uploaded by Mothercityrecords, 1 Jun 2007, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzFq0Ivwz9g&feature=youtu.be
