this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2023
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Availability of work animals gave much of Eurasia a significant edge compared to Africa (which generally only had access to them through Eurasia).
Idk how this applies to the Americas.
The americas had jack shit for work animals but thats sort of a guns germs and steel explanation. China had all the same materials and Europe and didn't go off to pillage the world.
As others have mentioned in this thread, China had the potential to be the birthplace of capitalism but got slowed down by other factors like the Mongol Empire.
China would have to be in a permanent waring states period for centuries to develop the debt systems necessary to start capitalism. It had all the resources but none of the motivation. The Mongol Empire had little to do with that, unless you meant "returning China to dynastic rule". Honestly that theory just sounds like chinese nationalist cope.
fair enough (I did not mean due to dynastic rule)
None of the Chinese dynasties could ever get away with something like the Enclosure Act in England. Any attempt would've resulted in dynastic overthrow. Plus the economic collapse of the Ming dynasty caused by silver inflation from Spain's colonization of the New World did far more damage than the Mongol Conquests.