this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2023
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Why did Europe come to dominate sea trade?
Mediterranean to start with. It's huge and relatively calm to sail on, so lotsa trade, meaning lots of practice (and profit) in improving those trading ships. Rome took this to new (horrific) heights; mass (slave) produced, standardised pottery from North Africa can be found across the entire empire, from Jerusalem to London. Rome's power (and wealth) was built on this slave labour (both in factories and in villas and in boats).
Rome's collapse slowed the marketization and decreased the scale, but on the whole by this point, such methods of transport and trade had reached the northern coast of Europe, which has a similarly large, but less calm sea. Traders here needed more navigatory techniques, and of course traders going all the way around Iberia, the sea route connecting these two seas, requires naval expertise.
Europe's polities are tiny and constantly fighting, in need of cash to pay armies (increasingly, mercenary armies). Merchants are hence supported, sponsered, etc. From here, see my points about the clock and navigatory technology above.
that all makes sense, but why did this "warring states funded by seafaring mercantilism and finance" dynamic not develop to the same degree in north africa or the levant, which were also in rome's footprint?
was it a lack of good trees for building long-distance ships? was it that europe just has more coastline? was it the mountains of europe making it easier for there to be multiple states that never conquer each other?
Western and northern Europe had been flooded with German nomads so kingdoms were constantly being carved out and borders were in constant flux. Also in the western roman empire, the pope ruled over Caesar, unlike in the east where it was Ceasar over the pope. This meant these new German kings were constantly jostling for the title of holy roman emperor and back stabbing whoever got it.
Baltic sea ship building (viking) mixing with Mediterranean ship building led to caravel built ships. The Arabs were just as capable seafaring merchants as the Europeans. But they didn't have systems to finance expeditions around Africa to fuck with Christians like the Portuguese would with them.