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From a materialist perspective, why did the the global north, the western global north in particular, become so powerful it could loot the rest of the world with borderline impunity? (hexbear.net)

submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I've recently read"The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World" and want to hear what all of you think the answer is, because I feel like the book was missing something in its thesis and I am not very sure what that is.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (8 children)

two continents of free wealth

that's basically it

if the western hemisphere didn't exist Europe wouldn't be able to colonize anything except maybe Siberia

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago (7 children)

more detailed explanation:

europe was the same as every other place, king nobles serfs caste system etc
1350 AD the Black Death did the mayocide and 40% of all europeans died overnight
suddenly king had to pay peasants more bc labor pool was halved
peasants also had 2x land per capita, everyone better fed and had leisure time for art/tech
western hemisphere discovered bc the Atlantic is easymode (this is the most important factor)

basically they were in the middle of a renaissance (which is nothing special tbh) but then they hit the mega giga trillions jackpot in the middle of that

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Also constant war necessitating more and more complicated systems of debt that both necessitate more war to pay of that debt but also allow financing large naval expeditions to loot not just the new world but the entire Indian ocean. Even after all this they are still in constant conflict with each other so the exploitation of the rest of the world accelerates to keep up.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

I doubt it, India was also in constant war as was the Middle East

Europeans just had a giga shitload more money and more resources to finance the wars, so they won

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

You still need the permanent war though:

Permanent war.
Spain dumps new world gold and silver on the fire.
War intensifies
Capitalism finally emerges
Northern Europeans start colonizing either as capitalist for-profit ventures or to escape capitalism.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

You still need the permanent war though

yea but that's like air

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Its cheaper than two continents of gold and silver but its not "like air". Permanent war. Always on the home front, not the frontier. Western Europe ground on for like a millennia without any empire establishing itself.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

same with every other place save China (but still sometimes even China)

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