VOLUME IV, CHAPTER 9, SECTION 3
Why Europe Was Late, Not Backward but Structurally Different
The last two sections covered expansion. This section looks back at a very interesting historical comparison. The centralized great state was built in China twenty-two hundred years ago, while Europe was nearly two thousand years late. Behind this hides a question easily misunderstood: was Europe late because its civilization was backward? This section sets firm one judgment: late is not the same as backward, it is a structural difference.
In the year two hundred twenty-one before the common era the First Emperor completed the building of the centralized great state. And Europe, not until the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, that is, some eighteen hundred to two thousand years later, completed the building of a comparable centralized great state one by one. Louis the Fourteenth of France began a full centralized authority, some nineteen hundred years after the First Emperor. The centralized authority Britain gradually formed under the Tudors and after was some seventeen hundred years late. Bismarck completing the unification of Germany was some twenty-one hundred years late. The unification of Italy was some two thousand and eighty years late. This is a historical phenomenon worth pondering. Why, for the same key breakthrough in human political history, were East and West nearly two thousand years apart? You may think of several explanations, a difference of culture, a difference of geography, a difference of the level of economic development, the influence of religion, a difference of ethnic structure, or the sum of many factors? This section looks slowly.
The political shape of Europe from the Middle Ages into the modern age was long scattered, and this scattering had several structural causes. The first, geographic fragmentation. The rivers, mountains, and coastlines of the European continent divide it into many relatively independent regions, the Alps cutting Italy off from Central Europe, the Pyrenees cutting the Iberian peninsula off from France, various seas dividing different regions. This geographic fragmentation made a large-scale centralized authority hard to hold. China was different, the North China plain, the middle and lower Yangtze, the Guanzhong basin, the Sichuan basin, and the far south, these core agricultural regions connected to each other by great rivers and by the canals built later, geographically a relatively complete whole, easy to make a centralized authority. The second, cultural and linguistic plurality. Europe is a continent of extreme linguistic plurality, the Germanic languages, the Romance languages, the Slavic languages, the Celtic languages, and many independent language families, each language answering to a cultural identity, and different groups did not easily accept being governed by the same central government. China was different, and though it too had many dialects, it had one unified written Chinese, all scholars using the same writing and the same classics, the cultural identity highly unified, and the First Emperor's policy of making the writing one, twenty-two hundred years ago, was the institutional starting point of this cultural unity. The third, three forces long in balance, royal power, church power, and nobility. Medieval Europe had three forces holding each other in check, the king the highest worldly authority, the Roman Church holding the highest authority of the spiritual world and possessing great land and wealth, and the feudal lords of every level holding their own domains, armies, and judicial power. These three long held each other in check, none able wholly to overwhelm the other two, leaving Europe long in a balanced scattered state. China from the Qin on had imperial power as the absolute highest authority, no force able to stand as an equal to it, church power never forming an independent political entity like the Roman Church, the nobility weakened after every great upheaval. China was a single power-center, Europe three forces in balance, one of the deepest structural differences of two thousand years. The fourth, the vacant ideal the collapse of the Roman Empire left. After the Western Roman Empire fell, restoring the Roman Empire became the ideal of many European rulers, but no ruler could truly reach Rome's territory, and Rome's place became a vacant seat every European king wished to sit in but none could hold steady, so Europe stayed always a system of many states. China was different, and after the Qin built the centralized great state, unity became the root presupposition of the political culture, a new dynasty reunifying after every division.
Europe did not stay forever in the scattered state either, and moved gradually toward centralized authority in the modern age, with several key nodes. The first, the Black Death, a plague that killed about a third of Europe's population, the death of many serfs leaving the feudal lords without labor, the traditional feudal system beginning to shake, creating the conditions for the later expansion of royal power. The second, the Hundred Years' War, the long war between England and France making both kings need to build standing armies plus centralized finance, the old model of a vassal's temporary service no longer enough, the three great pillars of the standing army, centralized finance, and a state bureaucracy all taking a step toward centralized authority. The third, the Thirty Years' War, a mixed religious and political war that cost Central Europe about a third of its population, the peace signed at its end establishing the principle of the sovereign state, each state holding the highest authority within its own borders, no longer subject to the interference of pope or emperor, the mark of Europe's transformation from a Christian world toward a system of nation-states. The fourth, the French Revolution, which wholly changed the feudal structure of France, abolishing the privileges of the nobility and nationalizing church property, after which Napoleon reorganized all of it into a highly centralized state, becoming the template for European states moving toward centralized authority. The fifth, Italy and Germany completing centralized authority through unification one after another in the nineteenth century. By the end of the nineteenth century the major states of Europe had basically completed some degree of centralized authority, some two thousand years later than the First Emperor.
Set firm the core claim of this section: Europe completing centralized authority eighteen hundred to two thousand years late was not because European civilization was backward, it was because Europe's geography, culture, power structure, and historical memory differed from China's. One cannot simply say European civilization was less than Chinese, an unfair judgment, for Europe had its own distinctive contributions in art, philosophy, science, technology, and many fields, but in this one political technology of building a centralized great state, Europe was indeed some two thousand years later than China, and this lateness is not a matter of good or bad, it is a fact of history. The several structural causes that made Europe late: geographic fragmentation made large-scale governance hard, cultural and linguistic plurality made cultural integration hard, the three-way balance of royal power, church power, and nobility made it hard for any one to overwhelm, and the vacant ideal Rome left made any unification fail against the Roman standard. These causes together decided that Europe necessarily stayed scattered from the Middle Ages into the modern age, not that Europeans did not want a centralized authority, but that the structural conditions did not allow it. China's geography relatively whole, its culture highly unified, its power a single center, unburdened by Rome's vacant seat, so it could build the centralized great state twenty-two hundred years ago. This is the result of structural difference, not the result of civilizational rank.
Set the other side, both sides to be seen. Europe completing centralized authority eighteen hundred years late paid a heavy cost and also brought a distinctive gain. Medieval Europe long scattered meant repeated large-scale wars and upheavals, sharp swings of population, a unified market hard to form, the whole economic development limited, the total economy of China's Han, Tang, Song, Yuan, and Ming long the largest in the world, not overtaken until after Western industrialization in the nineteenth century. But Europe's scattering brought another side too. The plurality of thought, Europe's scattering letting different thought grow in different places, a scholar pressed in this country continuing in another, this possibility of getting away letting Europe develop an extremely plural thought. The rise of science, many city-states, many universities, many patrons, letting different scientists have different channels of support. Technical innovation, the competition of many states letting technology spread and improve fast. The exploration of power-limiting institutions, from the great charter to the French Revolution to American independence, Europe in an environment without centralized authority developing instead a set of institutions to limit power and secure individual rights. Europe's scattered politics and China's centralized authority each had its cost and each its gain, with no simple verdict of which was better, only an objective analysis of in which respects better and in which respects a cost paid. This is the both-sides-laid-out of this section, passing no verdict on whether China or Europe was the better civilization, seeing only that different political paths produced different historical results, letting the reader judge by their own position and values.
So here is the position this section lays down. We set firm this layer: Europe completing centralized authority eighteen hundred to two thousand years late was not because its civilization was backward, it was because geographic fragmentation, cultural and linguistic plurality, the three-way balance of royal power, church power, and nobility, and the vacant ideal Rome left, these structural conditions long made a centralized authority impossible. Europe moving toward centralized authority went through the Black Death, the Hundred Years' War, the Thirty Years' War, the French Revolution, and the nineteenth-century unification of nation-states, a historical process of several centuries, at heavy cost, but its scattered politics had another side too, the plurality of thought, the rise of science, technical innovation, the exploration of power-limiting institutions. This section passes no verdict on which civilization was better, seeing only that different political paths produced different historical results, each with its cost and each with its gain. Today, some cross-national unions still face the structural problem of insufficient centralized authority, a present-day continuation of the scattered politics of medieval Europe, and history will give the answer.
By here the coming, the mechanisms, the ultimate goal of centralized authority, and the time gap between East and West are all made clear. But you will think of a most present question: is today's centralized authority still the old shape of imperial one-man dictatorship? The answer is that it has long ceased to be. In the world today centralized authority has evolved many modern forms. The next chapter looks at two of the most representative present-day samples, one China and one the United States, to see clearly how centralized authority runs today.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.