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Historical Continuity hypothesis:
I study history as a hobby and try to understand current affairs from historical context. From this effort a vague understanding came about, its not actually a theory, but more like a hypothesis. The proposition is about human group behavior and tranformation of societies. While there are many aspects to human group behavior and societies, it deals with a certain specific aspect, namely competitive edge. Let me lay out the core points:
- Since out of Africa migration, human beings mixed with earlier archaic humanoid species already present in different parts of the planet and then evolved in relative isolation in different climates, resulting in different primitive "races". After the ice age, with increasing temperature and population, pastoral nomadism and sedentary agriculture was developed and this gave rise to surplus and that helped create clans, tribes, nations and eventually empires. Empires started to integrate nations and peoples of far flung areas into a single unit with varying degrees of success. Most empires adopt certain core ideology to unify imperial subjects and most empires start out with a core archetype nation/tribe that subjugate and rule over other subject peoples. Aside from small aboriginal indigenous tribes, world history for the past 6,000-10,000 years, has been essentially the interplay of these large empires and smaller kingdoms. By societies or civilizations, I am refering to the remnants of these empires and kingdoms. Many of todays nation states are successor states of these past empires and kingdoms. The above is just a backgrounder to define societies and civilizations.
- Human societies or civilizations when they reach a certain size constantly adapt and reinvent themselves, due to internal reorganization and external influence. The longer a society is left intact without too much external interference, the more they can achieve a high degree of internal cohesion and as a result are able to adapt to changing circumstances more quickly and efficiently, as compared to a society that has been the victim of external aggression and forced transformation. In other words, relatively untouched societies retain some competitive edge over societies that were victims of invasion and brutal subjugation. There could be many reasons for this, but one of the most important one seems to be that societies take a certain amount of time to heal themselves of the damages from external forces to come to a steady state where the heirarchical pyramid structure of societies become well defined and whole society starts functioning as a organic whole with all parts playing their respective specialized roles. A good analogy is the body of higher animals whose body has organs for specialized functions. Although all cells start out as stem cells, eventually their functions and forms change to become part of a specialized organ, such as the central nervous system, the pancreas, the liver, the heart etc. Just as it takes time to evolve from single celled blue-green algae to complex reptiles, mammals, plants etc., societies also take time to evolve into a more efficient and complex unit, that has a competitive edge over other societies that did not have time or freedom from external influence to evolve.
Now lets apply this hypothesis to historical phenomenons to see if it makes any kind of sense.
European Supremacy or White Racial Supremacy, myth or reality?
Since the start of Inquisition and Reconquista in Spain, this has been an underlying theory for Western Europeans, that as the European race is superior, then they have the obligation as Jesuits and Conquistadors to colonize and civilize the Amerindians in South America and Filipinos in Philippines archipelago. Similarly other maritime European powers also colonized North America and Oceania with some civilizing goal and eventually ended up bringing these lands under "civilization". Africa and Asian populated nations were also colonized to civilize native population. While the early colonizers such as Spanish and Portuguese did mix with native people (probably because a large number, such as the Moriscos were Arabized already), giving rise to the Mestizo's in South and Central America and Filipinos in Philippines, later colonists from North-western Europe made it a point not to intermingle with native peoples, to prevent dilution of "superior racial characteristics". Of course there were exceptions, but a Mestizo nation did not rise in North America, Oceania or South Africa, as it did in South and Central America and the Philippines.
Today the former colonists from Western Europe (not the mixed Mestizo's but the unmixed ones), living in Europe, their homeland and in North and South America, Oceania, Africa and other places, where they were able to establish self sustaining societies and eventually sovereign nation states, as a group has the highest per capita GNP/GDP and continue to have the highest Human Development Index among all other nations of the world. This is still the reality today, with some exceptions, and it was the absolute truth around the end of 19th century, without any exceptions. Before the stunning advent of Japan on the scene, uptil 1880's, "white people" (more correctly Western Europeans) reigned supreme, with no visible opposition.
Japans arrival on the scene did put a big dent in the White supremacist argument, but it did not make it go away entirely. Rise of Nazi Germany was an Aryan twist to the original White supremacy theory, embellished with a bit of linguistic and pseudo historical claptrap. Even today there are followers of this train of thought, although their logical premise is greatly diminished with increasing economic and scientific progress of other non-white races of the world. But I never found a complete historical explanation of the phenomenon of Renaissance and the rise of Western Europe, which even today dominates world affairs to disproportionate degree and makes lesser intellects believe that there must be some-thing to the original theory of some kind of supremacy of a superior race.
Now, I will apply Historical Continuity theory to explain one of the most important reasons (in my humble opinion of course) behind the rise of Western Europe and Japan.
Lets turn back the clock and look at the world scenario back in around 1200 AD. The Western Roman Empire and the Eastern Byzantine Empire are both in decline. Western Europe has been through the dark ages. Spain was lost to the Muslims. Much of North Africa and Middle East was lost to the Muslim powers. Byzantine Empire is slowly loosing its steam. Crusades did not put much of a dent to the rise of Islam and Muslims, the Crusades were by and large failures, but they did bring exposure for Europeans to the world of Muslims and their civilization. In this hopeless situation, out of nowhere (well, actually todays Mongolia and around lake Baikal) came the Mongol horsemen. Within decades Russia, Eastern Europe, Muslim Central Asia and Middle East were devastated. The establishment of Pax Mongolica over much of Asian land mass took all societies through demographic and other forms of extreme make over transformation. In India they could not beat Turkic horsemen of Alauddin Khilji of Delhi Sultanate, although troops were sent 5-6 times. At Ain Jalut, also Turkic Mamlukes defeated Mongol forces, but this was not a full contingent of Hulagu Khan's army.
The most important event took place in the twin city of Buda and Pest (todays Budapest). Subutai and Batu Khan's army had just finished off Polish army and Hungarian Teutonic Knights. A large part of the Hungarian population were decimated, except for the ones who were lucky enough to hide inside forts. So General Subutai and the Khan camps out with their army of 200,000-300,000 horsemen, with 2-3 times number of horses. Finding grassland to graze these huge number of horses were a major tactical concern, so Mongols are sending out scouts to all parts of Western Europe to come up with a plan of attack to subjugate all of remaining Europe. It takes a lot of planning and almost a year has past in Buda-Pest and preparations are almost complete to initiate the attack. At this fateful moment in 1241, comes the news that the great Khan Ogedei have passed away. All leaders of some consequence, must now go back to Kharakhorum, the seat of the great Khan and the capital of the unified Mongol empire for a Khurultai (meeting or conference) to choose the new great Khan, according to the Mongol custom/code Yasak, established by Chingis Khan. So the army marches back, never to return with the same momentum and force to complete the job they had to abandon, the job of making the borders of Mongol empire from Pacific coast in Siberia and China to the Atlantic coast of Western Europe.
Similar is the story of Japan, it was attacked 2 times by Yuan Mongol forces with Chinese and Korean maritime armada, but every time there was bad luck of typhoons that diminished their chances of victory. These divine winds are called Kamikaze (it does not mean suicide fighter pilots, although the word was used to mean that these suicide pilots in WW II would also save Japan, just as the divine Typhoons did) in Japanese, that saved Japan from Mongol subjugation.
According to the Historical Continuity hypothesis, since the established powers of the time were crushed under the Mongol hammer and only Western Europe and Japan was spared and remained standing, it is no surprise then that West Europeans soon were ascendant with Renaissance, Maritime supremacy and eventual colonization of the planet. Japan was isolationist through out this period. It was opened up by force by Admiral Perry around 1860's. It adapted Western technology in a few decades and became a world power. Soon it had the honour to beat Tzarist Russia, the first White nation ever to be beaten by non-whites and went on to colonize Korea, Manchuria and parts of Asia.
This is just one example, the theory can be applied to other historical situations, current world affairs and future projections and planning.
Source:
http://www.defence.pk/forums/world-...ld-order-road-map-future-8.html#ixzz2Rg9mVvjs