Graeme Lang On China and Europe

Graeme Lang (cited by Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs, and Steel:

The Fates of Human Societies

(New York: W.W. Norton & Co.; 1999), p. 432.)

ʻDifferences between Europe and China in ecology and geography helped to explain the very different fates of science in the two regions.

First, [rainfall] agriculture in Europe provided no role for the state, which remained far from local communities most of the time, and when the agricultural revolution in Europe produced a growing agricultural surplus, this allowed the growth of relatively autonomous towns along with urban institutions such as universities prior to the rise of the centralized states in the late Middle Ages.

[Irrigation and water-control] agriculture in China, by contrast, favored the early development of intrusive and coercive states in the major river valleys, while towns and their institutions never achieved the degree of local autonomy found in Europe.

ʻSecond, the geography of China, unlike that of Europe, did not favor the prolonged survival of independent states.

Instead, China's geography facilitated eventual conquest and unification over a vast area, followed by long periods of relative stability under imperial rule.

The resulting state system suppressed most of the conditions required for the emergence of modern science. . . .

The explanation outlined above is certainly oversimplified. However, one of the advantages of this kind of account is that it escapes the circularity which often creeps into explanations which do not go deeper than social or cultural differences between Europe and China. Such explanations can always be challenged with a further question: why were Europe and China different with regard to those social or cultural factors? Explanations rooted ultimately in geography and ecology, however, have reached bedrock.ʼ

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