The Chinese and the Europeans

In many respects the early Ming Dynasty of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was the precursor to Medieval Europe of the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries. Europe's accomplishments tended to parallel the accomplishments of the Ming. Europe, as the more modern of the two societies, improved greatly the technology and weaponry of the Ming while retaining the essence of the Ming's contributions. Europe and China were equally stagnant in their attempts to ward off the rampant diseases that plagued them.

The Ming Empire was technologically innovative and the Europeans improved marvelously on their ideas. Artistically, the Ming made beautiful porcelain pottery. The Europeans expanded on this and started an artistic revolution during which artistic masters crafted fantastic forms of architecture, paintings, and sculptures. The Ming created the first counting device, the abacus, and made a spectacular mechanical clock. Not to be outdone, the Europeans featured giant clocks which were exponentially more accurate than any clock of the Mings' creation. Perhaps fueled by the mathematics of the abacus, the Europeans started a Scientific Revolution, which yielded many incredible discoveries including the revelation that the sun is in the center of the solar system.

Europe also exceeded the Chinese in military and seafaring ingenuity. The Ming Dynasty used huge and powerful square-sailed boats called junks. The Ming gradually adopted triangular sails called lateens that made the boats more agile than a square sail. The Europeans combined the square sails (that give a boat speed) with the lateen sails (that give a boat agility) to form an incomparable ship called a caravel. The Europeans also improved on the Ming Dynasty invention of gunpowder to make cannons and a wide assortment of firearms.

A counterexample to this European dominance is the way that both societies dealt with the horrible diseases that they both faced. When the Bubonic Plague struck the Ming Dynasty and Black Death afflicted Europe, both civilizations were at the mercy of the plagues. Neither Europe nor China had medical technology equipped to handle such catastrophes, resulting in massive death tolls.

It appears that Medieval Europe's greatest cultural achievements were rooted in the prior achievements of China. It also appears that when the Ming came up against insurmountable crises such as the plague, the Europeans found these crises insurmountable as well. The supposition that China was the predecessor to Medieval Europe's cultural domination could very well be wrong. An alternative hypothesis is that Europe exceeded the Ming Dynasty because the competition between contemporary countries in Europe necessitated advanced warfare techniques just to survive.

Spielvogel, Jackson. Glencoe World History. McGraw-Hill Companies. 2006.