I believe thats only partly correct. Britain did have a geographical advantage over the Continent, but continential Europe did not have any advantages over mainland China.
Thomas Woods has pointed to envy as the answer. Envy was in antiquity treated nonchalantly, but in Christian Europe during the Middle Ages and Enlightenment envy was considered a vice, a deadly sin. It was during this time that Europe made the majority of its progress. Today envy has shifted from a vice to a virtue. The desire to control what belongs to others is now considered among the most noble of social virtues, and Europe shall continue to decline until respect for property returns.
But taking human history as a whole China spent more time as the more advanced and prosperous of the two.
I cant claim to know much about Chinas history but after the definite end of the Great Migrations period (with the Christianisation of the Magyars) Western Europe might as well had been an island. You will note that after that time in European history invasions of Eastern Europe into Western Europe are virtualy unheard of while the invasions in the opposite direction are common (eg the sack of Constantinople). Christian East was threatened from further East and South (threats to which it irreversably lost the Near East and Asia Minor) and was therefore in no position to pick fights with the Christian West even in times when it was stil the more prosperous of the two. So Western Europe was safe even from the one direction it is geographicaly exposed in.
As far as the IQ aspect: northeast Asians have a slightly higher mean IQ but significantly lower verbal IQ than Europeans. I came across one study showing that Asians are over represented in high visuospatial IQ professions like engineering, but significantly under represented in verbal IQ professions like lawyers. This jumped out at me immediately; perhaps Western legal traditions developed as they did in the West instead of Asia due to the verbal IQ disparity.
Another thing to consider is the collectivism of the East-- could it have a genetic component? Some studies show Europeans have a slightly higher standard deviation in IQ than Asians (15 vs 13). Having more variance in IQ and thus more brilliant people as well as dullards could lead to a less collectivist culture.
Which begs the question. Why are there such differences?
Great topic!
The myriad proposals are individually topic-seeds.
One of the elements relating to the progressive ‘success’ of western nations - and. which I believe has been underrated, relatively unexplored, and often mis-represented - is the impact of the Reformation on the idea of liberty.
Specifically concerning the Reformation is a thesis of liberty in GRACE.
We have, in most (visible) churches and religions as well as in secular life, a rational basis for MERCY.
MERCY as a rational conception is cooperation; an extension of the division of labor; a (peaceful) means of dealing with strife, in particular, debt. Mercy acknowledges debt and substitutes a condition of reduced or no obligation for non-payment.
GRACE, however, is not rational to man. GRACE is similar to MERCY in that it is a (peaceful) means of dealing with strife/debt. GRACE differs from MERCY in the (rationally in-conceivable) sense of replacing strife/debt for a condition AS IF THE STRIFE/DEBT NEVER OCCURRED.
The condition of GRACE is a condition of pure liberty. A NEW condition embodied in the life and work of Christ Jesus.
Martin Luther re-introduced this new condition - GRACE - to the oppressed visible church and to society.
I know that such an approach is not popular amongst secular acadamia. Revealed liberty vs. evolved liberty. It is not a rational basis therefore it is discredited.
There is, however, no substitute under either oppression or liberty for a thankful heart - rational or not.
Imperialism and colonialism RUINED western nations. It did not benefit them.
Britain at one point of time was an importer nation that lived off foreign investment. Unlike France, it did not put restrictions on these things. As a nation that allowed the conduct of business relatively more freely than others, it managed to benefit.
When it was large enough to set up trading companies across the world, the British exchequer BEGGED the crown not to fund companies which intended to colonise or set themselves up abroad. He saw that it caused the wealth of their nation to run down, when it was used for investment in colonies in remote parts of the world with less return on investment. He also saw that the initial costs of setting up there were very difficult to recover, and they had to forcefully adopt a pro-export policy in order to get back that money, which ruined the wealth of their nation even further.
Their colonies may have had much misery to endure from being under British rule, but once British tried to put use protectionist means to forcefully export to them, the populations of those countries quadrupled. It’s as if they benefitted a little bit more than the British did. It also increased the size of British bureaucracy, and forced them to divert funds that could have developed their own country.
I am sorry, but western hegemony is not explained by imperialism.
Of course not, the imperialism was merely a byproduct of werstern hegemony.
…Yet SOME British subjects may have benefited from colonialism. True the the colonies may have benefited UNDER, if one summarizes the effect of colonialism.
But it is not possible to summarize the effects of colonialism. That would take judgement of value on our part. It is only possible to observe that colonialism is synonymous with force. Therefore whatever your own value judgement as what “to benefit” means we are in position to conclude that the peoples who were colonialised (who are the only ones whose value judgements of colonialism matter) were forced into trading something they valued more highly (their freedom) for something they valued less highly (whatever the benefits of being subjugated were). Else, if this were not the case there would have been no need for them to be forced into whatever empires they were made a part of, but would have instead joined them out of their own free will.
So when you say a colony can benefit from colonialism (a fancy word for overseas imperialism) you are taking a position of a paternalist, claiming that sometimes the rulers can know the interests of the subjects better than the subjects themselves and are justified in commiting force against them for their own good.