GUNS, GERMS AND STEEL - Cloverport Independent Schools

THE FUTURE OF HUMAN HISTORY AS A SCIENCE • 413
Europe been united under any one of the first three rulers, its colonization
of the Americas might have been stillborn.
In fact, precisely because Europe was fragmented, Columbus succeeded
on his fifth try in persuading one of Europe's hundreds of princes to sponsor
him. Once Spain had thus launched the European colonization of
America, other European states saw the wealth flowing into Spain, and six
more joined in colonizing America. The story was the same with Europe's
cannon, electric lighting, printing, small firearms, and innumerable other
innovations: each was at first neglected or opposed in some parts of
Europe for idiosyncratic reasons, but once adopted in one area, it eventually
spread to the rest of Europe.
These consequences of Europe's disunity stand in sharp contrast to
those of China's unity. From time to time the Chinese court decided to halt
other activities besides overseas navigation: it abandoned development of
an elaborate water-driven spinning machine, stepped back from the verge
of an industrial revolution in the 14th century, demolished or virtually
abolished mechanical clocks after leading the world in clock construction,
and retreated from mechanical devices and technology in general after the
late 15th century. Those potentially harmful effects of unity have flared
up again in modern China, notably during the madness of the Cultural
Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s, when a decision by one or a few leaders
closed the whole country's school systems for five years.
China's frequent unity and Europe's perpetual disunity both have a long
history. The most productive areas of modern China were politically
joined for the first time in 221 B.C. and have remained so for most of
the time since then. China has had only a single writing system from the
beginnings of literacy, a single dominant language for a long time, and
substantial cultural unity for two thousand years. In contrast, Europe has
never come remotely close to political unification: it was still splintered
into 1,000 independent statelets in the 14th century, into 500 statelets in
A.D. 1500, got down to a minimum of 25 states in the 1980s, and is now
up again to nearly 40 at the moment that I write this sentence. Europe still
has 45 languages, each with its own modified alphabet, and even greater
cultural diversity. The disagreements that continue today to frustrate even
modest attempts at European unification through the European Economic
Community (EEC) are symptomatic of Europe's ingrained commitment to
disunity.
Hence the real problem in understanding China's loss of political and