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How Military Technology Shaped Geopolitics and Economics A Service of Leibniz-Informationszentrum econstor Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre Make Your Publications Visible. zbw for Economics Teng, Jimmy Book — Published Version Musket, map and money: How military technology shaped geopolitics and economics Versita Discipline: Economics Provided in Cooperation with: De Gruyter Suggested Citation: Teng, Jimmy (2013) : Musket, map and money: How military technology shaped geopolitics and economics, Versita Discipline: Economics, ISBN 978-83-7656-059-5, Versita, London, http://dx.doi.org/10.2478/9788376560595 This Version is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/182290 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. personal and scholarly purposes. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle You are not to copy documents for public or commercial Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, If the documents have been made available under an Open gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ www.econstor.eu Jimmy Teng Musket, Map and Money: How Military Technology Shaped Geopolitics and Economics Versita Discipline: Economics Managing Editor Ewa Feder-Sempach Language Editor Thomas E Dudley Published by Versita, Versita Ltd, 78 York Street, London W1H 1DP, Great Britain. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivs 3.0 license, which means that the text may be used for non- commercial purposes, provided credit is given to the author. Copyright © 2013 Jimmy Teng ISBN (paperback): 978-83-7656-057-1 ISBN (hardcover): 978-83-7656-058-8 ISBN (for electronic copy): 978-83-7656-059-5 Managing Editor: Ewa Feder-Sempach Associate Editor: Urszula Mrzygłód-Opacka Language Editor: Thomas E Dudley www.versita.com Cover illustration: © istockphoto.com/mikdam Contents CHAPTER 1 Introduction ....................................................................................... 8 CHAPTER 2 Military Technology, Geopolitics and Economic Development ........ 19 1. Mass Factor and Relativist Concern .................................................................19 2. Geopolitics and Economic Performance ..........................................................26 3. Major Military Technological Revolutions ......................................................33 4. Southeast Asia, Africa, America and Oceania .................................................36 5. The Three Strands of Hume-Kant Hypothesis ................................................42 CHAPTER 3 Ancient Middle Eastern Leadership .................................................. 45 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................45 2. Writing .....................................................................................................................45 3. Bronze ......................................................................................................................48 4. Chariots and Iron ...................................................................................................53 5. Conclusions ............................................................................................................57 CHAPTER 4 Classical Pluralism ........................................................................... 59 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................59 2. Light Cavalry...........................................................................................................59 3. The Middle East .....................................................................................................61 4. Greece and Carthage ............................................................................................64 5. India..........................................................................................................................70 6. China ........................................................................................................................73 7. Conclusions ............................................................................................................77 CHAPTER 5 Gupta Efflorescence ......................................................................... 79 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................79 2. Heavy Infantry .......................................................................................................79 3. Roman, Persian and Chinese Empires ..............................................................80 4. South Asia ...............................................................................................................88 5. Eurasia .....................................................................................................................91 6. Conclusions ............................................................................................................92 CHAPTER 6 Abbasid Golden Age and Sung Puzzle .............................................. 95 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................95 2. Heavy Cavalry ........................................................................................................96 3. Middle East .......................................................................................................... 100 4. South Asia ............................................................................................................ 105 5. The Byzantine Empire ....................................................................................... 106 6. Europe ................................................................................................................... 107 7. China ..................................................................................................................... 110 8. Japan ..................................................................................................................... 120 9. Eurasia .................................................................................................................. 121 10. Conclusions ....................................................................................................... 124 CHAPTER 7 The Rise of the West ...................................................................... 127 1. Introduction ......................................................................................................... 127 2. The Gunpowder Military Revolution .............................................................. 128 3. The Gunpowder Empires .................................................................................. 130 4. Eurasia .................................................................................................................. 144 5. Europe .................................................................................................................. 148 6. Conclusions ......................................................................................................... 160 EPILOGUE The Contemporary Global State System ........................................ 163 Bibliography .................................................................................. 167 Index .............................................................................................. 185 Musket, Map and Money: How Military Technology Shaped Geopolitics and Economics CHAPTER 1 Introduction How did we get to the modern western centered world? Modernization is syn- onymous with westernization, and western nations dominating current world affairs, the western economies and companies generate most of the world’s nominal wealth with western ideas and values shaping the world’s cultures. To answer that is to address what caused the rise of the west above all other major cultures of the world, including Islamic, Indian, Chinese and Japanese, in the early modern era. To view it in a broader perspective, what are the forces that shaped the general contours of world history and the rise and fall of civi- lizations? The inquiry into the accumulation and distribution of wealth amongst na- tions is the raison d’etre of economics.1 But even now, this inquiry has not yet been completed with many conundrums still exist. One conundrum that ex- ists in economics development and economic history in particular, is of course the spectacular economic rise of the West. The economic rise of the West, also termed the European miracle within the literature, refers to the industri- alization and modernization of Europe ahead of all the other Eurasian major cultures in
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