China had only a few types of enemies prior to fighting Europeans - its historical rivals were never fully united and organised states. And it's not like China didn't embrace technology. They in fact did, and used guns and rifles to great effect against tribes in the northwest prior to European "harassment". The only technology they didn't foresee was the steamship, but there was no way to foresee that in the 1750's. It was in fact European organisation that made its military so superior to China's. With good leadership and training, Chinese weapons is sufficient to defeat European forces, sans steamship, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Taku_Forts_(1859).

It was corruption and ineffective leadership and organisation that meant even when China had resource and technological edge, it would lose devastatingly. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Yalu_River_(1894)

"The lack of training was a direct result of a serious lack of ammunition. Corruption seems also to have played a major role; many Chinese shells appear to have been filled with cement or porcelain, or were the wrong caliber and could not be fired. Philo McGiffin noted that many of the gunpowder charges were "thirteen years old and condemned."[2] What little ammunition was available was to be preserved for a real battle. Live ammunition training was rarely carried out."

And of course, corruption and ineffective organisation are qualities that states will gain over time - the longer a state is in power the more corrupt it will become, until one day it collapses.

Chinese technology is perfectly capable of defeating Europeans with superior technology in battle. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Liaoluo_Bay The key as always is organisation and leadership. Technology means naught without it.

Does this apply to highly intelligent horde AI that you order to annihilate an opposition with the wave of your hand?

I know this isn't based in current reality, but mark my words when I say that the country that produces the smartest and most effective AI weapons at a sufficient scale will be king.

We're already seeing the first retirements of humans in exchange for AI weapons.

I'm not talking about violence at all. The goal of a state is in fact to have a monopoly on violence. I'm not taking sides at all, just pointing out the history of the past couple hundred years.

China is like any other state, in fact it was literally the first instance of the Modern State that had centralized authoritative systems of governance that provided various facilities throughout the Empire, mandated by the emperor. Heck we have one of the first instance of the fiat currency being used in China, which in itself shows the internal stability of the Chinese state. Not to mention their vastly superior ability to mitigate famine throughout the country. Europe during all this lacked tremendously. For instance during the 18th century enlightenment era millions of people died due to famine, and other hunger related diseases in Europe, whereas in China during the same time period we see the Qing successfully provide millions of peasants with precious grains, and intelligently rationing them out through centralized sources. This was the norm in China. Compared that to the blunders of the later Qing, and infamous Mao. It's astounding how far China has come.

China being more violent than the West is bullshit. Both where at least equally violent. All states are violent. They require violence, and coercion. Well actually we can't really forgive the British literally starving the Indian population, by deliberately instating rules that caused millions of people to starve to death, while exporting record amounts of grains to Britain. Oh yes. The West wasn't that violent, or cruel...

The myth is that the West had technological superiority compared to other nations, and built their empire from that technology, but that really doesn't cut it. What the West was able to do is exploit that technology to create a new economic system, you know, globalization. Many nations had similar technologies, except the West's ability to politically maneuver regions in their own favor, and thereby exploiting that region to export trade goods back home is what actually made them incredibly successful. This export starved other nations, countries, and kingdoms, both literally, and metaphorically of various other prosperities. This exporting of goods is what drove the British, and the Imperial powers in general, and what produced a wealthy economy in those countries. Eventually draining away so much wealth from those regions that we see the effects to this day.

I'm not saying that West was either more, or less violent than any other nation in history, just pointing out what happened in the recent past, and what continues to happen even today.

Furthermore it's an assumption to think that conflict creation is inherent in human beings, because it's really not, and there are many instances of various government being satisfied in their own domains. China, and India being an example where incredible wealth meant a stable state, and that stability was satisfying to those population that actively pursuing conflict for even more wealth would be seen as idiotic. They knew they had more than enough. The West knew they were beggars, and so they conquered. The continued exploitation through conflict is not a preferred method of existence, as we are seeing with the USA.

> This exporting of goods is what drove the British, and the Imperial powers in general, and what produced a wealthy economy in those countries.

Deirdre N. McCloskey in her book 'Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World' does a pretty good job of explaining that this imperial trade (amongst other factors) doesn't do enough to explain why The West became wealthy.

To quote McCloskey: "What's wrong with such images? This: the world did not change by piling up money or capital. It changed by getting smarter about steam engines and wiser about accepting the outcome of innovation."

If imperialist trade is what caused British wealth to increase by a factor of sixteen or more since the 16th or 17th century, why didn't countless other states become modern-day wealthy during countless other imperialist expansions?

Nor did the Industrial Revolution do it. The printing press was invented in China (1041) some 400 years before Gutenberg (1450) caught on to the idea, and the Industrial Revolution didn't happen for another 300 year after that!

McCloskey's suggestion is that Bourgeois Dignity is what caused the change. That society came to dignify innovation. That average Jane Citizen came to be able to invent and bring to market innovation. Not only that, we now glorify the innovator, rather than prosecute them.

So it wasn't British imperialism that made Britain rich. Free trade does more to cause the wealth of nations than imperialism ever could. But free trade isn't enough either.

McCloskey argues it isn't Capitalism that is so important to modern wealth, because capitalism -the accumulation of capital- has been a thing since people have been gathering seeds.

As Sam says in his article it is Innovationism that made the modern world so extremely wealthy. That we are prepared to iterate so rapidly, ever more rapidly, and dignify those who do the innovating.

So I disagree that the imperial redistribution of wealth is what has caused 'those regions' to be affected to this day. As India embraced Innovationism -in manufacture, call centres, software development- we have watched it become increasingly more wealthy.

That is the old Imperial myth, that's as old as Imperialism itself. It's such a condescending perspective, as the countries from all around the world were just as inventive, and innovative with their technologies. What happened was very subtle. It was simply the fact that the already rich countries had no reason to expand, while European societies had every reason to expand, as their society was in complete tatters compared to Asia. The rise of European society wasn't just accepting innovation, while others declined innovation, no. Europeans just had more of an incentive to use that innovation for personal gains, while societies in Asia had every incentive to use that innovation for inner stability, and stay course for a non-expansionistic policy. I mean we have Europeans using gunpowder to blow each other up, while China used it for public entertainment, pacifying them, by utilizing it for fireworks. Not mention the Indians were better equipped with firearms compared to the Europeans. I mean India invented rockets at the very time the Imperial powers came in, so that right there throws out the idea that other societies were less inventive, or that invention somehow leads to wealth. They were simply more hesitant to utilize that invention to expand, as inner stability was more valuable to them.

Really I don't know how people can justify that idea. Steam engines don't give you wealth. Using the steam engines for the export of resources does. It was only with the railways that Imperial powers were able to export wealth from India. Not to mention the deliberate sabotage from within the country, by playing the political game very intelligently (the same thing happened in South America, and Africa). How can you ignore the deliberate deindustrialization of the India under that Raj? I mean you have state sponsored brutality such as chopping off the thumps of basket weavers, and making steel production illegal so that they can't practice their trade. Imperialism actively sought to close off, tax out, or straight make local industries illegal, thereby increasing wealth as the Imperial powers were able to sell more readily. The same thing happened with China, albeit indirectly, by deliberate sabotage.

How can you ignore the very idea of Nations, and Nationhood being a very corrosive force that has put ruthless competition at the basis of governance, on a scale never before seen?

Innovativeness does not even begin to cut it. I mean if you're going to argue on culture, then you're putting up a silly argument which says almost nothing, but definitely reiterate Europe's superiority in "culture", which is not a new argument. It's the same old argument that's been used by imperial powers to justify their ruthless conquest since the beginning. It isn't just inventiveness that made Imperial powers more powerful, but a shift in perspective that allowed them to both create the state, and utilize authoritative power for economic gains, coupling that with technology that allowed for global reach.

Just as European society was going through what China had gone through 2000 years ago, that being complete inner turmoil resulting in total war producing a centralized state. Just then it was blessed with unprecedented technological capabilities (that was in fact imported from all across the world), coupling that with the ideological stance which burgeoned due to constant conflict within European society. Ok. So here we have that "cultural" advantage, in that European society was just more ruthless than any other country in the world, not just more inventive. Invention means nothing, and does not produce wealth, it's the use of that invention that matters, and admittedly the Imperial powers did use invention to its fullest capabilities.

Asia in general was in a period of decline at that point, a slowing down, because we don't see the activity of Chinese, and Indian merchants in this period we instead see a recession, and any economist would tell you that this is completely normal for a society.

What wasn't normal for these societies, nor was expected, nor seen ever before in history, was an external force, that too coming from across the globe, that actively had the ability to exploit that recession. That force was able to exploit that recession in a way that allowed for the export of wealth by employing global technologies, and introducing a new set of state sponsored ideologies (soft power).

Of course, and so the same will happen today. Nothing has changed. There are no winners, or losers, just the eternal game.

I'm not saying these people were "better", or "worse" these were people, and so the coming chaos will reflect their humanity. The West shouldn't be afraid.