If We Were Living In An Eastern World

metallidude

I apologize if this has already been discussed before..
But I have failed to find any topic discussing probably ONE OF THE MOST INTERESTING 'What ifs' in Alternate history. Think about it. All you know now, the way you think, how you live, the environment around you, TVs, Radio, Playstation, PC games, Mobile phones, what language you're speaking, the food you eat, morals, the clothes you're wearing right now, the way I am discussing on an online mssage board..EVERYTHING, everything would be so totally different now if it was the Far East and NOT Europe who had conquered and won the world. Instead of the Westernized world we live in now.. it is an EASTERN WORLD. What do you think it would be like??? I cannot even begin to imagine..
 

metallidude

Lwlz

The Far East.. the Orient.. As in the cultural sphere of China, Japan, Korea, Indo-china... In other words the Sinicized sphere of influence.


You know the way.. What Im getting at here?? When during the time Europe was in the Dark Ages, China, the East was flourishing. There was a time when it was thr East who could have taken the world, not Europe..
 

Burton K Wheeler

Moderator
SRT said:
Well, I daresay we'll find out soon enough...
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..........

yellow_peril.jpg
 

The Sicilian

There were many reasons why the 'East' didn't become ascendant during the last few centuries, most of them discussed (or at least mentioned) in J. Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel.
 

Faeelin

Banned
The Sicilian said:
There were many reasons why the 'East' didn't become ascendant during the last few centuries, most of them discussed (or at least mentioned) in J. Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel.
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THIS BOOK MUST BE DESTROYED.

There are plenty of authors who do serious studies about why China didn't develop as Europe did; Pommeranz and Elvin, two name my favorite. Diamond is not one of them.
 

Nicksplace27

Faeelin said:
THIS BOOK MUST BE DESTROYED.
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Really? His book has awesome explanations that anwer a lot of speculation that Alternate historys are made of.

Its a book that provides empircal evidence to discredit the TL's of "Aztecs develop like crazy and conquer Midevil Europe" Scenarios. I realize that it is overly quoted and mentioned but there's a reason.
 

Faeelin

Banned
Nicksplace27 said:
Really? His book has awesome explanations that anwer a lot of speculation that Alternate historys are made of.

Its a book that provides empircal evidence to discredit the TL's of "Aztecs develop like crazy and conquer Midevil Europe" Scenarios. I realize that it is overly quoted and mentioned but there's a reason.
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It does a good job at explaining why Eurasia pulled ahead.

Why China did? Not so much.

Which is funny, because there are geographical reasons for it. But they aren't "China's smooth coastline united the region".
 

NapoleonXIV

Banned
Why would the world be so different? Modernity is modernity. My understanding is that Japan is now the most modern country in the world, already enjoying things that may not be available even in the US for a decade.

One thing, an Eastern world would be cleaner. The Europeans, in the first centuries of their ascendancy were probably the filthiest people on Earth. Good public hygiene in urban areas, a feature of most oriental societies since antiquity, was not recognized as a Western necessity until the Victorians decided to finally wipe out cholera and found it was caused mainly by using the streets as sewers
 

Faeelin

Banned
NapoleonXIV said:
One thing, an Eastern world would be cleaner. The Europeans, in the first centuries of their ascendancy were probably the filthiest people on Earth. Good public hygiene in urban areas, a feature of most oriental societies since antiquity, was not recognized as a Western necessity until the Victorians decided to finally wipe out cholera and found it was caused mainly by using the streets as sewers
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OTOH, the Tang Chinese reeked. Officials batehed once every ten days, so we can imagine that peasants did so even less.
 

Faeelin

Banned
Okay, assuming the Song Industrial Revolution TL....

The idea of individual rights developing seems pretty probable; you see some thinking along these lines in late Ming, early Qing thought. But no democracy; the government is carried out along civil service lines. Maybe the bible is used in the west instead of Confucianism?

Hmm, what else?
 

Justin Pickard

NapoleonXIV said:
Why would the world be so different? Modernity is modernity.
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With all due respect, that's bullshit.

Even today, there are at least three broad types of capitalism - North American, European, and East Asian. The Finnish state embraces a different brand of modernity than, say, South Africa, Iran, Brunei, Singapore or Japan - all of which are supposedly 'modern'.

NapoleonXIV said:
My understanding is that Japan is now the most modern country in the world, already enjoying things that may not be available even in the US for a decade.
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Try South Korea.
 

Advernt

I once asked the question about the Westernized state of the World in the thread , the Ascendacy of The West.For us to come up with a scenario where the East remains dominant instead of the West taking pole position , we would have to understand the reasons behind the Rise of the West , one of the major marcohistorical questions .
 
MrP

MrP

Banned
NapoleonXIV said:
Why would the world be so different? Modernity is modernity.
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Like Justin, I must say that I find this an astonishing statement! We aren't at "the end of history," old man. One can have technologically similar cultures that are separated by vast societal gulfs. I mean, just look at the USSR vs. USA in the Cold War, Sparta and Athens in the Peloponnesian War, Britain vs France during the Napoleonic Wars, the Union and the Confederacy during the ACW - in the last case that's even the same country with (largely) the same language!
 

carlton_bach

I would think that a modern technological civilisation emerging from the Sinosphere would emphasise gradualism much more strongly since it would not share the sharp, often violent discontinuities that characterise Western civilisation. I am not sure whether it would be more peaceful overall, but it may well spare the world many of the unnecessary horrors that the particular pathologies of the Western mindset have inflicted on it.

At the same time I'm fairly sure it wouldn't exactly be a nice place. After all, good aims do not make for good policies, we need go no further than Marx to prove that. I do not think we would have anything as uncompromising and forceful as 'Human Rights' or 'Civil Liberties' coming from a society that, after all, has not defined itself against the opposite extreme. Maybe Principate Rome and its 'Stoic Humanism' makes a reasonable analogy.

Technology will be interesting. If there is anything to the idea of 'high equilibrium', it will take different paths. An American settlement might force labour-shortage specific solutions anyway, but I doubt if they would meet with the same degree of acceptance as they did OTL (on a smaller scale, this was the fate of American 'convenience technology' in Europe). I could see much less 'cheap and shoddy' tech and a much greater emphasis on economy of effort and superiority of outcome.
 

metallidude

NapoleonXIV said:
Why would the world be so different? Modernity is modernity. My understanding is that Japan is now the most modern country in the world, already enjoying things that may not be available even in the US for a decade.

One thing, an Eastern world would be cleaner. The Europeans, in the first centuries of their ascendancy were probably the filthiest people on Earth. Good public hygiene in urban areas, a feature of most oriental societies since antiquity, was not recognized as a Western necessity until the Victorians decided to finally wipe out cholera and found it was caused mainly by using the streets as sewers
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Napoleon XIV, my point exactly. Yes, I know it would be, of course a modern civ!! The only difference is that a modern civ if the East were to have conquered the world is that, it would be an Eastern influenced modern world! IOf course it would be totally different. Our concept of a modern advanced civilization is what we now base on which is in a Westernized world that we live in! If the East and not the west were to have inherited the world then say, the architecture now in the modern world, if we were living in an Easternized world would be totally different. And your point about Japan.. Okay, I do know Japan is very advanced but had the West not dominated the world, then Japan would have been probably different today.
Your thought on the hygiene under an Easternized world.. Yes, that's what I want to see, ppl's opinions on what you think it would be like.
 
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