L'Europe, puissance émergente du Moyen-Âge (English)

Europe's emergence of superiority throughout the ages of the Renaissance might have come out as a surprising fact for people of the Middle Age, nothing seemed to show any real advantages that Europe had against the other influential civilizations such as the Ottoman Empire, China or even Japan. Each of these countries, at some point, were good contestants towards becoming a world power. We will see how each of these countries failed to become the most influential country in the world and then analyze how Europe manage to avoid the mistakes of it's enemies and ended up being the winner.

In this race to supremacy, at some point, every country had their chance to win. The first country to fall back was China in the 15th century. This country, the one with the biggest population, with great advances in agricultural technologies and trade, seemed to be on the right track towards domination over the other powers. The main problem in this Confucian bureaucracy was the “disruption of the Mongol hordes, and to … invasions of Kublai Khan. These internal disruptions and “the sheer conservatism of the Confucian bureaucracy – due to a resentment at the changes earlier forced upon them by the Mongols-” (Paul Kennedy p. 7) led to a total abandon of construction of seagoing ships, leaving the conquest of the new world and its resources to the Europeans and the Ottoman Empire. After building the Great Wall, this barrication did not allow China to grow at its full potential. For sure China kept on cultivating the knowledge it had and exploit it, but left it in an ankylosed state that took a long time rebuild on.

Japan had a similar development but in an even drastic way. Japan decided, “with a few exceptions, to cut itself off from the rest of the world” (p.15, The Rise and Fall, Paul Kennedy) and it's only after the Meiji Era that Japan will open itself again. This basically celled Japan's fate as a dominant nation.

The Ottoman Empire was prosperous and had several military success over Europe throughout the beginning of the Renaissance time. The development of Algebra and the first known hospital were created there, but religion had a huge impact upon the extension and spread of knowledge. Due to Sultan Selim I in 1515, people were threatened with death if they were found in possession of a book. So “having once provided European scholars with ideas and inspiration, Muslim scientists were now cut off from the latest research.” (Science, p.68) Due to one man, the whole Ottoman Empire found itself to be limited in its development whereas Europe, where the first printing machine was invented, books, and so ideas, flourished. So as we can see “an idiot sultan could paralyze the Ottoman Empire in the way that a pope or Holy Roman Emperor could never do for all Europe.” (Paul Kennedy, p.12)

But the moment where the Ottoman really started to crumble and was forced to withdraw from Europe was when the Sultan's army was at the gates of Vienna in September 1683. Being so sure, so close of victory and being sent back home with shame followed by several other defeats, made the Empire calm it's pretensions upon Europe.

So, as we saw, one of the major differences between these Empires and Europe might simply be defined by the fact that Europe had different governments within itself, whereas The Ottoman Empire, China and Japan were each led by one

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