Freedom of curiosity. I like it 🙂

Won't down-vote, but you're not really right. War is an incredible motivator for solving problems because it creates problems. Peace is a horrible motivator for solving problems because it doesn't create problems. I give you the Polynesian peoples and the proof that when you don't have a lot of problems to solve, you don't advance technologically.

@JBH I give you the Polynesian people as proof that if you don't have mineral resources, there's pretty serious limits to what you can do. And still, they developed serious seamanship skills well ahead of Europe. As for problems though, it doesn't get any more intense than economic competition - that list in my answer as a few examples. What would you give as counter-examples?

@vsz Thanks for reminding me of one other way that wars kill development though - by blocking discoveries in one place from being known by the rest of humanity, so that each little silo of knowledge has to (re)discover everything for itself.

Ummmm, the modern jet engine was refined into functionality during WW2 by the Nazi government. They first put them in V2 rockets, and actually had a few prototype jet fighter planes in the air late in the war.

@vsz There's significant evidence to indicate that vaccines originated in africa, as well as successful performed c sections, with relatively primitive medical technology. Most knowledge in africa was stored and transmitted orally, which was in fact erased by Europeans settlement and occupation. While such nations where not conducting research's, there was in fact a vast bank of knowledge contained in the various kingdoms and cultures of africa which where erased, on top of numerous borders drawn between historically peoples, so yes, africa was in fact trashed by europe.

@Graham Please remember that I'm only arguing against the premises that peace and war are technologically interchangeable and that a society need only choose to advance technologically for it to happen. No historical precedent for that.

@MegatheriumMegafauna : Africa was colonized at the end of the 19th century, and by that time Europe was by far more technologically advanced. Also, the Crusades as alleged in the question could not have set back and trashed the "advanced Muslim nations" as 1. the Crusades affected only a tiny percentage of their territory and 2. Muslim nations were constantly expanding during that time, conquering big parts of Europe (like the Ottoman empire). These are hard facts, not feelings. But it seems racism and supremacism is tolerated and even encouraged here, even if it goes against hard facts.

@vsz First of all,, reality is far to complex to be encapsulated by ideologies and quips, and so facts, encoded states are to an extend inherently based on feelings, and also, the idea that Africa is better off than when Europe came to it is absurd. The varus colonial powers deliberately drew borders that intersected between historical groups and so created territories of enemies and strangers less able to govern on their own, and so leading to the instability that exists today, borders that are ill suited to a migrating climate, and so forth. Africa was raped, if left more advanced.

@MegatheriumMegafauna : some are angry because there are different ethnic groups hating each other in the same nation and they say the Europeans should have placed more borders. Others wish for a giant superstate and say the Europeans should have placed less borders. So whom should they have pleased? Also these countries are now independent and free to do whatever they want, they could have did their own Schengen if they wanted, no one externally is preventing them from doing so. But we are straying off topic. My point was to counter the rants and factual inaccuracies in the answer.

@vsc P.S. Europe maintained a presence there since the 1600's when portagul and the various other nations started the slave trade and slowly spread from from there over 400 years. Europe did not just show up in 1801 or such and start to colonize in a vacuumed. Not to mention the railroads mostly lead to resource extraction areas, disconnected from most major population centers. yes various groups have conquered, but the Europeans occupation was notably more brutal than average, chattel slavery(in contrast to most forms of slavery practiced), brutal punishments, and so forth.

@MegatheriumMegafauna False yet again. The slave trade was not started by the Portuguese, it was endemic in Africa way before the very first European showed up. They just went to the ports and bought the slaves which were offered to them, as part of a pre-existing slave trade network. And "presence" meant they went to the ports to sell and buy stuff, and they had a few ports of their own, but they were not in control of any significant territory, and had zero control of inland territory.

But as I said this is off topic. The topic is technology, and the answer had 2 false allegations: 1. that Africa was technologically more advanced than Europe when it was colonized. 2. that the Crusades set back or destroyed Muslim technological advancement. If you have anything more to say, please focus on these on-topic parts.

@vsc Modern day is notably different than back then, integrated borders and free transport today, in Europe is hardly comparable, it's less like the borders of the eu, or the lack thereover, and more like if state A was divided into 16th century Russia, Germany, France and so forth, forcedly drained of it's resources, and then one depleted, the powers that be, drew out, to an extent, and said "govern yourselves" it's a disaster in two stages, it would never have turned out well for the territories.

@vsc, conservative out of context bleed, the trade was minor compared to when Europeans showed up, historical accounts point to this, and A I thought the point was that the occupation of africa was moraly wrong, and aberrantly brutal. and so even in the context of violent human history worthy of criticism. Saying africa had things going for it and that it was more advanced than Europe are two different things. Africa had as an extensive trove of cultural knowledge as the rest of the cultures world that was erased, due to being oral. I don't know enough about the islamic world to comment.

@MegatheriumMegafauna : interesting, that the Ottoman Empire did the same to South-Eastern Europe, with the added perk of kidnapping children and raising them up as soldiers to send against their previous home countries. Yet no on in South-Eastern Europe blames the Ottoman Empire for the problems they currently face, they blame their own corrupt politicians.

@vsc I'm not going to comment on things I have little following for historically, you can pick a fight with other people regarding the ottoman empire and so forth, it wasn't really comparable to Africa, nor the Americas. From what I do know it seems like the ottoman empire behaved within the standard of most empires, bloody and morally shitty, but pretty standard, and not all that different to how European states interacted with each other. No chattle slavery, no forced removal of children to work in diamond mines, no deliberately starving populations at random intervals as a scare tactic, ect

@MegatheriumMegafauna : if you want hard facts instead of ideology, compare the changes in life expectancy, and compare population growth. I never said that the Europeans did nothing wrong. But your allegations of it being more brutal than earlier conquests (which always led to depopulation) can be trivially proven false if we look at population dynamics.

@VSC Technically true again, lifespans did increase, as well as population numbers, but the graph, the data your looking at likely doesn't continued back extensively. Research's done on corpses in the area across the time frame indicates a significant drop in health, peaking in the general time of max colonialist presence, and a pretty strong inverse relation when it comes to the average height of skeletons, and the health therein.

Sources matter, you'll still find sources claiming the barter economy exists, despite the fact that no real world sociological survey has ever recorded a group that when not using money used barter. The data present, alone is not inherently reliable, the context of the information is often, especially in regards to history just as important.

If you'll tell me your sources, rather than an efermal "data" your claims would carry weight

But 1920's british surveys arent, especialy recording the fact that after Britain and a host of other powers withdrew, they deliberatly destroyed most of their records regarding the events that transpired

Which you can confirm, along with the mystical data that floats in a vaccume

Used barter on a widespread scale as a means of resource distribution, I forgot how conservatives tend to remove nuance

@vsz I never made any claim that Africa, across the whole continent, was more technologically advanced in all ways. Going back historically, Egypt and Carthage were significantly more technologically advanced than the European cultures which destroyed them.

@vsz Later on, north Africa, as part of the Muslim world, was significantly more technologically advanced than Europe until at least a century or so after the Enlightenment. North African ships were also generally better than Europeans until well into the 1700s, as evidenced by corsairs raiding coastal towns as far as Iceland. Sure, Europeans got better, but they got better by reinventing the wheel rather than learning from what already existed - which is how you get faster development.

@vsz In the rest of Africa, things varied, sure. But when Europeans got there, they found large-scale iron and bronze works (in particular in central Africa) which were not dissimilar to the European equivalents maybe 200 years previously. It would have been very much more productive to co-opt and train up those people, instead of just bringing in European products.

@vsz And as far as building methods go, Europeans still haven't really absorbed lessons from hotter countries (obviously Africa, but also central America, and to some extent ancient Rome and Greece too) about methods of passive cooling for buildings in a hot environment. Sure you can chuck air-con at the problem, but that costs money and energy.

@vsz Did Africa lead the world with the Industrial Revolution? Of course not. Any suggestion that it did is stupid; and trying to put words in my mouth to say that I claimed that is worse. Could Europeans have learned things from Africa, which I did say, and sped up development as a result? Absolutely yes, and I've given you some examples.

Early transistors were too expensive for anything but military/space applications, which provided the incentive for more development. Many post WWII electronics companies involved ex-soldiers trained on radar systems. Of course many early computers were funded by the military (or the Census Bureau).

@Graham Not true. They indeed were more advanced than Rome (especially Egypt was), hundreds of years before they came into contact, but when they had their wars, that was no longer the case.

@Graham And this is not true either. Indeed now there is a focus on building houses as cheaply and quickly as as possible, because you can install AC, but this does not mean not knowing how to build better insulation. There were Europeans peasant houses with pretty good insulation and placement (direction of the courtyard, other buildings, trees, to use the prevailing wind directions for temperature regulation, etc.)

You see, these are the problems when you are cherry-picking, and go so far as to mix up things from many centuries apart, only to push an ideological agenda.

@Graham hmmm... And yet it was Europeans who were crossing oceans in their 'inferior' ships while North Africans weren't.... That one has me a bit confused.

@Graham Europe was a vibrant innovating culture when they conquered the world, its why they were able to conquer the world. New worldview breaking discoveries were being made constantly in chemistry, math, economics, sociology, warfare, philosophy. While China, the Islamic world, the Americas were all in periods of technological and philosophical stagnation.

It is a societies ability to innovate that matters. Past technological achievements matter not at all if you aren't busy discovering something new to build on them. Catching up to someone with a technological edge is extremely easy... Look at the Romans who didn't know a ship from a boat one year, and then the next captured a Carthaginian ship, and used the technology pilfered there to build a navy that conquered the Mediterranean that same year.

@OwenReynolds Transistors did not come until after WWII