Chapter15 The Marriage of Science and Empire

啊~一开始的好多问题也是以前不明白也没有细思过的问题~

More importantly, if in 1770 Europeans had no significant technologies advantage over Muslims, Indians and Chinese, how did they manage in the following century to open such a gap between themselves and the rest of the world?

Why did the military-industrial-science complex blossom in Europe rather than India? When Britain leaped forward, why were France, Germany and the United States quick to follow, whereas China lagged behind? When the gap between industrial and non-industrial nations became an obvious economic and political factor, why did Russia, Italy and Austria succeed.in closing it, whereas Persia, Egypt and the Ottoman Empire failed? Afterall, technology of the first industrial wave was relatively simple. Was it so hard for Chinese or Ottomans to engineer steam engines, manufacture machine guns and lay down railroads?

我相信以下会提供一部分观点~

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The Chinese and Persians did not lack technological inventions such as steam engines（which could be freely copied or bought）. They lacked the values, myths, judical apparatus and socialpolitical structures that took centuries to form and mature in the West and which could not be copied and internationalised rapidly.

所以晚清时的"师夷长技以制夷"只是治标不治本。

France and the United States quickly followed in Britain's footsteps because the French and Americans already shared the most important British myths and social structures. The Chinese and Persians could not catch up as quickly because they thought and organised their societies differently.于是晚清在之后就学习西方的政治制度咯~一系列的变革…

What potential did Europe develop in the early modern period that enabled it to dominate the late modern world? There are two complementary answers to this question: modern science and capitalism.…Europe and Europeans no longer rule the world, but science and capital are growing ever stronger.

This chapter is dedicated to the love story between Europe imperialism and modern science.

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The Mentality of Conquest

Technology was an important factor in the nineteen and twentieth centuries, but in the early modern era it was of limited importance.

要有敏锐的触觉，抓住历史进程的方向，才能把住自己命运或者国家命运的脉搏。在十九二十世纪的时候我们民族依然生活在“我天朝物产丰富”的世界里，全然没感知到外面的变化，整个世界的重心变化。（作者在后面也有写道;Yet they displayed little interest in these discoveries. They contributed to believe that the world revolved around Asia, and made no attempt to compete with the Europeans for control of America or of the new ocean lanes in the Atlantic and the Pacific.）正如当今社会来说，马化腾马云李彦宏王健林乔布斯扎克伯格等等，从一定格局上来说，他们都是在大家还没有意识到认识到事物发展的方向的时候他们就已经嗅到了机会，或者说，是创造出机会，然后改变了很多人甚至整个社会格局的生活方式，而不至于被这个世界改变。同理，科技在那个历史阶段的重要性，即使存在很多文化的因素在里面，但事实和结果摆在我们面前，再多的理由和因素也没有意义。

The discovery of America was the foundational event of the Science Revolution. It not only taught Europeans to favor present observations over past traditions, but the desire to conquer America also obliged Europeans to search for new knowledge at breakneck speed.

Most great empires extended their control only over their immediate neighbourhood- they reached far-flung lands simply because their neighbourhood kept expanding. Thus the Roman conquered Etruria in order to defend Rome.（同现在很多情况一样，来自"peers"的压力）

Modern science and modern empires were motivated by the restless feeling that perhaps something important awaited beyong the horizon- something they had better explore and master. Yet the connection between science and empire went much deeper. Not just the motivation, but also the practices of empire-builders were entangled with those of scientists. For modern Europeans, building an empire was a scientific project, while setting uo a scientific discipline ws an imperial project.