“I Have Always Felt Reinforced and Stimulated by the Temperate Climate”
Personal experiences can be misleading, if only because of the variance among individuals. One person’s discomfort is another’s pleasure. Still, the law of heat exhaustion applies to all, and few manage to work at full capacity when hot and wet. Here is a Bangladeshi diplomat recalling his own experience and that of compatriots when visiting temperate climes:
“In countries like India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Nigeria and Ghana I have always felt enervated by the slightest physical or mental exertion, whereas in the UK, France, Germany or the US I have always felt reinforced and stimulated by the temperate climate, not only during long stays, but even during brief travels. And I know that all tropical peoples visiting temperate countries have had a similar experience. I have also seen hundreds of people from the temperate zone in the tropics feeling enervated and exhausted whenever they were not inside an air-conditioned room.
“In India and other tropical countries I have noticed farmers, industrial labourers, and in fact all kinds of manual and office workers working in slow rhythm with long and frequent rest pauses. But in the temperate zone I have noticed the same classes of people working in quick rhythm with great vigour and energy, and with very few rest pauses. I have known from personal experience and the experience of other tropical peoples in the temperate zone that this spectacular difference in working energy and efficiency could not be due entirely or even mainly to different levels of nutrition.”25
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Answers to Geography: Europe and China
The unevenness of nature shows in the contrast between this unhappy picture and the far more favorable conditions in temperate zones; and within these, in Europe above all; and within Europe, in western Europe first and foremost.
Take climate. Europe does have winters, cold enough to keep down pathogens and pests. Winter’s severity increases as one moves east into continental climes, but even the milder versions fend off festering morbidity. Endemic disease is present, but nothing like the disablers and killers found in hot lands. Parasitism is the exception. Some have argued that this exemption accounts for the vulnerability of Europeans to epidemic plagues: they were not sufficiently exposed to pathogens to build up resistance.
Even in winter, West European temperatures are kind. If one traces lines of equal temperature around the globe (isotherms), nowhere do they bend so far north as along Europe’s Atlantic coast. The mean winter temperature in coastal Norway, north latitude 58 to 71 degrees, exceeds that in Vermont or Ohio, some 20 degrees closer to the equator. As a result, Europeans were able to grow crops year round.
They were assisted here by a relatively even rainfall pattern, distributed around the year and rarely torrential: “it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven.” This is a pattern found only exceptionally around the globe. Summer rain falls abundantly right across the Eurasian landmass; winter rain, no. Precipitation coming off the Atlantic in the winter fails by the time it gets to the plains of Central and Eastern Europe. The landlocked steppes of Asia starve for water; hence such places as the Gobi Desert. Southern and eastern China are saved by rains coming up from the seas off Indochina; the same for the southeastern United States, heir to moisture from the Gulf of Mexico.
This dependable and equable supply of water made for a different pattern of social and political organization from that prevailing in riverine civilizations. Along rivers, control of food fell inevitably to those who held the stream and the canals it fed. Centralized government appeared early, because the master of food was master of people. (The biblical account of Joseph and Pharaoh tells this process in allegory. In order to get food, the starving Egyptians gave up to Pharaoh first their money, then their livestock, then their land, then their persons [Genesis 47:13-22].) Nothing like this was possible in Europe.
This privileged European climate was the gift of the large warm current that we know as the Gulf Stream, rising in tropical waters off Africa, working its way westward across the Atlantic and through the Caribbean, then recrossing the Atlantic in a generally northeast direction. The clockwise rotation is produced by the spin of the earth in combination with water rising as it warms; in the southern hemisphere, equatorial currents go counterclockwise (see Map 1). In both hemispheres, equatorial currents proceed from east to west, bearing heat and rich marine life with them.
Normally north and south equatorial currents should be roughly equal in volume, but in the Atlantic, an accident of geology turns the north equatorial into the largest such oceanic flow in the world. This accident: the shape taken by South America as tectonic continental plates parted and the Americas broke off from the African landmass, specifically, the great eastward bulge of Brazil (roughly corresponding to the eastward bend in the Atlantic coast of Africa). Brazil’s salient splits the south equatorial current and sends roughly half of it northward to join its northern counterpart, producing a huge warm-water mass that washes finally against the coasts of Ireland and Norway (see Map 1). This geological good fortune gives western Europe warm winds and gentle rain, water in all seasons, and low rates of evaporation—the makings of good crops, big livestock, and dense hardwood forests.
To be sure, Europe knows more than one climate. Rainfall is heaviest and most equable along the Atlantic, there where the moisture-laden west winds leave the water for land. As one moves east toward the Polish and Russian steppe, climate becomes more “continental” with wider extremes of both moisture and temperature. The same for the Mediterranean lands: the temperatures are kind, but rain is sparser, more uneven. In Spain, Portugal, southern Italy, and Greece, the soil yields less, olive trees and grapes do better than cereals, pasture pays more than agriculture. Some would argue that these geographical handicaps led to poverty, even to industrial retardation, in southern as against northern Europe.1 (We shall see later that other, cultural reasons may have been at least as important.)
If so, why was Europe so slow to develop, thousands of years after Egypt and Sumer? The answer, again, is geography: those hardwood forests. Edmund Burke spoke well when he contrasted the Indians and the English: “a people for ages civilized and cultivated…while we were yet in the woods.”2 Not until people had iron cutting tools, in the first millennium before our era (B.C.E.), could they clear those otherwise fertile plains north of the Alps. No accident, then, that settlement of what was to become Europe took place first along lakeshores (what we know as lacustrine settlements, often on stilts) and on grasslands—not necessarily the most fertile lands, but the ones accessible to primitive, nonferrous technology. Only later could Europe grow enough food to sustain denser populations and the surpluses that support urban centers of cultural exchange and development. Even so, most of the forest remained, even gaining when population shrank in the centuries following the fall of Rome. The folk memory comes down to us in legend and tale, in Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, Tom Thumb, and other stories of woods and wolves and witches and danger close by.
As these tales make clear, it would be a mistake to present the European geographic environment as idyllic. Europe knew famine and disease, long waves of cooling and warming, epidemics and pandemics. Peasants knew they could survive one and perhaps two bad crops, but after that came starvation. Here again the forest played a crucial role—source of berries, nuts, even acorns and chestnuts. And here too the steady water meant that farming was not marginal, that a dry spell would soon be followed by a return of rain and crops. One has to look at the dry places, there where cultivation is a gamble and the land risks turning into desert—not only the areas south of the invasive Sahara, or the lands east of the Jordan River on the northern margin of the Arabian desert, but the American plains west of the 100th meridian, or the Siberian steppe where Khrushchev tried to grow wheat, or the cotton lands around Lake Baikal—to get a sense of how narrow the edge where rains are fickle and rare.
This favorable environment enabled Europeans to leave more of the land for forest an
d fallow and so raise livestock without seeking far for pasture. Their animals were bigger and stronger than those of other lands. The Mongolian pony, scourge of the steppe, stood tiny next to a European battle steed; the same for Arab mounts. Much of India could not breed horses at all because of the climate. Yet both small and large animals offered advantages. The Mongol and Tartar could move easily across their empty inland sea, striking fast and hard against the sedentary populations round. The European horse, carrying an armored warrior, amounted to a living tank, irresistible in charges, unbeatable in set combat.
The conflict between these two tactics gave rise to some of the greatest battles in history. In 732, Charles Martel, grandfather of Charlemagne and Frankish Mayor of the Palace, led an army of mounted knights against the Arab invaders near Tours and set a westward limit to what had seemed irresistible Muslim expansion.* Some four hundred fifty years later, in 1187, the Saracen troops of Saladin let the European knights charge down at them at the Horns of Hattin, stepping aside at the last moment to let them through. By then the crusader mounts, which had been carrying their riders all day in the blazing sun, were exhausted. The Saracens had only to close and cut down the Europeans from the rear. So ended the crusading kingdom of Jerusalem and Christian feudal power in the Holy Land.
In the long run, however, the Europeans won. Larger animals meant an advantage in heavy work and transport. Dray horses could plow the clayey soils of the great northern plain (the horse is more powerful than the ox, that is, it moves faster and does more work in less time), while moving fresh crops to urban markets. Later on they would haul field guns to war and into combat. European herds were typically larger and yielded lots of animal fertilizer (as against the human night soil employed in East Asia). This enabled more intensive cultivation and larger crops, which gave more feed, and so on in an upward spiral. As a result, Europeans kept a diet rich in dairy products, meat, and animal proteins. They grew taller and stronger while staying relatively free of the worm infestations that plagued China and India.* (Only a few years ago, one fifth of all Chinese who received blood transfusions came down with hepatitis, because donors’ livers had been ravaged by parasites and blood screening was incompetent.)3 Healthier Europeans lived longer and worked closer to their potential.† 4
This is not to say that European crop yields per area or population densities were higher than those in warm irrigation societies. The gains from animal fertilizer, plowing (which brings nutrients up from below), and fallow could not match the fertile silt of the Nile, the Euphrates, or the Indus; even less, the alluvial deposits of the Yellow and Yangtze rivers, and the multiple cropping made possible by year-round warmth.** On the other hand, irregular interruptions in riverine cultivation, whether by want or excess of water or by enemy action against irrigation systems, could hurt far more than dry or wet spells in a rainy climate.‡ Averages are deceiving. Monsoon rains, generous over time, vary a lot from season to season and year to year. Floods and droughts are the norm. In China and India, repair and replenishment were that much more urgent. Even without catastrophe, the demand for labor in the rainy season and the big yields of wet cultivation promoted high densities of population—30 times that of Africa per unit of arable, 40 times that of Europe, 100 times that of America.5 Hence early and almost universal marriage, without regard to material resources.*
In contrast, Christian and especially western Europe accepted celibacy, late marriage (not until one could afford it), and more widely spaced births. Medieval Europeans saw children as a potential burden in time of need. Recall the stories of Hansel and Gretel and Tom Thumb—the children left in the forest to die far from the eyes of their parents. The riverine civilizations maximized population; the Europeans focused on small households and strategies of undivided inheritance and interfamilial alliance.
So, numbers alone do not tell the story, and some would say that when health and animal support are factored in, Europe may have brought more energy to agriculture (per area of cultivation) than the much more numerous populations of Asia. Such peasant throngs, moreover, tempted Asian rulers to undertake ostentatious projects based on forced labor. These would one day be the wonder and scandal of European visitors—great tourist attractions—astonishing by the contrast between overweening wealth and grinding poverty. “The splendours of Asian courts, the religious and funerary monuments and hydraulic engineering works, the luxury goods and skilled craftsmanship seemed merely to testify that political organisation could squeeze blood out of stones if the stones were numerous enough.”†
The Europeans did not have to build pyramids.** Europe, particularly western Europe, was very lucky. Now look at China, where “agriculture teems…and mankind swarms.”6
Anyone who wants to understand world economic history must study China, the most precocious and long the most successful developer of all. Here is a country with some 7 percent of the earth’s land area that supports some 21 percent of the world’s population. The old Chinese slogan puts it succinctly: “The land is scarce and the people are many.”7
Some two thousand years ago, perhaps 60 million people crowded what was to become the northern edge of China—a huge number for a small territory. This number more or less held over the next millennium, but then, from about the tenth to the beginning of the thirteenth century, almost doubled, to around 120 million. At that point came a setback, due largely to the pandemics also scourging Europe and the Middle East; and then, from a trough of 65-80 million around 1400, the number of Chinese rose to 100-150 million in 1650, 200-250 million in 1750, over 300 million by the end of the eighteenth century, around 400 million in 1850, 650 million in 1950, and today 1.2 billion, or more than one fifth of the world total. This extraordinary increase is the result of a long-standing (up to now) reproductive strategy: early, universal marriage and lots of children. That takes food, and the food in turn takes people. Treadmill.
This strategy went back thousands of years, to when some peoples at the eastern end of the Asian steppe exchanged nomadic pastoralism for the higher yields of sedentary agriculture. From the beginning, their chiefs saw the link between numbers, food, and power. Their political wisdom may be inferred from (1) their mobilization of potential cultivators, assigned to (planted in) potentially arable soil; (2) their storage of grain to feed future armies; (3) their focus on food supply to fixed administrative centers (as against camps). On these points, we have “The Record of the Three Kingdoms,” which tells of state warfare around the year 200 of our era:
Ts’ao Ts’ao said: “It is by strong soldiers and a sufficiency of food that a state is established. The men of Ch’in took possession of the empire by giving urgent attention to farming. Hsiao-wu made use of military colonies to bring order to the western regions. This is a good method used by former generations.” In this year he recruited commoners to farm state colonies around Hsu [in central Honan] and obtained a million measures of grain. Then he…marched out on campaign in every direction. There was no the wealth and poverty of nations need to expend effort on the transport of grain. In consequence he destroyed the swarms of bandits [the forces of rival political chiefs] and brought peace to the empire.
A half century later, according to the same source, “it was desired to extend the area under cultivation and to amass a supply of grain that would make it possible to destroy the ‘bandits.’” To do this, “it would also be necessary to excavate canals to provide water for irrigation, to make possible the accumulation of large supplies of grain for the troops, and to serve as routes for the transport of the government grain….” Some calculations follow: “Within six or seven years thirty million measures of grain would be stockpiled on the Huai. This would be enough to feed 100,000 men for five years. Wu would thus be conquered and [Wei] arms prevail everywhere.”8 And so it was.
This erratic seesaw of labor-hungry soil and food-hungry labor inevitably brought times and places of want, even famine. No room for animals. Around 300 C.E. a memorialist named Shu Hsi complained:
The situation is especially bad in the San-Wei, and yet grazing lands for pigs, sheep, and horses are spread throughout this region. All of these should be done away with, so that provision may be made for those with no or little land…. All the pasturages should be removed, so that horses, cattle, pigs, and sheep feed on the grass of the empty plains, while the men who roam about in search of a living may receive land from the bounty of the state.9
Clearly, Chinese agriculture could not run fast enough. State and the society were always striving for new land and higher yields, making and using people in order to feed people. Under the emperor T’ai-wu (reigned 424-52, so, over a century later), the government was not going to leave anything to chance. Peasants without oxen were forced to sell their labor for the loan of oxen. Families were listed, numbers were counted, labor duties and performance clearly recorded. “Their names were written up at the place where they worked, so that it was possible to distinguish between their varying degrees of success. They were also forbidden to drink wine, to attend theatrical entertainments, or to abandon agriculture for wine-making or trade.”10
No time, then, for fun or money. Only for growing food and making children.
Viewed over time, the treadmill process shows a number of stages:
1. The Chinese, or Han people, as they came to call themselves, started in the north, in the forests edging the barren inner Asian steppe. They cleared the land (by fire?) and worked it as hard as they could; but what with irregular rainfall and no trees to hold the soil, severe erosion soon killed the yield. They then moved, not into the open dry lands to the west, which could not support an already dense population, but south, on to the loess soils along the upper Yellow River.*
The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor Page 4