r/AskHistorians - Reddit

China’s part in international commerce may have been relatively small, but its internal trade may have been as large, if not larger, than that of contemporary Europe.

The colonization of the Americas and the expanded trade with Asia also unleashed a new frenzy of consumerism in Europe, marked by soaring demand for spices from Asia and Africa. The most sought after products were tea, silks, and porcelain from China; fine textiles from India; coffee from Yemen; and a trio of addictive products from America’s new c

Self-sustaining industrialization took off just once in human history, in Britain in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. All other industrialization since then are descendants of the technologies, corporate laws, and financial mechanisms of Britain’s breakthrough. Before Britain’s industrial revolution, other places had developed industr

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, judicial apparatus and sociopolitical structures that took centuries to form and mature in the West and which could not be copied and internalised rapidly. France and the United States quickly

A most remarkable diplomatic initiative, known as the Iwakura Mission, was launched. Senior Japanese diplomats voyaged around the world to establish new diplomatic relations with Europe and the United States and to study best practices abroad as the basis for Japanese reforms in many key areas, including the structure of government, central banking