Étienne Fortier-Dubois

The Yuan follow up on this by being super into global trade, commerce, and cultural exchange (whether anyone else wants to or not)... to the point where their shoddy economic policies, climate change, and the Black Death burn out the Chinese economy and throw the whole region in chaos (again)

Then the Ming comes in, saying "screw that, we're going b... See more

Despite its strengths, Song China never developed an effective military system. Instead it relied on mercenaries, diplomacy, and paying off outside threats.

purely contingent and accidental reasons. Pomeranz puts great stress on one factor, that China’s coal reserves were both geologically inaccessible and geographically remote, making a steam-powered industrial revolution like the one in Europe impossible

China and Europe are different in many ways, but one is that after the Mongol conquest in the 12th century, China remains a unified empire run by a single Mandarin bureaucracy.

In 1078, China produced 125,000 tons of cast iron, more than the rest of the planet put together.