What is the role of European feudal agricultural economy in European civilization?

When talking about the progress of Chinese and Western civilizations, many people always think that Chinese civilization is lagging behind European civilization because of the change of position between the East and the West in the last hundred years, or how Western civilization is superior to Chinese civilization, and so on. But in my opinion: Chinese civilization and European civilization due to the huge difference in their geographical environment, and chose two very different development path. So we can't easily compare the superiority of the two in the historical process

When talking about the differences in the historical process between China and Europe, an overview of the changes of the times may be a good way. Europe can be roughly divided into the nodes of City-State Era - Roman Era - Medieval Era - Enlightenment and Exploration - Revolution and Industry. China, on the other hand, can be divided into the nodes of

Ancient Age - Age of Feudalism - Age of Great Unification - Westernization and Self-Transformation. The differences between China and Europe are obvious almost from the beginning, but how did they come about?

First, the origins of the geography of China and Europe

China is located on the eastern edge of the continent of Asia and Europe, with endless steppes, the Gobi, and the Siberian Ice Sheet in the north, and the towering Himalayas in the west, and the Taklamakan Desert in the northwest, which is severely depleted of water resources.

The southern part is the forest area which cannot be developed by the pre-Qin human beings, and the eastern part is the Pacific Ocean and the Japanese island which is as isolated as China, which seriously isolates China from the civilizations of the world, and the degree of isolation of China is similar to that of the Americas, but the superior natural conditions of China are incomparable to that of the Americas, and the Chinese civilization is a typical agrarian civilization relying on the two big rivers and plains. The Chinese civilization was a typical farming civilization based on two great rivers and plains, and most of its areas had a monsoon climate, which was warm and humid, and it was possible to feed a large part of the population simply by growing food without looting. The agrarian economy required a strong centralized government to ensure social order and to limit the flow of population and production. Since then, dynasties have changed, and unification-division-unification has become the basic rule. Stavrianos outlines it this way: each dynasty began by strengthening the power of the central government as a means of organizing a large-scale army to fight against the nomads, but as time went on, the country fell to the nomads again ......

And the source of European civilization is the Roman and Greek civilization, both distributed in the Mediterranean coast, compared to the large deserts in Africa, hot climate; Northern Europe is a dense forest, we can easily understand why the Mediterranean Sea has become the birthplace of European civilization. It had a mild climate suitable for farming, a vast inland sea and a scattering of islands that gave the Greeks access to food, fish and a basis for early colonization. But the Mediterranean had a serious drawback: it had scant precipitation, which led to a fragile agrarian economy that could easily lead to food shortages once the population boomed in peacetime. And the vast plains within Europe, but also very vulnerable to nomadic invasion and lead to the collapse of the country, the collapse of civilization. Therefore, Europe was united by the short-lived Roman Empire, and then quickly split into various states with different cultures and a strong sense of independence. The wars between the various states were all fought by a unified religious

system, the Roman Catholic Church.

Second, the chain reaction of geographic differences

Huang Renyu believes that when the unification of the state was established, the rigid social composition of the peasant-gentry-bureaucrats, leading to the gradual corruption of the state system, such as the end of the Ming Dynasty, the ineffective tax system and the military system, coupled with the Confucian civilization of introspective and closed, do not think about the change of the culture. factors. As a result, Chinese civilization never took a step towards industrialization during the long feudal era.

Wanli fifteen years wrote: "This empire is neither the tendency to advocate martial arts, nor the transformation of society, improve the standard of living, its purpose is only to make a large number of people are not embarrassed by famine, that is, in the "four books," the so-called" The purpose of this is only to keep a large number of people from being embarrassed by famine, that is, to maintain long-lasting peace and security under the low standard of what the "Four Books" call "no hunger and no cold for the people. ......" I really thought so after I read it

That is to say that the root of the problem is the great unification of the country, and that China has set up the great unification of the state, and has utilized the state apparatus of the great unification of the country to eliminate progressive speech that is against the government or progressive speech against the monarch himself, leading to cultural stagnation. China did not have a religious system, but at the same time it lacked a rigorous atheistic and rationally critical philosophy, and the severity of this problem trickles down to this day.

The problem with great unification is again that the central government can regulate the economy with impunity, rather than the market that arises from an agrarian economy. What we often say about the importance of agriculture over commerce, and the backwardness of China as a result of the closed-door system, is in fact precisely related to the great unification of the state. In China, at the peak of the agrarian economy, there was a civic class, which Europe considered the most important for political modernization, which often consisted of ordinary citizens, such as early small capitalists and artisans, but which played a role in shaking down monarchical dictatorship and winning the autonomy of the cities. China's civic class is not, they with the growth of the country's political center and cluster, economic strength is weak, the state can even arbitrarily deprive them of property and life, resulting in their in the course of China's history has never played an important influence

In contrast, in Europe, in the long medieval era, never produced absolute centralized unity of the state, the feudal monarchs and feudal ministers in the division of the existence of the development of the system in the division. The feudal monarchical system existed in the midst of division and developed in the midst of division. Even in countries that we consider monarchies today, such as Britain, they even retained parliamentary politics, aristocratic rule, and the ancient Roman tradition of protecting private property. (This is the result of one party's strength not being able to achieve decisive suppression of the other party.) And then the King of England slightly wanted to increase his own autocratic power, wantonly depriving the nobles of their property, was met with resistance from the nobles and led to the Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights, so it must be said that this breakthrough was difficult and great. The continuous development of "democratic" politics, in turn, constantly awakening the growing class of citizens, forming a rare virtuous circle, "the king of the people" eventually became a democracy.

The lack of political unity led to great economic and cultural exchanges; the Arabs brought the compass and numbers to Europe, the Mongols broke up the traditional European economic order and brought gunpowder to Europe, and everyone understood the great value of these cultural exchanges. Until the end of the Middle Ages, Europe encountered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, the unification of the Islamic Empire in the Middle East, closed the original trade routes in Europe and Asia, forcing the Western European aristocracy wanted to open a new sea route and get their own need for spices, tea and other specialties of Central Asia, East Asia, the great exploration of the era thus opened, and as a political and economic change of the chain reaction of thought and scientific and technological enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution and the widespread dissemination of democracy, contributed to the great European greatness. The widespread dissemination of the European great civilization reached its peak.