The Baboose

England's flag (on flickr)

This is just a copy of an e-mail I sent to a friend.

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I am also curious how England achieved so much, despite being a small country, and an island nation.

Japan and England are similar: both are big island nations next to an overbearing continent; have four seasons; have no tropical weather; and are between 30-60° latitude. Not important, but worth mentioning is that both have different types of natural disasters.

Having no tropical or year round warm weather is a major factor in innovation. It’s one of the reasons why both countries are more advanced than say Papua New Guinea or Hawaii. The UCLA Researcher, Jared Diamond, has a very interesting theory on this in his book Guns, Germs, and Steel.

In my opinion the main reason why England outpaced Japan is because of its internal and respective continent’s political atmosphere – including its competition with neighbors in academics, war, science, economics, etc.

Europe is an amalgamation of many small nations and has not been ruled by one empire for a long period of time – I am excluding Napoleon because his rule didn’t last for a long time – for that reason, Europe was in constant conflict and the many nations that did not innovate were swallowed by those that did. A perfect expression to describe the situation European nations were in is “innovate or die.”

Japan on the other hand was next to China, a massive empire that stopped innovating in technology in the 13th century (It did innovate in philosophical pursuits).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China

The Japan we know today was in a state of conflict for thousands of years until Tokugawa united most of Honshu, Kyushu, Shikoku, and Hokkaido (Okinawa did not become a part of Japan until 1879) under one ruler. The constant conflict between the nations within present-day Japan led to a lot of innovations in combat and weaponry, engineering, politics, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okinawa

The defining factor I believe for England ousting Japan as the strongest island nation and eventually becoming the most powerful nation in the world in 19th century and arguably the 18th century was the political environment of the continent.

England was next to Europe, a constant battleground, a site of many nations and rapid innovation, and the place to be for the exchange of modern technology. England, while in a constant battle with its neighbors, received the technology produced there. England needed advance modern technology to maintain its power and to continue existing.

Japan on the other hand was near China: A former hotbed for technology that stopped innovating in the 13th or 14th century. Additionally, China was a massive nation surrounded by enemies without advance modern technology – compared to the situation in Europe. For this reason, China and Japan did not have to innovate with the fervor European nations did to stay alive. Which concurrently led to Europe becoming the site of technological innovation.

Why did Europe a landmass of comparable size to China produce so much more innovation? Europe was a collection of battling powers, which needed to innovate for survival (competition breeds innovation) as opposed to one massive nation without a dire need to innovate for survival. Also, in Europe’s case, technology transferred easily from nation to nation producing further advancements.

This is the reason I see for Asia and Japan losing to Europe and England. Asia stopped innovating, while Europe started to on a rapid scale.