ComradeRat

I hope not

I'm still not sure. As @Dolores@hexbear.net says it likely had something to do with islamic conquest (not Ottoman though; the split occurred before then). It was against religious law for Sunni muslims to live outside of the House of Islam or to trade with the christians (this rule was of course violated), and their economic and administrative systems took very seperate courses from very early on. Sadly I havent done investigation into exactly what these differences were etc so cannot speak to them beyond generalities such as more centralisation. Deforestation is a strong possibility and definitely a factor, but without more research its hard to know how much

However, drawing on Jones' work on the collapse of Rome, its clear that this divergence between East and West predated the rise of Islam. The trade economy of the West was never as robust as the East, and when it lost imperial trade connections, it collapsed hard, much harder than the East.

In the Eastern empire existing admin anf economic structures were taken over and only slightly altered, existing groups, peasant or aristocrat, taxed. In the West otoh, Rome's settler-colonial policies saw mass settlement of retired soldiers with slaves (from conquests) for farm work. Slaves therefore featured more heavily in the western empire, and as the Western empire fell they rose slightly, to become protoserfs, whereas the remaining free farmers fell into protoserfdom.

These slave-owning small farmers were firmly tied to and dependent on Roman markets for many necessary commodities. As one example, some parts of the empire (e.g. Britain) native-made pottery disappears from the Archaeological record in favour of those imported. As a result, following the collapse, britons had to relearn the ability to make pots from the ground up.

Mostly going off of Jones' 2 volume work on the later empire. Slavery basically permeates every pore of Roman society, especially in production.

Mediterranean to start with. It's huge and relatively calm to sail on, so lotsa trade, meaning lots of practice (and profit) in improving those trading ships. Rome took this to new (horrific) heights; mass (slave) produced, standardised pottery from North Africa can be found across the entire empire, from Jerusalem to London. Rome's power (and wealth) was built on this slave labour (both in factories and in villas and in boats).

Rome's collapse slowed the marketization and decreased the scale, but on the whole by this point, such methods of transport and trade had reached the northern coast of Europe, which has a similarly large, but less calm sea. Traders here needed more navigatory techniques, and of course traders going all the way around Iberia, the sea route connecting these two seas, requires naval expertise.

Europe's polities are tiny and constantly fighting, in need of cash to pay armies (increasingly, mercenary armies). Merchants are hence supported, sponsered, etc. From here, see my points about the clock and navigatory technology above.

Thanks!

Trade. Specifically, trade overseas (sea transport is much faster than land transport to the point of qualitative difference) allowed by long-distance ships. This seems to have had dramatic effects from very early on centred around the Mediterranean (e.g. Bronze age, Hellenic world, Rome, etc for more detail see Broodbank's The Making of the Middle Sea). The secret to merchants' capital and hence merchants' power is found in ch5 of Kapital:

The form of circulation within which money is transformed into capital contradicts all the previously developed laws bearing on the nature of commodities, value, money and even circulation itself. What distinguishes this form from that of the simple circulation of commodities is the inverted order of succession of the two antithetical processes, sale and purchase. How can this purely formal distinction change the nature of these processes, as if by magic?

But that is not all. This inversion has no existence for two of the three persons who transact business together. As a capitalist, I buy commodities from A and sell them again to B... [A&B] step forth only as buyers or sellers of commodities. I myself confront them each time as a mere owner of either money or commodities, as a buyer or a seller, and what is more, in both sets of transactions I confront A only as a buyer and B only as a seller. I confront the one only as money, the other only as commodities, but neither of them as capital or a capitalist, or a representative of anything more than money or commodities, or of anything which might produce any effect beyond that produced by money or commodities.(258)

Even in the relatively even playing field of the Mediterranean, this creates the ability of one party, the capitalist, to hold an overwhelming advantage of knowledge of (closer to) the entire process of exchange, instead of one part. In addition, this creates impetus to find new sources of valuable materials (a source of relative surplus value) spurring expansion. These twin impulses help drive and enable early European expansion. The next key to super-imperialism lies in the medieval monasteries.

Moving quickly (for more detail; Landes The Invention of Time and parts of Crosby The Measure of Reality), medieval monks became very fixated on routine, schedule, fixed times unchanged by the movement of the sun, etc. This made them efficient workers, and it spread into the cities. This conception of time (time composed of homogenous, discrete units instead of heterogenous, continous movement) is a necessary precondition for the existence of the capitalist mode of production, but here we are interested in its relationship to the construction of the modern escapement clock (as opposed to e.g. water clocks, sun-dials, etc).

Modern clocks (basically the kind where time is measured by discrete intervals of sounds; the tick) arise from this conception of time, as a way to create clocks that are more consistent. At first, a main goal of such clocks was to regulate monastery life better; it spread to cities and burghers from there. At this point, we are at the pendulum clocks, and these serve well for use on land. However, the clock has applications for navigation.

In sea navigation you wanna know how far North/South you are (latitude) and how far East/West (longitude). Latitude is much easier to find to an accurate degree than longitude, so it was a major limiting factor in naval navigation. The pendulum clock allowed for much more accurate longitudinal readings, but pendulums do not work at sea. Even more complicated, smaller, mechanical clocks were needed, and they were created. This allowed Europe to reinforce its naval navigation advantage regarding trade.

From 1492 and even earlier, the ships developed through mass trade in the mediterranean saw Europe become a global middleman, buying (or stealing) goods in places where they were common and selling them in places where they were rarer. This was ultimately the source of European wealth and power, as they enjoyed a collective near monopoly on (direct) intercontinental trade, flow of information and military movement.

Europe's dependence on those ships gave it impetus to develop more intricate clocks and ships, and the wealth flowing into Europe gave it the means. As Europe shifted more towards exporting manufactured goods, this created impetus for methods to rapidly produce tons of shit. As manufacture turned into industry (meaning; as the machine was invented and the human turned into a mere motive power and machine-minder), a more controllable motive power was needed, and coincidentally existed in large quantities in the centre of manufacture (Britain).

The information gap also makes resistance, or even intention to resist more difficult:

The circulation of commodities differs from the direct exchange of products not only in form, but in its essence. We have only to consider the course of events. The weaver has undoubtedly exchanged his linen for a Bible, his own commodity for someone else's. But this phenomenon is only true for him. The Biblepusher, who prefers a warming drink to cold sheets, had no intention of exchanging linen for his Bible; the weaver did not know that wheat had been exchanged for his linen. B's commodity replaces that of A, but A and B do not mutually exchange their commodities...We see here, on the one hand, how the exchange of commodities breaks through all the individual and local limitations of the direct exchange of products, and develops the metabolic process of human labour. On the other hand, there develops a whole network of social connections of natural origin, entirely beyond the control of the human agents. (208)

...

Since money does not reveal what has been transformed into it, everything, commodity or not, is convertible into money. Everything becomes saleable and purchaseable. Circulation becomes the great social retort into which everything is thrown, to come out again as the money crystal.(229)

Conditions of production (e.g. extraordinarily brutal slavery, unprecendented ecocide, etc) are similarly in "the hidden abode of production on whose threshold there hangs the notice 'No admittance except on business'"(279-80), so for example while someone might reject trading furs for alcohol if they knew the alcohol was made with horrific slave labour, the conditions of international trade kept most knowledge in European hands. Without being aware of the conditions of oppression, without lines of communication, without immediate knowledge of the Europeans' goals, etc, co-ordinated defence against Europe is difficult.

Afaik this is the transcription of the original letter rather than a translation (it can be found in MEWBand32). I'm not a German speaker, but my guess would be that any weirdness is a combination of:

1. it being 19th century German;

2. it might have traits of 19th century Rhineland dialect;

3. it uses random English;

4. it's a speedily written letter so may have errors

Marx tends to use random English, French, Latin, Greek, Italian, etc words and grammar in his personal writings along with his own contractions in German, and just words he's made up

Engels translated his own name as Fred actually

We have evidence of this as early as the 1838-9 letters to his sister Marie (Engels was in the habit of using random bits of English even in his earliest letters).

And it becomes more prominent ofc once he moves to England and lives there. Marx himself used 'Fred' to refer to Engels often, including in this Dec. 6 1868 letter

Rent is expensive

The first half of Anita Chan et al's Chen Village: Revolution to Globalization gives a very close look at the cultural revolution at the level of a single village. The author's emphasise it isn't representative of ALL villages, but the book gives the most in depth look at the day-to-day of cultural-revolutioning I've seen. The second half looks at the history of the village post-Mao.

Mobo Gao's The Battle for China's Past: Mao and the Cultural Revolution is a fullthroated historical defence of Mao, the Cultural Revolution and tthe Great Leap Forward written by a Chinese maoist. It has a lot of citations to Chinese works, which is RARE for something written in English. Unfortunately, I don't speak Chinese so I can't really check what sort of sources they are.

Xiaojia Hou's Negotiating Socialism: Mao, Peasants and Local Cadres in Shanxi, 1949-53 falls outside the period you're asking about, but if you want to understand the Great Leap Forward, I'd advise giving it a look if you can find it online/in a library. Very detailed and close engagement with CPC sources to look at the foundations of the PRC's economic systems which show the various issues at the top, mid level and at the grassroots that would lead to the Great Leap.

Wen Tiejun's work 10 Crises: The Political Economy of China's Development, 1949-2020 covers the GPCR and the GLF from a more abstract-economical perspective. Instead of ideological terms, both are looked at in terms of economic cycles, responses to foreign relations and strained government costs.

I remember playing Civ IV when I was like 13. I had a nice socialist state set up, everyone was happy and healthy. And then the UN voted for global capitalism and all my cities started starving. I think that played a part in my radicalisation.

Don't know which is the most lib, but the least lib one is definitely Order of the Pheonix