Absolutely wrong and is disputed by all major historians.
Europeans were "forced" to look for other trade routes after the Ottoman Empire had chocked Europe by dominating all major land and sea routes through which Europeans carried their trade...
First of all, simply because "all major historians", which you don't name, say something, doesn't make it true. 20 years or say, all major historians also said Medieval Europeans thought the world was flat, which wasn't true at all.
Second of, until the West invention of the railroad, water transportation was cheaper than land transportation. That is why China built its network of canals. There would have always been a powerful economic incentive to find an all water route to Asia. By the 19th century, tea was a major import from China to Britain, and it would never have been economical to transport tea by land. So even if the Ottomans hadn't been greedy, there was still a strong motive to find an all water route to Asia.
Finally, the Europeans were trying to bypass the Islamic world to get to Asia, which shows how important the Islamic world was to them.
It wasn't a 'by-product' of Europe's rise...
Without the improvements in navigation and ship technology, they couldn't have gotten to the Americas economically. Nor could they have conquered the natives without the superiority of weapons technology they enjoyed. The Vikings failed in their earlier attempts to settle America because they couldn't transport enough people with their ships to make settlement viable.
The unlimited resources of Americas, and labor, were fundamental to Europe's rise....without them, Europeans probably would have crumbled to the Ottoman Empire..which had conquered half of entire European continent already!
The resources of the Americas were not unlimited, large as they might be. If the Europeans didn't get the resources they need from the Americas, they would have found them elsewhere, Siberia maybe.
Without the technology they obtained from the Europeans, the Ottomans would have fallen long ago. It was only with European cannon technology that they finally succeeded in conquering Constantinople after fruitlessly trying on their own for 700 years!
And so the Muslims were good at killing and conquest . There hasn't been an empire as powerful and wealthy as the Ottomans that made so little contribution to the advancement of science and technology.
You repeatedly talk about the ability of the Ottomans and other Muslims to conquer, i.e., to kill people. To me, killing people, but not making other major advancement in science and technology is not something to be proud of that you obviously are.
But no way near at the pace that America's wealth later caused Europe to advance at...
Leave aside your bias for a second, and tell me, do you seriously think that Europe would have dominated the world like it did without Americas?
Your bias prevents you from seeing the point I was making. Sooner or later, with the Europeans continuing to make new technological inventions and scientific discoveries, and the Islamic and the rest of thew world basically static when it came to new major inventions and scientific discoveries, the Europeans would have eventually surpassed the rest of the world and come to dominate it economically and militarily. It might have taken longer for that to take, that is all. When the Europeans had steamship, repeating rifles, and machines, and the rest of the world was still using sailing ships and matchlock guns, the Europeans would have come to dominate, if not in the 19th then in the 20th or 21th century.
The Europeans were making world changing inventions BEFORE they discovered the New World, not after - major, world shaking inventions such as the printing press (Chinese invented only printing, not the printing press), engraving and etching printing (which the Chinese never invented), matchlock firing mechanisms and corning gunpowder ()which made it both more reliable and powerful), magnetic compasses, frame first ship construction, multi-mast square and fore/aft sail ships, etc.
The rest of the world wouldn't have surpassed the Europeans, because the main competing civilizations, China, India, and Islam, were technologically relatively static. They were not making new major inventions during the same time period, and there is no good reason to expect would. If the Europeans didn't invent steamships, telegraphs, repeating guns, and machine guns, then they wouldn't have gotten invented. The other civilizations had opportunity to develop these new technologies while Europe was still in the Dark Ages, but failed to do so. For example, no other civilization developed modern human anatomy and found the modern theory of blood circulation, but there wasn't any technological limitations that would have prevented other civilizations from developing either of the fields.
The Spanish drove the Muslims out of Spain before the New World was discovered, the Russians conquered the Muslim Golden Horde before the wealth of the New World arrived in Europe,
Without indian numerals and Arabic Algebra/logarithms, Europe would still be living burning their ..... as witch crafts...
If you actually knew history, the great witch trials and burnings did not occur until the beginning of the modern era, after the new world was discovered, and centuries after Indian numerals and algebra had arrived in Europe. They had no effect on the issue witch trials.
At least non Muslim Europeans are not encouraging them ..... to blow themselves and kill other men, women, and children like the Muslims TODAY. Witch trials are things centuries in the past, suicide bombers are happening today.
And if the Europeans hadn't gotten the Indian Numerals and algebra from others, they could and would have invented the equivalent themselves if they needed to. This is not an idle boast - Europeans re-invented cast iron, porcelain, and concrete, something that Muslims never did.
Without Mamluks, Mongols would have ripped apart Western Europe sending it back to stone-age..
You don't invade Europe from Egypt with a cavalry force like the Mongols. The Mamluks save the Muslim world, not Europe. What saved Europe was Mongol politics. Although the terrain of western Europe is less suited to the Mongol style of fighting, and the Mongols might have found conquering Western Europe more difficult than the weaker and poorer parts of Europe they did conquer.
umm..I quit.
Such assertions are childish.... Every civilization has made great/significant contributions of human life...
I never said nor meant to imply such was not the case. But not all contributions are equal, and some have provided more contributions than others.
LOL! now this is epic...
Ancient Indians had books on surgery..Muslims during golden age invented some of the most important surgical equipments...and so on.
Europeans' medicine in dark ages, before coming in contact with the Muslims through Crusades, were a joke.
Once, I read a primary Arab account of Ibn Munqid regarding his dealings with the crusaders...and he describes in detail how Crusaders had no idea about hygiene, medicine, and advance medical practices..and how crusaders' will kill patients due to their backward, and superstitious medical practices...
So you want to compare Islam at its best with Europe at its worst? Sure, Muslim medicine was better back then, that is not something I ever denied. But that story is from the earlier centuries of the Crusade, before the 14th century. If you want to compare current situation, how about this for comparison - the 3 countries with the top infant mortality rates are all Muslim countries, and the Muslim country with the highest has a level that is t 1000% higher than the rate in the US, and the US doesn't have the best rate. None of the 50 countries with the lowest rate are Muslim countries.
Islamic Medicine had huge impact on West...And Islamic Medicine had huge impact of Indian, Greek, and Chinese knowledge and so on..
It was the other way around, the ancient Greeks had a big impact on Islamic medicine, not the other way around. The ancient Greeks were before the Muslims. Galen wrote centuries before Muhammad, and he had a huge impact on Islamic medicine.
Yes.
lol, and offcourse, suit, tie etc had no Eastern influence
And world uses Indo-Arab numerical system, which forms the basis of the standards of measure and so on..
No, the Indo-Arab numerical system does not form the basis of standards, it is just a method of notation. The metric system wouldn't be any different if we used a different method of notation, it would just look different.
That article is a load of crap and nonsense, which I am not going to waste time in this article disputing. English common law derived from the customs and practices of the the Anglo-Saxons, and just another example of how the Muslims tried to steal credit, just like they tried to steal credit for Arabic numbers and the Zero, until better historical knowledge made the West aware that they were really Indian inventions.
Persians had a written human right code centuries before westerners even understood the concept of human right..Offcourse, our current human right charter is much improved..since we live in modern times..
Nonsense. The Persians, who have always been ruled by kings and other autocrats, are not the founders of human rights. But as usual, you make typical Muslim claims not backed by anything so trivial as "facts"\
The Persians did not have an independent body that did not serve at the whim of the king that enforced these hypothetical rights.
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We have all seen the great human track record that Islamic societies have, winners like the Saddam, Khadafi, and others.
PS, John Locke was highly influence by Islamic Philosophers and thinkers....no?
Actually, no. Here is are the influences on Lock. e
Influences on Locke. Locke's philosophy is grounded in medieval thought, though he, like Descartes, turned away from it as far as possible. The Cambridge Platonists, notably Ralph Cudworth and Benjamin Whichcote, influenced him greatly with respect to religious tolerance, empirical inquiry, and the theory of knowledge. Locke was indebted to Richard Hooker in his political thought. Hobbes probably influenced him somewhat, though Locke was concerned not to be classed as a Hobbist.
The two most important philosophical influences upon him were Descartes and Pierre Gassendi. From Descartes he learned much that is incorporated in the Essay, and in Gassendi and the Gassendists he found support to challenge the doctrine of innate ideas and the radical rationalistic realism of Des-cartes. Gassendi helped to convince Locke both that knowledge begins in sensation and that intellect, or reason, is essential to the attainment of truth and knowledge.
John Locke
Actually quite the opposite I'd say..
West's religion comes from East...Westerners eat more Eastern food that vice versa...Coffee, Alcohol etc are basic parts of our culture...something without which our everyday life is unthinkable..and these comes from East....basis of our mathematics comes from East...
You have shifted definition the meaning of "East" in your discussions. The "East" you refer to is the Mideast, and can include Anatolia, which culturally was more part of Europe until Muslim rapist and murders conquered the land. And discussions were comparing Europe with Islam, and now you have shifted the argument when you couldn't win.
And you want to get into "heritage", then applying the same standard virtually all of Islamic civilization came from others by the same token. Their religion was derived previous Jews and Christians, Many of their most important cities were founded by non-Muslims (Alexandria, Istanbul), Muslim medicine was based on Greek Medicine, Muslim philosophy was derived from Greek philosophy, almost all Muslim technology had a Greco-Roman basis, their mathematics was derived from Greek and Indian sources. Even their main coin, the dinar, was derived from the Roman denarius. While the Muslims made some improvements, almost all they did was found on the works of previous civilizations. They did not come up on their own with a completely new branch of mathematics like the Europeans did with calculus, and or develop completely new geometry, as they did with non-Euclidian geometry
Specially today, through massive immigration, there is a "physical" presence of Eastern culture on Western lands...can't say that for East though...Millions of non-Westerners bring their culture, religion, tradition, family-structure, way of thinking etc etc to the West...
And there is a lot of immigrant rats in Western lands to. Most of the new immigrants have adopted to Western culture, adopting western dress, and language.
The unassimilated immigrants have brought things like "honor killings", increase crime, increased rapes, and other changes you can be proud of.
Here is one final couple of points:
1. Any of the lands that the Muslims conquered that later became world leading centers of civilizations, had well developed civilizations before the Muslim conquest. Both the Mideast and the India had ancient civilizations that existed thousands of years before the Muslim conquest. These areas were among the leaders of civilizations since the dawn of civilization itself.
2. These same areas, that had always been among the leading civilizations of the world before Islam, are no longer among the leading technological or scientific areas of the world
Show me one song from India, Pakistan, Arab World, or China etc..that has such glaring Western influence..and that get THIS many views...?
Symphony orchestras throughout the world. You can find classical (European) orchestras in China, Japan, and throughout the world, playing the same music, using the same instruments as their western counterparts.
but "culturally", West is getting easternized faster than East getting Westernized...
Americans eat more Indian food than Indians eat American food...
A lot more Japanese are eating steak than Americans eating Japanese food. A lot more Indians drink scotch and whisky than Americans drink Indian drinks (whatever they are).
Things like democracy becoming the prevalent form of government, and most governments becoming republics is due to Western influence. Traditional Islam has virtually no Republics, and the fundamentalist, although they may not realize it, were borrowing a Western type government.
Our concept of right and wrong was largely influenced by the West. It was the West, and the influence of the West, that slavery was ended, and it only persist in those areas that are least influence by the west.
The style of buildings follow western taste, not Eastern ones
The fact we have a global civilization at all is due entirely to the West. All previous civilizations, and that includes Islam, were just regional., and never effected more than part the world.
