Relationship between western European countries and others - Essay Example

Relationship between western European countries and others The European countries, thus, looked down on China since they were at a better position in the industrialization sector, despite China’s size, wealth and high population. John Barrow, the writer of Travels in China contributed to how different writers and citizens of Western Europe thought about China. He made them view their country as superior, because, he reasoned that although in the past China was more developed, the Western Europe in the 1800s had grown to be more industrialized and had advanced more in technology.

He emphasized that the education offered in Western Europe was of higher quality than in China because the Chinese did not learn algebra, Chemistry and geometry. The decline of the Qing dynasty, economic growth and China’s defeat by the western powers seemed to reinforce the thought that the country was better than China. The British realized that China’s military had not developed during the opium war due to use of smoke and lack of expertise in using firearms. This led to a more degraded image of China.

Although China had invented the compass, gunpowder and printers, it did not advance on these new inventions. Their lack of admitting that the Europe was more developed and; therefore, declining to embrace the technological change, showed China’s inability to embrace change.James Mill, a writer of the History of British India book influenced greatly how the western Europeans viewed the Indians. Basing his argument on Scotsmann Grant views, he argued that the Indians were deficient in education, technology, science, civilization and medicine.2. He argued that although Indians had invented handcraft, there was little advancement made in improving their inventory2.

Their poor learning systems did not involve teaching of sciences e.g. anatomy and their teachings in mathematics were not fit for any civilized person. There was belittlement of the Indians discoveries in the mining of iron ore. They described the activity as negligible because it carried out on small scale. They considered it destructive and imperfectly done. There was ridicule on the cotton textiles the Indians produced. The character traits associated to them were dishonesty and morally decayed2.

The collapse of the Mughal Empire emphasized these traits together with their lack of masculinity. Although Indians had built buildings similar to the Europeans, the Europeans still considered India barbaric and uncivilized due to lack of roads and pipes. However, this made them pass the lowest set social development stage by the Europeans. The Europeans called the Indians barbaric because of the medicine they took, which they said was not fit for the civilized. Mill created an impression that the Indians were unwise because they spent their time playing chess and hunting tigers unlike the Britons who spent their time and resources in trading and developing their empires.

They had poor military weapons as compared to the British although the Europeans did not take into consideration that Indians adopted the Europeans training methods and arms. The thinking of the Western Europeans as better than the other countries made it gain more power and superiority in the world. Europeans based their superiority on how righteous a country was in terms of religion in the past, but this changed