Historical Questions you want answered.

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Lago PARANOIA
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Historical Questions you want answered.

Post by Lago PARANOIA »

1.) How did pre-industrial China get to have a much, much larger population than other pre-industrial civilizations?

2.) What exactly was the point of the original Kulturkampf? I've heard three separate, confusing stories: the first being a modernization of German government, the other being a misguided attempt to clamp down on socialists, and the last being a misguided attempt to neuter the Catholic Church.
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Post by Koumei »

Well, I can't explain population density, but take a look at a map. China, like the USA, is big enough that when trying to do an apples-to-apples comparison with European countries, you basically have to compare it to all of Europe at once. Or break it into smaller chunks, such as "the area held by Shu" (which would still be more than just Britain or France). It's big, so it had an easy time having "lots of people" in it.
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Post by name_here »

China also had merit-based civil service before it was cool. They could do major civil engineering projects and ship food properly. In Europe, not so much. Rome was better than the medieval period, but nevertheless amazingly fucked by modern standards. We're talking elected officials having to pay for government projects out of their own pockets levels of bad.
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angelfromanotherpin
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Re: Historical Questions you want answered.

Post by angelfromanotherpin »

Lago PARANOIA wrote:What exactly was the point of the original Kulturkampf? I've heard three separate, confusing stories: the first being a modernization of German government, the other being a misguided attempt to clamp down on socialists, and the last being a misguided attempt to neuter the Catholic Church.
My short answer is that there were two anticlerical parties in the Reichstag, and Bismarck was using the issue to manage their support for his agenda.
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Post by Blicero »

There is some kind of interesting discussion of China's population in this reddit thread. http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/c ... ously_had/
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Post by fectin »

TED talk answering China's population:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYaj8aqkdbA
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OgreBattle
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Re: Historical Questions you want answered.

Post by OgreBattle »

Lago PARANOIA wrote:1.) How did pre-industrial China get to have a much, much larger population than other pre-industrial civilizations?
Early advances in agriculture. I wrote an answer on it on Quora with a gloating tone here:
http://www.quora.com/What-aspect-of-Chi ... e-Chaisiri

But to sum it up some important inventions were the seed drill, moldboard plough, blast furnace for mass production of iron tools, horse harnesses that didn't choke horses. The soil quality was also good throughout southern China.
Last edited by OgreBattle on Wed Nov 26, 2014 2:43 am, edited 1 time in total.
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