Quote:
Originally Posted by censusdata
Russia and parts of China and Japan are at the same latitude. Taiwan was colonized from the north by Chinese and Japanese. Greece is at a similar latitude to Maryland / Virginia. Rome is at a similar latitude to NYC. It doesn't explain everything but I tend to think something about adapting to both cold and very short days to gather food might have something to do with development inequality. But it's certainly not 100%.
I think govt and social system is a major factor in human development. Why was Germany poor in 100 AD but now rich? Rural Appalachia and rural New England both have majority populations of British ancestry, why is one so much richer? Why is India poor but Indian immigrants to the West usually rich? The system and societal values seem to be greatest determiner of life outcomes.
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The later question is addressed fully in the book written by a Scots-Irish lawyer who is/was from the Cumberland Plateau.
In the USA, the answers are quite simple. The North was populated by Simple Religious Fundamentalists - and some goods traders (Dutch) who were already highly educated and literate. They were trained in trades...and had "compacts" which somewhat guaranteed meritocracy.
Jametown was looking for Gold. When they didn't find gold they didn't want to work....most died off. More were send and, under threat of hanging, finally did a little work...some of it in stealing food supplies from the Indians.
Finally they went a bit South (over the River/Bay) and saw that the "Gold" was in drugs (tobacco) and they imported Slaves and Indentured Servants to make it happen. That was the Southern Culture for 100's of years. No Harvard, No Yale, No Factories...no "Protestant Work Ethic". Forced Labor.
Many of the indentured servants were illiterates - sent (got rid of) by Britain because they had no trades and were not literate, etc. - when their time (as slavemasters or workers) was up, they escaped to the Mountains.
"It is apparent that such human refuse, dumped on a strange shore
in the keeping of a few hundred merciless planters, was incapable of
developing the kind of stable society under construction in the Puri-
tan North"
Same DNA......in general But different opportunities and education.
Full text of Night Comes to the Cumberlands:
https://archive.org/stream/nightcome...3caud_djvu.txt
"New England was settled by farmers and villagers, but the climate
and soil of the Southland did not entice such settlers. The economic
value of the Southern region was discovered by planters, and there
a plantation society was established and nurtured. As Europeans
became habituated to nicotine, the demand for tobacco expanded at
an astronomical rate. Tobacco was a cash crop and producers sought
to manufacture it from the soil in the most efficient and least expen-
sive way. Thus there grew up along the tobacco coasts a spangle of
plantations, the majority originally quite small, embracing at most a
few thousand acres. Slaves were imported from Africa to work the
land, and then more slaves and still more. But so rapidly did the
demand for the product grow that not even by the mightiest exer-
tions could the slave traders keep up with the demand for black
field hands. As the plantation economy strengthened and as the
cotton plant appeared in the same regions, the labor shortage
became acute and the planters turned to the teeming cities of Eng-
land. "
"t was to these orphans and to the debtors' prisons which the labor-
hungry planters of the Southern coasts turned. Parliament wanted
to get rid of these social outcasts, who so proliferated and burdened
the respectable classes of England, and the agents of the plantation
owners were able to paint glowing pictures of the wonderful new
world waiting beyond the Atlantic, where the weather was sunny
and where men might perform honest labor under wholesome condi-
tions. The inevitable result was a series of Parliamentary acts making
it possible to transport street orphans, debtors and criminals to the
New World, their transportation costs to be paid by the planters.
Of course, these wretched outcasts were obliged by law to repay the
generous planter with the sole commodity they could produce —
their labor. The period of indentureship was usually seven years,
though sometimes it was much longer.
And so for many decades there flowed from Merry England to the
piney coasts of Georgia, Virginia and the Carolinas a raggle-taggle of
humanity — penniless workmen fleeing from the ever-present threat
of military conscription; honest men who could not pay their debts,
pickpockets and thieves who were worth more to the Crown on a
New World plantation than dangling from a rope, and children of
all ages and both sexes, whose only offense was that they were
orphans and without guardians capable of their care. "
This is perfect evidence of what progressive try to put forward over and over again - that you need to educate people and treat them right - not "cast them off" because of their circumstances......
Much of the advancement of Europe may be because of our lack of caring about many (most?) of our own fellows.....out of sight, out of mind. The free planter or industrialist in the north didn't come in contact with the overseer on the plantation or the cotton plantations (other then to finance or build ships, voyages, etc.).
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