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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   29600 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 6, 2023

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Russia has lagged despite the Volga, Don, extremely fertile soil in the south, and massive quantities of oil, natural gas, and other commodities.

Russia also has very few natural defensible borders, and has land connections to historically-expansionist powers (Western Europe to the west [French, Germans, Swedes, Poles, etc.], and steppe nomad confederacies to the east and south). This has had a major impact on their political development, and arguably still is exerting a negative influence on their geopolitical standing if you buy Peter Zeihan's thesis that the current war in Ukraine arose out of a Russian perception that they needed to control the Carpathian gaps against potential future aggression.

the only comparable successes in the 19th century had similiar cultures of bourgeois values (where an enterprising commoner could rise to high status) and policies, even when geographically very different from the US e.g. the UK or Germany.

Before WWI killed it, Russia was ascending precipitously throughout the 19th century without this kind of culture. Similarly, Japan pulled off a faster ascent than the U.S., U.K., or Germany, with a very different culture. Even Belle Epoque France, though not as successful as the British, was renowned for its culture worldwide and still sneered at the U.K.'s "nation of shopkeepers." Bengal under the Mughals was the richest place in the world by far in the 1700s, and only a weird quirk of elite politics brought its trade under British control (i.e., one governor's extremely bad decision to piss off his bankers, who promptly turned around and funded the British interlopers).

I agree that it is better to have positive cultural values, and that noxious cultures retard or even reverse development. However I don't think culture is sufficient to explain developmental successes, particularly at the national level. Geography and geopolitical context really, really matter a lot.

Before WWI killed it, Russia was ascending precipitously throughout the 19th century without this kind of culture. Similarly, Japan pulled off a faster ascent than the U.S., U.K., or Germany, with a very different culture. Even Belle Epoque France, though not as successful as the British, was renowned for its culture worldwide and still sneered at the U.K.'s "nation of shopkeepers." Bengal under the Mughals was the richest place in the world by far in the 1700s, and only a weird quirk of elite politics brought its trade under British control (i.e., one governor's extremely bad decision to piss off his bankers, who promptly turned around and funded the British interlopers).

But these were rising from a much lower base and (Bengal aside) experiencing catch-up growth. And even then, Russia, France, and Japan all took big steps towards bourgeois culture in their periods of ascent.

Russia also has very few natural defensible borders, and has land connections to historically-expansionist powers (Western Europe to the west [French, Germans, Swedes, Poles, etc.], and steppe nomad confederacies to the east and south). This has had a major impact on their political development, and arguably still is exerting a negative influence on their geopolitical standing if you buy Peter Zeihan's thesis that the current war in Ukraine arose out of a Russian perception that they needed to control the Carpathian gaps against potential future aggression.

So what's the geographic explanation in Germany's success, which is even less defensible than Russia, in that it lacks Russia's vast distances between its borders and its capital?

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