Both ends of Eurasia are developing some really big population centers.
China for example, in the Yangtze Valley,
northwest Europe epitomized by places like London and
Paris Both ends of Eurasia have pretty strong financial capacity.
Different ways, but yes, there are some things in northwest Europe as
the Commercial Revolution that I talked about earlier develops.
Some other private financial capabilities.
But there's a lot of things in common.
Both ends can muster a lot of money for major investments.
Another thing both ends of Eurasia have in common,
their development is both running up against hard constraints.
Not enough land, not enough resources to support the way population is growing.
Just a classic pattern.
I showed you a graph having to do with this in one of the earlier lectures.
It's called the Malthusian trap.
Population grows, your capacity to support that greater population is pretty fixed.
So you may have more people, but they're producing less per person.
They're running up against hard limits, bad things happen, famine,
population then declines, and you start the cycle again.
So, in the 1700s both ends of Eurasia are running up against this.
Look at China, they're cutting down all trees.
They're running into all kinds of environmental problems in finding the food
to put in their mouths and the fiber to wear on their backs.
Go to the other end of Eurasia, you could see symptoms of some more problems.
Deforestation all over England, for example.
So both ends are running into the ecological constraints
that should flatten out their ability to develop.