But anyway, the problem with these Eurocentric why answers is that they all apply to either China or India or both. And it's really important to note that in 1800, it was not clear that Europe was going to become the world's dominant manufacturing power in the next hundred years. At the time, China, India, and Europe were all roughly at the same place in terms of industrial production. First, let's look at China. It's hard to make the European cultural superiority argument, because China had been recording its history since before Confucius, and plus there was all that bronze and painting and poetry. It's also kind of difficult to make a blanket statement that China was economically inferior to Europe, since they invented paper money and led the world in exports of everything from silk to China. I mean, pre-Industrial Revolution, population growth was the surest sign of economic success, and China had the biggest population in the world.