Asia, the Center of the World — Before the West Arrived

We tend, almost out of habit, to view the modern world from the West. The smokestacks of the Industrial Revolution, steamships, the European powers spreading their colonies — such scenes have long been placed at the center of world history. But if we turn the clock back just a little and look down upon the globe of the 18th century, a different landscape comes into view. The place where wealth lay thickest, where the most people lived, where goods flowed most abundantly — it was not Europe, but Asia. According to the estimates of the economic historian Angus Maddison, even as late as 1820 Asia is said to have accounted for more than half of the world’s gross domestic product. This series begins from that ‘Asia, the center of the world.‘

What the Numbers Tell Us About Asia’s Wealth

When we tell history, numbers can sometimes be more eloquent than hundreds of words. The British economic historian Angus Maddison left behind a work without parallel: estimating the economic scale of countries around the world over the past two thousand years. According to his figures, until the early 19th century China and India alone are said to have carried nearly half of the world’s production. Even in 1820, China (the Qing) is estimated to have accounted for about a third of the world’s GDP and India for about 16 percent, so that Asia as a whole, including Japan, came to more than half.

Of course, these are estimates reaching back into the distant past, and the figures themselves carry a margin. There are not a few points on which scholars differ. Even so, the broad picture is clear. Before the Industrial Revolution remade the world, the center of gravity of wealth lay unmistakably on the side of Asia. The size of its population, the productivity of its agriculture, and the quality of its handmade crafts — these made Asia the leading actor of the world economy.

Why was Asia so wealthy? One key lies in the fact that Asia held the goods the world wanted. China’s silk, tea, and porcelain; India’s cotton textiles and spices. These were objects of longing that Europe could not make, or that fell far short of Asian wares. Wealth from all over the world flowed into Asia in pursuit of these goods.

Qing China — The Height of a Vast Empire

The being that symbolized 18th-century Asia was Qing China. Having brought Beijing under its control in 1644, the Qing is said to have built one of the most stable and prosperous eras in Chinese history under three emperors — Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong. Around the time of the Qianlong Emperor in the mid-18th century in particular, the Qing realm expanded to one of the largest extents in Chinese history.

What first supported the wealth of this empire was the sheer number of people. Partly because crops brought from the New World, such as maize and sweet potatoes, spread widely, the population is said to have swelled greatly. More hands to till the fields, more hands to work the looms, more merchants crossing the markets. It was an age in which the multitude of people became, directly, the depth of the economy.

The Qing also held a distinctive position in trade with the world. Europe, and Britain in particular, became enthralled by Chinese tea. Yet the Chinese side had little need for European goods. As a result, the world’s silver flowed one-sidedly into China as payment for tea and silk. It is said that no small part of the silver mined in the New World was, in the end, drawn into China. Asia was like a magnet drawing in the wealth of the world.

Mughal India and a Thriving Southeast Asia

Alongside China stood another vast source of wealth: India. The Mughal Empire, which had continued since the 16th century, at its height governed most of the Indian subcontinent and boasted a magnificent court culture and immense wealth. Architecture such as the Taj Mahal carries the memory of that abundance to this day.

Above all, India’s cotton textiles were goods the world could not stop craving. Thin, light, and brilliantly colored, Indian cotton cloth was in great demand in Europe, in Africa, and in Southeast Asia — truly worthy of being called a global commodity. India was, in a sense, ‘the textile factory of the world,’ and here too vast amounts of silver flowed into India as payment for its exports.

Even so, the zenith of the Mughal Empire did not last long. When the emperor Aurangzeb passed from the world in 1707, the cohesion of the vast empire is said to have gradually loosened, with regional powers rising separately across the land. India’s wealth itself remained great, yet the power to bind it into one was weakening. This vacuum would later become a gateway for those who came from outside.

If we turn our gaze to the sea, Southeast Asia too was a stage that thrived on trade. The sea routes, the Strait of Malacca foremost among them, were the great artery connecting the Asia of the east with the world of the west, a crossroads of trade where merchants seeking spices gathered. Spices such as cloves and nutmeg are said to have held value likened even to gold of equal weight in Europe. Many languages mingled in the ports, and wealth and culture intermingled — Southeast Asia was the knot where the world tied itself together.

And so, in the 18th century, Asia stood at the center of the world’s wealth, people, and goods. Qing China, Mughal India, a Southeast Asia bubbling with trade — each, within its own abundance, marked time at its leisure. Yet around the same time, on the opposite side of the globe, something that would remake the very mechanism of the world had quietly begun to stir. It was the power of steam and machinery. Before long, that wave from the West would shake Asia’s prosperity to its foundations and tilt the center of gravity of the world greatly toward the West.