What the World Will Look Like by 2050
time.com
time.com
Aside from the fact this has rarely been seen in history, and only during transitional periods (After WW2, briefly we had USA, USSR and the British Empire as superpowers) when it has been seen. When we look back, with hindsight it becomes clear that there is a direct line of superpowers back to the dawn of civilization and, largely, one superpower passed off the power to its successor. The example here would be that the British Empire, instead of fighting to the death stepped aside for the USA. This has been played for thousands of years, during the Classical period it was passed between Greece and Rome, who was the super power. After the Roman Empire was defeated by the Hunnic Empire (Atilla the Hun) the power moved so far to the east no one in Europe had a clue, which led to the Dark Ages, because the people who had spread their technology (the Romans) rarely taught the locals how to build it themselves.
This meant that after the Roman Empire, and the fairly swift collapse of the Hunnic Empire with the death of Atilla, Europe was left without a power and so was the world. It was quite ironic, it would be like if the USSR had beat the USA in 1990, and a year later still collapsed. The effect was profound, especially moving into the medieval period, due to the fact that people relied on these Empires to shift around technology and without them there was no one big enough to move the information.
(Ed: This is also why when moving into the late Medieval Period and the Colonial Era, we had multiple powers all handing the superpower status between them as one got a clear advantage. In hindsight this largely centered between England and France, a play reminiscent of how Greece and Rome passed the superpower title between themselves many times during the classical period, but at no point was there two true superpowers.)
I find that their predictions are based on personal opinions, and they choose to use history to back themselves up whenever it's convenient, but in many of the examples they wholly ignore it. There's no historical basis to assume suicide bombings, it's an exceptionally rare development with the invention of compact explosives and religious brainwashing. Why would a pirate perform a suicide bombing, it's absurd they're in it for personal gain not religious gain.
This article is very stupid merely for trying to predict the future. I'll trust a Sci-Fi writer on the future before I trust an economist, if we could trust economists to predict the future then we wouldn't be in the financial crisis we are.
The greeks were only a super-power in their limited sphere. China and Rome/Greece did not even interact that much.
However, the Roman Empire (more so than Greece) managed to stay the infighting between factions until unification and what we all perceive as the Roman Empire that stretched across a huge area.
China's history is the Dynasties, which up until the Mongol Invasion and the formation of the Yuan Dynasty, the country hadn't had one single ruler of the whole territory. Probably in around 1200, when the Byzantine Empire (Eastern Roman Empire) itself divided into three states, the Yuan Dynasty and thus China probably became the worlds superpower.
After 1206 when Genghis Khan united the Mongols there's little doubt that the Mongol Empire was the super power. At its height it controlled over half of Eurasia, meaning at the time it essentially controlled over half of the world. Even when it broke into the Yuan Dynasty, Ilkhanate, Golden Horde and Chagatai Khanate. However, the Yuan Dynasty was largely recognized as led by the Great Khan, but the other Khanates didn't seem to care, they just never attacked each other.
Again, sadly at their largest point there was the Holy Roman Empire, which was more clearly a superpower than either the Song or Jin. The Jin (Jurchen) supplanted the Liao Dynasty, which was an Empire formed from one Mongol tribe (not all the Mongols like under Genghis Khan).
One of the key elements of a superpower is its ability to unify and act. The USSR dissolved from superpower status when it couldn't stay unified, Russia remained a powerful country (it still is) however it isn't a superpower any longer.
The Holy Roman Empire was very powerful, potentially a superpower (at least in the beginning when it was definitely more unified than the Song and Jin) but the Mongol Empire dwarfed the HRE drastically.
Put it this way, the Mongol Empire ruled over almost as much territory as the British Empire (I think the difference is ~0.4 million km^2), without their feet ever leaving soil. Considering the British Empire contained Canada, the Thirteen Colonies, Australia, New Zealand (lots of smaller islands too) and the British Antarctic Territories, all of which the Mongols couldn't have got to during their expansion. I think the Mongols clearly won.
Defining China as a superpower is, in my opinion, false due to it never unifying into an Empire. When the Tang Dynasty was in power it had the full potential to be the world superpower, and depending on how you look at the world in the 8th century it was.
This part of history is what opinion depends on. At the time the Roman Empire was collapsing, but still held a huge swathe of the Mediterranean. However, the Caliphate ruled over an even larger part of land on the south of the Mediterranean including the whole of the Middle East, however in this case land doesn't necessarily mean power. Many European powers avoided this area of land because it was deemed worthless, the Mongols avoided this area because they decided it wasn't worth the effort, and their few excursions into this region was based on their practice of killing anyone who double crossed them.
I'd say, the Tang dynasty was quite possibly the superpower at the time. It had the politics, culture, military and most certainly the economic strength. This was probably a product of China being densely populated at the time (relative to Europe and especially the Middle-east and Saharan regions), and I believe the Tangs wide adoption of woodblock printing probably helped put their cultural development well through the roof compared to their European counterparts at the time.
I think I just convinced myself the Tang Dynasty was possibly the superpower at the time, this is possibly helped by the fact the Roman Empire repeatedly tried to ban Chinese silk as it was exporting too much money to China.
Moving towards the end of the Tang, despite their political power crashing their economic and cultural growth were still huge. So during the 9th and early 10th Century they were the only country big enough to be the superpower as the Caliphate had collapsed and the Roman Empire had shrunk and western Europe had the lovely Dark Ages.
So between the collapse of the Roman Empire and the Caliphate (if they count as a superpower, due to segregation and poor land types) and the rise of the Holy Roman Empire, I believe the Tang probably held the superpower position due to it being the first unification of the country.
But the Chinese cultural sphere has long been bigger than the area under the political control of the recognized emperor in a dynastic cycle, in much the same way that Rome's influence extended beyond the broadest boundaries ever ruled by a Roman emperor. The spread of scripts and literacy is instructive: there are more pre-movable-type-printing era writings extant in literary Chinese than in all other world languages combined, by a huge margin. And Japanese and Korean (and formerly Vietnamese) have long used Chinese written characters even after developing indigenous alphabets or syllabaries for what are languages that aren't even cognate with Chinese. Many other cultural influences have spread outward from China to a recognizable cultural area known as east Asia, just as different influences spread from Greece and Rome to an area known as Europe. But for most of human history, east Asia has bested Europe in both population and prosperity.
Europe yes, but power for the world as you suggest moved east, and remained in the Muslim world for most of the middle ages.
While people in London were dying in plagues, the folks in Constantinople were enjoying their new found success.
Uhh, no. There will always be a premiere power and the British Empire was it, but they weren't head and shoulders above everybody else the way the US is now, or Rome was in its day. Neither was any other power ever an undisputed champion between Rome and the post Cold War US.
Edit: not in Western Europe, anyway. The Mongol Empire and the Caliphate were supreme at certain times and places.
>After the Roman Empire was defeated by the Hunnic Empire
WTF? That never happened. The Romans defeated the Huns at Chalons and were then conquered by Goths a few decades later.
We're discussing superpowers here, not military battles. The Hunnic Empire overtook Rome in power and size long before Rome fell. However, after the battle at Chalons the Roman army was fatally weakened, it didn't help that the Vandals sacked Rome for 14 days only 2 years after the battle at Chalons. Sucks to be Roman when coincidental invasions happen, I guess.
I'm sure Oprah's secret followers will lap it up.
Ten years ago, the same dreck would claim 2010 would see us away on extended vacation while WebVan and Pets.com delivered goodies to our internet-automated homes. Of course, everything would be paid for by effortless automated day-trading, with the Dow at 50,000 and markets headed higher due to Western nations celebrating some multi-decade milestone for time without conflict.
If someone claims to have the future figured out, it's pretty safe to assume you can ignore 'em.
But somehow he managed to not predict Europe's own financial troubles. Yes, quite the soothsaying there...
Just as we could not predict in 1968 what the world would look like in 2009 - similarly we can't predict what the world will look like in 2050 today.
I've heard some crazy predictions... world will end in 2012 (when the Mayan calendar ends)... USA will break down into 2-5 different countries and there will be a civil war there... the arctic cap will melt submerging all the major port cities: NY Tokyo Mumbai...
Not gonna happen!
I know a man who is now a United States diplomat who predicted to me (when he was still a student of Chinese) in 1984 that the Soviet Union would be around well into the twenty-first century. Sometimes empires that have little press freedom are especially hard to make predictions about.
Thats why in his latest movie "Examined Life", Slavoj Zizek points out that humanity should cut his roots from nature and doesnt intervene its inner workings.
Even solid statistics will fail horribly over a longer time period.
Epic mega-fail.
But maybe you meant that the meaning of the snippet, that experience and evidence can guide us in what to expect for the future, is somehow profoundly wrong?
For some things, past experience is of use. For guessing at the general trends of history, past experience should, in fact, teach us that it's completely useless. On a personal, immediate scale, it is useful to try and figure out what's about to happen, but when it comes to large trends, there are too much chaos and wild swings involved for past experience to be of any use.