EURASIA where most of world lives, and trades?

[chris macrae]

Like all sustainability challenges, Eurasia's story is quite simple but incrediby rich in detail

Like all sustainability challenges, Eurasia's story is quite simple but incredibly rich in bottom-up detail

Over two third of the world lives on the Eurasian continent

Less than a sixth live on its West End - Europe

More than half live in Asia - two nations each account for one sixth of the world's population - China at far eastern coastal belt of Eurasia; India which protrudes from middle of its southern belt (much of which is around latitude 20) extending eurasia to within 7 degrees north of the equator

Until the year 1500, the graph (below) shows economies were largely people-centric- in other words because each of china and india were over 7 times larger in populations than any other nation, they were the biggest economies. In India's case before 1500, borders were quite fuzzy - what today are called countries of south asia might then have been called the Indian subcontinent

More detail before 1500 SILK ROAD Until around 1500 the world's greatest overland trading route had started at the Asian end of  the med sea around latitude 30 north (which is also close to the origin of most of the world's golden rule religions eg jewish, christian, muslim ...) and involved over  6 years trek to China's East coast (Hangzhou on Yangtze River or Shanghai on the coast). Only a few people eg Marco Polo made this whole trek- it was set up as a whole series of trading relays : win-wins between each of the neighboring overland places. However trade and so wealth multipied most of all at the 2 ends - all round the med sea (Italy, Greece, Turkey/Ottoman, Middle East and its overland crossroads to Africa starting with Egypt and its great river the Nile). AND: at the Chinese (far eastern) coastal belt were sources of the most valued trades of all : silks, spices, porcelain.

more detail after 1500 After 1500 Northern Europe got   organised around mercantile Empires;   the biggest of all hubbed round the island nation of Great Britain which is actually separated from continental europe by about 33 miles of channel (the channel tunnel opened in 1994 being just over 50 km long) Perhaps accidentally these Mercantile Empires spun the biggest win-lose trading systems ever. For over 4 centuries with world wars the outcome. PRETTY MUCH WHOLE SOUTHERN COASTAL BELT OF EURASIA TAKEN OVER BY BRITAIN Britain was the first to rule the waves mapped by the discovery that Eurasia wasnt landlocked- if a ship was prepared to sail all the way round Africa it could hit the southern coastal belt of Eurasia: at what is today's western boundary of Pakistan you can sail East and hit India or west back into the Gulf. Or you have 2 more choices to come up from the equator, after India , of after Singapore at the Asean Penisular where you pretty soon start to hit China's coastal belt and the island port of Hong Kong. If it had taken a 3 year overland trek to get trade from Europe to the centre of eurasia (say where latitude 30 meets India,s north) Empire ships could now get to Mumbai in about 6 months. Having made that voyage, captains would dictate what trade they wanted using arms if necessary to get it. From the mid 1700s this was turning into colonisation of most of the countries up to and including Asean. Britain had also become the first to exploit industrial revolution's  steam engines- thousand of times more power than that of a horse or man as long as you could feed this industrialisation by extracting ever more carbon and iton in the case of railways and newly (1840) gigantic ironclad warships.

Lets learn from this approximate map of world economies at such dates as 1500, 1776, 1860, 1914, 1946

 

In 1500 China and India were the laregst economies both about 30% ; the UK was less 1%, the US was about to be discovered by Europeans

By 1776 Britain was exponentially increasing its economy in large part by exponentially decreasing India's economy. Adam Smith's book The Wealth of Nations pleaded with British leaders to mediate free (win-win) trade with USA as its resources were to destined to be the largest economy - but instead English-speaking people got war and separation of the Americas from rest of the world .

By 1860 China's economy is pictured as closing down and US's was overtaking Britains. What actually happened was that Queen Victoria sent James Wilson founder of The Economist to Calcutta to try to design a more inclusive Raj economy. He died within 9 months due to lack of oral rehydration. And over in China, the Brits ultimatum that opium should be traded for silk and spices caused the closure of China to trade with the world for over a century.

By 1914 Japan had started to empire over east eurasia, and German industrialisation was rising fastest with Russia competing too. To get bigger as a developed nation more and more carbon and iron was needed. Wars over these commodities were to define the first half of the 20th century.

Stories of what happened after 1946 become very interesting if you look for regions where win-win trades were being born to replace the 450 yeras of win-lose colonisation, and innovations were needed beyond the the peak era of extraction of carbon and iron

Whether you call the search for win-win sustainability goal economies "girls hold up half the sky" or BRI (Belt Road Imagineering) or any other name:  climate and other huge learning challenges make now the last call for post-industrial mapping. We have a window of opportunity since 2016 we are mobilising 1000 times more of the technologes of connectivity than 1946. Some people feel that preparing to change education for this tipping point was already evident at time of moon landing. The coming post-industrial entrepreneurial revolution needs to value economies that grow people and especially girl power. If the era 1500-1968 showed a map of the economy of girls (as counted by male marcoeconomists) it would likely figure at under 5% of value. That girls are worth 19 times less than boys is patently outrageous- as wrong an economic model as mercantile empires themselves can now be seen to be. 

So which are the 2 greatest economic miracles of girlpower since the moon landing? Probably no surprise that china's mainland is one; the other miracle is wherever girls are valued as linkedin by BRAC@Bangaldesh. We invite you to explore with us how this network ( 90 million girls alummi so far) changed livelihood education, investment, innovated "leapfroging"  tech partnerships and celebrates the collaboration race to sustainability goals in the most community-loving yet entrepreneurial of ways..

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