Whites should not concede one inch to this racial war against them. They should not only show that Europeans were already ahead of non-Europeans by the time of the ancient Greeks, but were in fact responsible for developing the rest of the world. One can concede that, in terms of gross economic output, Asia was ahead of Europe before the industrial revolution due to its vastly larger population and the naturally higher productivity of rice over grain agriculture.

Broadly speaking, however, when we look beyond mere gross output, pre-industrial Europeans were ahead not only in per capita income but in all spheres of human life. Going back to prehistorical times, the Indo-European Aryans were responsible for the domestication and riding of horses, the co-invention of wheeled vehicles, the major agents behind the "secondary-products revolution," the invention of chariots, the creation of the most dynamic language in history, the proto-Indo-European language, and the cultivation of the only aristocratic culture in history (in which rulers were not despots but first among equals) -- all of which allowed them to conquer large swaths of lands in the East and West, Persia, India, Anatolia, Russia, and Old Europe.

The ancient Greeks dominated Mediterranean commerce, were responsible for the invention of mathematical proof and logic, artistic realism, prose writing, historical writing, real politics beyond palatial despotism, infantry warfare, the highest sequence of the great thinkers in history, culminating in the Hellenistic Revolution in Science.

It was the Romans who created the first rationalized legal system that recognized each citizen as a legal person, together with the greatest empire in history. It was during the Middle Ages that universities were first created, towns with corporate autonomy, the "first modern legal system," mechanical clocks, the scholastic method of investigation, the best water mills, Romanesque and Gothic architectural, the three field system of agriculture, the Renaissance in the 12th century.

Whites Developed the Rest of the World

But the point I want to emphasize here is that Europeans have been the ultimate developers of the world. Tharoor complains that the British did not give Indians representative institutions, equality of rights and all sorts of goodies he expects for free, employing white guilt to extract reparations, as if empires are rose gardens and as if India today is still not caste divided with lots of shitting on the streets.

But here is the most salient fact: Without the diffusion of European inventions there would have been no development anywhere. After one examines all the varying factors involved in the developmental experiences of non-European nations, the truly ultimate factor, the one variable that stands apart as the most important, has been the diffusion of technologies invented by European nations.

Geographical conditions, type of governments, and cultural values have undoubtedly played a role in encouraging or obstructing diffusion, but the rider in all cases of non-European industrialisation has been the diffusion of European inventions, not whether non-Europeans were able to invent new technologies. All the countries that developed outside Europe, managed to do so only in the degree to which they created the setting for the assimilation of European technologies. Japan, China, South Korea did not industrialize thanks to domestic inventions but only insofar as they carried out political reforms conducive to the integration of technologies invented by Europeans.

Only after they industrialized, Japan first, and now South Korea, Taiwan, and China, are we witnessing domestic inventions. Moreover, the modernisation of the political institutions, upon which Asians relied to create the framework for the adoption of European inventions, was itself a European creation. Europeans were not responsible for creating liberal-democratic states only; they were also great rationalisers of institutions and governments, which sometimes came together with liberalism, but not always, as the case of Germany showed with excellence.

The German path has been called "authoritarian modernisation from above", that is, industrialisation led by the old agrarian Junker class in cooperation with the new industrial class, both committed to the creation of an efficient rational state and capitalist economy, by means of universal conscription, centralisation of power, state promotion of industry, technical training of future state officials, emphasis on a scientific (but also a nationalistic-authoritarian) curriculum. Japan's industrialisation is unthinkable without a consideration of their adoption of this "German model" of rational authoritarianism.

Don't let tricksters like Tharoor demand "respect" for Indians while trashing your own history. Don't let them tell you that you have no right to be proud of your ancestors while every other group, blacks, Asians, and gays are constantly told to be proud. Without the diffusion of white technologies Tharoor would have little to brag about India today.