But some Western long-termers thought there was simply nothing the East could do. Culture made the West best, they claimed, but was not the ultimate explanation for Western rule, because culture itself had material causes. Some believed that the East was too hot or too diseased for people to develop a culture as innovative as the West’s; or perhaps there were just too many bodies in the East—consuming all the surplus, keeping living standards low, and preventing anything like the liberal, forward-looking Western society from emerging.
