The World Powers of the 16th Century

In the sixteenth century, Europeans started to journey around the world for trade across the world, including the Far East. Though they were successful in trading and bringing back goods, they still weren’t as prosperous as other Empires like Ming China, Mogul India, Japan, Ottoman, and Russia. The success of these empires could have been affected by population, economics, religion, technology, resources and the government. Comparing the 6 empires can help decide which was the most powerful of them all. Russia was the weakest empire, but was still trying to make their own footprint in the world powers. Russia’s growth was focused around growing their military force and getting better weaponry. Even though they had fire power, they didn’t have anything else that would make a strong empire. Technological advancements was crucial to growing an empire, but even with the gun powder technology, they continued to be technologically backward and economically underdeveloped. Part of this is because of the extreme climates and long distances. This resulted in social defects, for example, like the full control of education given to the Orthodox Church and the uncertainty of Bureaucracy. Their population was small and the foreigners who came to Russia would be segregated due to the fact that they wanted to avoid subversive influences from outside lands. Then for the people who were conquered, there was a high chance that they may revolt within the country. None of the less, the empire still continued to grow and they kept at it (Kennedy, 1989). Second to Russia, Japan was also a growing empire, but had developed enough relationships with others to not be the weakest. During the time, Japan had trading relationships with Portugal, Dutch, and Western Europe. On the contrary, Entrepreneurs, Warlords and Military adventurers also saw an opportunity in the East Asian trades, so pirates would the coasts to find goods to steal. Whether this is wrong or not, it was a way for Japan to prosper as an empire. Then people who had resources that could benefit the army would receive power. The population began to grow and people started to use more money. Everything seemed well until the government cut off all international relations with a few exceptions. From there, Japan was unable to learn and adapt to any technological advances besides their own. Despite the downfall for international trades in japan, domestic trades and economical activities either remained unchanged or have improved. The Mogul Empire may seem to be prosperous when looked at their kingdom, emperor, craftsmanship, and banking, but besides that, there is a big gap between. This empire had a massive population with peasants working on many of the crops and rice which they sold. Machinery wasn’t provided to them in case of a flood, famine or plaque. The Indian civil service was wealthy, but greedy so the peasants didn’t get very much. An issue that they faced was that the Hindu peasants wouldn’t kill rodents and pests to preserve the crops. The leaders being Muslim had a dispute with them about this. The government wasn’t very stable so it was bad. In terms of technological advances and military power, their naval power wasn’t very strong, but the ground army was well equipped because that was how they took their land and had weapon manufacturers in India. In the end, they still made a lot of money though because the Europeans were looking to trade in the Far East. The Western Europe empire was always a growing powerhouse, but just wasn’t quite up to par with some other empires. The location of the empire showed a lot of disadvantages due to how the land was geographically shaped and formed. The North and West was surrounded by ice and water, while the South and East was open to potential invasion. Having Atlantic seacoast on the West opened up opportunities to colonize and trade to find resources in nations that are now known as the