Why were the catholic countries of France, Portugal and Spain so successful at colonization and sea born trade in 15-1600s?
Is there a catholic intelligence advantage that made them so ruthless, intelligent and successful in trade and colonialism?
This is the wrong way of thinking. Catholic/southern countries such as Spain, Portugual, France even italian city states were extremely rich for many centuries. Maybe they got complacent and lost their desire for hard work and wealth. Maybe they got used to the easy money from colonialism. So, when the industrial revolution started they were left behind by poor protestant nations who did not have such an easy wealth and had to work harder. Maybe this disparity in hunger for wealth caused them to be left behind and northern europeans to succeed and that advantage still remains.
China/East Asians have been very poor for a long time and probably have that hunger and work ethic to earn money. Maybe the west has lost that edge due to too much wealth and comfort. China maybe able to become richer than the west eventually due to this disparity in hungerness for wealth and prosperity.
as
@gelgoog pointed out Southern Europe had far less coal. But another thing is that they also had much less oil so they also couldn't capitalize on the next wave of industrialization either, the way Russia and the US did. By the time the post-WW2 boom hit, they spent much of their resources on importing oil as colonial borders were frozen and then independence slowly granted to colonies.
Neither could Imperial Japan, btw, so its not about culture or motivation, but hard numbers. They got fucked after WW1 and were stuck at 1/10 US GDP per capita because they could not secure oil, since all the oil in East Asia was taken by colonial empires like Dutch (Indonesia), British (Malaysia), Russian (Sakhalin) and US (Philippines) empires or were too hard to extract with the technology of the time (Daqing in China).
It is not a coincidence that Imperial Japan got stuck at 1/10 US GDP per capita when they couldn't get oil but jumped to ~equal US GDP per capita once they were allowed access to oil, facilitated by US oil exports at first and then Middle Eastern oil exports. Without that post WW2 oil, they're absolutely screwed.
Energy does not alone determine whether you succeed or not, but it does set a hard upper limit on your development. You
need energy to develop, either self produced or bought.
What enables China to grow was 3 fold:
1. having the world's largest coal reserves and enough domestic oil resources via Tarim Basin and Daqing to industrialize at a critical time of industrial development in the 1950's and 1960's.
2. having a huge population and enough arable land to make full use of it.
3.
including
and ships of countries like the UK. Funny, wonder how they got away with that?
and the Taiwanese navy started avoiding PLAN ships.
and due to Taiwanese threats it required diversion to Philippines and Japan.
China normalizing relations with some certain country finally forced them to give up the blockade because they cannot sustain it without diplomatic, logistical and ISR support.
