Wednesday, July 6, 2016
Chapter 20, 21
I feel like it wasn't until reading this week that I really understood, or at least bothered to think about, the difference between fascism and communism. Fascism had been so quickly glossed over in school growing up that all I truly remember about it are the names of a couple of dictators, and that it was inherently un-american. Reading about how fascism came about, and how different it is than communism, made me stop and feel embarrassed about how little I knew about the whole ideology. We maintain the American hero narrative around WWII, and study the Holocaust, but rarely do we talk about how global the recession was after the Great War, and how other countries perceived their rise to prominence. We take for granted our American position as world leader, as less than a century ago it was quite the opposite. We only entered wars when it was in our best interest, and not to spread democracy in areas ruled unjustly. The isolationism after WWI isn't mentioned as much as the "New Deal" and cultural icons of the time. Only in recent years have I been exposed to movies and textbooks that take up the Japanese narrative of this portion of history, and it is eye opening. Of course the treatment of women is always of issue to me as well. How they can be valued, contributing members of a wartime economy, only to be shoved back in the kitchen upon the men's return, and treated so horribly as the spoils of war- a notion we attribute to ancient or medieval times, but less in our modern era. Another interesting aspect of the history of communism is all that it was built up to be, and the ideal to which so many people still hold it, as a work in progress and the means to a utopian end, when the reality has been so oppressive and dismal. Is it a matter of the geographic places that it has been tried with the people in question? Would communism have fared better somewhere else at another time? It's amazing that so much pain, destruction and division could have resulted from Enlightened ways of approaching modern times.
Monday, June 13, 2016
Part 3: Ch. 9, 11, 12
Chapter 9
With how much we discuss Islam and Muslim people in the media today, it seems that the general public knows very little about its history, its original beliefs and intents, and what the majority of Muslim people believe and how they practice. Every time I study it, I learn something new and seemingly contradictory to what I have been conditioned to believe based on recent global history. When people I know want to get into a heated political discussion about Islam, I begin by asking them if they know the original, fundamental differences between Sunni and Shia Muslims, and that the Quran has many different meanings based on different Sharia views, they typically do not. These point, coupled with the reminder of all that Islamic scholars and scientists did to accelerate the base of human knowledge, puts the discussion into a decidedly more positive light and larger scope. Reading in this chapter about how Islam was adapted and adopted, or not, into the societies it conquered was the most interesting point. It seems obvious, in hindsight, that it would be easier to integrate the religion and Arabic culture into a society with an existing population of predominantly monotheistic believers. The way that it was viewed in India to Hindu believers was a point I had never been exposed to before. It was mentioned several times how it could be an economically beneficial religion, that it was helpful in making one's way up in business, but never really explained how so. Was it simply because Islam does not allow charging interest? As an economic benefit, I understand that, but I am curious to research further how this was practiced and what made it true.
Chapter 11
For the bad publicity, or lack thereof, the Mongols receive in revisited history, it seems from this text that the modern world might look a bit different without them. So many trade routes, technologies, and cultures were opened up as a direct result of their conquests, which shaped the development of the third-wave civilizations and they way they viewed and interacted with the world. Even if the Mongols didn't share their religion or languages around the world, their horsemanship changed the way people around the world fought and carried trade goods. Along these now expanded trade routes, societies from different continents were exposed to each other, for better or worse, which set into effect a chain reaction of cultural and scientific globalization. Along with these great things, the worst things were also spread, including the plague. Had Afroeurasia not encountered the plague, who knows how cultures would have continued to develop. It was this interruption that was a catalyst for change and innovation in later years. The population would have hit much higher numbers while still being governed the old ways. It would be interesting to know how these old leaderships would have handled those populations, and which cultures would have survived and which would not have. Of all of this, one of the most striking things was the way that women were valued in the Mongol society, reminiscent of how we believe neolithic people to have been. This seems to show, once again, that it is civilization that begins the mistreatment of women, for in all of the cultures they conquered, all of them remained baffled by their respect for women, and didn't attempt to emulate it, but simply commented on it in a negative light in their written histories of this time governed by the Mongol people.
Chapter 12
In reading about the civilizations and pastoral and agricultural people of the Americas, I am struck by how little history we know of our own continent. We are not instructed in the validity and importance of those societies, we simply get teasers to what life was like before Columbus arrived. We know so much about the Ancient civilizations of the Mediterranean, but so much less about our own continent's history, presumably because so many American historians trace their roots back to Europe, making that the official history of our society. Either way, it seems that we should be emphasizing traveling on our own continent to study the ruins of these people, instead of traveling halfway around the world to study those sites.
China's maritime history was also surprising to me. The "what if" at the end of the chapter mentioned explicitly what I had been thinking...Why did they stop? What if they hadn't? Would Europe have been able to accomplish any of what it did if China had continued? How different would world history be now?
I am so looking forward to reading the next part of the text, simply because of the amount of time that it captures, and how that is such a different time span lumped together than students normally get to study. Seeing how the last 500 years led us directly to where we are now will be a fun read, if not humbling, as today we do like to think of ourselves as so beyond any of our history in terms of what we know, what we do, and how we interact. It will be nice to see how recently things were much different, astonishingly recent, in terms of the world's history, as this text presents it.
With how much we discuss Islam and Muslim people in the media today, it seems that the general public knows very little about its history, its original beliefs and intents, and what the majority of Muslim people believe and how they practice. Every time I study it, I learn something new and seemingly contradictory to what I have been conditioned to believe based on recent global history. When people I know want to get into a heated political discussion about Islam, I begin by asking them if they know the original, fundamental differences between Sunni and Shia Muslims, and that the Quran has many different meanings based on different Sharia views, they typically do not. These point, coupled with the reminder of all that Islamic scholars and scientists did to accelerate the base of human knowledge, puts the discussion into a decidedly more positive light and larger scope. Reading in this chapter about how Islam was adapted and adopted, or not, into the societies it conquered was the most interesting point. It seems obvious, in hindsight, that it would be easier to integrate the religion and Arabic culture into a society with an existing population of predominantly monotheistic believers. The way that it was viewed in India to Hindu believers was a point I had never been exposed to before. It was mentioned several times how it could be an economically beneficial religion, that it was helpful in making one's way up in business, but never really explained how so. Was it simply because Islam does not allow charging interest? As an economic benefit, I understand that, but I am curious to research further how this was practiced and what made it true.
Chapter 11
For the bad publicity, or lack thereof, the Mongols receive in revisited history, it seems from this text that the modern world might look a bit different without them. So many trade routes, technologies, and cultures were opened up as a direct result of their conquests, which shaped the development of the third-wave civilizations and they way they viewed and interacted with the world. Even if the Mongols didn't share their religion or languages around the world, their horsemanship changed the way people around the world fought and carried trade goods. Along these now expanded trade routes, societies from different continents were exposed to each other, for better or worse, which set into effect a chain reaction of cultural and scientific globalization. Along with these great things, the worst things were also spread, including the plague. Had Afroeurasia not encountered the plague, who knows how cultures would have continued to develop. It was this interruption that was a catalyst for change and innovation in later years. The population would have hit much higher numbers while still being governed the old ways. It would be interesting to know how these old leaderships would have handled those populations, and which cultures would have survived and which would not have. Of all of this, one of the most striking things was the way that women were valued in the Mongol society, reminiscent of how we believe neolithic people to have been. This seems to show, once again, that it is civilization that begins the mistreatment of women, for in all of the cultures they conquered, all of them remained baffled by their respect for women, and didn't attempt to emulate it, but simply commented on it in a negative light in their written histories of this time governed by the Mongol people.
Chapter 12
In reading about the civilizations and pastoral and agricultural people of the Americas, I am struck by how little history we know of our own continent. We are not instructed in the validity and importance of those societies, we simply get teasers to what life was like before Columbus arrived. We know so much about the Ancient civilizations of the Mediterranean, but so much less about our own continent's history, presumably because so many American historians trace their roots back to Europe, making that the official history of our society. Either way, it seems that we should be emphasizing traveling on our own continent to study the ruins of these people, instead of traveling halfway around the world to study those sites.
China's maritime history was also surprising to me. The "what if" at the end of the chapter mentioned explicitly what I had been thinking...Why did they stop? What if they hadn't? Would Europe have been able to accomplish any of what it did if China had continued? How different would world history be now?
I am so looking forward to reading the next part of the text, simply because of the amount of time that it captures, and how that is such a different time span lumped together than students normally get to study. Seeing how the last 500 years led us directly to where we are now will be a fun read, if not humbling, as today we do like to think of ourselves as so beyond any of our history in terms of what we know, what we do, and how we interact. It will be nice to see how recently things were much different, astonishingly recent, in terms of the world's history, as this text presents it.
Monday, June 6, 2016
Part 3: Ch. 7, 8, & 10
Chapter 7
I suppose I didn't really know when all of these trade routes came about, but for some reason it came as a shock to me that it was in this third-wave civilization time period. The amount of time it took to cross the Sahara trade routes makes it all the more impressive that people could accomplish this so regularly. It mentioned that this was only doable after camels were introduced to the area, but didn't mention where they came from...I will have to do some further investigating as this piqued my interest. In so many Western Civilizations classes, the history is obviously presented to you with a Western bias, so learning that so much spreading of technology, religions and luxury items were being traded all over the world during the same time frame was fascinating. These trade routes also carried the diseases that we so often heard about as Western Civilizations covered so much about the plague, but to see civilizations thriving, growing, and people making fortunes off of these luxury goods definitely has me looking at this time frame from a new perspective. Noting the difference between Eurasia and the Americas, in terms of how it was much harder to spread agriculture between the northern and southern hemispheres seems to make all the difference in understanding how the two parts of the world developed so differently. Even if these items were brought to a new land, they most likely would not be a viable option to grow there. Eurasia had a much easier time of things, because even though the terrain could be different, the temperatures, zones, water sources, etc. didn't vary as much between a great many more lands. The people in the Americas could have traversed the land and water just as well as the people of Eurasia, so the difference between their progress and spread of agriculture and culture must lay in the physical differences of the lands. It is also always interesting to hear of civilizations that I never had before where the gender differences weren't as extreme, and that women were held in higher regard for their contributions, like the people of Angkor.
Chapter 8
I was most intrigued by two parts of this chapter. The first being the general theme, how connections between people and places can change a culture, but not always into a mirror image of itself. People surrounding but in contact with China were heavily influenced but China's luxury goods and often their political and cultural practices. While some things were gladly taken on without question, many ways were altered to best suite the adopters. Beliefs and practices were taken on piecemeal in an effort to make them understandable and approachable to the people, and resulted in something that the Chinese would barely even recognize. This practice still occurs the same way today, as rapidly accelerating globalization exposes new cultures and practices to other people. While some criticize the process as homogenizing the world, others note that while an idea might be taken as a jumping off point, almost all cultures assimilate the idea to become something easily adopted by their people. Take, for example, social media. People all over the world use the same several applications, but they employ them in many different ways. While Twitter might be used by a Californian to bolster their business, advocate for a cause or political leaning, or by celebrities and regular people to stroke their own egos, people in the Middle East used it as a means to educate, congregate, and rebel. Same platform, different people with different needs, so therefore different uses.
The other thing that I found interesting was the rise of the samurai warrior class. This part of Japanese society was created out of a time of political decentralization, and smaller groups placed emphasis on the virtues, values, and talents of warriors. Their bravery, endurance, and self-sacrifice was exalted over the Chinese values of state hierarchy and loyalty, and of brain over brawn. When reading this passage on page 382 of the text, I was struck by the similarities between how the Japanese samurai and Chinese mainland differed and how the Spartans and Athenians differed, respectively. One set of people placed high value in warrior tactics, loyalty and bravery in battle, while the other emphasized the power of the government and the education and higher thinking of certain classes of people. This was just an brief thought bubble in my mind, but I would be curious to research any real comparisons between the two sets of people if given the opportunity in the future.
Chapter 10
The main thought I was struck with regularly while reading this chapter was, "what if...". There were so many odd turns that are glossed over as inevitable when studying Western Civilizations, but reevaluating in this text make you think about what could have been otherwise. What if Rus had decided to take on Western Christianity or Islam as its religion? How would history have changed? Thinking of our more recent world wars, tensions, and battles, it seems strange to think that current powers would likely not exist in their borders or with their mentalities had another choice been made. What if the crusades had succeeded in maintaining power in the conquered areas? What would that empire have looked like? How long could it have been sustained, and where would the world's borders be now? What if Greek philosophy hadn't been revived and taken on by the greatest minds of the time? What would our civilizations, technologies, and schools look like today? It is so interesting to enter this fantasy land and play out the next few steps in your mind to think about how different every successive, clearly not inevitable, moment in history would have unfurled.
I suppose I didn't really know when all of these trade routes came about, but for some reason it came as a shock to me that it was in this third-wave civilization time period. The amount of time it took to cross the Sahara trade routes makes it all the more impressive that people could accomplish this so regularly. It mentioned that this was only doable after camels were introduced to the area, but didn't mention where they came from...I will have to do some further investigating as this piqued my interest. In so many Western Civilizations classes, the history is obviously presented to you with a Western bias, so learning that so much spreading of technology, religions and luxury items were being traded all over the world during the same time frame was fascinating. These trade routes also carried the diseases that we so often heard about as Western Civilizations covered so much about the plague, but to see civilizations thriving, growing, and people making fortunes off of these luxury goods definitely has me looking at this time frame from a new perspective. Noting the difference between Eurasia and the Americas, in terms of how it was much harder to spread agriculture between the northern and southern hemispheres seems to make all the difference in understanding how the two parts of the world developed so differently. Even if these items were brought to a new land, they most likely would not be a viable option to grow there. Eurasia had a much easier time of things, because even though the terrain could be different, the temperatures, zones, water sources, etc. didn't vary as much between a great many more lands. The people in the Americas could have traversed the land and water just as well as the people of Eurasia, so the difference between their progress and spread of agriculture and culture must lay in the physical differences of the lands. It is also always interesting to hear of civilizations that I never had before where the gender differences weren't as extreme, and that women were held in higher regard for their contributions, like the people of Angkor.
Chapter 8
I was most intrigued by two parts of this chapter. The first being the general theme, how connections between people and places can change a culture, but not always into a mirror image of itself. People surrounding but in contact with China were heavily influenced but China's luxury goods and often their political and cultural practices. While some things were gladly taken on without question, many ways were altered to best suite the adopters. Beliefs and practices were taken on piecemeal in an effort to make them understandable and approachable to the people, and resulted in something that the Chinese would barely even recognize. This practice still occurs the same way today, as rapidly accelerating globalization exposes new cultures and practices to other people. While some criticize the process as homogenizing the world, others note that while an idea might be taken as a jumping off point, almost all cultures assimilate the idea to become something easily adopted by their people. Take, for example, social media. People all over the world use the same several applications, but they employ them in many different ways. While Twitter might be used by a Californian to bolster their business, advocate for a cause or political leaning, or by celebrities and regular people to stroke their own egos, people in the Middle East used it as a means to educate, congregate, and rebel. Same platform, different people with different needs, so therefore different uses.
The other thing that I found interesting was the rise of the samurai warrior class. This part of Japanese society was created out of a time of political decentralization, and smaller groups placed emphasis on the virtues, values, and talents of warriors. Their bravery, endurance, and self-sacrifice was exalted over the Chinese values of state hierarchy and loyalty, and of brain over brawn. When reading this passage on page 382 of the text, I was struck by the similarities between how the Japanese samurai and Chinese mainland differed and how the Spartans and Athenians differed, respectively. One set of people placed high value in warrior tactics, loyalty and bravery in battle, while the other emphasized the power of the government and the education and higher thinking of certain classes of people. This was just an brief thought bubble in my mind, but I would be curious to research any real comparisons between the two sets of people if given the opportunity in the future.
Chapter 10
The main thought I was struck with regularly while reading this chapter was, "what if...". There were so many odd turns that are glossed over as inevitable when studying Western Civilizations, but reevaluating in this text make you think about what could have been otherwise. What if Rus had decided to take on Western Christianity or Islam as its religion? How would history have changed? Thinking of our more recent world wars, tensions, and battles, it seems strange to think that current powers would likely not exist in their borders or with their mentalities had another choice been made. What if the crusades had succeeded in maintaining power in the conquered areas? What would that empire have looked like? How long could it have been sustained, and where would the world's borders be now? What if Greek philosophy hadn't been revived and taken on by the greatest minds of the time? What would our civilizations, technologies, and schools look like today? It is so interesting to enter this fantasy land and play out the next few steps in your mind to think about how different every successive, clearly not inevitable, moment in history would have unfurled.
Tuesday, May 31, 2016
Week 2- Ch. 3, 4, 5, 6
Part Two of the text was incredibly interesting in the way it took segments of time and compared and contrasted civilizations within that time. Doing it this way helped me to see the history as the progression of human kind around the world, and not just the progression of one group of people. In this way, you can evaluate a civilizations progress compared to itself and its past history in the time it existed, and not compare it to a group of people that have existed in their culture for longer, and therefore seem to have accomplished and progressed more.
Chinese history always seems so long and dense, I have never really taken the time to try and parse it out and understand it, but breaking it up into the various causes and effects of smaller time periods helped immensely. The same with Indian history, but even more so for the history of the Americas. Knowing a tiny bit about the Incas and the Mayans, I was surprised to learn about the peoples that lived around them and their societies, gods, and economies. Evaluating the differences in how cultures develop based on what kind of large animals they have available to domesticate was interesting and seems to make a huge difference in civilization development.
Chinese history always seems so long and dense, I have never really taken the time to try and parse it out and understand it, but breaking it up into the various causes and effects of smaller time periods helped immensely. The same with Indian history, but even more so for the history of the Americas. Knowing a tiny bit about the Incas and the Mayans, I was surprised to learn about the peoples that lived around them and their societies, gods, and economies. Evaluating the differences in how cultures develop based on what kind of large animals they have available to domesticate was interesting and seems to make a huge difference in civilization development.
Monday, May 30, 2016
Week 1- Prologue, Ch. 1 & 2
***Addendum to original post: An article from The Times of India about an ancient Indus Valley civilization being re-dated upon new studies.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Indus-era-8000-years-old-not-5500-ended-because-of-weaker-monsoon/articleshow/52485332.cms?utm_source=toimobile&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=referral
I appreciated the use of the "three c's", not only because I am a fan of literary alliteration, but also because it gives me a means of looking at different peoples through various times. By evaluating what changed from one era to the next, comparing how people handled those changes, and connecting how the similarities or differences affected the next stage of time, you can begin to feel you have learned something new about the cultures you have studied repeatedly.
So often today, we talk of globalization, and know it to mean something in particular, but using the word in terms of people populating the various continents of the planet shed a new light on what it means for humans to bring their knowledge, lifestyles, and culture to new parts of the world. In order for each place on earth to have a culture to share with others, it first must be developed.
It was also interesting to be reminded that things didn't simply switch from gathering/hunting to large civilizations very quickly. It took many generations to deduce what plants could be used, and many more generations in small groups of people that were no longer nomadic, but were far from living in an urbanized empire.
I bookmarked and wrote down for further research a note about the Saka women, who appear to have battled along side the men. This, juxtaposed with the almost universal deterioration of women's rights in coalescing civilizations, made me curious to study more about these different histories and other anomalies of women's roles.
Above all else, it was staggering to really comprehend and internalize the vast amount of time that the Paleolithic era covered.
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