Ch. 18 Colonial Encounters in Asia and Africa or How to Have Your Life Ruined by Euros

In the last paragraph on page 882, many aspects of the Chinese and Indian cultures were held in high esteem, and some even married their women.  Two paragraphs later, the Chinese and Africans are reduced to subpar humans.  How fickle we are with one another.

I suppose one way of justifying the superior race card is to turn the tables and act like a benefactor.

Juxtaposition:  “endless but peaceful negotiations among the competing Great Powers about “who got what” and extensive and bloody military action” (p. 885).  Does this mean make an offer they can’t refuse?  OK, I see now.  There were no central authorities with whom to negotiate, so conquests had to be made by force.

Good for the Zulu and the Boers for fighting back and not making their overthrow easy!

Did not know that Ethiopia and Thailand avoided colonization!  Cool.

Sometimes the old saying, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” is worth its weight in gold, meaning it is easier to cooperate than get beat to a pulp.

Why innocent animals have to get dragged into human battles is just plain sad, i.e. animal fat from both used for gun cartridges.  I do not like weaponry – this is what starts trouble because people feel powerful with guns.  Sad.

Oh, those Brits were clever with their invention of a Brahmin version of “traditional India” and with the idea of a “tribal Africa” (p. 892), not to mention linking inferiority of women with the weaker races.  Trickery at its best.

I am willing to bet the people buying cars were not thinking about where the rubber came from for the tires, nor had they any idea about the cruelty and violence inflicted on those poor people of the Congo, who were abused for the sake of rubber.  Sickening.

Here is another slave labor technique:  the cultivation system.  Not only do you starve to death, but you get whipped while being forced to cultivate, then you have to turn around a pay taxes on it.  Raw deal.

What else is new?  The women end up having to support their families without the husband, yet men are always concerned with controlling women’s “sexuality and mobility” (p. 901).  Control is the name of the game.

I find it interesting that the Euro colonizers had a “paternalistic obligation of the superior to the inferior” (p. 902).  This is quite new considering the forcefulness with which they overtook most of the colonies.  I am actually taken aback at this statement.  Just take a look at the photo on page 894 - that photo is worth a million words.

Everybody hold it!  This “female circumcision” thing is absolutely atrocious.  I have heard of this and have actually seen a photo of this being performed.  It is repulsive!  Who thinks of these absurd actions?  Dang!

I like this Edward Blyden’s assessment comparing African culture to that of the Euros at the bottom of page 909.  Nice!

The term “tribe” was something contrived by the colonialists.  “Ethnic identity” is a much more powerful term.

Ch. 17 Revolutions of Industrialization or The Problem with Wealth and Power and Other Quandaries

Two words on the first page of this chapter jump out:  wealth and power.

Bottom of page 829:  “a widespread and almost obsessive belief that things could be endlessly improved.”  I can say with confidence that this thinking still applies today.  Just look at Apple; they are constantly upgrading and improving their products, and people are like sheep lining up at the crack of dawn to get the next best toy.

OK, I am dating myself by saying this, but when I was a kid, we had a white rotary dial phone attached to the kitchen wall, and I still remember that phone number: 57980.  That was it!  Later, more numbers got attached to the front:  335-7980.  Then 412-335-7980.  Now 412 is 724 because there are too many people, and new numbers had to be created.

Historians can spin the words all they want about spreading the credit for innovation from Britain alone to other parts of the world, but the bottom line is that the Industrial Revolution was spawned in Europe, with Britain at the helm.  To say otherwise is like saying that the Cardinals don’t have the runaway best record in baseball right now.  The writing is on the wall.

Page 833:  “Asia, home to the world’s richest and most sophisticated societies . . .”  Says who?  Is this what everyone thought of Asia?

Seems to me that Britain, if compared to a phenomenal baseball team, had all the star players, resources, and backing to create a team of ultra studs!  Let’s give credit where credit is due.

This is awesome:  Samuel Smiles’ famous book outlining the core values of middle-class culture:  Self-Help (p. 837).  What a great title!  Now I know where my family’s values derived.  I will sleep much better tonight.

OH MY WORD!  So the Industrial Revolution spawned the world’s shopping addiction!  I wonder if the topic of shoes and shopping will surface at some point, because shoes are my personal addiction.

My father worked at PPG factory where I grew up in the suburbs of Pittsburgh.  Once, as a young adult, I took a job in a uniform factory, which I found to be akin to entering and exiting a prison on a daily basis.  That job lasted one week – I never even gave them a notice – just walked out of there.  Got sick of having my lunch stolen every day, punching a clock for every movement, and getting barked at for not folding the uniforms with the right creases.  Factories are really prisons in disguise.

Little did Henry Ford realize what a monster he created with the advent of the car.  Virtually every other commercial on the boob tube is one promoting a car.  Our society relies so heavily on automobiles that there is no turning back.

I am dating myself again, but this paragraph on Sears and Monkey Ward’s (p. 848) prompted me to think of my first pair of skates obtained with books of green stamps.  They were the metal skates that clamped onto the bottom of your sneakers and the parts were adjustable with a skate key.  I still remember going to the Green Stamps store to get them, and I loved them so until I got my first pair of shoe skates!

Yes, Pittsburgh is a steel town through and through.  That is why the Steelers are called the Steelers.  There are still communal living areas that exist around my hometown, projects that were built to accommodate the families of the factory workers.  Basically, they are tenement slums.

OK, I get the need for tin, rubber, sugar, bananas, cacao, etc., but bird droppings for fertilizer?!  Ugh!

Ch. 16 You Won't Fool the Children of the Revolution - No Way!

Ya know, I used to like French culture, but after reading what they did to the Haitian peeps on page 781, I have a change of heart.  Demanding payment for a successful revolution is downright cruel.

The Euro wars were more global because they had stakes around the world.

I like this “popular sovereignty” idea – give the people authority versus “from God or established tradition” (p. 783 .  Right on, brothers and sisters.

This perspective that the thought never crossed their minds to break from England until England tried to tighten the reigns is a detail that has been overlooked by me in past history classes.  Never looked at the colonists situation in that regard, but it is understandable the way it is explained in the textbook.

Another similar angle – that the independence achieved by the U.S. was less a result of the revolution and more of principles contained in the Declaration of Independence.  Never thought of our country’s freedom in these two aforementioned regards.

I like the distinction made between the impetus for the American Revolution versus the one for the French Revolution:  Respectively - tensions between a colonial relationship with a distant power versus sharp conflicts within French society (p. 788).

If anyone would like to see Louie XIV and Marie Antoinette humanized, check out Sofia Coppola’s “Marie Antoinette.”  This is a wonderful flick with Kirsten Dunst as Marie, and Jason Schwartzman as the inept and wishy-washy Louie XIV.

I remember reading about the French Revolution in history class at CSM about six years ago – the most interesting aspect of that lifeless class.

I actually kind of feel for Marie Antoinette.  She was a mere child thrown into a role in which she most likely did not want to be.  She knew nothing of Louie.  Who knew that a salad would be named after him?

Oh, I love this one:  Women who aspired to exercising political power were “not really women at all” (p. 790).  What were they, then?  Men in drag?  Sheez.

“Enlightenment” permeates these revolutions.

Hey, I like this Toussaint Louverture!  Smart guy.  Even got a power shift toward the slaves in Haiti (p. 793).

I simply do not understand how the French government can “force” a debt on Haiti.  How do you force someone to pay money?  I need more details to understand this one.

Of course, few of the promises of freedom, end of legal restrictions, and social advancement were kept because who is going to enforce these freedoms anyway if the people did prevail?  If France can force Haiti into debt, then broken promises for Latin Americans seems par for the course.

Thank God for enlightenment!  Finally, slavery was being viewed as out of date and unnecessary.

Funny how Britain became the voice of slavery, yet they were the worst offenders overall.  Atonement?

Sometimes one is unawares of oppression until it is brought to their attention, like the Poles and Ukrainians under the control of the Russian Empire (p. 802).

I love this phrase on page 806:  “freedom from household drudgery.”  How about the drudgery of working in an office?

Well, I don’t think I would throw myself in front of king’s horse in the name of women’s rights, but whatever suits your fancy.

This sentence sums up the feminist movement nicely:  “the movement prompted an unprecedented discussion about the role of women in modern society” (p. 807).  Amen.

Of course women were viewed as selfish, because now men have some serious competition, baby!

Ch. 15 Cultural Transformations or How Science Turned Religion Upside Down and Other Pope Stories

As I have stated in previous writings, churches are a business, and this line at the bottom of page 721 sums it up:  “many people were critical of the luxurious life of the popes, the corruption and immorality of some clergy, the church’s selling of indulgences, . . . and other aspects of church life and practice.”  You bet your sweet booty!  What a racket!  The Pope mobile is one of the worst offenders.

Right on, Martin Luther!  Somebody needs to question those popes, because they are some of the shiftiest people roaming planet earth.

Here we go, kings/princes, middle-class urban, and common folk are jockeying for positions.

Martin Luther’s movement actually lit a fire under the Catholic Church organization, to the point that the Catholics started a Counter-Reformation!  Good power play, Mr. Luther!  Don’t let those phonies rest on their laurels.

Honestly, people are taking this religious thing way too seriously.  Must they completely destroy other people’s objects with complete destruction?  And urinating on public idols (p. 729)? That is complete insanity.

“It is hardly surprising that such aggressive action generated resistance” (p. 729).  Of course it is not surprising!  What would you do if some foreigner ruined your trinket with his bodily fluid?

Oh, those Jesuits were even craftier than all other previous evildoers combined.  Let’s dress like them [the Chinese], learn their language, and focus on exchange of ideas with the ulterior motive of converting them.  Assimilate, then move in for the kill.  They will never know what hit them.

Oh, please, Strayer!  Christian monogamy would require men having to give up their concubines.  Then, Strayer asks, “What would happen to these deserted women (p. 734)?”  Certainly, no one was worried about these women’s welfare!  The only interest lies in the very act that has caused this world so much grief since day one.

Leave it to the pope to step in and right the ship in China.  Back off, boys, you are practicing Chinese idolatry!

That Muhammad Ibn Saud – what a nice guy!  “He did not insist on head to toe covering of women in public” (p. 736).

Here is a good line to chew on:  “intuitive moral knowledge exists in people . . . even robbers know that they should not rob” (p. 737).  Do humans have built-in morality?  Good Q.

Now this is interesting – how the university concept took off in Paris and other Euro cities.  The emergence of modern science is a breath of fresh air from all of this heavy talk of religion.

Copernicus turned old concepts about earth upside down and started a whole new ball game.  At the center of all of this lies math; scientific principles are described mathematically, providing new realities for non-believers.

I disagree, though, that the heart is just a machine – the heart is a metaphor for feelings.  It can be broken so badly that it is sometimes beyond repair, and that breaking can reverberate throughout one’s soul.  But then, my view is not the scientific view.

“Borrowing.”  That is the perfect word to describe how the world’s various peoples responded to new ideas, conquests, assimilations, and movements.

Ch. 14 Emotional Transformations and Other Historic Tragedies

Imagine the emotional state of the shackled victims in the painting on page 668.  Look at the faces of the four men in that painting and visualize the conversation taking place.  This chapter should be titled Emotional Transformations rather than Economic Transformations.

Whips, leg irons, windowless dungeons – how can people be so cruel and heartless?  I do hope that the tables were turned when these slave traffickers were sent to their final destination of hell.

Oh, those Portuguese were clever peeps!  We don’t have anything valuable to trade with you, so we are going to use our maritime might, whilst borrowing from the Mongols, and forcibly overtake your sorry arses to create a “trading post empire” (p. 673).  When all else fails, use brute force.

Sounds like the Spanish timed their takeover of the Philippines just right!  A combination of weak societies, no other competition, and proximity to China were the perfect combination for an “often bloodless Spanish takeover of the islands” (p. 675).

Why are the islands called the Philippines, yet its peoples are “Filipino”?  Never understood that flip from “ph” to “f.”

The Dutch and English “quickly overtook and displaced the Portuguese, often by force, as they competed vigorously against each other as well.”  Well, that scenario about sums up how the female species in my office operate.

Seems to me that the Dutch were more ruthless than the Mongols.  They “killed, enslaved, or left to starve virtually the entire population of some 15,000 people” (p. 676) and replaced them with slave labor.

When all else fails, another option besides brute force is good, old-fashioned bribery, which is what the Brits had to resort to with the Mughals in India.

Of course the conditions in the silver mines were horrendous!  Mine work is literally a descent into hell.  Check out the song “Blue Sky Mine” by Midnight Oil and notice the juxtaposition in the title words.

I would hardly call infanticide a moral method of birth control (p. 682).

Thankfully, we have environmental impact reports today.  Without keeping tabs on such commercialization as the fur trade, many animals would be extinct, just like what is happening to those poor elephants for their tusks.  Leave those animals be!

Yes, “criminal excess” (p. 685) is an excellent way of articulating how people get seduced by foreign commodities!

Unfortunately, we know all too well what alcohol has done to not only our Native American people, but people the world over – to the point that society functions on rehabilitation centers.

Fascinating that the word “slave” derived from the Slavs; bad timing for the African peoples, who were forced into plantation slavery and such a sad part of history.

I am not buying this line that “Africans did not generally sell “their own people” (p. 693).  Nonsense!

Not only was Mother Earth decimated by deforestation for whatever was in vogue at the time (silver), and animals made nearly extinct, the African population decreased from 18% of the world’s population in 1600 to only 6% in 1900 (p. 694).  These actions signify killing for profit.

Ch. 13 Political Transformations: Spud Encounters and Evil Vices that Make People Happy

Is there any significance to the fact that the Soviet Union was replaced by the Russian Republic on Christmas day 1991?  Why was that particular day chosen?  Is there symbolism?

Winds + innovations – a successful combination for conquering lands across an ocean.  With the wind at your back, you just sail right on in and make your mark.

For some inexplicable reason, I am fascinated by the germs and disease topic and how low tolerance in the Americas was an advantage for the Europeans.  Our book states that up to 90% of the Native American population was decimated by the diseases from abroad: measles, smallpox, malaria, etc.  That is a mind-blowing number.  Really lovely of the Euros to transport their diseases, but little did they know what was coming down the pike.

Here is a new word:  Amerindian.  I have not heard that used before.

One cannot possibly think of potatoes without thinking of the Irish potato famine, yet I never knew that the famine was caused from an airborne fungus from the Americas.  Fascinating!

Corn may have been cheap food for slaves, but it still is used today in just about everything.

Tobacco, chocolate, coffee, tea – Evil vices that people love!

Of course, all of this prosperity brought with it rivalries, wars, piracy, and smuggling – all things that still go on today.

Good way to soften the blow of women’s sexual abuse and rape by first stating that sometimes the marriages were beneficial to women because they acquired land.  Then the bomb drops – knew that one was coming.

Protection my arse!  So Mafioso!

Here’s a good string of words:  “Bearers of Civilization” (p. 628), the roots of status and power.

The Arabs pioneered large-scale sugar production?  Who would have known?

The demands placed on slaves were sinful.  While modern society has a pretty comfortable life, reading about the working conditions of slaves is a sad reminder of how we got to this point in time.

I see similarities in the “dregs” of the colonial world developing into the powerhouse of the United States and smart acquisitions of low-budget baseball teams that get the golden boys for small salaries.  The teams take these guys off of the scrap heap and shine them up into stud ball players.  Nice.

The PETA people would not have liked this fur hunting in Russia!

There has been a recurring theme of paying fees for virtually nothing in return throughout this book.

Peyton Place alert:  Nur Jahan ran the helm of her alcohol-and-opium- addicted husband!  Love it!

Within the space of two sentences, Turkish women are secluded and veiled, YET retained some social power from the pastoral societies.  Does not quite make sense.

The Devshirme Process:  Sheez, I guess if your son is stolen, you might as well look at the bright side:  upward mobility.

Ch. 12 Fifteenth Century or How People Became Jaded

It is about time these men of the past, like Columbus, were deconstructed to reveal their true colors.

Thanks to the Agricultural Revolution, the American Indians have been reduced to relying on casinos as an economy.  What a shame.

“Things Fall Apart.”  They certainly do.

“Warfare replaced successful food getting as the avenue to male prestige.”  Damn straight because certainly women are not the instigators of war.  War is all about men flexing their almighty muscles to prove their manhood.  Sorry if I have offended any of you dudes out there, but it is true.

Those Iroquois had it together by creating the League of the Five Nations.  Right on!

The encyclopedia concept by Emperor Yongle was the best concept ever drummed up by a person of his ilk.  I used encyclopedias from about 7^th – 12^th grades and could not have gotten through school without them.  My dad bought them from a traveling salesman.  Best thing he ever purchased.

I want to hear more about these “eunuchs” (castrated men).  What was that all about, Alfie?

300 ships filled with 27,000 people?  That equates to 9,000 people per ship.  Those things must have been monstrosities, kind of like the cruise ships of today’s world.

Personally, I much prefer reading about Western Europe than places like China, Russia, Africa.  The Renaissance period is fascinating reading in my book.

I like this Christine de Pizan woman and just might read her City of Ladies when WH is over.

I must say, Strayer does a fine job of volleying back and forth between Europe, China, and the Islamic empires.

So, some of the Hindu and Buddhist rulers along Malay and Indonesia converted to Islam with the ulterior motive of attracting traders to their port city (p. 580).  Not surprising at all that religion is used as a method to gain something because that is how people operate.

That’s so cute that the Aztecs had rubber balls!  Rubber balls defined my childhood; I always had a rubber ball and broomstick ready for stickball games.

I am willing to bet that the people responsible for performing human sacrifice rituals were thanking their lucky stars that they were on the other side of the table.

A laundry list of gender parallelism, which sounded so even, then the bomb drops with “None of this meant gender equality” (p. 586).  I do not see a distinction between parallelism and equality.

Thank God, we are finally getting into the modern age!

I like how Strayer words population growth as an “unprecedented jump in human numbers.”  It is procreation, something humans excel at.

It is so much easier to read about modern society, since that is what we know.  Out with the old, in with the new!  The Euros have taken over the world with their dominance in everything, thus creating the jaded human being.

Of course, coincidence and chance played a part on history!  Coincidence and chance play a part in every aspect of life.  We can "what if" all we want, but that will not change what actually happened.  God only knows how much I would like to have changed many things from the past.

Reflections on Ch. 11: Pastoral Peoples or How to have the Pope Shaking in His Boots

Patterns develop when people start forming alliances.  The mind’s wheels spin in directions that create power and wealth, and from reading about the Mongols, they wrote the book on survival of the fittest with kinship, horsemanship, and military might.

Strayer amazes me how empires are created and dissolved in one to three paragraphs.  That has been his running theme throughout this book: the rise and demise in less than 300 words.

Wolf packs led by a kaghan.  Los Lobos, the wolves, now has a whole new meaning tied to their name, and raids are the name of the game.

Sultan is such a sexy word.  Who would not want to be dubbed a sultan?

Those Mongols sure are a conundrum – they left only a modest imprint after being the “largest land-based empire in all of human history.”

Outnumbered?  No problem.  No technological superiority?  Handled.  Just create armies that will kick everyone’s arses, and you have got yourself a Mongol empire.  Desertion means death, so don’t even think about it.

Were Mongols bullies?  I would say, yes, since they used “psychological warfare.”

Great idea:  Let’s “exterminate everyone in northern China and turn in into pasture land.”

Bloodshed and massacres everywhere, and torture for taxes.  I guess that is one way of getting blood from a stone.  God’s punishment for all of these evil doings was to turn the land into desert.

These Mongols make the Mafia look tame.

Can someone please do something different with peasants besides tax and torture them?

Thank God someone came along and finally poked a hole in the Mongols’ hold over creation!  Leave it to the Russians.

Cool that guidebooks were published about how to navigate the Silk Roads.

Wow – the pope and European leaders were shaking in their boots about the Mongols’ intentions all the while with their own intentions of converting Mongols to Christianity.  Let’s see, Mongols versus the pope.  That pope had better run for cover.

Thus far, the Black Death portion is the most intriguing of all.  The rats and fleas were in and of themselves vehicles for disseminating the plague.  In a way, the plague could be viewed as a way of simmering down all of the Mongols’ frivolity over the planet.  It sort of evens thing out.

Reflections on Ch. 9: The Worlds of Islam

I had no idea that as many as “22% of the world’s population identified as Muslims” at the beginning of this century and that they “identified their own God, Allah, with Yahweh, the Jewish High God.”

Well, the book says that “the Quran demanded social justice," but in today’s world, extremists have taken this doctrine to the nth degree.  As the book states on page 411, attacks have “signaled the growing role of Islamic civilization in world affairs.”  Unfortunately, Americans are all too aware of the negative connotations.

These pillars of Islam are way too out there for this cowpoke.  A month of fasting?  How can one even stand up without sustenance for a solid month?

For someone who preaches “spiritual striving”, suppressing turncoat Jews by exile, enslavement, or murder is nothing short of contradictory in my book.

Seemingly, Muhammad had a captive audience, just like Hitler did in Nazi Germany.

I see contradiction in the brotherhood and no superiority themes posed on page 418 because of so much violence in today’s world.

Wow – the Arab armies just rode in and pretty much swept up Asia and Europe.  Were people really that weakened to let themselves get swept away by a foreign invasion?

Honestly, can’t people just get along?  These caliphs end up dividing people instead of uniting them, and then they roll right into a civil war.

I have heard of the Sunni / Shia people but never had an understanding of what this meant, so now I know.

How many offshoots of one religion can people create?  It is almost like a game:  Sunni, Shia, Sufis.  Maybe they should all just sit down together and enjoy some sushi and sake.

Yeah, I was waiting for this one:  in spiritual life, men and women were equal.  Then, you turn the page and get the big BUT.  “In social terms, and especially within marriage, . . . viewed women as inferior and subordinate.”  Of course, they did!

A separate bridge for women – that is hilarious!  This one is even better:  if a woman has to answer a knock on the door while she is using a pestle, she must stick her finger in her mouth to sound like an old lady!  Then they turn around and put equal blame on sin for both Adam and Eve just to level things out a bit.

I would hardly call Muslim egalitarian as stated at the bottom of p. 428.

“Massacres, enslavement, famine, and flight led to a sharp drop in the population” of Anatolia.  Sheez, I should think so!

Here is a nice change of pace:  Islam’s acceptance was “largely peaceful and voluntary” in West Africa.

Ch 10. The Worlds Christendom

Religions take on a life of their own by contracting and expanding, like a breathing organism.  Christianity, which seems to encompass a multitude of sub-religions, is the one religion that seems to have infiltrated the entire globe.

How could a religion decimate so quickly when a new one emerges?  Within a century after Muhammad’s death, “only a few Christian groups remained.”  It seems inconceivable that so many people converted so quickly.  They must have been really unhappy with Christianity – something was not going their way.

Oh, here we go.  Let’s show our control over others by guaranteeing the right to practice religion, largely in private, in return for payment of a special tax (p. 466).  So the Muxlim rulers flexed their muscle by driving Christians underground.  Nice.

Motivation for endorsing a religion:  It allows one to drink alcohol and eat meat, including during worship.  The Mongols liked it!

Wow!  Imagine “twelve linked underground churches” in Ethiopia (p. 469).  Literally, the churches were underground.  That is awesome!

People are not fools.  They are not going to be fooled by the pageantry and ostentation of an emperor who is hoisted high above his peoples as though he is made from divine blood.  That is why Byzantium had to focus on “collecting taxes, maintaining order, and suppressing revolts” (p. 470-1) because the people were on to their shenanigans.

I am not seeing the difference between a serf and slave.  Serfs were not personal property, but were bound to their master’s estates as peasant laborers and owed payments and services to the lord of the manor (p. 478).  That is hardly any different from being a slave, but then maybe it truly was a step up for them.

An anchoress – a woman who withdrew to a locked cell, usually attached to a church, where she devoted herself to prayer and fasting” (p. 484).  That is what I want to be when I grow up!  I am an anchoress, hear me roar!

Ch. 8: China and the World, or The World According to China

Amazing how in one paragraph there is a dynasty, like the Sui, and in the next paragraph they have collapsed.  How quickly things turn.

All you have to do is bring in the arts, and voila, you’ve got yourself a “golden age.”

Oh, it figures: the privileged get positions even when they flunk testing – still goes on today, I bet, and those poor peasants are forever being abused by the bullies.

Foot binding!  Certainly that was not thought up by anyone female!  What a ridiculously cruel thing to do to young girls.  Absolutely thoughtless.  Sickening, really, and right up there with animal abuse.  I want to know who dreamed up that idea!  Whoever the man is  responsible for foot binding should be floating around purgatory forever and a day.

The “tribute system” is an ingenious idea, I must say.  Let’s have the barbarians pay homage to the emperor with gifts, and we will gift them at a higher level just to cement who is in charge.  Great strategy – kind of in line with the Godfather.

OK, right on with the Godfather theme:  protection money (p. 375).  Still goes on today, I’m sure.  Extortion, a way of life for many people over many eras of time.  It’s all an illusion.

I had no idea that Chinese culture was so sought after and borrowed from by Korea, Viet Nam, and Japan, although Japan had the most upper hand in being selective because they were physically removed from China.

I also had no idea that China was the leader in papermaking and printing.

Seemingly, the rise and demise of dynasties coincides with foreign religions that had been slowly infiltrating.  For example, Buddhism was accepted into the folds during the demise of the Han Dynasty.  Timing is everything.

As always, things do get lost in translation:  “husband supports wife” gets translated to “husband controls wife.”  I am sure that was deliberate.

Monasteries, like the Catholic Church, are businesses and acquire wealth, so it is no wonder critics resented Buddhism’s hold in China.

Everything is a two-way street:  “what comes from beyond is always transformed by what it encounters within” (p. 393).

Ch. 7 Commerce and Culture or How to Transmit Disease Across Borders

Why does it not surprise me that rural women were the "main labor force" of silk textile production, were bringing in the bacon, frying it up in a pan, yet living in poverty?

This silk talk is fascinating stuff.  The fables about smuggling silkworms across borders are precious!  Hiding silkworms in a bamboo cane?  How did those little buggers survive?  Of course, the story has probably been embellished time and time again.

The silk bandwagon – you either get on board or lose your chance to profit.

 All it takes is people comingling, like on the Silk Roads, and you have got a recipe for disease.  Let’s face it, people are dirty, and combine that with animals, you’ve got disease brewing.

Of course, people are smart enough to take advantage of the death tolls incurred by disease.  Just jack up the prices on everything, and all is good – the foundation of supply-demand.

Consumerism at its best – always hungry for luxury goods, thus creating a money-infused economy of which everyone wants a piece of the action.

Piracy!  I was waiting for that to surface.  Of course those ships were hijacked in transit.

Phallic imagery was prominent in the Champa kingdom.  Imagine that?

Still today as in the past, commerce/trade is the driving force of economies and shapes civilizations creating hierarchies, status, wealth, and poverty.

The fabulous camel even has a cigarette named after her/him.  “I’d walk a mile for a camel.”  I just hope those poor creatures were properly cared for.  People can be so cruel to animals, and that is an unforgivable act.

Here is the one sentence that sums up commerce and the way of the world:  “This growing integration with the world of international commerce generated the social complexity and hierarchy characteristic of civilizations” (p. 336).

Ch. 6: Africa and the Americas or How to Catch a Buzz while Elminating People You Can Live Without

Symbolism is expressed everywhere: national pride, kingship, spiritual leadership, and ceremonies.  Where would we be without symbolism to tout or bemoan our position in this thing called life.

Those poor camels - being hauled off to other countries.  Did anyone bother to ask them if they wanted to go?  Perhaps they were content where they were.

I remember reading the book “The Hot Zone” about 20 years ago that addressed the health issues believed to emanate from Africa, so it is interesting to read that because Africa is bisected by the equator, serious health problems derive from this area.

It makes me sick to think about demand for ivory.  Elephants are sacred creatures and yet they are constantly hunted for their ivory.  Sickening.

Graves – another symbol of life that once was.  In the case of Axum, huge stone obelisks marked royal graves.  Gravestones are chockfull of information.

Who knew that being an ironsmith could bring one such a powerful persona.

I am envisioning a lively market full of people who have not bathed in eons and a swarming about the markets with their beasts in tow, surely unhealthy situations.  The smells alone must have been overpowering.

Aha!  So the Mayans are responsible for complex math calculations much to the chagrin of those who are not good at math.  Thanfully, I am not one of them.  You either get math or you don’t.

 The Mayans seemed culturally and intellectually advanced for their time, but I see the underlying problem as procreation.  Same as in today’s world.

Love the juxtaposition of the “Street of the Dead” and the “Pyramid of the Sun.”

How do we know that “two small sections of the [Teotihuacan] city were reserved exclusively for foreigners” and for what reason?  Were they tourists?

Fertilizer from  bird droppings?  Ay yi yi!

Shaman rulers under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs coupled with human sacrifice – sounds like a horror show.  Well, today’s world still experiences the former, but thankfully not the latter!

Here is a novel visual:  a Moche woman in her late 20s who was heavily tattooed – not so different from today’s world.

What a creative way to get a woman!  Just decorate your furnace with clay breasts and speak of their bellows impregnating the furnaces!  That certainly would draw me in.

OK, I get the human sacrifice thing because who wouldn’t want to eliminate some annoying soul here and there, but sacrificing of animals?  Absolutely not.