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).