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Chapters 19, 20, & 21 Online Commentary

In this series of chapters, what I found most interesting was the comparison of the Chinese, Ottoman, and Japanese Empires.  Europe had a strong influence on the way these Empires conducted business, even to the point of forcing their will upon them.  China was a very good example of that. I find it ironic that China, with all of its technology and intelligence, found itself conquered by the Europeans at that time and never truly recovered from that.  China grew in population, yet was unable to accommodate this influx of people.  Resources were scarce and so were opportunities.  With the economic state in disarray, peasants revolted.  This event caused the necessary use of monies and other resources to defend itself from its own people that in the end, the state had significantly weakened.  This opened the door for outside influences to enter, and that's exactly what they did. The Ottoman Empire was no less fortunate.  It went from being a pow...
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Chapter 8 Online Commentary

Chapter 8 titled "China and the World" was exactly that, a description of how China's influence spread throughout the world and how the world influenced China as well. After reading this chapter, I couldn't help but wonder why China never became the leader of all countries.  We look at the United States as the world power, but China definitely was the head of many "firsts" that changed the way others lived their lives.  The movable type printing press, first established by the Chinese, was given credit to Johannes Gutenberg who was probably unaware that it had already been discovered elsewhere.  We all know it now, though.  The production of salt by solar evaporation spread to Islamic countries and Europe.  Papermaking was the highlight of it all for this innovation spread to Korea, Vietnam, Japan, India, Islamic countires, Spain, France, Germany, and England.  How one country, China, altered the way of living of so much of the world is absolutely phenom...
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Chapter 5 Online Commentary

The title of Chapter 5 is "Society and Inequality in Eurasia/North Africa".  So the main topic discussed here was the caste system in India, the unjust selection of individuals in China who could be selected for positions of civil service, and finally, slavery as it was in the Roman Empire.  There was also the view of the patriarchal societies in these regions and more specifically in Athens, Sparta, and Greece.  Basically, it boils down to women being subordinate to their male counterparts and restricted in their daily lives. I have looked over my previous posts and had a habit of summarizing the chapters instead of just giving my opinion of the content.  So I will try to change it up as such in this blog post.  Bear with me. As I have pondered the material, what stands out for me is the word "patriarch".  In all of these societies, males dominated over women and children and it was just accepted.  This was the way it had always been and would co...
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