Chapter 12: Pastoral Peoples on the Global Stage

Chapter 12: Pastoral Peoples on the Global Stage

            In this chapter I learned about the Mongolian Empire, a group that was commonly described as barbaric but in some sense I consider them to be ingenious and ruthless. The Mongolian society was nomadic based so a majority of their history is written by either enemies or account witnesses who ran into them. Being a nomadic culture gave them a huge advantage in war fare.  As an audience we hear mostly about the greatness of the Mongol’s and their fierceness but every now and then they had their casualties or setbacks for example “their withdrawal from Eastern Europe (1242), their defeat in Egypt (1260), the failure of their own invasion of Japan owing to violent typhoons (1274, 1281), and the difficulty of penetrating the tropical jungles of South East Asia, even when they tried conquering Russia” Page 345.  Mongolian society was egalitarian and this lead to the fall of Cheggis Khan’s empire based on the “10, 100, 1000, 10,000”structure, when the Cheggis Khan had passed away everyone who was a general had to return back to pick a new Khan. Everyone in the hierarchy of this pyramid structure had to turn around when they were already scattered.  History doesn’t credit on how impressive the Mongolian civilization truly was because they were consistently doubted they were the first ones to have horses and domesticated them into being used for battle. They had a complex economy because again their usefulness of being nomadic their economy was based from what they raided in small cultures and what they had gathered mainly only what they needed. When they did take over areas they never forced a religion because amazingly they were open towards what people believed as what Mongke had said “Just as God gave different fingers to the hand , so has He given different ways to men” Page 347.

Chapter 10: The Worlds of European Christendom

In this chapter we were provided with the knowledge about the religious conflicts that occurred during the classical era for the Byzantine Empire “The Third Rome”. “Europe eventually became the global center of Christianity, but that destiny was far from clear in 500 C.E. At that time, only about one-third of the world’s Christians lived in Europe” Page 270. The Western Roman Empire was permanently lost to Byzantium, and at this time the church was tied to the state. Economically, the Byzantine Empire was a central player in the long distance trade of Eurasian. During a period at this moment in time, Rome relatable to India’s caste system, to be in the system of power or to obtain social status becoming a part of God’s followers and being that status included religious empowerment meant an individual had elite status. With that saying most of this chapter covers Constantinople or Byzantium and how was split at this time between the Eastern Orthodox Church versus the Roman Catholics had disagreements upon the nature of the trinity, and one major issue involved the veneration of icons, popular paintings of saints and biblical scenes, this was critical controversy in a religious prospective because they felt that it “Distracted believers from the adoration of God himself” Page 275. The most significant expansion of the orthodox Christianity occurred among what is now known as Ukraine and Western Russia. Kievan Rus was a city formed and stimulated through trade but this society was loosely led by slaves, freemen, privileged people and commoners. Persia had already become a part of the Islamic world, but Prince Vladimir of Rus went into a wider network of communication, he actively considered Judaism, Islam, Roman Catholicism, and Greek Orthodoxy. Prince Vladimir rejected Islam because it prohibited alcoholic drinking in which he said “drinking is the joy of the Russes”. Eastern Orthodox Christianity thus came to Rus without pressure of military or occupation; it had eventually taken its account amongst the Russian society.

Chapter 8: Commerce and Culture

Chapter 8: Commerce and Culture

Chapter eight proved to be quite interesting with its mixture of involving probably the three greatest trade routes in the world and the huge appreciation for camels because camels they provided long ways of transportation for most of these roads/trails that revolutionized history in agriculture, structures, technology, writing, language, religion, and changed most peasants’ lives.  We have the Silk Roads, Sea Roads, and The Sand Roads, which are all apart of long distance exchange of goods. With the growth of the Silk Road that provided a setting for great civilizations such as China, India, the Middle East and the Mediterranean. The Silk Road provided all kinds of all the luxury goods and quantities of silk it came to be a problem that the only time the Silk Road prospered was when security was provided. Amazingly Koreans, Japanese, Indians, and Persians learned how to produce silk because of its huge impact on the economy at this time period besides its use to trade later on it was equal to being currency. Restrictions of silk use was developed later on because it was able to determine elite status, eventually silk even was associated in the expanding wardrobes of Buddhism and Christianity.

Sea Roads linked Eurasian societies by land and sea-based trade routes which help connect civilians from multiple continents from the Indian Ocean. Most of the goods that were being imported and exported were shipped in bulk and the various goods were ivory, gold, eventually in its years the road carried mass market stuff like textiles, pepper, timber, rice, sugar, and wheat.  Then we have the sand roads which really surprised me because this is where the camel exchange was critical because it was a lot easier to transport gold, salt, and slaves! The sand roads provided North African with cloth, glassware, books, and other manufactured goods.

Chapter 7: Classical Era Variation

Chapter 7: Classical Era Variation

            This chapter helps support my statement about how confusing this book can be in organizing its information with that being said the information that was provided it seemed to lean towards how amazing these three major continents from the classical era were.  Most of the reading was incredible with what depth was covered, so much detail about each continents civilization. The wide variety that was highlighted covered culture, city states, governments and some important officials, even talked about how the peasants survived and how revolutionary agriculture was. Most of the reading was hard to digest especially due to some of the information was not necessary. A quote that stood out to me was on page 183 in ways of the world and it said “when historians refer to the Africa during the classical era they are speaking generally of a geographic concept, a continental landmass, and not a cultural identity, no one living on the continent at that time at that time thought of himself or herself as an African.” I wanted to use this quote as an example of something shocking and unnecessary. As you continue on with the reading you learn more about the civilizations that have been in their section since 100 B.C.E. to 200 B.C.E. which is pretty awesome to know especially how detailed the author goes when mentioning the cultivated land and how soil erosion factors into the process and expansion of agriculture but some cons were warm temperatures.

Chapter Six: Eurasian Social Hierarchies

In chapter six you would find the information provided to be so natural and realistic. We see that the section strongly focuses on social hierarchies’ or caste systems. Class would be defined from areas you’re born to the clothes you wear, even based up on how wealthy you were. In China class would be determined on the wealth of its family, so from much land you owned and the family name. Most wealthy people in China were some type of scribe or scholar to law maker this making intelligence a priority in China. Another example of these social hierarchy and caste systems were India’s Birth “purity of blood”.  What family you were born into determined what social status people had, some of their social life, religious life, or even cultural traditions had influence upon their caste system. Then as we read farther on in the chapter we hit a section of this brutal and vulgar truth about Rome and its slavery civilization.

As I have been reading these last couple chapters I am lead to believe how important China’s history is because we could really learn and fix our government from their problems. China’s role in this section leads a huge chunk of a terrible and corrupt economy. The way China was lead seemed backwards they taxed greatly on the poor and less on the rich even let them get away depending on property. Most of China's inhabitants were a merchant, beggar, or peasant that worked on a farm. Early on in China's history its people were allowed to expand and migrate until population started to greatly increase then they were allow less slots eventually people ran out of money and sold their land.