Accelerating Connections - Part 3

The first surprise for me was the fact that silk had laws around who could wear it. I was long under the impression that everybody in China wore silk, like it was a common fabric. I also found it interesting that Seneca felt the cloth was immoral because it did not hide enough of a woman's body. I'm not sure how I thought Buddhism spread, but, I know I had never made the connection to the Silk Roads and the travelers upon it being the ones to spread the philosophy. It was also interesting to read about how the practices and beliefs changed as they migrated along the route. It makes sense that religions evolve while picking up pieces of other belief systems. It is a little bit surprising to realize that in our everyday lives we don't see these pieces falling together or the impact of cultural exchanges have on religions. I also was unaware that Bubonic Plague actually originated in India, long assumptions that it came out of either Africa or China. At the end of Chapter 7 I found Strayer's correlations between early "globalization" and trade patterns to todays globalization interesting. Although, the world of the "third wave" did not seem as globally connected at the modern world, the diffusion we are experiencing today is certainly reminicsent of what you read about in Chapter 7. I like to look at history as a means of finding surprises and I would say the biggest surprise for me in Chapter 8 was not how much the Chinese invented, this has almost always been hinted at. The surprise was in how much they borrowed from other cultures and then expanded upon. It was interesting to learn some of the influences that the Chinese had on other Chinese cultures and that the elite groups in all those cultures tried so hard to mimic Chinese Culture. Styling their cities on the capitol, pulling some semblance of Confucianism into their practices. I had no idea that Chinas was the first to invent printing, but, it makes perfect sense. I like the way Strayer manages to identify all of the impacts that China had on the world at large and the world at large had on China. There are many similarities to other and to later cultures. Using a tribute system that in fact the Emperor was actually paying tribute but stylizing it as gifts after tribute had been paid to him was a really good example of why those systems don't actually work for the long term. I also found it interesting that China was not a closed society until much later in their history. When you study Marco Polo, you think China has never allowed ambassadors and trade but that was not the case. Reading about the formation and growth of Islam did not offer to many surprises, most likely due in part to all of the commentary both good and bad that has prompted the watching of documentaries and reading of historical occurrences. I knew that much of what we in the west take for granted in our styles of learning and emphasis on study came out of the Islamic world. I did not know that Algebra came from that time and thought it stemmed from Asian or Chinese history so that was a new fact to file away. It is very telling however that in reading about the spread and the different Islamic rulers we can locate many similarities in the resurgence of Islam today and its ongoing spread. It was also interesting to learn that the word Jihad was used to really talk about interior personal struggle toward GOD, and that the Jihad of the sword was actually secondary. Also surprising and very interesting was to learn that Muhammad considered himself the last prophet and the revelations GODs final message to humankind.