WH Blog: Intro to Part 2 and Chapter 3

WH Ch 3:

The chapter brought up some questions for me. The chapter compared China with the Roman civilization and discussed the reasons why it lasted a lot longer: national identity through language, culture, intermarriage, etc. I’m wondering if this conformity for unity is actually good for the country. It is helpful to have a more centralized government, but isn’t lack of diversity a bit sad? A loss of culture is a part of someone’s identity taken away. And this conformity could hinder China too. We’ve already seen a bit of this actually in the past. For example, the ideas of Confucius were highly regarded pre-1900s. They were used as content for the civil service exam so only those with a good understanding of Confucian’ political and ethical values were able to obtain a level of authority within the country. This focus on only one person’s ideas helped unify the ideals of rulers, but they were using the same 4 books and 5 classics to govern for the longest time. Since there was so much emphasis on staying the same, there wasn’t much room for new ideas. How can a backward-looking society fare and last in the modern world? Ever since realizing the flaw in their system, China has tried to involve itself in forms of academia besides those studied in the civil service exam. I just wanted to talk about that since the chapter didn’t go into many downsides of China’s way of unity.

It was interesting to read about how Rome started out. I never would guessed that they started so small. The book never really went into depth about how they got into power, so I was disappointed. Their “rags to riches” story is intriguing (117). How can an empire so small and poor suddenly conquer a group of people as large as the population in China? I hope to read about this more in the future. I didn’t like how it’s republican ways eventually turned into monarchy, but as we all know, money and fame changes people (and countries). I forgot if Rome was a direct democracy… It was probably difficult to keep it that way if that’s what they practiced, so I understand to an extent. Also, the different cultural groups would probably continuously fight over policy because of their different backgrounds and needs.

Sidenotes:
  • The reading this time compared civilizations with each other. I’ve found it more helpful to take my notes in charts comparing the two civilizations discussed rather than having them in outline form.
  • In this chapter, I was very surprised to read how China and India are so old. I didn’t know that they’ve been around for that long.
  • The Greeks, Persians, and Indians were great too. I just don’t have anything to say about them.
  • In the intro to part 2 (pg. 99) there’s a snapshot of human population growth. I don’t understand really why it fluctuated so much between 500 B.C.E. to 500 C.E. Was there a disease/pandemic? The summary above it says that it was due to “absence of fundamental breakthrough” which failed to support large numbers of people. Does this just mean there weren’t enough resources or ways to get to the resources?

Thank you for reading and have a wonderful day! :)

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