The next step is to start taking "1421: The Year China Discovered the World" seriously.
Chinese archaeologists are striking out along the Silk Road
41–50 of 113 posts
Re: Chinese archaeologists are striking out along the Silk Road
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
The West really isn't winning this one if that's your standard. The Mongol empire which amassed all the wealth, technology and military prowess of China during their expansion destroyed the Arabic world (arguably the most advanced civilization at the time), Russia, and the West they encountered like a bulldozer through wet cardboard. And did so with armies 1/3-1/5 the size of their opponents. We don't really acknowle…
There were structural, geographic, and ecological, reasons for why mongol invasions stopped before they reached western Europe (aside from some relatively short-lived attempts at imperiogenesis in eastern Europe). The same reasons were present for Arab "invasions" up from Iberia. Walter Scheidel has written a fascinating book that takes a very hard historical look at possible historical counterfactuals comparing post…
> aside from some relatively short-lived attempts at imperiogenesis in eastern Europe
Hm? The Golden Horde seems to have lasted for a fairly respectable period of time as far as empires go. Mongol rule in Russia outlasted Mongol rule in China by more than a century.
Re: Chinese archaeologists are striking out along the Silk Road
#43The next step is to start taking "1421: The Year China Discovered the World" seriously. Vide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_Menzies
I read that book when it came out. Really liked it, but, from that link:
"The reasoning of 1421 is inexorably circular, its evidence spurious, its research derisory, its borrowings unacknowledged, its citations slipshod, and its assertions preposterous ... Examination of the book's central claims reveals they are uniformly without substance."
Whelp!
Re: Chinese archaeologists are striking out along the Silk Road
#44The next step is to start taking "1421: The Year China Discovered the World" seriously. Vide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_Menzies
I read that book when it came out. Really liked it, but, from that link: "The reasoning of 1421 is inexorably circular, its evidence spurious, its research derisory, its borrowings unacknowledged, its citations slipshod, and its assertions preposterous ... Examination of the book's central claims reveals they are uniformly without substance." Whelp!
If that were true, when the Portuguese and Spaniards got to tne new world 90% of the people would have died recently of disease.
Those chinese ships were small floating cities and disease would have spread throughout the continent.
Re: Chinese archaeologists are striking out along the Silk Road
#45Travellers from Asia journeyed to the Greco-Bactrian kingdom of Ghandara (whose name is a corruption of Alexandria) and took Buddhism back with them to the east. This is fictionalised in the story 'Journey to the West'. Nippon TV in Japan did a cool TV series adaption of this story that was dubbed into English and shown on kids TV in the UK as 'Monkey', which was quite popular back in the day. If you spend enough time wandering around the British Museum you learn all this stuff.
Re: Chinese archaeologists are striking out along the Silk Road
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
There were structural, geographic, and ecological, reasons for why mongol invasions stopped before they reached western Europe (aside from some relatively short-lived attempts at imperiogenesis in eastern Europe). The same reasons were present for Arab "invasions" up from Iberia. Walter Scheidel has written a fascinating book that takes a very hard historical look at possible historical counterfactuals comparing post…
> aside from some relatively short-lived attempts at imperiogenesis in eastern Europe Hm? The Golden Horde seems to have lasted for a fairly respectable period of time as far as empires go. Mongol rule in Russia outlasted Mongol rule in China by more than a century.
Mongol rule in Russia posed no serious threat to western Europe in terms of imperial conquest. The horde was fragile on its western frontiers. Steppe invasions and conflicts on the east between the Mongols and Chinese empires shaped that area for millenia. Russia, as an outlier, if we consider it a part of Europe, is uniquely exposed to the steppes in a similar way to China. The Mongol threat to greater Europe, however, was not that great. The tactics, ecology, and technologies, that made them a remarkable threat would not have been effective in western Europe during the same time periods.
It's certainly an interesting "could have been", but you need to move very far away from what actually happened to make it a convincing possibility.
Re: Chinese archaeologists are striking out along the Silk Road
#47Re: Chinese archaeologists are striking out along the Silk Road
#48Re: Chinese archaeologists are striking out along the Silk Road
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
> which way did influence run? Usually the way of the site of higher riches and more advanced technically, organizationally, etc, to the less one?
The West really isn't winning this one if that's your standard. The Mongol empire which amassed all the wealth, technology and military prowess of China during their expansion destroyed the Arabic world (arguably the most advanced civilization at the time), Russia, and the West they encountered like a bulldozer through wet cardboard. And did so with armies 1/3-1/5 the size of their opponents. We don't really acknowle…
I was reading about Keraites recently:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keraites
Some of the invading Mongols were Christians, with a particular reverence for the biblical Magi (the three wise men), and Genghis Kahn, and his son, and his grandson Kublai Khan, all married into this group.
Re: Chinese archaeologists are striking out along the Silk Road
#50The myth of China being China for millenia is such a propagandist rewrite of history in that region; I hate to see NYT headlines fall for it.
It would be akin to Italy claiming that they are Romans...sure Romans lived there, but there is a whole lot of history between then and modern day state that would make this claim at best tenuous.
Mussolini was fond of making that claim. Wikipedia says "the entire Mediterranean was redefined to make it appear a unified region that had belonged to Italy from the times of the ancient Roman province of Italia, and was claimed as Italy's exclusive sphere of influence."