10/30/10
Assignment 1-Chapter 16, “Centuries of Turmoil & Grandeur in Asia”
This paper will not be a chapter summary, but instead be my individual perspective gleaned from picking one relevant section from the reading of this chapter’s content. Firstly, one simple, yet deeply resonating point that was conveyed during today’s lecture was essentially that humans are a pretty young species. After listening and taking notes on ‘The Middle Ages’ history today, I postulated the following from the discussion of the two basic principles of history in regard to both change and continuity. What I seek to achieve as my terminal learning objective derived from this course will be to enable myself to better understand how the human race has evolved. Based on mastery of this information, I can potentially plan to possibly further enhance my own individual existence as well as offer input for the betterment of society as a whole, or merely gossip (go sip) about this material over a pint (or a few of the aforementioned).
Now on with the show…
After reading the above referenced chapter, it spells out very clearly with regard to the “who, what, when, where”, and a little less clear picture of the “why”. It begins with a high level summary, and then dives into the areas that are covered, broken out into geographies, and finally it compares and contrasts some of the key differences from a few perspectives, such as politics, religion, and economics.
The big picture of-When: Middle Ages (c. 1000-1500) Where/Who: India, China, and Japan. “Who” can be referenced to dually define a group of people as well as certain, and/or specific individuals. What: Ruling empires and subsequent turnovers, primarily through invasions, although Japan, was an exception to the history of invasions based on Kamikaze (not the drink) but a few lucky “divine winds”.
The chapter starts out with India,