Chapter Fourteen: Economic Transformations Continued

"Ways of the World"

Chapter Fourteen: Economic Transformations Continued

Commerce and Consequence

1450-1750

In this chapter what I also found interesting was the section on the fur trade. It is just such an underrated topic when you actually think about it. Honestly, I never even really saw the fur trade in other historical classes being taught through a text book as essentially a prosperous enterprise. Sure it was making money like any other rarity or textile during that time yet it was not portrayed in a way that wold imply that this was a serious, and at the time, existentially growing market for the larger parts of the globe and larger more successful empires. This includes but is not limited to North America, Russia, the Ottoman Empire, France, London, etc. It was also fascinating to analyze the symbolic meaning behind the different kinds of fur in various regions. Not only were they worn for conventional purposes, such as keeping the French or Siberians warm in fatal winters, but they also represented different social statuses in Russia, Europe, and parliament.

Chapter Fourteen: Economic Transfomations

"Ways of the World"

Chapter Fourteen: Economic Transformations

Commerce and Consequence

1450-1750

In this chapter I was in a sense exhausted to be reading about slavery. Not that I don't think it is important to be talked about, however, I think it is repetitive and similar due to the fact that I personally feel as though the same instances and concepts of slavery are taught in the same vague perspective. Aside from that I found it interesting and actually kind of funny reading about the section on A Portuguese Empire of Commerce. In particular the part, on page 673) where it said "the Portuguese king grandly titled himself "Lord of the Conquest, Navigation, and Commerce of Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia, and India." For one it's humorous in a way that he gave himself such a high and prestigious title and just the fact that it was extremely long. I personally would not call him all of that because its just a mouth full and ridiculous. In retrospect this chapter made me internalize the concept of how important and diverse the globalization differed in many ways throughout many cultures, races, and civilizations.

Chapter Thirteen: Political Transformations

"Ways of the World"

Chapter Thirteen: Political Transformations

Empires and Encounters

1450-1750

While this chapter of Robert Strayer's global history textbook covers great topics such as The Great Dying, the Colombian Exchange, the Aztecs and Incas, and the Russian Empire, I could not help but to become fixated on one section in particular. I have to first admit that even throughout my first world history course in high school I was always more curios and had an overall fascination with the Asian Empires. A feasible question one might ask would simply be 'why?" And of course, sarcastically, I would respond with a "why not?"
I find it more than mildly interesting to see history of this civilization essentially be told fore-knowingly through text. It is not at all hard to argue that during this time frame, and even years following after, the Asian Empires where among the most advanced and abundantly resourced civilizations on the planet (although it can as easily be counter argued that they did not know what to do with all of that at once leading to their ultimate demise). Between the Qing Dynasty Empire, the Mughal Empire, Tibet, and Xinijang there is more than enough history, culture, and knowledge to go around. I think it is more than fulfilling to take a look back on the Empires and see their successful peak as an empire transform into an abrupt but inevitable downward spiral. How do some of the most populated, educated, and materially rich civilizations as Strayer puts it "[turn the] Silk Road trading network, welcoming all of the major world religions, and generating an enduring encounter between the nomads of the steppes and the farmers of settled agricultural regions...[into] the backward and impoverished region known to nineteenth- and twentieth-century observers" (pg 641). This chapter makes me wonder, in a more generalized perspective, about the characteristics these fallen empires had that countries today posses and if those countries of such wealth, power, and resources will take a similar downward spiral as these once flourishing empires.