I knew virtually nothing about the history Near, Middle, or Far East until fairly recently, when I read a couple books with a reading group, became fascinated, and read more. I really feel like Persia, the Silk Road, and China/Southeast Asia were huge holes in my formal education, and I'm trying really hard to fill them.
Also, at least after it became the center of the Muslim World before 1000 CE, the Middle East, trade with which made the Vikings and Venice great powers, while shaping Eastern Europe (including Russia), and intellectual exchange with which made the great European advancements in philosophy and science of the late Middle Ages possible.
2025-03-20 11:30:01
There are many problems with using the Dark Ages as an analogy, not the least of which is that the Dark Ages, to the extent that they were really a thing, took place in a part of the world that, outside of the Italian Peninsula, Greece (and the surrounding areas), and Turkey, had effectively been a global backwater since the extinction of the Neanderthal. Sure, Rome had conquered much of it, but it's not like Roman technological, military, or political advances were coming out of Gallia, Hispania, Germania, or Britannia (or to the extent that they were, they were coming from Romans campaigning there). Things looked very different for much of that thousand years in, say, Persia or East Asia, where the world was doing just fine.
Since the end of the world, the West has seen the rise and fall of more than one great power, and the East has seen its millennia-old great power fall and rise again. There are likely better lessons about the end of a great power in a highly globalized world in the last 600 years than in anything before it. We're not Rome, as much as we'd like to think we are, because the rest of the West is not merely barbarians.
I'm sure I've recommended it here a few times before, butThe Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power and the Origins of Our Times by Giovanni Arrighi is a great look at the cycle of the decline of a great Western power, the interegnum, the ascendance of another power, and its reign, since the late middle ages (starting with Renaissance Florence). There's much to disagree with in there, and he gets predictions about who will come after the U.S. wrong, but it's full of great historical insights.
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I knew virtually nothing about the history Near, Middle, or Far East until fairly recently, when I read a couple books with a reading group, became fascinated, and read more. I really feel like Persia, the Silk Road, and China/Southeast Asia were huge holes in my formal education, and I'm trying really hard to fill them.
Also, at least after it became the center of the Muslim World before 1000 CE, the Middle East, trade with which made the Vikings and Venice great powers, while shaping Eastern Europe (including Russia), and intellectual exchange with which made the great European advancements in philosophy and science of the late Middle Ages possible.
There are many problems with using the Dark Ages as an analogy, not the least of which is that the Dark Ages, to the extent that they were really a thing, took place in a part of the world that, outside of the Italian Peninsula, Greece (and the surrounding areas), and Turkey, had effectively been a global backwater since the extinction of the Neanderthal. Sure, Rome had conquered much of it, but it's not like Roman technological, military, or political advances were coming out of Gallia, Hispania, Germania, or Britannia (or to the extent that they were, they were coming from Romans campaigning there). Things looked very different for much of that thousand years in, say, Persia or East Asia, where the world was doing just fine.
Since the end of the world, the West has seen the rise and fall of more than one great power, and the East has seen its millennia-old great power fall and rise again. There are likely better lessons about the end of a great power in a highly globalized world in the last 600 years than in anything before it. We're not Rome, as much as we'd like to think we are, because the rest of the West is not merely barbarians.
I'm sure I've recommended it here a few times before, but The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power and the Origins of Our Times by Giovanni Arrighi is a great look at the cycle of the decline of a great Western power, the interegnum, the ascendance of another power, and its reign, since the late middle ages (starting with Renaissance Florence). There's much to disagree with in there, and he gets predictions about who will come after the U.S. wrong, but it's full of great historical insights.