However, enslaved captives often gained positions in the societies that had captured them, and their children were generally born free.
This is very different from slavery in America in the past. Allowing children to be born free and allowing them to gain positions in society is almost unheard of from the United State's past.
The encounter with the Americas (the topic of the next chapter) also upset a traditional understanding of the world’s origin and history that did not account for the existence of these continents. And religious reformers like Martin Luther used the ability to print books to radically change the way Europeans thought about their Christianity and the Catholic Church.
With the reprinting and different interpretations of the Bible, a question that has to come up is: how accurate is today's version of the Bible? While the basic concepts are probably consistent throughout history, some details had to have been lost in translation.
This depopulation threatened the power of the Church and the nobility, as surviving peasants became less patient with the taxes and labor demands of their bishops and lords. Peasant revolts in France and England in the second half of the 14th century showed the feudal system of the Middle Ages was coming to an end.
This is really great representation of how at the end of the day, the public has power. Although the government was raising taxes, once public population decreased and the existing people had enough, the government system derails.
The Janissaries were the Ottomans’ most effective weapon from 1363 to 1826,
This is very interesting because what started as an ethically wrong thing, stealing boys from their families, turned into a politically successful army. Nearly 500 years of this army allowed Istanbul to grow immensely and was breeding ground for political power.
The fleet traded for ivory, spices, ointments, exotic woods, giraffes, zebras, and ostriches;
In this time, China seemed to constantly want more. More people, more trade, and more land and cities.
During his three-decade reign, China’s population recovered from plague and famine, and grew from 60 to 100 million.
With the population almost doubling during his reign, I wonder if it would have happened regardless of if Hongwu was Emperor or not during that time.
Female infanticide has been a problem throughout Chinese history, as was, until the last century, the practice of foot-binding, which rendered generations of Chinese women crippled and semi-mobile for the sake of what amounted to a fetish of Chinese fashion.
The practices of infanticide and foot-binding are interesting because they directly go against the virtue of gentleness that Confucian wanted.
But the exams were also democratic in a way: even a scholar from a poor family could take the exam if he could educate himself;
With a generally fair way to take the tests, it probably left room for more people to want to be in positions of power.
Confucian ideas about conduct focus on five basic virtues: seriousness, generosity, sincerity, diligence, and kindness.
These five virtues are interesting to me because, though they aren't from the same religion, they are somewhat similar to the Fruits of the Spirit in the Bible. Which are: love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
iron, copper, and porcelain production as well as a variety of technological inventions including the compass, gunpowder, paper-making, mechanical clocks, and moveable type printing.
There is no doubt that China was extremely advanced and successful due to their abundance of goods. This is still somewhat true today given that a lot of the products used worldwide are made in China.
Religious conversion often accompanied Arab merchant activity.
This is interesting because it would also affect trade of crops.
The three other staple crops of the modern world (corn, potatoes, and cassava) were developed between 9,000 and 7,000 years ago by natives of the Americas, as we will discuss below
In old ways of farming, it was common to see three plants next to each other. Often called the "3 sister" way of farming, Native Americans did it with different crops as well.
And some have suggested we may have been thinking about agriculture wrong.
This reminds me of one thing about the agricultural industry that is still true to this day, there is always room for improvement and a possibility of a better way of doing something.