Showing posts with label History. Show all posts
Showing posts with label History. Show all posts
Friday, December 28, 2012
Sunday, October 28, 2012
A Point Of View: China and multiculturalism
A Point Of View: China and multiculturalism
The
vast majority of the Chinese population regard themselves as belonging
to the same race, a stark contrast to the multiracial composition of
other populous countries. What effect does this have on how China views
the world, ask Martin Jacques.
I was on a taxi journey in Shanghai with a very intelligent
young Chinese student, who was helping me with interviews and
interpreting. She was shortly to study for her doctorate at a top
American university. She casually mentioned that some Chinese students
who went to the US ended up marrying Americans. I told her that I had recently seen such a mixed couple in Hong Kong, a Chinese woman with a black American. This was clearly not what she had in mind. Her reaction was a look of revulsion. I was shocked. Why did she react that way to someone black, but not someone white? This was over a decade ago, but I doubt much has changed. What does her response tell us - if anything - about Chinese attitudes towards ethnicity?
China's population is huge.
Continue reading the main story
Find out more
- Martin Jacques is an economist and author of When China Rules the World
- A Point of View is usually broadcast on Fridays on Radio 4 at 20:50 BST and repeated Sundays, 08:50 BST
What people aren't generally
aware of, though, is that more than nine out of 10 Chinese people think
of themselves as belonging to just one race, the Han. This is
remarkable. It is quite different from the world's other most populous
nations: India, United States, Indonesia and Brazil. All recognise
themselves to be, in varying degrees, multiracial and multicultural.
True, a country that is the size of a continent has obviously
been home to countless different races down the ages. But that is not
how the great majority of Chinese see themselves today.Why is this?
The answer takes us back to the birth of modern China more than 2,000 years ago. China is extremely old - the longest continuously existing country in the world. The eastern half of China - where the vast majority of Chinese live now and lived then - has been more or less united ever since 211BC.
Over that extraordinarily long period - as a result of war, occupation, absorption, assimilation, ethnic cleansing and government resettlement - the sense of difference between the many races that lived in the eastern half of China was slowly eroded.
Fundamental to this process was the gradual emergence of a shared cultural identity.
Continue reading the main story
Han Chinese
- Trace ancestry back to Huaxia people who lived along northern China's Yellow River
- Name comes from Han Dynasty that ruled a unified China from 206BC til 220
- Han have absorbed many ethnic groups, taking on aspects of their culture and language
- Speak a variety of dialects and even distinct languages, but share a common writing system based on Mandarin
- Traditional Han beliefs are Confucianism and Daoism
China, along with part of today's
Middle East, was home to the first settled agricultural communities in
the world. They gradually supplanted nomadic culture and ushered in the
beginnings of centralised governance.
Over the last two millennia, China has generally been one of
the most advanced, often the most advanced, civilisation in the world.
It is hardly surprising that, with a rich history like this, the Chinese
have a very powerful sense of their cultural identity.Every country has its own unique story of ethnicity. Take the US. It starts with arrival of the European settlers and the near extermination of the native American population, to be followed later by large-scale African slavery. Not surprisingly, these experiences have profoundly influenced American attitudes and the country's behaviour as a global power.
How did China evolve? It is essentially the story of the Han and the way in which over a period of two millennia they came to absorb the great majority of other ethnic groups.
Continue reading the main story
Of the 55 recognised ethnic minority groups, the 10 largest are:
Ethnic minorities in China
- Zhuang (16.9 million)
- Hui (10.59 million)
- Manchu (10.39 million)
- Uyghur (10.07 million)
- Miao (9.43 million)
- Yi (8.7 million)
- Tujia (8.35 million)
- Tibetan (6.28 million)
- Mongol (5.98 million)
- Buyei (2.87 million)
Before the victory of the Qin
dynasty in 221BC, China was divided into many different states. The
process of its subsequent unification was the creation of an empire. But
whereas all the other great empires of the world have long since broken
up, China remains united. Why? In one word - the Han. The Han identity
has served as the glue which has kept a geographically and
demographically vast country together. Without that shared identity,
China would long ago have fallen apart.
The China I have been talking about is the eastern half of
present-day China, where more than 90% of the population lives. What
then of the western half? This is a different story. It accounts for
over half the territory of China but contains only about 6% of its
population. Whereas the eastern half of China dates back about two millennia, the western part is far more recent, having only been incorporated about 300 years ago.
From the mid-17th Century, large tracts of the western region were conquered by the Qing dynasty in a series of brutal wars. The inhabitants of these lands were not Han. With their different physical appearance, darker skin, distinctive customs and lower level of development, the Han saw them as the Other, as "barbarians".
Not surprisingly, the Chinese government, both imperial and communist, has long had a troubled relationship with parts of the western regions, notably Tibet and Xinjiang.
Ethnicity is a powerful determinant of how societies perceive others. So is China, as a global power, likely to view the rest of the world?
Just as with the US, China will naturally tend to see the world in its own image. An unusual feature of China, in this respect, is that its history is so atypical: a huge population who overwhelmingly consider themselves to share the same identity. This helps to explain why the Chinese have tended to think of Africa as one, just like China, rather than a complex mosaic of different ethnicities and cultures.
The fact that China has had little experience of, or exposure to, the rest of the world until very recently - the past 30 years to be exact - has served to reinforce a tendency to see other countries through a Chinese prism.
When I first got to know the Chinese, one of the things I most enjoyed about them was their powerful sense of who they were, their confidence in who they were. They did not defer to white people. I liked that and respected them for it. It was as if their remarkable history resided in each and every one of them and made them walk tall.
Despite the fact that for the best part of two centuries China came to suffer hugely at the hands of the West, and to lag badly behind the West, the Chinese never stopped believing in themselves. Such pride and confidence is to be admired. In my view, though, it can also have a downside - a tendency to look down on others. If the Chinese have always considered themselves to be at least the equal of white Westerners, a common, though by no means universal, attitude has been to regard those of darker skin as inferior.
My horrified student friend was a case in point.
But why is this? Its roots are deep. For many centuries, white has had positive connotations in Chinese culture and black negative ones. Perhaps the reason is that those who toiled all day in the fields became dark while the aristocratic elite, protected from the sun, remained pristine white. To this day, interestingly, skin whitening products are enormously popular amongst Chinese women, as they also are in Japan and Korea and elsewhere.
Didier Drogba now plays in Shanghai
There are small signs of change.
Didier Drogba, the Ivory Coast footballer who now plays for Shanghai Shenhua, has spoken in glowing terms about how the Chinese have received him.
As China becomes increasingly familiar with the world - as is now happening in such a dramatic way, from Africa to Latin America, and South Asia to Central Asia - parochial if deep-seated prejudices will come under growing pressure.
Source
Monday, September 24, 2012
10 things readers want in a history of the world
10 things readers want in a history of the world
Andrew Marr's History of
the World is attempting to tell the story of civilisation in eight
hour-long episodes. Last week he spoke of the difficulty of choosing
what to include, and what to leave out.
Charlemagne didn't make the cut. Mughal emperor Aurangzeb did. And there had to be a host of other difficult omissions. We asked for your suggestions for often overlooked moments in world history. Here are 10.
1. Industrial ammonia
In 1909 Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch created a way of producing huge amounts of fertiliser by artificially synthesising ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen.
The fertiliser increased crop
yields which allowed more food to be produced for a growing population.
The process was described as conjuring "bread from air".
Without the Haber-Bosch process, about 40% of people - nearly
three billion - would not be alive today because we could not produce
the amount of food we need, says environmental expert Professor Vaclav
Smil from the University of Manitoba."We have to eat and drink, everything else is optional. In that sense it's the most important scientific discovery. Organic agriculture would not provide enough food to feed the world."
But Haber's contribution to agriculture is often overshadowed by his work developing chemical weapons. During World War I, he developed the use of gas for warfare and his work was later used by the Nazis to poison Jews in the gas chambers.
Continue reading the main story
Find out more
- Andrew Marr's History of the World began Sunday 23 September on BBC One at 21:00 BST
- Reveals the decisive moments that shaped the world we live in today
Of Jewish descent but "pardoned"
because of his patriotic efforts in World War I, Haber was expelled from
Germany after he refused to fire Jewish workers. He died of a heart
attack one year later in 1934.
"We should remember his peaceful efforts before the Great War
and recognise his contributions to science, useful for the whole of
humanity to stave off possible famine," says Haber's godson, the
historian Fritz Stern."He was a prime example of the complexities and contradictions of a scientist in wartime."
2. Andreas Hofer, rebel Austrian leader
"The story of Andreas Hofer deserves to be much more widely told." Dr Andrew Bellenkes, Pinswang, Austria
Continue reading the main story
Napoleon and Austria
- Two of Napoleon's most famous victories fought against the Austrians - at Ulm and Austerlitz
- Arc de Triomphe in Paris built to commemorate Austerlitz victory
- Treaty of Vienna (1814) carved up Europe after Napoleon's defeat, and was a diplomatic triumph for the Austrian statesman Metternich
In 1809 Andreas Hofer led a rural
rebel army to fight against Napoleon's troops to try and claim back
Tyrol, a region of Austria that had been given to the German state of
Bavaria.
An innkeeper in the countryside, his army was made up mostly
of peasant workers and farmers. They only had improvised weapons and
primitive military tactics.For a short period in 1809 he ruled the land, announced new laws and made his own coins. But his success was short lived, and less than a year later, in exile, he was betrayed and executed.
Today he is celebrated as a hero. He has museums, books, streets and hotels named after him, but not many outside of Austria know who he is.
"If you look to Europe during the Napoleonic era, Tyrol was not of economic importance, it was just keeping the traffic routes between the North and South open," says historian and director of the Tiroler Landesmuseen, Wolfgang Meighoerner.
3. Alhazen and his work on optics
"The great Arabic scientific work of the 10th Century, and in particular the life of men such as Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen)." James, Bristol
Continue reading the main story
Father of scientific method
- Al-Haytham proved that we see because light enters our eyes
- Many of his scientific discoveries were made while under a 10-year house arrest
Ibn al-Haytham was born in about 965 in what is now Iraq, and is regarded by some by some as the real father of the scientific method, predating Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes in the 17th Century.
Al-Haytham was the first to disprove the theory that we see
objects by rays of light emitted from our eyes, realising instead that
we see because light enters our eyes. No other scientist before him had used maths to prove this process, says Prof Jim Al-Khalili from the University of Surrey.
"When the great scientific revolution took place in Europe, science had advanced so much that people forgot it was built on previous knowledge."
Al-Haytham was part of the golden age of Arabic science, and while Europe was stuck in the Dark Ages, he filled the gap, says Al-Khalili.
4. Danube script
The Neolithic civilisation of central Europe (6000-3,500BC) and the enigmatic Danube script, which possibly influenced the first true writing." Jeremy Glover, Leighton BuzzardThe Danube script is a controversial subject among archaeologists, some of whom claim it is the earliest known form of writing in the world.
The early signs are found on Neolithic artefacts such as pottery and spindle whorls, concentrated in the Balkans and associated with the Vinca culture.
Some think tablets from Tartaria, in Romania, are exceptional as they "really look like 'writing'", notes James Mallory, professor of prehistoric archaeology at Queen's University in Belfast.
But he says no-one can tell for sure whether they are random symbols, a system of select magical symbols, or possibly some form of early writing.
There has also been a debate about whether they actually date to the Vinca period or were later insertions into the mound, he says.
5. Double-entry book-keeping
"Double-entry book-keeping, which revolutionised commerce first in Europe and then the world over." Philippa Sutton, Newcastle
Continue reading the main story
Luca Pacioli, father of accounting
- Born around 1447 in Tuscany, this Franciscan friar was friend of Leonardo da Vinci
- His masterwork Summa de Arithmetica, Geometria, Proportioni et Proportionalita set out principles of double-entry accounting
- His motto: "No person should go to bed until the debits equal the credits"
Double-entry book-keeping, which
is widely believed to have been introduced to Europe in the early 16th
Century by the monk Luca Pacioli, is a financial accounting system. It
recognises that all transactions have two aspects, a credit and a debit,
and in a properly constituted set of books, the two sets of figures
always balance.
Prof Christopher Napier from the Royal Holloway, University
of London, says the system provided a standard structure for businesses
and individuals to record transactions, and it helped entrepreneurs and
investors to measure their capital, and the profits of their business. Some people argue that double-entry prompted a shift in culture, Napier says, from a time when the goal was simply to earn a good living, to a culture where the goal was to maximise one's capital. But there are some historians of accounting who argue it's possible to overstate the influence of double-entry, Napier says.
6. Seven Years' War
"The Seven Years War was truly the first WORLD war and is overlooked in history." Cleggy, Northfleet, KentThe Seven Years' War (1756-1763) involved all the great powers of Europe and saw France, Austria, Russia and Sweden on one side, and Britain, Prussia and Hanover on the other.
Continue reading the main story
The Death of Wolfe
- Benjamin West's 1770 painting is probably most famous image of Seven Years' War
- James Wolfe died from his injuries while leading British troops in Battle of Quebec
Michael Ball, curator of Britain's National Army Museum,
says the Seven Years' war could arguably be seen as the first world
war, "not in the sense of the 20th Century wars, which saw entire
nations mobilised for war, but in terms of geography".
"The battles affected North America, India, the Caribbean, the Philippines and large parts of central Europe," he says.Prof Mark Knights, of the University of Warwick, says the Seven Years' War could also be seen as the first world war due to its "shockingly high" casualties.
"Estimates vary but it is likely that more than a million people died," he says.
The result of the fighting, which saw Britain acquire Canada from the French and control all of North America east of the Mississippi, was also "very significant", according to Ball, and ultimately led to the American war of Independence.
It also saw Britain become, arguably, the first world power, he says.
7. The Kingdom of Axum
"Civilisations are neglected. What about Axum?" Berhanu Tessema, Addis AbabaThe Kingdom of Axum (or Aksum) rose to prominence as a trading nation in the 1st Century, and at its height became the greatest market of north-eastern Africa.
Its most renowned surviving monuments are a group of memorial obelisks, or stelae.
There are many reasons for including Axum in any world history, says James Burns, author of A History of Sub-Saharan Africa.
The kingdom represents a significant and highly innovative urban civilisation.
"Its economy was based on the cultivation of crops grown exclusively in the Ethiopian highlands, supplemented with cereals and technologies imported from Asia. It was one of Rome's great trading partners, and they rose and fell in close parallel," he says.
The kingdom was one of the earliest regions of Christian conversion in Africa. "The image of an isolated Christian kingdom captured the imagination of Christians in Europe throughout the Middle Ages", he says.
8. The law code of Hammurabi
A basalt stele (slab) protrudes into Paris' Louvre like a thumb. On it is the earliest truly extensive documented set of laws of the ancient world, written in Akkadian.
It is commonly referred to as the Law Code of Hammurabi, but some experts argue it's not really a law code at all. It does however provide an incomparable insight into life and justice during King Hammurabi's reign (1792-1750BC) as first ruler of the Babylonian Empire.
The stele sets out the famous principle of "an eye for an eye". But also included are familiar concepts of evidence-based justice and giving testimony under oath - even provisions for the maintenance of divorced wives.
There were precursors to Hammurabi's laws, explains Dr Frances Reynolds, Assyriology expert at Oxford University, but the stele and 130,000 clay tablet documents from the period establish the king as a "fantastic administrator".
It perhaps explains why he adorns the wall of the American Supreme Court, suggests Reynolds.
9. Rise of the Khmer empire and creation of Angkor Wat
Thousands of backpackers and awed holidaymakers have stood and gazed at the massive temple complex of Angkor Wat deep inside the Cambodian jungle.
The Angkor temples are legacies of the Khmer Empire, which dominated south-east Asia from the 9th Century.
"One of the first and certainly the most important classical civilisation of southeast Asia, it set the standards by which kingdoms and societies that came after measured themselves", says Dr Charney, an expert from SOAS.
Angkor became the "largest pre-industrial urban complex in the world", says Cambridge PhD student Mary Beth Day, featuring the "most sophisticated hydraulic engineering and water management system". The Khmer could collect and store water across 1,000 square km, channelling it directly to rice paddies.
Yet the empire's demise remains a "contentious issue", says Day, with many details shrouded in mystery.
10. The life of Simon Bolivar
Inspired by European enlightenment philosophy, Caracas-born Simon Bolivar helped liberate his people from the Spanish Empire, gaining independence for the modern-day nations of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Peru and Venezuela.
Continue reading the main story
Simon Bolivar
- Born 1783 in Caracas, New Granada (now Venezuela), died 1830
- Soldier and statesman who led revolutions against Spanish rule in Latin America
- Bolivia named after him
His political rule was less
successful. Unable to fend off factional enemies and increasingly
dictatorial, Bolivar died awaiting exile in 1830, "disillusioned that he
was unable to maintain the ideals of freedom, liberty and equality",
says Dr Matthew Brown, a Latin America expert at Bristol University.
Bolivar's impact was nevertheless vast.The "most significant figure" to emerge from Latin America, he was even "more important than [US President George] Washington", says Anthony McFarlane, emeritus professor at Warwick University.
He played a critical role in the decline of the Spanish Empire, which in turn marked a huge shift in global imperial relations. Bolivar's leadership also served as a "model" for later anti-colonialist movements, adds McFarlane.
Reporting by Tom Heyden, Vanessa Barford and Melissa Hogenboom
Source
Friday, October 28, 2011
Scientists Decipher German Secret Society's 'Uncrackable' Code
Scientists Decipher German Secret Society's 'Uncrackable' Code
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Black Death genetic code 'built'
Black Death genetic code 'built'
The ancient burial site is under what is now the Royal Mint
The genetic code of the germ that caused the Black Death has been reconstructed by scientists for the first time.
The researchers extracted DNA fragments of the ancient bacterium from the teeth of medieval corpses found in London.
They say the pathogen is the ancestor of all modern plagues.
The research, published in the journal Nature, suggests the 14th Century outbreak was also the first plague pandemic in history.
Humans have rarely encountered an enemy as devastating as the bacterium, Yersinia pestis. Between 1347 and 1351 it sparked the Black Death, an infection carried by fleas that spread rapidly across Europe killing around 50 million people.
Now scientists have uncovered some of the genetic secrets of the plague, thanks to DNA fragments drilled from the teeth of victims buried in a graveyard in London's East Smithfield.
Professor Johannes Krause from the University of Tubingen, Germany, was a member of the research team. He said all current strains circulating in the world are directly related to the medieval bacterium.
Continue reading the main story
The plague
- The plague is one of the oldest identifiable diseases known to man
- Plague is spread from one rodent to another by fleas, and to humans either by the bite of infected fleas or when handling infected hosts
- Recent outbreaks have shown that plague may reappear in areas that have long been free of the disease
- Plague can be treated with antibiotics such as streptomycin and tetracycline
- Source: World Health Organization
"It turns out that this ancient Yersinia pestis strain is very close to the common ancestor of all modern strains that can infect humans," he said.
"It's the grandmother of all plague that's around today."
Previously researchers had assumed the Black Death was another in a long line of plague outbreaks dating back to ancient Greece and Rome.
The Justinian Plague that broke out in the 6th Century was estimated to have killed 100 million people. But the new research indicates that plagues like the Justinian weren't caused by the same agent as the medieval epidemic.
"It suggests they were either caused by a Yersinia pestis strain that is completely extinct and it didn't leave any descendants which are still around today or it was caused by a different pathogen that we have no information about yet," said Professor Krause.
Tooth powerGlobally the infection still kills 2,000 people a year. But it presents much less of a threat now than in the 14th Century.
DNA fragments were extracted from teeth According to another member of the research team, Dr Hendrik Poinar, a combination of factors enhanced the virulence of the medieval outbreak.
"We are looking at many different factors that affected this pandemic, the virulence of the pathogen, co-circulating pathogens, and the climate which we know was beginning to dip - it got very cold very wet very quickly - this constellation resulted in the ultimate Black Death."
Rebuilding the genetic code of the bacterium from DNA fragments was not easy, say the scientists.
They removed teeth from skeletons found in an ancient graveyard in London located under what is now the Royal Mint.
Dr Kirsten Bos from McMaster University explained how the process worked.
"If you actually crack open an ancient tooth you see this dark black powdery material and that's very likely to be dried up blood and other biological tissues.
"So what I did was I opened the tooth and opened the pulp chamber and with a drill bit made one pass through and I took out only about 30 milligrams of material, a very very small amount and that's the material I used to do the DNA work."
From the dental pulp the researchers were able to purify and enrich the pathogen's DNA, and exclude material from human and fungal sources.
The researchers believe the techniques they have developed in this work can be used to study the genomes of many other ancient pathogens.
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