[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by Jeff Lebowski

As I'm sure you can appreciate it is difficult to discuss complex historical issues and be concise, especially considering Frankopan's book is roughly 650 pages.

Silk Roads was on my reading list, but I removed it after some lukewarm reviews on Goodreads. I might have to sign it out from the library.

Originally Posted by Jeff Lebowski

This was not what I was taught. I never learned about non European sources and their perspectives. Perhaps you did but for those that had similar education to me it may be a similar shock to learn history from the others pov.

There's value to reading history that flips traditional narratives on their head (though a chauvinistically Western take on history hasn't been the default for at least 40 years). But even better than learning our familiar history from a non-Western POV is to learn history where the West isn't even involved. Like China's repeated efforts to subjugate Vietnam. Or the Mongol invasions of the Middle East. Or the successive waves of invasion of India from Persia and the steppes.

The merit of learning about history that doesn't involve the West is it removes the temptation to fit history into a narrative of us vs them / oppressors vs victims.

Originally Posted by Jeff Lebowski

You seem to imply that the west (which at times were ruled by kingdoms and churches) were not autocratic and locked down. How is it that only eastern civilizations with their monarchies were autocratic and had less internal violence? Curious as to why the difference?

Western rulers were just as autocratic when they had the opportunity. But as I said, the last time Europe was unified under a single ruler was during the Pax Romana - which was a very peaceful time. Since then it has never been unified, so war was common.

China, on the other hand, has mostly been unified, with no powerful neighbours besides the Mongols and other people of the steppes, which I've already mentioned. That unity meant stronger central control, and fewer periods of internal violence. When that unity broke down, such as during the era of the Three Kingdoms, China was a bloodbath.

Originally Posted by Jeff Lebowski

When Columbus (he was trying to be a crusader himself but ended up in the Americas) and his sailors came ashore, carrying swords, speaking oddly, the Arawaks ran to greet them, brought them food, water, gifts. He later wrote of this in his log:

Now read about how the Aztecs rose to power, and the means by which they maintained their subjugation of neighbouring peoples. There's a reason why virtually all of them enthusiastically joined the Spanish - to the extent that the overthrow of the Aztecs could reasonably be characterized as an uprising by their subject states.

Originally Posted by Jeff Lebowski

What did people in Spain get out of all that death and brutality visited on the Indians of the Americas?

What do invaders ever get? Loot, pillage, rape, domination, land. For some, the crude excitement of violence itself.

The conquistadors were largely freelancing. They defied the orders of the governor in Hispanola and the monarch in Spain. Their brutal excesses were reported to crown and church, and investigations launched against the perpetrators, though little came of them.

And asking what 'the people of Spain' got out of it is anachronistic. Spain in 1492 was not a modern state. Nobody would have even thought to ask the question of what the average person in Galicia or Castile got out of the conquest of the New World. They were irrelevant. Just as the great mass of peasantry were irrelevant to the military and commercial expeditions of China, Persia, the Ottomans, etc.

Originally Posted by Jeff Lebowski

Well all those civilizations you listed who fought and brutally killed in the Levant lived in close proximity. The crusaders came from a call from their christian brothers in the east but killed them too!

I don't see how proximity is relevant (though Persepolis is hardly in close proximity to Jerusalem, and for that matter the Pyrenes are a good long way from Medina). To the poor bastards living in the Levant, it made no difference if the people who conquered them were from Anatolia, France, or the Arabian peninsula.

Originally Posted by Jeff Lebowski

It's just the total depravity and sheer frequency of that depravity that is consistent with wherever Europeans encountered the other.

That's a political narrative, not an empirical historical truth.

Your eyes have been opened by your recent readings. Westerners have done many hideous deeds. Now take the next step and educate yourself about the rest of the world. Brutality and violence are endemic to human experience. It's tempting to draw moral narratives out of that sea of violence, but the reality is we're pretty ugly at the species level.

Anyway, we've strayed pretty far from the subject of this thread. I could have sworn there was a world history thread on this forum, but I couldn't find it. Anyone who wants to bat these issues around more might want to create one.