How China became Chinese Essay

Jareds b alone fields Guns, Germ and steel is an diachronic narrative that focuses on alternate explanations to the rise and f any of well-bredizations and the organic evolution of cultures and societies by tracing evolutions and nuances in world and human history dating as far back as 13,000 years ago to the put. It is an historical treatise that moves away from a by and large Eurocentric model of the world towards a more objective analysis of the various environmental, biological, political and economic phenomena adjoin a continents growth.The book attempts to unravel the varying fundamental frequency and decisive creators to explain and answer why continents developed differently from each some otherwise. For instance, Chapter 16 of the book lays down the conundrum how chinaware became Chinese instantlywhat with its monolithic ethnicity and almost incorporate wrangle and uniform racial identities, as opposed to its European and North American counterparts Both of w hich are characterized by diverse cultures, language and races. Accordingly, mainland China is the way it is now because of several penultimate causations.Foremost of these reasons is that they gained a decided head-start advantage in terms of pabulum intersection and animal jejuneness because of its strategic geographic location. There is the white-livered River in the north and the Yangtze River in the south which conveniently cut crosswise the whole span of the continent thereby making trade and production much easier (331). Because of the advances in feed production and animal vapidity techniques compared to its rearwards hunting-gathering neighbours at that time, ethnic north and south Chinese were able to loom the entire socio-cultural landscape.As proterozoic as 7,500 BC, Jared infield notes that based on the archaeological pieces of evidence found scattered in the East Asian regions, it would be fair to conclude that China was one of the worlds first centres of p lant and animal domestication (229). These valuable crops and animals contributed to the growth of Chinese civilizations especially in terms of population, language and political and social structures because they skip the economy of a given locality.Diamond continues that as elsewhere in the world, in China food production gradually led to other hallmarks of civilization (330). The Chinese began to invent and discover the process of bronze metallurgy and its uses as substitute domestic tools and probably even in warfare. Furthermore, apart from the optimisation of the post-Neolithic metal tools technology, the millennia that followed saw the outpouring of Chinese technological inventions that included paper, the compass, the burial mound and gunpowder (ibid. ).These are manifest indications or signs that the Chinese society has infragone a gradual yet upending process of optical fusion or otherwise known as the great Sinification over the years that it had started to develop a nd took advantage of their valuable food and animal resources. The most interesting part of Diamonds analysis however has something to do with the correlation he catch up withs with food production and its residual yet significant consequences as with the spread of septic diseases (ibid. ).Since pigs, according to Diamond, were domesticated so early and became so important in the region, Influenza must have likely have risen in China (ibid. ). Nevertheless, suffice it to say that China is the solid and monolithic China of today because of the advantages in its geographic locations and the kind of culture that was nourished through and through time because of trade, domination, ethnic assimilation and language unification as to a fault added consequences of early breedings in food production and animal domestication.In other words, because China enjoyed critical benefits during the formation of its civilization at such an early stage, it was able to mass up early and thereafter s team-rolled its neighbours in the southeasterly and East Asian regions. Leaving in its wake are disconnected but major influences in other countries of today, such as Japan, Korea and/or Southeast Asian countries, by way of language, race and literature.Indeed, as Jared Diamond concludes the chapter, he writes that the persistence of Chinese writing in Japan and Korea is a vivid 20th century legacy of plant and animal domestication in China nearly 10,000 years ago (333) and owing largely to the leaps and bounds advances in farming in the eastern regions of Asia, China became the Chinese of today and traces of its powerful and overwhelming culture can be gleaned from Thailand and other proximate Asian countriestheir cousins (ibid. ). Of course, China is not China today solely because of its early advantage in food production and animal domestication as Jared Diamond argues.There are other important factors which taken together with Chinas historical development can make for anothe r alternate hypothesis to explain its puzzle day unified state. It would be a little too much of a draw out of the imagination to correlate present times with the circumstances then present several millennia ago. Although Diamonds premises are elegant and sound, the simple and abbreviated accounting of Chinese history leaves more historical questions than it answers. Denis Sinor argues that China did indeed gain a strong foothold in development early on because of its geography (49).But geography is not all that there is available that arguably led to Chinese domination in the region (51). For instance, the occasional barbaric attacks from the Mongol hordes from the north stimulated the hardening of the small communities in China to a powerful unit under one dynastic rule to parry away the constant little terror of invasion. Assuredly, food production and animal domestication have little to do with the menace of warfare except for the fact that surpluses in resources can be a m otivating factor for the invaders.Still, because of these threats in the Chinese regions, the warring civil clans in China unified to face a common oppositeness (Sinor 65). In so doing, the Chinese developed a stronger and distinct personal identity from their neighbours. For lack of a better term, the Sinification was an offshoot of the fact that China has nurtured a crude sense of nationalism as reflected in their literary works, language and cultural masterpiecesincluding the building of the Great surround of China simply because unification was a necessity for warfare.Without a doubt, the lasting legacy of the Great Wall bespeaks that need to solidify China at a time when wars from its neighbours were imminent. It is also important to consider the varying political ideologies in ancient and recent China. Its important leaders and other iconic historical figures adopted a monistic approach to its rule. Laws were codified according to the changing needs of the time. This sum that the Chinese had a justice system that is inspired the ruling dynasty engorge with its own brand of religious, philosophical and social ideas which required everyone to obey with all zest (Sinor 72).Nevertheless, going back to Diamonds premises, there is no question that food and animal production acted as an impetus for development. however to heavily rely on such a primordial causation is to eschew other aspects of Chinese civilization such as its political and social history. True enough certain advantages in geography impart ingresss for a nascent civilization but then again, once that door is opened, there are multitudes of other doors that the choice of one excludes other historical possibilities for a civilization.It just so happens that the Chinese example is a get out of a singular development from the start of its development up to the present time. Works Cited Diamond, Jared. How China Became Chinese The History of East Asia. In Guns, Germs and blade The Fates of Human Societies. Ed. Jared Diamond, pp. 322-333. New York W. W. Norton and Company, Inc. , 1999. Sinor, Denis. Inner Asia, History, Civilization, Languages. Bloomington Indiana University Press, 1969.