ch. 5 reading notes

According to the reading, China was the first meritocracy and bureaucracy. The two go hand in hand in many ways. Meritocracy opens up the labor pool more than choosing people for personal favors or heritage. Though the fact that education was a private institution clearly favors the upper classes.

I probably shouldn't be amused by the idea that China's governance fluctuates most often on account of peasant rebellions, but I can't dispel the image of torch-carrying, pitch-fork waving people on a rampage.

It's very interesting that the book claims the caste and sub caste system was the cause for a lack of empires in India. But having such a rigid social structure with all its rules fleshed out, it makes since that people did not require anything to bring them together, when they were together and portioned out so clearly and well-defined. They wouldn't need another structure that an empire would provide.

It doesn't surprise me that slavery was such a minor issue in China and India. They have huge populations. In Africa, there are three separate slave trades: Atlantic, Islamic and internal. And the reason Africans traded other groups was because Africa has been historically underpopulated. People worked in the condition of labor shortage. Their entire society was built on having as many people as possible, whether through natural increase from polygamy or the taking and enslaving of other peoples. China and India had plenty of laborers, so there was no need for forced labor.

It's nice that the book points out how inadequate Athenian democracy was. It may have been direct, but it was severely limited. Realistically, it was just a larger group of mainly wealthy men than Sparta. I think the biggest thing from Sparta is that death in battle and death in childbirth were viewed as equally honorable. Strayer tosses it away as still patriarchy but the fact that main thing men are viewed as valuable for was on the same level as what women were viewed as valuable for is huge. Most societies did not view reproduction as on the level with warriors. Sparta did.