Gregory Luckert’s Reviews > The Foundations of Eastern Civilization > Status Update

Finished with last three lectures

45: PRC. More familiar material now. It feels like this chapter is a history written by the party now: “Good Mao / Bad Mao”; Mao as a “complex figure”. It’s apparent Mao was bad for China generally. He destroyed a generation and set the country back. He was good for the party though, which is why he’s celebrated within PRC now.

43 & 44: Medieval, Tokugawa & Meiji. I have to learn more about the rise of the nationalists after the Great Depression and before the war.

42: modern Korean history. Again, much of this is new to me. Korea and Japan were really the only two E. Asian Maritime country that we’re not colonized . The kinship lasted up until the early 20th century. I knew that Japan had colonized Korea in the early 20th century, but I didn’t know how it proceeded from expansionary Japanese policy previous denials of western colonizers.

41: the Chosun. Interesting overview of a part of the world that I don’t know much about. The Koreans created their own form of fusionism that created a class of scholar bureaucrats. That class was inherited and eventually cleaned by internal factions. Women were little more than household slaves. What implications does that have for modern Korean Society? Christianity brought to Korea by converts in China.

40: misrule, conservative closing and inward turning, by the Ming & Qing, result in European colonization. What could have been? I think the “4000 years of imperial dynastic rule” is not exactly correct. First the dynasties were separate lineages, there are multiple foreign dynasties & long periods of dissolution. There’s been maybe 2500 years of Confucian/Buddhist/Taoist culture, thought

Ch 38: what would the world be now if Ming China hadn’t closed? I already feel like this is a Chinese world. We’re just in a period where the barbarians have the upper hand.

37: Rise of the Ming. Interesting parallels between modern US politics and late Ming. Currently, there is a desire to turn away from the world and close off. Trump’s wall and the Ming’s extension and renovation of the Great Wall. The civil service exam seems like a test of family wealth and class more than anything else. Maybe that’s its power: it gives the hopeless hope while maintaining the class structure.

Lecture 36 - Shaking the Foundation - Mongols in the East. Light on details and a Chinese historian's perspective. Not much on China. Pax Mongolica. Interesting that they brought in Persian administrators.

Lecture 35: The Mongols Capture the world. Steppe nomad confederations are fascinating. Are they always associated with/ settled states, the alternative to farm life? Are they usually multicultural? “Motorcycle gangs” as Harl calls them. Someone also said they attract those that leave settled life. H&G no longer an option since all the land is used by farms. The rise of GK teaches us about how states are made.