1434 Year China Ignited The Renaissance (2000) - Plot & Excerpts
This book was unfortunately a huge disappointment. As an AP World History teacher and lover of history from a non-euro-centric viewpoint, I was hoping for great things. However, this book takes what could ultimately be fascinating and twists into a tale of engineering, mathematics, and babel that ultimately comes off as dry.Ultimately, I feel the book just tries to do too much. Within each chapter there are stories that could compose books of their own. The author makes very surface level claims, provides a judicious amount of evidence, but does not spend time analyzing that information or explaining the impact of the ideas proposed. It is the analysis and the impacts that are most interesting to the reader. I really enjoyed this book. I am huge a history nerd, and filling in the blanks on this subject is really important. Pretending that white people in Europe invents everything all on their own is super racist revisionist history that needs to be dispelled. The author does not say so, but I think that the long history of China's trade with Europe undercuts the case that England made for the opium war: that china refused to trade with anyone else. One of the only bad thing I have to say about this book is that the exhaustive vetting of the sources got boring for me as a lay reader. I appreciate his thoroughness as a scholar, but hearing for thirty pages about the people that knew people who drew a map feels like a bit much. I would believe him if he shortened his explanation slightly. The other thing that bothers me is his treatment of the conquistadores. I get is point about them being from backgrounds of poverty and injustice, and I guess they were courageous, but they also carried out a horrific slaughter for sport. He treats them far too gently when he describes their exploits. He also leaves our the fact that all of them were in crippling debt in their home countries, which was a significant factor in their drive to pillage the wealth of foreign lands. Overall, this was an enjoyable and informative read.
What do You think about 1434 Year China Ignited The Renaissance (2000)?
Very weak in literary and in historical terms.
—Jack
