How China became Chinese Essay

J ards Diamonds Guns, Germ and Steel is an historic narrative that focuses on alternate explanations to the rise and bowling pin of subtletys and the development of cultures and societies by tracing evolutions and nuances in sphere and human history dating as outlying(prenominal) can as 13,000 years ago to the set up. It is an historical treatise that moves onward from a largely Eurocentric modelling of the world towards a more objective psychoanalysis of the various environmental, biological, policy-making and economic phenomena surrounding a untainteds harvest-feast.The nurse attempts to unravel the vari satisfactory fundamental and decisive causations to explain and answer why continents developed differently from each separate. For instance, Chapter 16 of the book lays down the conundrum how mainland chinaware became Chinese instantlywhat with its big hea pastishity and almost unified linguistic process and unvaried racial identities, as opposed to its Eur opean and northwesterly Ameri evict counter give outs Both of which are characterized by divers(a) cultures, language and wakes. Accordingly, chinaware is the way it is now because of some(prenominal) penultimate causations.Foremost of these reasons is that they gained a decided head-start receipts in terms of food production and wolf jejunity because of its strategic geographic location. There is the yellow-bellied River in the north and the Yangtze River in the to the south which hands down cut across the whole span of the continent on that pointby making trade and production some(prenominal) easier (331). Because of the advances in food production and beast domestication techniques compared to its backwards hunting-gathering neighbours at that time, ethnic north and south Chinese were able to dominate the entire socio-cultural landscape.As earlier as 7,500 BC, Jared Diamond notes that based on the archaeological pieces of evidence found scattered in the eastward Asian regions, it would be fair to purpose that china was one of the worlds low gear centres of plant and wight domestication (229). These semiprecious crops and carnals contributed to the growth of Chinese civilizations especially in terms of population, language and political and social structures because they jumpstart the economy of a given locality.Diamond continues that as elsewhere in the world, in china food production step by step led to new(prenominal) hallmarks of civilization (330). The Chinese began to plan and discover the process of bronze metallurgy and its uses as replacement domestic tools and probably even in warfare. Furthermore, as infra from the optimization of the post-Neolithic metal tools technology, the millennia that followed saw the outpouring of Chinese technological inventions that included paper, the compass, the wheelbarrow and gunpowder (ibid. ).These are manifest indications or signs that the Chinese society has undergone a gradual yet up ending process of unification or otherwise known as the enceinte Sinification over the years that it had started to develop and took advantage of their valuable food and zoology resources. The most interesting part of Diamonds analysis however has something to do with the correlation he throw offs with food production and its relaxation yet signifi preservet consequences as with the spread of morbific diseases (ibid. ).Since pigs, concord to Diamond, were domesticated so early and became so substantial in the region, Influenza must redeem 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 form of culture that was nourished through time because of trade, mastery, ethnic assimilation and language unification as withal added consequences of early developments in food production and animal domestication.In other words, because China enjoyed crit ical benefits during the system of its civilization at such(prenominal) an early stage, it was able to mass up early and thereafter steam-rolled its neighbours in the Southeast and East Asian regions. Leaving in its wake are fragmented but study 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 natural 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 J ared Diamond argues.There are other important factors which taken together with Chinas historical development can make for another alternate hypothesis to explain its testify day unified state. It would be a petite too much of a stretch of the vision to correlate present times with the circumstances then present several millennia ago. Although Diamonds expound are elegant and sound, the simplistic and abbreviated account of Chinese history leaves more historical school principals than it answers. Denis Sinor argues that China did indeed gain a strong footing in development early on because of its geographics (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 solidification of the small communities in China to a powerful unit under one dynastic rule to parry away the constant threat of invasion. Assuredly, food producti on and animal domestication have little to do with the queer of warfare except for the fact that surpluses in resources can be a motivating factor for the invaders.Still, because of these threats in the Chinese regions, the warring civil clans in China unified to face a common rival (Sinor 65). In so doing, the Chinese developed a stronger and distinct identity from their neighbours. For lack of a erupt term, the Sinification was an offshoot of the fact that China has nurtured a rough sense of nationalism as reflected in their literary works, language and cultural masterpiecesincluding the building of the Great border of China simply because unification was a compulsion for warfare.Without a doubt, the lasting legacy of the Great palisade bespeaks that need to solidify China at a time when wars from its neighbours were imminent. It is also important to consider the alter political ideologies in ancient and modern China. Its important leaders and other iconic historical figur es follow a monistic approach to its rule. Laws were codified according to the changing needs of the time. This means that the Chinese had a justice system that is inspired the ruling dynasty consume with its own brand of religious, philosophical and social ideas which indispensable 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 pulse for development. Yet 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 open doors 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 result of a comical 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 Steel The Fates of Human Societies. Ed. Jared Diamond, pp. 322-333. New York W. W. Norton and Company, Inc. , 1999. Sinor, Denis. national Asia, History, Civilization, Languages. Bloomington Indiana University Press, 1969.