Barrington High School
State and Religious Reactions Toward the Accumulation of Wealth
Isabella White
AP World History, Period 2
Mr. Parolin
December 11, 2017
Due to the immense success of trades routes such as the Indian Ocean and Silk Roads, new ideas began to spread rapidly throughout Eurasia from 600 BCE to 1500 CE. Merchants traveling along these trade routes facilitated the majority of this cross-cultural diffusion and greatly impacted the spread of iconic faiths such as Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Even though merchants were critical to the exchange of these concepts, the wealth accumulated by merchants evoked differing responses from governments and religious establishments. The Christian and Islamic
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In Document 2, an advisor to the Mauryan emperor writes that merchants should be given strict guidelines under which they could operate. He proposes that the government regulate every aspect of trade to keep merchants from benefiting too greatly from their transactions. Document 3 is an excerpt from a Roman politician’s article, An Essay about Duties, suggesting that mercantilism is no better than murder. These two documents show the extreme attitudes of government officials and their willingness to go to great lengths to keep the merchants from possessing too much wealth. Document 7 is by a ruler of South India that imposed a tax on sea-voyaging merchants. Even though this reaction is relatively tolerant, the tax still restricts the growth of traders and merchants. Document 1 is an excerpt from a historical Chinese document conveying the idea that merchants, while scorned, are critically important to the stability of the Chinese state. However, this document must be approached with caution since it was written during the Warring States period. Government officials during this time would have done their best to ensure that no unnecessary conflict was started. Although not mentioned in the given documents, one reason why so many societies resented merchants and rejected them as a social class is that merchants were seen as people who profited from the labor of
In the Background Essay Q’s, Doc B, Box 1, it mentions Hinduism. Doc A box 3 mentions confucianism. Rome worships christianity. Hinduism is technically Buddhism. These reasons explain that trade was never JUST physical items, but ideas and beliefs as well. The Silk Road made sure if you didn’t trade items you can hold, then you can trade items you can cherish. Finally, in the western civilizations (Rome), was accessed by boat. Boats could carry a ton more items and it was less of a walk for the merchants/traders. However, the Silk Road did lead a small backup path up north of Parthia. Around 27 B.C.E., the Roman Empire had only begun, but the silk road had been a thing for a very long time before that. About 3,073 years to be close to proximity. This took trade across seas! This was also how the Silk Road was Forgotten...boat travel became popular, less expensive, and easier to carry bigger loads.On Doc A, the map shows a series of dashes across the Mediterranean Sea. This represents the route to Rome by boat. Also on Doc A, the dashes on the backup path lead from east of India, to the north of the Caspian Sea, then south to Rome. Also, the timeline says 27 B.C.E.- Roman Empire begins. This time subtracted from 4000 B.C.E- Silk Cultivation in China, is about 3,073
As the work of translators such as, Averroes, made these scientific findings accessible for larger populations, the Muslim world grew in prominence in Eurasia. A less prevalent byproduct of globalization and contact was the boost of economies. As scientific learning centers and new technologies were traded and spread, the founding countries reaped the benefits. China, through the prominence they gained as a result of their Silk technologies, gained a high-demand export. Both cultural exchange and information exchange were direct results of major Eurasian trade networks.
An ocean route was sought to the countries that were believed to contain riches beyond European comprehension, thus avoiding having to pay hundreds of miscellaneous middlemen involved with trade, also making for a shorter journey. These motivations were accompanied by the desire to convert the heathen to Christianity, which had been declining since the rise of Islam. By uniting some of the Western Asian countries with Christianity, Europeans hoped to form a formidable team against the Turks and recover the valuable Holy Land (Morison, p.55).
In the poem “Ballade of Wordly Wealth,” the author, Andrew Lang designates the reality about money and peoples outlook on money in the 1800s and 1900s. Repetition is used throughout the poem to clearly explain that money can either be good or evil. The setting of this poem seems to be in the author’s own town. The people mentioned in the poem are merchants, soldiers, and priests. The audience of this poem could be anyone from any period of time because money has always existed. It is obvious that the tone/mood towards money is negative. In short, this poem describes that money is both a requirement and the impelling cause of exploitation and power in the society.
India and China’s geography helped them spread their religion to other areas. India’s religions, Hinduism and Buddhism, spread to other regions. The trade that was created due to each civilizations’ geography not only traded regions’ goods with one another, but their religion as well. According to World History: A Pattern of Interaction, Hinduism spread to Nepal and south to Sri Lanka and Borneo. A majority of the spread of Indian religion was due to Buddhist merchants and monks that converted people along the route of the Silk Road. China is similar to India’s religions, as the Chinese region believed in Buddhism because of the conversions of religion that had occurred
Time is Money A plethora of research studies exist on the topic of wealth inequality in America. There is no question that the top one percent of earners consume a large portion of wealth in this country, while the other 90 percent of earners share the left-overs. Some of the related questions that I found during the course of my research are: 1) Why are wealth and income distributions so vastly disproportionate? 2) Can America bridge the wealth gap? 3)
Wealth inequality is a real issue that needs to be fixed. The imbalanced growth of the upper class compared to the middle class is a danger to American society as a whole. The rich becoming richer while the middle class remains the same leads to a power imbalance, with the rich using their money to run the country the way they see fit while the middle class speaks to ears that do not listen. The issue of wealth inequality needs to be fixed by raising taxes on the rich.
Why are so a large number of people that beg for money, sitting on the streets, looking for food 's some sort? It is not day-to-day that we consider situations like this, but it is out there constantly without all of us realizing it. A number of states have poverty 's more issues than others, but it is sad to think about how plenty of people are actually considered to be in poverty. This is an inequality concerning me a lot, and is getting worse daily. Poverty in the United States relates to people whose annual household earnings are less than a poverty line set by the United States government. Poverty is common, resulted in by numerous different factors such as failing markets, structural problems, unfortunate mishaps, and poor individual
Silk was an important item that was traded and began during the Han Dynasty. The Silk Road was a network of trade routes and the first marketplace that allowed people to spread beliefs and cultural ideas across Europe and Asia. Merchants and traders of many countries traveled technologies, diseases and religion on the Silk Road; connecting the West and East. They also imported horses, grapes, medicine products, stones, etc. and deported apricots, pottery and spices. The interaction of these different cultures created a cultural diffusion. The road consisted of vast and numerous trade routes that went between China and Europe.
... had control various territories. Many merchants learned the Islamic language and became custom to their traditions. This allowed for its culture to spread and Islam had received converts. The trading industry has a major effect on the economy and allows the spread of one’s culture.
Economics of Reich “Why the Rich are getting Richer and the Poor, Poorer” written by Robert Reich, describes as the title says, why the rich are getting richer and the poor, poorer. In Reich’s essay, he delves into numerous reasons and gives examples of each. It makes one wonder if the world will continue on the path of complete economic separation between the rich and the poor. One very important factor Reich examines in his essay is that large corporations are always trying to find the edge, whether that is new technology or cheaper wages. One may ask, how does that affect me?
At first, the Greco-Romans had no prominent religion and emphasized polytheism. But, just as soon as the first monotheistic religion Judaism emerged from the East, came Christianity. Christianity borrowed heavily from Judaism and preached the salvation of all, including the poor, which helped increase its popularity during “the classical period”. Emerging from the east, Christianity spread from the Middle East into Rome, through the Silk Road, and quickly gained such a large following, Roman emperor Constantine converted to it, making it one of the most important religions at the time. Another major religion spread through the Silk Road and the Indian Ocean was Buddhism. Buddhism originated from India and shared some Hindu traditions but stressed the path to “nirvana”. Hinduism remained India’s main religion, and as Buddhism saw somewhat of a decline, it began to spread into China and Hellenistic regions. Ultimately, Buddhism became one of China’s religions and established a fusion of Greek and Buddhist culture:
Wealth inequality is the uneven distribution of resources in a given state or population, which can also be called the wealth gap. The sum of one’s total assets excluding the liabilities equates the person’s wealth also known as the net worth. Investments, residents, cash, real estates and everything owned by an individual are their assets.In reality, the United States is among the richest countries in the world, though a few people creating a major gap between the richest, the middle class and the poor control most of its wealth. For more than a quarter of a century, only the rich American families have shown an increase to their net worth.Thisis a worrying fact for the less fortunate in the country and calls for assessment (Baranoff, 2015).
Accordingly, the rapid spread of Islam was the main influence to making Islam the hub of a series of important trade routes, including caravan trails leading from the Middle East through Central Asia to North China, and across the Sahara to the Sudan. A lot of Muslim traders were also effective missionaries, acting as multiple diffusion nuclei who travelled widely. Expansion diffusion accounts for the spread of Islam from its Arabian source area, and relocation diffusion accounts for its subsequent dispersal to Malaysia, Indonesia, South Africa and the New
In American society, there is a large disparity of wealth between the rich and the poor. This wealth disparity has far reaching effects into the areas of politics, education, culture, and more. By using their wealth to dominate politics, education, and culture, the rich perpetuate the exclusion of the poor into the substandard position of poverty.