Tag: west

China’s Influence Upon Foreign States and Their Associated Cultures

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China has become highly adept at spreading its practices or at the very least, acquiring acceptance and tolerance of its practices, throughout the open markets of the world (e.g. American companies willing to do business with Chinese companies to access the Chinese marketplace despite the U.S. government experiencing continuous conflict with the Chinese government). Hollywood is perhaps the best example of this ideology taking shape. Hollywood’s business and by extension its profit model, is designed to produce blockbuster cinema for the box office, at regular intervals throughout each calendar year (e.g. for each holiday season etc.). China, due to its large population, has the worlds largest box office and as a direct result of this, in order to ascend to the level of becoming a major blockbuster film, movie studios are forced to capitulate and cooperate with the Chinese Communist Party. The Chinese government heavily censors cinema in China, however despite this, Hollywood movie production studios virtually always refuse to green light film scripts if they cannot be shown in China. This effectively means that the Chinese government has the ability to, and openly does, influence and shape the kinds of movies produced in the west simply by omission or refusal to accept a movie and its content. This means that in the future, China will become the cultural connoisseur and decision maker for the world, both in supply and demand of products and services (e.g. new films), solely due to the volume of the Chinese public and its appetite for western cinema

The Reason Behind the Anglo-Burmese War

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The annexation of Burma, which is modern day Myanmar, by England, occurred in 1885. The conquering and colonization of Burma was a long and drawn out process involving 3 wars in 1824 – 1826, 1852, and finally 1885, each a pivotal part of the Anglo-Burmese War. After successfully dominating Burma, the British made the decision to annex all of Upper Burma as a colony and to make the country as a whole, a province of British India. During the 19th century, Burma was a matriarchal society and the majority of commerce was run and ruled by Burmese women, a society which was notorious in the west for shrewd business practices. Burma was during this period a matriarchal society, and it is believed that this is due in large part to the fact that the country as a whole was primarily Buddhist and Buddhist cultures tend to hold women in higher regard than other parts of the world. The conflict between the British and the Burmese erupted because of trade, as the British wanted the absolute shortest route to China which involved crossing through Burma to avoid the Bay of Bengal

The Defiant American Natural Landscape Art Form and Luminism

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Artists in the America’s who continually pushed further west, pioneered the technique of “luminism” which used light effects and concealed brush strokes to create paintings which were considered so overwhelming detailed that opera glasses were needed to fully appreciate their true beauty. The American landscape was psychologically bore out of feelings of inferiority and competition with the European continent, as the Americas at this time were not the industrialized indomitable power they are today, but rather a fairly poor country still developing itself and not yet having reached the same milestones which Europe had already accomplished. During the 18th and 19th century, those living in the Americas rejected the notion that Rome, Italy was the center of art and that the best landscapes with the highest and most spectacular mountains were only found in places like France and Switzerland, as the west had its own mountains and its own unique monoliths and animals which could be depicted and celebrated to create American pride within the American landscape

The Insatiable Demand for Chinese Silk and Illegally Exporting Silk into Europe

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Historically recorded Chinese accounts by monastic Chinese scholars state that a handful of monks sent to China by the Roman emperor Justinian, smuggled silkworms out of China within the hollowed out shoots of bamboo canes and brought this cargo to Constantinople which is modern day Istanbul, Turkey so that the silk textile trade could be exported from China for the first time in recorded history. For over 2000 years Constantinople was considered the crossroads of the world, the nexus at which the west and east converged. Silk soon took off as one of the most in demand and profitable industries within Istanbul’s long and fascinating history. It should be noted that these accounts are thought by many scholars to be a work of fiction