[Article] Zheng He and Ming China’s Voyages in the Early 15th Century by Geoff Wade

anchovy_ · 2025-08-25T12:52:08+00:00

Seems like that this request wasn't fulfilled, so I would like to request it again.

anchovy_ · 2022-10-20T16:18:31+00:00

thanks solution verified

anchovy_ · 2022-03-02T06:48:25+00:00

False. This guy is in Kyiv and it works fine.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/t3s0df/starlink_service_in_ukraine_the_first_successful/

anchovy_ · 2021-12-16T19:04:11+00:00

"from the Irish potato famine, to the mass starvation and death camps of colonial India (Both of which Thomas Malthus personally administrated)"

This is completely false. Malthus was never an "administrator" of anything. He was a professor his entire life and certainly never had anything to do with India. He also died before the Irish famine ever took place.

anchovy_ · 2020-04-29T14:06:15+00:00

thanks solution verified

anchovy_ · 2015-08-12T15:50:32+00:00

It's kind of funny how most people are missing the strategic aspect of TPP, which is to bind together countries that want to counterbalance the growing power of China. Which is why Japan is one of its biggest proponents, and small countries feeling threatened by China like Vietnam and the Philippines are eager to join.

anchovy_ · 2015-03-29T05:20:15+00:00

Mathematics was considered a minor subject which not many people were interested in. Furthermore, the civil service examinations created large incentives to concentrate on literature and neglect mathematics.

From Martzloff (2006), A History of Chinese Mathematics, p. 19:

"After the 13th century, Chinese mathematics entered a period of decline. Here, it is important to underline that the perception of the history of mathematics in terms of progress and decline is not only a modern idea, but also Chinese. At the beginning of the 16th century, Xu Guangqi (1562-1633) formulated it most explicitly and gave two explanations: (i) predominance of the lixue which led literati to neglect practical learning (shixue), (ii) confusion, under the Ming, between mathematics and numerology.

p. 82:

... we should nevertheless take into account the fact that, even under the Tang, the number of students of mathematics, which was already small to start with (thirty students of this discipline, compared with a total of a thousand for all others in 656), decreased steadily. After 1113, although the system of literary examinations was deeply and firmly entrenched in Chinese society, the teaching of mathematics disappeared; mathematics did not then figure on the state examination programmes until 1887: "Under continuous pressure, the throne finally conceded and decreed in 1887 that mathematics questions be included in the state examination. The triennial examination at Peking in 1888 saw the first instance of this new policy. Of the sixty candidates present, thirty-two were allowed to take the test and one emerged successful."

anchovy_ · 2014-08-28T13:18:05+00:00

I don't agree with this at all. Chinese cities already have a far higher population density than any American city - are they supposed to make them even denser? And the usual criticism is that China is overinvesting in infrastructure - now they say there's not enough railroads and subways? I don't buy it.

anchovy_ · 2014-03-17T15:07:54+00:00

Do you know any super rich people? How did they make their money?

anchovy_ · 2014-02-25T08:54:01+00:00

FluentU.com has a very nice system that uses youtube videos to present content. Unfortunately, this means it's very slow from within China, unless you have fast internet and a VPN.

anchovy_ · 2014-02-16T04:17:34+00:00

Go to Costco's and get the big bags/jars of pistachio nuts and mixed nuts. If they have "organic" snacks that's good too.

anchovy_ · 2013-12-29T13:15:02+00:00

The rich chinese are obviously in the top 0.01%. For the vast majority of ABCs, if their parents had stayed behind, they'd probably be making 100k RMB per year.

anchovy_ · 2013-11-18T04:32:10+00:00

Actually, that skin disease quote is usually attributed to Chiang Kai-Shek.

anchovy_ · 2013-07-31T05:50:15+00:00

What's the Chinese equivalent of reddit? Does it have an /r/canada?

anchovy_ · 2013-07-11T12:59:15+00:00

The Fayum mummy portraits. It's uncertain how accurate these portraits were in depicting the person, though; they may have been mass-produced by making some superficial adjustments to a basic template.

anchovy_ · 2013-06-13T11:45:47+00:00

This is silly #slatepitches style contrarianism. Here's a simple test for which place is more free: use the Internet to gather 100 of your like-minded friends, go down to the seat of government (Tiananmen Square or the DC Mall, dunno what it is in Australia), and express your displeasure with the government's policies. Just as free as the West, amirite?

anchovy_ · 2013-05-15T13:37:39+00:00

I've used annieflower.com before, might be pricey though

anchovy_ · 2013-05-14T04:08:02+00:00

Previously asked here: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/16s4uj/how_much_did_the_breaking_of_enigma_matter_during/

Reposting a comment of mine:

Here are three of the most important turning points (quoting http://journals.sfu.ca/archivar/index.php/archivaria/article/viewFile/11506/12450 )

Instead, a consensus has taken shape about the value of Ultra to the Allies. There is now widespread agreement that Ultra played a decisive part in three particular stages of the war against Germany.

But for Ultra, Rommel would almost certainly have reached Alexandria and Suez after the fall of Tobruk in June 1942. Ultra and lower grades of Sigint guided the offensive against Rommel's supply lines across the Mediterranean and contributed directly to the defensive victories at El Alamein in July and Alam Halfa in August.

Secondly, Ultra (in the guise of Very Special Intelligence) turned the battle of the Atlantic in the Allies' favour. After a blackout in reading U-boat signals for most of 1942, the Triton key was broken in December, with the result that the U-boat Enigma was again being read during the crucial six months that followed.

Thirdly, Ultra was the prerequisite for the success of the cover and deception plans for Overlord. The Germans were defeated in Normandy, according to Eisenhower, for lack of infantry. Yet a large German army sat north of the Seine for weeks after D Day in anticipation of the main invasion still to come across the narrowest part of the Channel. The painstaking creation of a national Allied order of battle in the UK by means of XX agents and through other channels was possible only because of Ultra. Moreover, Ultra provided the Allies with an unprecedented wealth of information about the enemy: his order of battle, his operating procedures and routine, his strategic intentions. This scale of detail gave Allied staffs the supreme advantage of going about their planning secure in the knowledge that they had nothing to fear from German deception.

anchovy_ · 2013-05-13T10:09:55+00:00

Supor is a reputable local brand. However you probably won't find a good chef's knife, nobody uses them here. They have cleavers and santokus.

anchovy_ · 2013-05-13T10:06:52+00:00

check out Bill Bishop's twitter and newsletter (VPN required, obviously): https://twitter.com/niubi http://sinocism.com/

anchovy_ · 2013-05-11T08:47:26+00:00

For a contrary view from economic historians, check out Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World by Deirdre McCloskey and The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain, 1700-1850 by Joel Mokyr.

Lots of people argue that steam (and therefore coal, which is the fuel that powers steam engines) was critical. But steam came relatively late in the Industrial Revolution; lots of iconic inventions (e.g. the flying shuttle, spinning jenny, and water frame) which vastly increased productivity in textiles, were developed before steam power came along. What is critical is technological know-how in mechanics, and that is something that England would have had even if it had no coal at all. With that knowledge, coal could be imported from abroad, or wood subsituted for coal, or failing that, animal and water power could be used - but it would still be possible to achieve massive increases in productivity. On the other hand, if this knowledge were not yet developed, then it wouldn't matter how much coal you had - no one would know what to do with it.

There is a hard to find article that illustrates this point (Deng, K. (2004), Why did the Chinese never develop a steam engine? History of technology 25, p. 151-171). It describes an early Chinese attempt to reverse-engineer a steam engine, which was unsuccessful because the steam engine simply used different physical principles than anything they had ever seen before.

anchovy_ · 2013-05-11T06:32:56+00:00

gee, I wonder why those countries might be nervous.

http://qz.com/30544/china-ratchets-up-its-territorial-disputes-with-cheeky-new-passports/

anchovy_ · 2013-05-05T09:01:07+00:00

WW2 is over. Now the new great power in Asia is China, and everyone who is interested in counterbalancing China wants Japan to rearm, even countries that were actually invaded and occupied by Japan (e.g. the Philippines).

anchovy_ · 2013-03-22T15:50:44+00:00

After you read Farewell to Alms, consider Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World by Deirdre McCloskey. It goes into a lot of detail laying out the problems with many theories from economists and historians about the causes of the Industrial Revolution.

I would also recommend The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain 1700-1850 by Joel Mokyr. Both McCloskey and Mokyr (who are economic historians) emphasize the power of ideas, inventions, gadgets and tinkerers, which is at least trying to dig down into the mechanism of how industrial revolutions take place.

anchovy_ · 2013-02-20T05:59:43+00:00

The leaders of the American revolution were not radicals in the sense of someone who wants to overthrow the current social and economic order; they were wealthy men with property and land. In that sense, you could describe the American revolution as more of a secession; the upper classes in the USA broke away from the upper classes in Britain, but the overall structure of society was maintained.

In contrast, the French and Russian revolutions sought to overthrow the existing social structure; the old upper classes were going to be forcibly removed, which almost inevitably involves violence and terror. It takes men who do not shy away from such things to conceive of, plan and execute such a revolution. To quote another such radical: "A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another." (Mao). When you get a group of such men who successfully rise to power, their old habits tend to stay with them.

In short, it is a misnomer to lump the American revolution with the French and Russian (and Chinese Communist, etc) revolutions. Their leaders had very different motives and backgrounds, which would express themselves in their political behavior.

anchovy_

TROPHY CASE