Civilization Analysis Series

Since the 1500's Western civilization has been coming up to power. How have they been doing it? They started out as the last bet to ever become powerful. In the 15th century China was the best place. They had regular sewage pick up, and generally better hygiene than the west. London was generally a disgusting diseased place to live. There was no sewer system and fecal matter ran down the streets. The average life expectancy was 37 years. They had short, brutal lives. From this perspective, China would be thought to the country to gain power. However, Western Europe expanded 500 years ago. They had one major thing that China did not have, competition. Western Europe had political and economic competition. China had many more inventions and had grown and explored previous to any other country. When China went out to sea and explored the world, they were looking for people to worship their king. They quickly found that the other countries had nothing they wanted. This is when China made a very large mistake, China turned in on itself. China refused to communicate with people outside of their empire. When the Portuguese, Spaniards and Europeans set sail, they have much different motives. They set out to trade and make money. This is the beginning of Western Ascendancy. By 19156 the average American was 70 times richer than the average Chinese.

All of these changes can be seen by comparing two rivers, the Themes and the Yanksee Rivers. The Yanksee River is in China, it is a canal that runs from Hong jo to Beijing. The canal is so large it seems to be a sea instead of a river. There was an unimaginable amount of boat traffic through the river. Each boat had an amazing amount of goods aboard as well. The Yanksee River was done to stimulate the Chinese economy. The Themes river is in England, and in comparison it was a "primitive backwater."

There was a banker who took over 72,000 pictures of people all over the world. This documented every different kind of clothing everyone in different countries wore. Their country almost dictated what they wore. And every country was different. Now however, there is virtually no difference in how different countries dress. The attire seems to be jeans a t-shirts through ought the world. They all started dressing in a way the West had brought in. It started out as British Handmade suits. Then it went to Jeans, at the time they were called denim waste overalls. There were several types of these garments. So why did the Levi jeans become so popular? They were advertised and shown on movie stars in movies. Some actors like James Dean wore them, and soon they were a hit. They also had versatility on their side; they are easy to make, comfortable to wear, easy to clean and hard wearing. Jeans were for the hardworking cowboys, and the Gold diggers. Denim is made of cotton, which is what the United States was built on. There was plenty of cotton fields and slave labor to feed the need for cotton

...