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BurdensomeCount  Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.  8mo ago (astralcodexten.substack.com)   1034 thread views

Your Book Review: Zuozhuan

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Review was not written by me, I just think it offers a fascinating insight into a culture that was stable long term (the Zhou dynasty - pronounced like Joe - lasted 800 years, which is twice as long as we've had modern democracy for) but very very different from the way we live these days in the thought processes of the people.

Korea was also very stable but very dysfunctional. They had this weird, subordinate relationship with China, changing their allegiance as new dynasties and invaders took control. There was this extremely ritualized trade mission that would go to give gifts to the Emperor and get gifts in return. Otherwise there was very little foreign interaction, China and Korea had agreed to prevent any settling near the border.

At home, Korea was run by actual civilian governors, to the point where they could actually have military coups in the 11th or 12th century when everyone else was feudal. One of the bureaucrats was so disrespectful to a general that, allegedly, he set his beard on fire. This caused an attempted coup. And of course, there's the one thing people know about pre-modern Korean history - fending off the Japanese with turtle-ships and heroic generalship. The saviour of Korea, Yi Sun-sin, was incredibly poorly treated. He was tortured and imprisoned twice by the government, who were legendarily corrupt and incompetent. And of course China flooded the peninsula with so many troops that the Japanese army was ground down.

By the late 19th century, Korea was still sending letters to China asking them to fix all their problems with uppity foreigners. Little had changed in centuries. A very strange place, with a very strange history. It seems only natural that today it's still a land of extremes.

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