{"id":14235,"date":"2017-10-05T22:07:31","date_gmt":"2017-10-06T05:07:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=14235"},"modified":"2017-10-05T22:07:31","modified_gmt":"2017-10-06T05:07:31","slug":"considering-the-east-for-a-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/considering-the-east-for-a-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Considering The East For A Change"},"content":{"rendered":"

I thought my 6th<\/sup> grade history teacher was way off base until this week. I have a very clear memory of Mr. Spence telling us that, even though we would learn that Greece and Rome were the center of civilization, Persia should really have that title. In all of my years studying and teaching history, I have only read sporadic and spotty support for Mr. Spence\u2019s theory, until now.<\/p>\n

In his book, The Silk Roads<\/em>, Peter Frankopan sets out on the arduous and often overwrought task of correcting the illusion that all roads trace back to Rome (or Athens). This book is over 500 pages long, and the notes\/bibliography is well over 100 pages! To say that Frankopan has done his due diligence is an understatement. He convincingly shows that the network of avenues labeled the Silk Roads, have long been the conduits through which society, religion, and even fashion have traveled. So many little details in this book sent me on Google searches with the question, \u201cIs that really true?\u201d leading the way. It is difficult for me to imagine a time when Muslims and Jews interacted peaceably as a matter of course. I struggled to accept some of Frankopan\u2019s more charitable offerings relating to Ghengis Khan and the Mongols in chapter nine, but his evidence bore out. Even Frankopan\u2019s theory that the Black Death which scorched the Earth in the 14th<\/sup> century \u201cturned out to be the catalyst for social and economic change\u201d[1]<\/a> makes an odd kind of sense as he has laid out the evidence.<\/p>\n

While all of this information captured my historian\u2019s heart, what strikes me the most is the way Frankopan manages to do what I may have considered impossible \u2013 he shifts the focus from West to East. Even in the parts of the book where Frankopan\u2019s focus is decidedly Eurocentric, there is always an eye to the East, a re-telling of history as we have heard it. Just as Thomas Oden shifted our ideas about Africa\u2019s role in Christianity,[2]<\/a> Frankopan shifts the map just a bit to allow our focus to rest on a new center. This reminded me of the \u201cnew\u201d maps that are being made for classrooms which put the \"\"<\/a>continents in scale and decenter the imperial West. Suddenly the history of the world looks very different when assumptions about Western dominance and European colonialism are viewed through an unfamiliar lens.<\/p>\n

I am not fully convinced of all of Frankopan\u2019s assertions, but I am intrigued enough to look further into possibilities I have never considered. I think, after all, this is what Frankopan (and Mr. Spence) would ask of each of us if we were to have that conversation. Rather than demanding we agree, a good teacher opens our minds with the invitation to \u201cconsider this\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a>\u00a0Peter Frankopan, The\u00a0<\/em>Silk Roads: A New History of the World, <\/em>(New York: Vintage Books, 2015) 186.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Thomas C. Oden, How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind<\/em>, (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2007).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I thought my 6th grade history teacher was way off base until this week. I have a very clear memory of Mr. Spence telling us that, even though we would learn that Greece and Rome were the center of civilization, Persia should really have that title. In all of my years studying and teaching history, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[762,1030],"class_list":["post-14235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-frankopan","tag-the-silk-roads","cohort-lgp7"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14235"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14237,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14235\/revisions\/14237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}