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To: Edwarda who wrote (1898)	11/19/1999 12:09:00 PM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3246

Broadening is fine. I am talking about historical processes. Joan thinks that I am merely prejudiced. I think that I am being realistic....

To: Edwarda who wrote (1898)	11/19/1999 12:30:00 PM
From: Neocon	Respond to of 3246

This is the sort of thing I am thinking about (from the Britannica): Alexander's empire became, after his death, the scene of a long struggle among his generals, most of whom, installed by Alexander as satraps, aimed at breaking up the empire and creating realms of their own. For more than 40 years (323-280 BC) they battled, with shiftings of territories and power; and their conflicts laid the foundations of a new type of monarchial ruler and bureaucratic state and a new civilization of multiple nations united culturally by the Greek language. The three leading realms--the Macedonian (north of Greece), the Seleucid (reaching from Palestine and Anatolia to Persia), and the Ptolemaic (centred in Egypt)--thereafter maintained a balance of power. The ensuing wars and foreign policy signified a constant probing of that balance and were concentrated mainly on the border areas of Syria, Asia Minor, and the Aegean. Greece itself in the 3rd century BC saw the rise of two leagues, the Aetolian (which held central and northern Greece) and the Achaean (which held all the Peloponnese except Sparta and Elis); they gradually extended their power and rivalry and weakened the position of Macedonia. Culturally the period from about 280 to 160 BC was highly creative, producing the historian Polybius, the mathematician Euclid, the astronomers Aristarchus, Hipparchus, and Seleucus, and the geographers Eratosthenes and Poseidonius. It was the philosophic period of the Epicureans and Stoics and the artistic period that left to posterity such now-famous sculptures as the "Venus de Milo," the "Victory of Samothrace," and the "Laocoon." The Museum at Alexandria, with its large library, became the meeting place of scholars and writers. Callimachus, who was the leading Greek poet of the 3rd century BC, was responsible for the catalog of the library. Other cities besides Alexandria also had substantial libraries.

To: Edwarda who wrote (1898)	11/19/1999 12:44:00 PM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3246

As in the Hellenistic period, when Rome became the dominant power, it supplied the "common culture" in the West, to the extent that there are regions that were thinly populated by Roman garrisons that developed Romance languages. Of course, the influence went both ways, and there were styles and ideas that went from the periphery to the metropolitan center, but without the medium of the common culture, such a flow would have been impossible, and the strongest current was from Rome outward. Even the Ostrogoths who finished Rome off spoke Latin and aspired to be Senators. For centuries, the desire to recreate Rome haunted the Western imagination, and when Charlemagne led the Franks to establish order in the whole of Gaul and parts of Germania, he had himself crowned the Holy Roman Emperor....

To: Edwarda who wrote (1898)	11/19/1999 12:56:00 PM
From: Neocon	Respond to of 3246

Similarly, in Indochina the locals were caught between two dominant cultural spheres, neither of which had political hegemony, and yet both of which competed for the allegiance of the locals. Thus, the cultures of the region are an admixture of Hindu and Chinese Buddhist elements with purely local elements, overlain with colonial remnants, mainly French. In the Islamic world, local cultures were dominated by the Arab and Koranic culture that spread throughout North Africa and Asia Minor. Japan and Korea, without being wholly absorbed, are markedly and demonstrably within the Chinese sphere of influence, and in India, the most common 2nd language is English, which is the mainstay of the educated. (Also, India fields superlative cricket teams)......