Entry 6: More Classification, More Trends
Hello everyone! I forgot last week was spring break, so feel free to read the last entry before this one. Anyways, continuing from my last entry, I have eventually decided to make a tag-classification for the many different events. The tags I’ve made so far are ‘Historical’, ‘Cultural’, ‘Internal’, ‘External’, ‘Military’, ‘Upper class’, ‘Lower class’, ‘Middle class’, ‘Europe’, and ‘China’. The historical, cultural, Europe, and Asia tags should be pretty self evident. Internal refers to changes that happen within a country, while external involves multiple countries. Upper , middle, and lower class refers to which of the members of the nation are affected. As things go, I may or may not add more tags. Making tags is shockingly tedious.
Currently, I have found some more trends, thanks to my classification. Cultural trends that start in the upper class tend to propagate to the lower class, and trends that start in the lower class tend to stay localized and small, with few exceptions, mostly regarding fashion. Most cultural propagation tends to do with fashion and visible status, because the middle class want to imitate the upper class, and it spreads from there to the lower class, while certain lower class trends, such as more comfortable clothing due to a need to be able to work in them propagate up the social hierarchy, because who doesn’t like comfortable clothes?
Another trend I’ve found appears to be that those with money and power like to show off their wealth and create distinctions with others, by wearing fancy clothes, speaking fancy words, and use fancy etiquette, while the middle and lower class eventually imitate it in a half-baked way, lowering the value of whatever the trend is, forcing the nobility to find and adopt a new trend. This is again sped up by the existence of technology. Tea, which once cost incredible amounts of money to buy due to it originating from a different continent, slowly lost its luxury as more ships came, more ports opened, and more people sold it, causing inflation on the price of tea, and changing it from a sign of nobility to something everyone drank, at least in England. As better ships are built, and better ports are invented, this process speeds up, but it was inevitable either way.
Somewhat unrelated, but something I found funny, as I research these topics more and more, I’m starting to get a general grasp on the flow of history, and by just looking at the state of things, I can predict what’s going to happen, like with the tea. Knowing that the poor will want to imitate the rich, and general economic principles lets me predict what will happen. On this note, it becomes really apparent when you’re researching culture that it’s mostly just human psychology. The upper class want to maintain a separation with the lower class, and the lower class want to join the upper class. A certain nation becomes the powerhouse of the era, everyone imitates them. Look at France in the 19th century, for example. They were the cultural and intellectual center of Europe at the time, so all the nearby nobles imitated the French nobility, leading to the middle class to imitate that. Culture is all just waves propagating outwards.
Also, some things I forgot to mention before when talking about how war and culture affect each other include cultural propaganda during times of war, national identity which is very firm and indispensable in war time, how military service leads to class mobility, cultural assimilation due to forced military service, etc. I forgot to include them before because they seemed, for the lack of a better term, too commonly known. I had just assumed that everyone would start off knowing it, so I neglected to mention it. But here I am, and I’ll just give a quick rundown of all these.
Cultural propaganda: During war, nations want to spread their core beliefs throughout the entire country to consolidate nationalistic ideologies. For most of history, there wasn’t a clean border between nations and cultures, and instead of a fine line between France and Germany, there was the Alsace-Lorraine region, and a few others, in between, sharing both French and German culture. In times of war, Whatever country owned those lands would spread their nationalistic beliefs that were strong in the capital, but weaker near the borders, just to make sure that the border cities didn’t defect due to cultural differences. It also helped boost morale and strengthen the sense of ‘otherness’ when fighting the enemy.
National identity: Most countries like to have a strong national identity, especially after nationalism became a thing, to ensure the people knew who and what they were fighting for. Soldiers who charge into battle with no idea why they’re there don’t make for a motivated army, and an army lacking morale is destined to lose. Again, it also reinforces the alienation between armies.
Class mobility: Nearly all countries that I can think of, at one point or another, had class mobility as a reward for serving in the army. This led to propagation of trends, as mentioned before, because the lower class could bring their lower class customs and cultures with them as they advanced. This works the other way too, where losing your territory could lead to your nobility title being revoked. Many nobles can’t live with this, and desperate grasp on to whatever semblance of nobility they can, often resorting to cheaper alternatives that appear similar, paving the path for the poor to adopt a richer lifestyle without a significant financial burden.
Cultural assimilation: When you take over a foreign piece of land, you have to make sure it knows it’s part of your nation so it doesn’t just revolt immediately and defect back to its original nation. This is where assimilation comes in. This is more of a thing in Europe than in China, because China’s culture was quite heavy on accepting defeat and honoring surrenders, so few defections happened in times of war, unless something truly irreconcilable happened. Generally cultural assimilation is done by leaving some soldiers in the city for a while, talking with the locals, spreading their values, and getting the locals accustomed to a new ruler, before leaving. This also works in that people from across the country are gathered together, so many different cultures get to mingle and spread in the barracks.
These aforementioned events are very important and are major ways culture and military interact. In fact, I’m pretty sure most cultural spread comes from war. I’m not very good at knowing where to start with information, because I forget not everyone’s a nerd like me. Anyways, that’s all for this week, I hope you all have a good day, and I’ll see you all next week!
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