Tang And Song's Economic Revolutions example essay topic

457 words
The Tang and Song had many important economic revolutions that affected trade and culture. These economic revolutions include the achievements and developments of the Tang and Song empires. Many of the developments and achievements of the two empires encouraged trade, and trade influenced the culture of these empires and the culture of China. The Tang and Song's developments encouraged trade in their empires. The Tang built the 1,100 mile Grand Canal, linking the Yellow River in northern China with the Yang zi River in Southern China.

The Grand Canal was built to facilitate communication and trade. This was an important economic revolution because it helped spread ideas and goods through China. The Song made improvements on techniques in building junks. Junks were very large, so when it came to steering them it was very difficult.

The Song developed stern-mounted rudders that improved steering these large ships in uneasy seas. The Song also developed watertight bulkheads that helped keep the junks afloat in emergencies. This economic revolution of the Song was very important because these improvements made on the junks, encouraged trade. Since the junks had large capacities for more goods to be stored, trade increased into larger quantities. This caused more ideas to be spread and more diversity in the Song Empire. The Tang and Song economic revolutions changed their culture.

The Tang's improvements on the Silk Road encouraged trade from all different regions. The different ideas in different cultures being spread because of the silk roads affected Tang's culture. The music of which they listened to changed as various stringed instruments were imported across the Silk Road. Tang's food was transformed because the many new foods were introduced by many other regions that also traded on the Silk Road. The Song's development of printing increased production of books. This affected Song's culture in many ways.

First, the Song Empire didn't believe in women being literate, so the development of books made it easier for women to learn how to read and write. Second, the tradition of telling stories form one generation to the next decreased. People started to print the stories and read them to themselves. They didn't need an old family member to tell the stories anymore. This was an important economic revolution because this decreased cultural unity since these stories became less important and less special within families. Overall, the Tang and Song's economic revolutions were very important and played big roles of how the empires turned out.

The economic revolutions shaped the Tang and Song empires and changed the outcome of China and the surrounding countries.