[HN Gopher] Smuggling of silkworm eggs into the Byzantine Empire
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Smuggling of silkworm eggs into the Byzantine Empire
Author : monkeybutton
Score : 126 points
Date : 2023-04-20 14:21 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| infamia wrote:
| Byzantine history is interesting and vastly underappreciated
| (IMO). If you'd like to learn a bit more, the "12 Byzantine
| Rulers" podcast is a good place to start. It starts off a touch
| stiff, but loosens up and is great overall.
|
| https://12byzantinerulers.com/
| bjackman wrote:
| I can also recommend the History of Byzantium podcast for
| anyone that wants to to extremely deep into the timeline.
|
| I've listened to all 265 episodes so far, and I'm still
| thrilled every time a new one comes out!
| Floegipoky wrote:
| During the 19th century there was an attempt to establish a silk
| industry in New England. The industry failed, but the White
| Mulberry (morus alba), imported to serve as the food source for
| the silkworms, is thriving in North America. It's invasive in
| many areas and has displaced the native mulberry, morus rubra.
| y-curious wrote:
| Super cool article, thank you. These 2 guys significantly changed
| the world and we don't know who they are.
| m00dy wrote:
| It is so fascinating that I can find "ottoman" keyword at least 6
| times on this thread even-though this smuggling had happened way
| before the ottomans concurred the Byzantine.
| ptsneves wrote:
| Byzantine history is so important to understand the modern world.
| It gives us the context for the orthodox/west divide; it gives us
| an example of a economic and intellectual superpower needing to
| live with the realities of barbarian neighbors, and being
| destroyed! It shows us great statecraft lasting a thousand years.
| It even shows us why generals and senior civil servants were
| eunuchs and how the next best thing was celibate people. This is
| the reason why catholic priests should be celibate and therefore
| the answer against nepotist corruption. We all know how nepotism
| is a serious issue in states everywhere in the world.
|
| I became a fan of the Byzantines and seriously found team Roman
| Catholic to be a bunch of barbarians. I say team Roman Catholic
| because this small book[1] makes Byzantine history and trivia so
| humorous.
|
| [1] https://global.oup.com/academic/product/a-cabinet-of-
| byzanti...
| drcode wrote:
| I do find it curious that not that much science came out of the
| Byzantine empire- Yes there was some, but (with my admittedly
| limited knowledge) it does seem to pale in comparison to the
| earlier stuff from Greece, Rome or even the Arab Caliphates
| with their scholars in Mathematics and Physics.
|
| It seems like it was intellectual, but didn't have a
| proportional output of science or art that has stood the test
| of time.
|
| Feel free to disagree and tell me why I'm wrong
| mach1ne wrote:
| Well, Christianity is a big reason. It was so successful for
| so long in part because it aggressively repressed any
| ideologies which could have threatened its hegemony. Since
| the Church considered the 'scientific' domain to be part of
| its curriculum, new science was generally a threat.
| ogogmad wrote:
| Citation?
| badpun wrote:
| > Since the Church considered the 'scientific' domain to be
| part of its curriculum, new science was generally a threat.
|
| I don't think that's true. Church only opposed science that
| was in contradiction with the Bible, which was a small
| minority of all science discoveries. Church never had any
| qualms with Newton laws or laws of conservation of mass (in
| chemistry) etc.
| thomasahle wrote:
| Unfortunately for the Byzantine empire it spent most of its
| centuries in a population/territory/economic decline.
|
| Back in 541-542 an outbreak killed about 40% of the city's
| population. But even during the period 1347-1453, a total of
| 61 plague reports were noted.
|
| They only had the wealth, peace and population to focus on
| science to a very small degree. That they managed to stay
| afloat for as long as they did is a testament to the science
| the original Romans left them, and which we can thank the
| Byzantine's for preserving.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| >> Back in 541-542 an outbreak killed about 40% of the
| city's population.
|
| An outbreak _of the plague_.
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| There is a strange trend of downplaying Byzantine heritage..
| for instance modern Greek society seems to uphold the ancient
| Greeks much more, when in fact there are much closer ties to
| the Byzantine... a few hundred years ago it wouldn't have
| occurred to any Greek that they are connected to the
| ancients, and this trend has started with European Romantics.
|
| But they did produce significant art and science, and
| especially architecture:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagia_Sophia
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_science
|
| There would have been no transmission of the classics without
| the Byzantine, and possibly no Renaissance in Europe.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| I'm impressed by how you manage to disparage both the very
| real intellectual achievement of both the Byzantine empire
| and the Abbasid Caliphate in such a short comment. It's even
| more amusing that you do that while comparing them to the
| Greek achievements without realising that the main reasons
| you know about them is due to translations made by
| intellectuals of the Byzantine empire and especially of the
| Caliphate.
| drcode wrote:
| It seems like you're just kind of arguing that every
| culture everywhere at all times was the most awesome
| culture ever and had the most awesome scientific
| achievements and saying that relative comparisons are
| possible is uncouth
|
| Even though I'm an oaf, I do think it's nice that they
| maintained copies of the Greek stuff
| Jun8 wrote:
| AFAIK, an important reason eunuchs were preferred as generals
| and high officials is because a person who was castrated or had
| any other deformity could not be emperor (https://en.wikipedia.
| org/wiki/Political_mutilation_in_Byzant...) Exceptions did
| occur, e.g. Justinian II, but rare. It was also common practice
| to castrate sons of deposed emperors.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| The religious parts of this I'm not sure I can agree with
| really.... I'm orthodox if it matters or seems relevant.
|
| The catholic/orthodox differences are largely just because of a
| thousand years of divergence, of speaking different languages
| and having relatively little interchange, of each individually
| having movements in response to internal pressures and trends
| not experienced by the other. Not going to get into a filioque
| debate on HN but the initial theological dispute, however
| significant you find it to be, is _not_ the source of the most
| tangible differences in the two branches today. They 've just
| each been doing their own thing for a millennium and their
| unique histories took them to two different places during that
| time.
|
| I don't see how byzantine eunuchs indicates anything about
| priest celibacy, especially since orthodox priests are usually
| married. Eunuchs and celibate priests still _come from_
| families, they experience love and duty and allegiance and
| enmity. To the extent a position is admirable people will want
| to be in it and to the extent it 's powerful people will use
| that power to benefit the people and things they value. No
| restriction on who can hold an office will by itself address
| those factors. Byzantine eunuchs got up to plenty of corruption
| and betrayal in their own right.
|
| I assume by "barbarians" you mean the ottoman turks, but we
| have to be careful in reading byzantine history not to absorb
| byzantine attitudes about their rivals. The ottomans were a
| long-lived, sophisticated, and nuanced entity in their own
| right. Even their precursors and other byzantine neighbors were
| not as simple or simply motivated as byzantine or byz-
| sympathetic sources would indicate.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| Oh yes, the Ottomans very mighty sophisticated. They just
| didn't know how to build cities, so they took other peoples'.
|
| Orthodox? Which kind? I grew up Greek Orthodox but then I
| grew up more atheist.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| I'm american and my parents were converts so I don't think
| of myself as being particularly affiliated with any of the
| ethnic jurisdictions. I usually just find a parish where I
| like the people and the services are in english.
|
| Often that's OCA (russian-tinged american) but in the past
| it has been serbian or greek. As you're probably aware it's
| all technically the same church so there's no barrier or
| ritual to changing. The differences are mostly just musical
| style and other aesthetic traditions.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| Thanks, I don't really know the customs of the other
| Orthodox churches, but they are different organisations.
| I don't know them well, by any means. I'm reading about
| them on wikipedia:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriental_Orthodox_Churches
|
| Apparently there are six Oriental Orthodox churches that
| are all "autocephalous" (i.e. they do their own thing). I
| think the Russians and Serbians are closer to the Greek
| church in custom.
|
| And btw, that's why I asked. The Orthodox Greek diaspora
| are probably the largest group of Orthodox Christians
| outside Russia, but I was just curious.
|
| Somehow I also find it curious that your parents were
| converts to an Orthodox church. I didn't think that
| happened. If I may pry, what were they converted from?
|
| I'm Greek, btw.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Yeah the jurisdictions are an unbelievable mess you
| virtually need a degree in history to understand.
| Downside of not being under a single bishop like the
| catholics.
|
| The oriental orthodox iirc reflect an even earlier schism
| than the one with rome, and aren't in communion with the
| eastern orthodox (despite those words meaning the same
| thing) which is the greek & russian churches mostly, plus
| a bunch of smaller slavic & balkan ones, plus some middle
| eastern churches. Within those bounds though it's
| different organizations but one communion eg I could
| receive eucharist at a greek church one week and be a
| godparent at a russian one the next without having to ask
| permission or even tell anyone.
|
| In the US there seem to be a lot of converts recently,
| it's a big ongoing... thing... in american orthodoxy.
| Most ethnic churches just serve their communities and
| that's that. But the OCA and antiochian archdiocese
| specifically try to welcome converts with some success.
| Orthodox is liturgically and theologically the closest
| thing to catholicism, so we catch a lot of people leaving
| that church bc of child sex abuse scandal, anger at the
| liberalism of the pope, or whatever.
|
| There are also a lot of ex-evangelicals but their reasons
| are incredibly varied in my conversations with them.
| Often they are extremely pious and it's part of a deep
| and sincere effort to connect with what they consider the
| true or original church founded by the apostles.
| Sometimes, less wholesomely, it's simply "trad" fetishism
| and our historical connections with slavic racial
| superiority movements and ethnonationalism.
|
| In cities with multiple orthodox churches there is
| usually an informal "convert parish" made up of at least
| half americans who converted as adults.
|
| My parents were devout southern baptists who left their
| church in disgust during the civil rights movement.
| Archbishop Iakovos famously marched with MLK, and I think
| became a sort of symbolic figure for white southern
| christian supporters of the civil rights movement. It's a
| much longer story than that but it was enough to get them
| to explore the greek church and eventually convert before
| I was born.
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| The author of this book was a guest on the History of Byzantium
| podcast. It's a great listen that picks up where the History of
| Rome left off.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| Carrying that logic further, then, would it be better if public
| servants had no friends? If everyone anywhere but the lowest
| rung of the corporate ladder (from which one does not typically
| make hiring decisions) also had no family? For only the least
| (conventionally) successful to reproduce seems problematic.
| knodi123 wrote:
| > Carrying that logic further
|
| Or rather, "carrying it to an extreme". But we don't have to
| carry it that far. Eliminating inherited positions is a huge
| and sufficient improvement. If you go all the way to "no
| family or friends at all", yeah, I'd agree the problematic
| aspects might outweigh the benefits.
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| > It even shows us why generals and senior civil servants were
| eunuchs and how the next best thing was celibate people
|
| ok. why?
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| They're more likely to choose their successors based on merit
| than familial ties for a start. That's really enough, but
| they may also have less need to enrich themselves as they
| don't need to plan for inheritance.
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| I wish the original poster had put that. It makes sense.
| Thanks
| nsajko wrote:
| > senior civil servants were eunuchs and how the next best
| thing was celibate people
|
| Ralph Nader comes to mind.
| kmlx wrote:
| one random tidbit that struck me was that the term "Byzantine
| Empire" was actually an invention from the 1500's.
|
| the "byzantine" people actually called themselves Romans, and
| the empire was called "Roman Empire".
| KoftaBob wrote:
| Ironically, those outside of Byzantium (namely the Western
| Europeans) called them "the Greeks". The Byzantines in turn,
| called those Western Europeans "The Latins".
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| A good compromise is to call it the Eastern Roman empire,
| though some folks in the Vatican would undoubtedly be
| annoyed.
| aorth wrote:
| Ah yes! This is an interesting tidbit I learned while
| listening to the excellent Fall of Civilizations podcast. The
| episode about Byzantium was so good. Paul and his team do
| such a good job on the audio and visuals.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvzoAfpCvbw
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| That's because Byzantium was the eastern wing of the Roman
| Empire. Justinian I (the emperor in the wikipedia article) is
| remembered for being behind the last almost successful
| attempt to take Rome back from the hands of the barbarians
| and reunite the Empire's two heads.
|
| The two heads in the Byzantine flags, that is. Byzantines
| called themselves "Roman", and everyone else in the area
| called them "Rum" (i.e. "Roman") because they _were_ Romans.
|
| And this guy was the _Last of the Romans_ :
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belisarius
| m00dy wrote:
| and then the Ottomans came...
| triceratops wrote:
| But also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_claim_to_Ro
| man_success...
| epilys wrote:
| They were the Roman Empire. The distinction we make today is
| mainly of two reasons:
|
| - In the East side of the empire, Constantine, the Roman
| emperor who moved the capital to Byzantium ("New Rome") was
| half-Greek, and the Greek element in the East meant this half
| of the Roman Empire had a stronger Greek ethnic presence.
|
| - In the West side, the local Roman elite along with newly
| arrived Germanic peoples (the Franks) were Christianized and
| established the Papal states, of whose the Pope was king, the
| Catholic church, and realms that continued from the Roman
| Empire that was split into West and East. To make their claim
| over the Roman Empire stronger, there were fabrications of
| legitimacy (See
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donation_of_Constantine ) and a
| lot of religious infighting with the East.
|
| In short, in terms of a continuum of emperors the Eastern
| empire was essentially uninterrupted.
|
| Even before the breakup of the empire, Romans were a bit
| obsessed with lineage and being descendants of powerful
| Romans. This cultural element carried over in the next two
| millennia by many people claiming the role of the Emperor of
| Romans, until the victories of Napoleon forced the rest of
| Europe to dissolve the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 to prevent
| Napoleon from claiming the title for himself. https://en.wiki
| pedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_the_Holy_Roman_...
| ginko wrote:
| Well that and that the city of Rome wasn't part of it.
| epilys wrote:
| Ethnonym versus toponym; they are not the same.
| qwytw wrote:
| > It even shows us why generals and senior civil servants were
| eunuchs
|
| That was the case for "only" around a third to a half of the
| empire's existence. But by the 1000 ADs appointing eunuchs to
| high posts fell out of fashion with emperors appointing family
| members or leading in the field directly (unlike in Justinians
| day when emperors spent almost their entire reign being
| cloistered in the palace).
|
| Somewhere between the first and third crusades there was a non-
| insignificant chance of the empire becoming much more
| integrated with Latin/Catholic west. Later Komnenian emperors
| started adopting Western customs, had fairly good relations
| with most Crusader and Western States and were attempting to
| reunite the both churches officially.
|
| Of course this process culminated when a French princess became
| an effective ruler of the empire as a regent for her underage
| son, she surrounded herself with Latins and parceled off pretty
| much everything she could off to Italian Merchants. This was
| met with an extremely violent backlash culminating in her and
| her son being murdered and a literal genocide (or at least a
| massive pogrom) of all the westerns living in Constantinople
| (10-20% of all the people living in the city). And the split
| was made permanent by the even more violent sack during the 4th
| crusade by the westerners.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| In some sense, the final sack by the Ottomans imposed a
| certain modicum of order and peace to the Polis. And that's
| saying something.
| nerdponx wrote:
| One thing I learned recently is that 12th Century Fourth
| Crusade actually culminated in sacking Constantinople and
| establishment of the "Latin Empire", as the intended successor
| of the Byzantine Empire, which only existed for a brief time
| before it was recaptured by a rump state founded by exiled
| Byzantine aristocrats. Apparently (and understandably) this led
| to major deterioration in East-West Christian relations, and
| furthermore the resulting weakening of the Byzantine Empire is
| what might have enabled the Ottoman Empire to eventually
| conquer the Byzantine Empire in the 15th Century. The level of
| geopolitical chaos involved in such an event is unimaginable
| today. Even the messiest of 20th century wars seem downright
| orderly by comparison.
| [deleted]
| qwytw wrote:
| The Fourth Crusade was preceded by:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_the_Latins
|
| which was a reaction to the empire becoming near completely
| dominated by westerns both economically and (to a lesser
| degree) politically.
|
| The last coup attempt/civil war (which was also a near
| permanent issue in the empire) before the massacre was
| between a French Princess ruling the empire as a regent for
| her underage son and her stepdaughter who was married to a
| Frankish nobleman from the Outremer (he was -the second
| highest ranking official in the empire and seemingly the heir
| apparent together with his wife). Had they succeeded the
| Empire would probably have had its first Latin Emperor (or at
| least co-Emperor) without even being directly conquered. Of
| course instead it ended with late emperor's cousin* murdering
| (he forced the 12 year old emperor to sign her mothers death
| warrant and before having him assassinated soon after).
| mothers everyone and taking the throne for himself after he
| masterfully utilized the widespread public hatred towards the
| Latins amongst the general population..
|
| *Andronikos Komnenos, who was in his middle 60s at the time
| and while being quite a terrible person had a very
| interesting life. Amongst other things (while in exile due
| all kinds of scheming) he seduced the former queen of
| Jerusalem (who happened to be his niece..) and up having two
| children with her after they ran away to the Turkish
| Sultanate of Damascus. Eventually she was captured by the
| emperor who used her to lure Andronikos into Constantinople
| and then (unfortunately for the emperor's son) decided pardon
| him and exile him to a remote province instead of executing
| him.
| nerdponx wrote:
| This is why it makes my blood boil when TV shows and movies
| that recount historical events try to dramatize everything
| and add their own silly unnecessary fictional touches. The
| _actual_ events that happened are dramatic enough!
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Thanks for sharing, i read a lot of history and while I was
| generally aware of the western sacking of Constantinople
| during the crusades.. I wasn't aware this preceded it.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| > It even shows us why generals and senior civil servants were
| eunuchs
|
| The place the Byzantines got those eggs from tried that too,
| didn't always work out too great in terms of stability and good
| governance, for example:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Attendants
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zong_Ai
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight_Tigers
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wei_Zhongxian
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| I like how easily television puts the event into a show set seven
| centuries later. That'd be like including the signing of the
| Magna Carta in a show about WWI.
| alehlopeh wrote:
| This event lead to the Byzantines having a silk monopoly in
| Europe. It follows that the Venetians didn't have the means to
| produce silk. They may have therefore tried to acquire said
| means. The show apparently depicts that attempt, with
| inspiration from the story in TFA.
| valarauko wrote:
| I'd also add that holy men smuggling out the means to break
| monopolies in their walking sticks is a popular theme, to the
| point of being a trope.
| cubefox wrote:
| Perhaps a naive question: What was so special about silk? It
| seems it was just a luxury article for the rich. I assume unlike
| today, not many people had a lot of disposable income to spend on
| luxury products. So I don't understand how silk could have been
| economically relevant compared to other non-luxury goods.
| gostsamo wrote:
| And 1400 years later my grandfather farmed silkworms a few
| hundred kilometers from Constantinople.
| exhilaration wrote:
| I'm curious, is there a list somewhere of these world-changing
| industrial espionage incidents? Here's two more I remember off
| the top of my head. Not sure why the top results are the
| Smithsonian Magazine but here are some links:
|
| Samuel Slater brings cotton mill technology to America in 1789:
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-industrial-esp...
|
| Robert Fortune learns Chinese tea production methods and brings
| them to British India in 1848:
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-great-british-tea...
|
| Someone ( _maybe you!_ ) should write a book about this!
| mihaic wrote:
| The fact that the world's production of nutmeg until the 19th
| century was restricted only to the remote Banda islands I think
| falls in that category. The Dutch protected their source with
| vigilance.
| samstave wrote:
| I cant recall where you can see footage, maybe on the
| documentary _" Murder Mountain"_ where they talk about
| smuggling Cannabis seeds from Afghanistan to California in the
| 1960s or 1970s by sewing the seeds into the edge-trimming-folds
| of (wallets?) to get the seeds into the US... then creating
| cannabis farms in mendocino county california...
| morkalork wrote:
| >"Foreigners seemed to prefer having a mixture of Prussian blue
| and gypsum with their tea, to make it look uniform and pretty,
| and as these ingredients were cheap enough, the Chinese [have]
| no objection to [supplying] them as such teas always fetch . .
| . a higher price!"
|
| This quote and the preceding paragraph about the distrust of
| the Chinese tea manufacturers are quite something. I hadn't
| considered the "made in China" stereotype for quality had been
| around for centuries.
| mjhay wrote:
| Historically (before ~1800 let's say) China was known for its
| very high-quality goods. In fact, the Silk Road trade and
| later trade with the Spanish was almost exclusively Chinese
| goods flowing out and gold and silver specie flowing in -
| mainly because their domestic production was good enough that
| foreign goods couldn't compete. This was enough of a thing
| that the Romans became concerned at the amount of specie
| flowing out of the empire to pay for silk and other Chinese
| goods.
| fluxinflex wrote:
| This is was the reason for the Opium Wars with the English.
| The English wanted Chinas tea but the Chinese didn't want
| anything from the English so the English were bleeding gold
| and silver into China.
|
| So the English forced Opium onto the people of China
| against the will of the King of China. China rebelled, the
| English conquered and forced the Chinese to open their
| ports and accept Indian-grown opium as trade for Chinese
| tea.
|
| That continued until the English found the secret plants
| that made the Chinese tea. They stole those plants and
| planted them in India.
| qwytw wrote:
| > mainly because their domestic production was good enough
| that foreign goods couldn't compete
|
| Most international trade (well intercontinental anyway) was
| restricted almost exclusively to luxury goods. And Europe
| didn't have to export in that regard besides glassware up
| until the 19th century. Transportation costs were way too
| high to export/import anything that might have taken up
| more space across long distances (especially over land).
|
| After the industrial revolution imports to China remained
| at relatively very low levels due to heavily protectionist
| policies by the imperial government until the opium wars.
|
| Obviously opium was the most egregious example and by
| modern standards China clearly had the right to restrict
| its imports. Opium just happened to be the most profitable
| one, however importing anything else (like cotton, furs,
| steel tools, mechanical items) besides gold/silver was very
| hard as well which why (amongst other thing) many Chinese
| people living on the coast weren't that keen on supporting
| the government (of course China was in sate of near
| permanent civil war and endless revolts during most of the
| century).
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| The US actually encouraged "IP theft" well into the 19th
| century and did not recognise foreign copyright.
|
| On their side the UK not only banned export of certain
| technologies to the US but they also banned emigration of the
| people knowledgeable about them.
| dragonelite wrote:
| That not so weird Taiwan does the exactly the same with their
| semi conductor engineers that want to go to China.
| fluxinflex wrote:
| This similar to Chinas stand on IP: copying is ok so long it
| doesn't happen to our IP. But this is how small economies can
| grow quickly, by ignoring IP. So nearly every western nation
| had a period of ignoring copyright and/or IP.
| dormento wrote:
| Theres the smuggling of wild rubber tree seeds, which
| eventually got to Malaysia.
|
| https://geography.name/how-rubber-moved-to-asia/
|
| > The Brazilian monopoly suffered a fatal blow in 1876. In that
| year the English explorer Sir Henry Wickham (1800-67) gathered
| about 70,000 seeds from wild rubber trees in the forest close
| to the city of Santarem, in the state of Para. Wickham smuggled
| the seeds out of Brazil and took them to Kew Gardens, London,
| where they were sown. Many of them germinated, and 3,000
| seedlings were sent from London to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). In
| 1877, 22 rubber plants were sent from Ceylon to the Singapore
| Botanic Gardens. The trees were growing there when in 1888 Sir
| Henry Nicholas Ridley (1855-1956) arrived as the gardens' first
| scientific director. Ridley spent years studying the trees, and
| in 1895 he discovered a technique for tapping the latex without
| seriously harming the tree. That made it practicable to
| cultivate the trees commercially. In 1890 Ridley exhibited the
| first cultivated rubber trees, and in 1896 the first rubber
| plantations were established in Malaysia. Most of the trees
| were grown from Ridley's seeds. Growers went on to produce
| hardier, disease-resistant varieties, and large rubber
| plantations were developed in Ceylon and Singapore as well as
| Malaysia.
| [deleted]
| Jun8 wrote:
| It seems there's a lot of interest for Byzantine History on HN,
| that's fantastic! My friends and I have run a book club for the
| past four years on Ancient History with focus on the Eastern
| Roman Empire.
|
| Most books we read were kind of dry. Here's a list of books I
| found readable and engaging if you want to delve deeper:
|
| * _Byzantium_ trilogy by Norwich. If you don 't want to get all
| three, I suggest getting _The Apogee_ (2nd volume). Fantastically
| readable and solid historical work with a generous side of
| gossip.
|
| * _Alexiad_ by Anna Komnene. Written around 1140 after Anna was
| deposed to a convent, this biography of her father, Alexios, has
| an immediacy that history books cannot match. The end will
| probably bring you to tears.
|
| * _Anecdota (Secret History)_ by Procopius. For pure titillation
| factor cannot be beat! Severe attack against Justinian, Theodora,
| Belisaurus, and his wife Antonina. "Severe" is an understamenet
| really, here's Procopius on Theodora's depraved youth:
| On the field of pleasure she was never defeated. Often she would
| go picnicking with ten young men or more, in the flower of their
| strength and virility, and dallied with them all, the whole night
| through. When they wearied of the sport, she would approach their
| servants, perhaps thirty in number, and fight a duel with each of
| these; and even thus found no allayment of her craving. Once,
| visiting the house of an illustrious gentleman, they say she
| mounted the projecting corner of her dining couch, pulled up the
| front of her dress, without a blush, and thus carelessly showed
| her wantonness. And though she flung wide three gates to the
| ambassadors of Cupid, she lamented that nature had not similarly
| unlocked the straits of her bosom, that she might there have
| contrived a further welcome to his emissaries.
|
| So, she fit the full Messalina archetype. Full text available at
| Fordham (https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/procop-anec.asp).
| Here's an interesting paper on the depiction of Theodora in the
| Secret History
| (https://www.mcgill.ca/classics/files/classics/2004-09.pdf)
|
| * _Chronographia_ by Michael Psellos covers the reigns of 14
| emperors and empresses in a 100 time period
| nologic01 wrote:
| It is interesting how concepts of commercial secrecy and rule of
| law evolve over the centuries. In modern terms we might call this
| "knowledge transfer incident" a form of commercial espionage /
| intellectual property theft.
|
| It is unclear if the affected entity ever imposed sanctions or
| other form of punishment on the perpetrator (presumably they
| _did_ notice that there was no longer demand for their silk in
| certain markets??). It also appears that the perpetrators
| promptly established a monopoly of their own (on the basis of
| somebody else 's know-how which is also somewhat odd with today's
| eyes :-).
|
| Somehow it is all predicated on very sparse communication between
| different parts of the world. The flip side is that in today's
| hyper-connected world you might be able to tell if a secret has
| leaked just by triangulation.
| peteradio wrote:
| You might have a pretty good clue of who did what but today's
| winning strategy is to never admit any fault and form
| coalitions of protection. I suspect that is the winning
| strategy always, just stonewall, its not particularly honorable
| but what has that ever won anybody, an honor trophy? You can
| get trophys by cheating too, and much more!
| vrglvrglvrgl wrote:
| [dead]
| peteradio wrote:
| Silk has been produced for 3-4k years, can you imagine what a
| son-of-a-bitch that was back then? Was silk like gold and
| bitcoin? Somehow valuable because its such a bitch to produce?
| Feels like all of it is a goof on the people who accept it at
| face value.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| silk materials relate to a sensual world, where the touch, feel
| and quality of the physical embodiment is valued highly.. It is
| possible that English-style commerce downplays this sensual
| value, preferring all forms of money, e.g. rare coins, stamps,
| securities and financial agreements, as higher value. It is an
| example of a polarity.
|
| There is a rumor that Bill Gates will not pay for art because
| "that is not worth money" .. he famously had giant digital
| screens hung in his thirty thousand square foot home,
| displaying reproductions of famous art without paying for them.
| Yet, he has spent millions of dollars building and acquiring
| software patents, which are applied with attorneys to generate
| many times that income. I suggest that is directly reflective
| of that cultural difference.
| knodi123 wrote:
| > There is a rumor that Bill Gates will not pay for art
|
| It's a funny anecdote, but he has well over a hundred million
| in art.
|
| https://www.the-sun.com/news/2845331/bill-gates-art-
| collecti...
| Avicebron wrote:
| Silk definitely had(has) the immediate day to day use case of a
| comfortable fabric to wear, I can imagine that alone drove up
| demand. I'm sure it being difficult to produce increased it's
| value.
|
| Sure gold and bitcoin are stores of value and currency, but we
| don't usually make our boxers out of them.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Silk has unique characteristics as a material, and in a pre-
| plastic pre-industrial world with relatively few viable fabric
| materials (and all of them profoundly labor-intensive by modern
| standards) it would have been valuable regardless.
|
| Obviously its rarity, social connotations, and mysterious
| origins had a huge effect on its value. But like gold, its
| characteristics alone are enough to cause people to go through
| the trouble to acquire it initially, enough for those other
| factors to take over.
| peteradio wrote:
| IMO we shouldn't have started wearing clothes to begin with,
| it was a bad call. If my ancestors could have just held off
| on that I'd have nice thick fur right now.
| whythre wrote:
| I mean... if you stick to the areas that mimic the early
| hominid climate you don't really need them. Lots of modern
| tropical tribes wear functionally zero clothing.
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