Great Courses Review: The Barbarian Empires of the Steppes

I'm becoming a Professor Harl aficionado. When I saw that he was the professor for this course I was excited about listening to it. I'm primarily a listener of the GC presentations, and Dr. Harl is one of the best.

I loved this series. When you stop and think about it, we learn in school about the West, and a little about the East, mostly China and a little about Japan and Korea, mainly as they interact with China. Then you learn about the fantastic Silk Road and how much impact it had in bringing the rich products of the East to the West. OK, did the Silk Road happen magically? Obviously no, and this series fills in the dark hole of how it worked.

One of the things that I really liked was that Dr. Harl said that Islam was influenced by the Persian Empire much more than the Roman Empire. In another lecture series, I can't remember off the top of my head, the Roman Empire is said to have left three civilizations in it's wake: Western, Eastern Orthodox, and Islamic. I've always felt that was wrong and that Islam was much more influenced by Persia than Rome. Dr. Harl makes the case for Persia as well, which is probably why I like it since it agrees with my thoughts.

I do find one thing funny about Dr. Harl's presentation. He doesn't give enough credit to the transfer of technology from the east to the west. He seems to think that the only idea that the West took from the East, via the Steppes, was gunpowder. He says the West took that technology and advanced it as artillery and hand held weapons which could be mounted on ships and this led to the West's subjection of the East. Well that's true, but the West also took the compass and improved it so they could sail their ships, they took printing and improved it so they could print cheap books and so transfer knowledge more easily, they took paper and used it in industrial amounts in the cheap books they read to transfer knowledge. They took algebra and applied it to real world applications so their mounted artillery worked better. I could go on. I think this is the first GC lecture series where I didn't think the lecturer gave the East enough credit for the West's development. It was bizarre. He may think that gunpowder was the most influential idea that was transfer ed, or had the most impact but it is weird that gunpowder is the only thing he mentioned.

Great course. I would highly recommend it.