How Japanese Castles are similar to European Castles
1.They had large and tall walls for protection
2. They often had moats around them to discourage the digging of tunnels
3. They had narrow and steep stairways to make assault difficult
4. They had portholes for guns and for arrows
5. They often had a main gate area that could be used as a trap
6. They almost always had concentric rings of walls to give them multiple layers of protection
7.They capitalized on terrain features - often the best placement was at
the top of a hill or small mountain. This gave a very advantageous
position and view
DIFFERENCES
Unlike European feudalism Japan’s feudalism system did not have a true
pyramid form with the monarch presiding over the less important nobles.
First, the authority in Japan was much less centralized than it was in
the nation-states of Europe. Even though most of the local aristocrats
paid lip service to the emperor, the rugged terrain of Japan made it
very difficult for the emperor to fully control the local aristocracy.
Therefore the local aristocrats had much more power in Japan than they
ever had in France, Britain, or any other European country.
Secondly, even though the lower nobility in Japan (the samurai) swore
fealty to their local lords, the local lords didn’t give the samurai any
land of their own. When the European nobility receives land in exchange
for their military services, the samurai did not join a landowning
hierarchy. Instead of that they were given an independent income from
their local lord based upon what that lord’s lands produced.
In contrast, European knights usually had their own serfs to work the
land the knights received from their lord. While a Japanese samurai
might have had servants, these servants did not work the land the way
they would have done in Europe.
The presidential election of 1828 was a landslide victory for Andrew Jackson. It was actually much closer than most Presidential Elections have historically win because Jackson received 56% of the vote while Adams received 43%, but the United States of course elected President with the Electoral College. The Electoral College vote was: 178 Electoral College votes for Jackson, 83 Electoral College votes for Adams. I suppose I would consider that a bit of a landslide victory.
Confucius
Key texts from Confucius (551-471 BCE) were core material for the civil service examinations in imperial China, beginning in the Sui dynasty (581-618 CE) and reaching the height of development in the Qing dynasty (1644-1912 CE). Not only was the focus on Confucius, but on recognized authoritative commentaries on Confucius.
The Scientific Revolution was a series of events that marked the emergence of modern science during the early modern period, when developments in mathematics, physics, astronomy, biology (including human anatomy) and chemistry transformed the views of society about nature. The Scientific Revolution took place in Europe towards the end of the Renaissance period and continued through the late 18th century, influencing the intellectual social movement known as the Enlightenment. While its dates are debated, the publication in 1543 of Nicolaus Copernicus's De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres) is often cited as marking the beginning of the Scientific Revolution.
The concept of a scientific revolution taking place over an extended period emerged in the eighteenth century in the work of Jean Sylvain Bailly, who saw a two-stage process of sweeping away the old and establishing the new. The beginning of the Scientific Revolution, the Scientific Renaissance, was focused on the recovery of the knowledge of the ancients; this is generally considered to have ended in 1632 with publication of Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. The completion of the Scientific Revolution is attributed to the "grand synthesis" of Isaac Newton's 1687 Principia. The work formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation thereby completing the synthesis of a new cosmology. By the end of the 18th century, the Age of Enlightenment that followed Scientific Revolution had given way to the "Age of Reflection."
