This section has ventured away from the goings-on of Europe for some time, which was refreshing, since war clearly affects more regions than the West. It ventured into the Middle East, as well as China presumably near or around the time of the opium wars (certainly during the time when the economy was thriving due to opium sales, but the people were falling into addiction and not able to alleviate their despair --> discussed on pg 346-347 in my book).

The book addressed colonialism rather poignantly, in one of my favorite passages: "Colonies are the outhouses of the European soul [...] Christian Europe was always death, Karl, death, and repression. Out and down in the colonies, life can be indulged, life and sensuality in all its forms, with no harm done to the Metropolis, nothing to soil those cathedrals, white marbel statues, noble thoughts... No word ever gets back. The silences down here are vast enought to absorb all behavior[...]" (317).

This quote reminded me of Madame Butterfly, a play which GR actually mentions on pg 351. I read Madame Butterfly for my Scripps Core class when were were studying Eurocentrism. The play critiques the Eastern/Western dichotomy by inverting the masculine/western/colonialistic ideal and the mysterious/eastern/femine colony. It compares Europe to an overly masculine man attempting to rape the obedient and silent female Orient. Ultimately, the play inverts the power structure, and critiques the stereotypes upon which in is based. It was an interesting reference for me, since we've been talking a lot about gender, race, east/west and all those other sticky issues we're trying to pick apart.