Despite the pomp and circumstance of the embassy, the Chinese ultimately rejected the British request, stating emphatically that the Chinese were not in need of any British commercial goods and that the British, if they wanted to trade in China, must follow the existing rules
It was likely that due to this attitude by the Chinese government they later fell behind in technological advancements
Many of the Aztec written codices were labeled as works of the devil and destroyed. Between 1540 and 1585 a Spanish priest, Bernardino de Sahagún, worked closely with educated Aztecs and compiled twelve books of information about their culture.
This seems to be a common thread in history, that important works of a culture are attempted to be destroyed, and managed to at least be partially preserved. We saw this in Unit 1 when a copy of the Classic of History was saved
It is recognized as perhaps the most important extant work for the study of ancient Chinese political thought — thought that still has wide influence on contemporary political structure in China.
I recently wrote a paper in another class that was about the Tiananmen Square Massacre and how the Chinese Government has enforced censorship of all of its media, so reading about the Mandate of Heaven helps to put these events into context