Week Seven - Chapters 17, 18, 19 & 20

Chapter 17  begins by discussing the impacts that each of the major social / cultural revolutions (North American, French, & Haitian) had both singularly and on each other.  For instance, I was unaware of that Thomas Jefferson was the US ambassador to France at the beginning of the French Revolution or that Simon Bolivar had a tie to Haiti.

The North American Revolution occurred not so much because the people wanted immediate independence from Britain so much as they wanted a way to ease the control and taxation from a country on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.  The revolution allowed the people of North American to continue to create a society based upon equality that was not prevalent in Europe.

After hearing about the positive effects the North American Revolution created, the French began to realize they could revolt against the taxes imposed upon them to offset the government’s fiscal problems.  Additionally, social conflicts pitted the rich against the working class and the working class against the peasants.  The French Revolution created a new beginning which they illustrated by recreating the calendar starting with the year 1.  The population of France began to view themselves more as citizens of a country as opposed to residents of their particular region.  Napoleon was able to tame the tides of the revolution and use its forces to provide benefits to the people.  It was also his goal to militarily expand the elements of the revolution beyond France’s borders.  Napoleon’s empire came to a halt by 1815 due to the efforts of Britain and Russia.

The Haitian revolt by slaves created a society where “the last had become the first.”  Slavery was abolished and equality within its borders was established.

The industrial revolution began in Europe, particularly in Britain.  This was most likely because of the culture of the people of Europe at the time in conjunction with the wide availability of iron ore and coalfields.  The United States also later took advantage of its natural resource of coal mining and precious metal to begin their own industrial revolution.

The impacts of the Industrial Revolution were felt globally.  The advent and improvements made by the West provided them with military superiority over the East.  Pressure from the West including rampant racism of the Asian people made their growth more difficult.  The Chinese in particular had mounting internal issues that had to be dealt with first. 

Opium use became widespread in about 1832.  China attempted to prevent further strife by seizing millions of pounds of Opium from western traders without providing them compensation.  The British would not let this stand and embarked upon a crusade to make the Chinese pay dearly for their decision.  In the end, Britain ended up signing a treaty with China, paying millions of dollars, giving up control of Hong Kong to the British. 

Week Six - Chapters 14, 15, & 16

With the majority of my education on the history of the Americas coming from elementary school (which included colorful crayon drawings of the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria), I was somewhat fascinated by the role that disease played in the destruction of the Native Americans.  I was always under the impression that Europeans came in and simply militarily conquered the original inhabitants of the “New World.”  The text indicated that in some areas up to 90% the Native American peoples died from disease brought by the Europeans and Africans.  This of course had an impact on the available slave workforce which impacted their ability to grow food which in turn affected their source of an adequate amount of food.  Pretty elementary but not really anything that I can say I thought about before.

Moving onto the building up of the Russian empire and Geoffrey Hoskins statement, “The British had an empire, Russia was an empire.”  The Russians were able to utilize their own existing means in which to expand their empire whereas the countries of Europe were forced to use only what they were able to bring over by boat.  This allowed their Russians to build a strategy to slowly expand their borders akin to a virus.  This provided them certain benefits when it came to trade and commerce.  When it came to obtaining goods from the America’s the Russians simply traded their furs for American gold and silver.  There was no need to fund overseas trips using funds that could be better spent expanding and defending the empire at home.  

On has to wonder what would have happened if there had been an African Empire; a nation in which the people and civilization had progressed enough to defend themselves and their borders from other nations looking for slave labor.  Where would the workforce that other nations used to build their newly conquered lands?  As mentioned in the text, the African population was not necessarily chosen so much as they ended up being the largest mass of people left from which to draw from.  Not to mention the inclination that stereotyping of blacks as an inferior race began as early as the 14^th century and has continued to this day worldwide.  Finally, I find it interesting that Africa as a continent is still considered to be a third world country.  Could one surmise that this began when their peoples were pillaged and since that time their culture has never really been able to regain its footing in the world again?