World History chapters 19, 20, 21

Chapter 19: Empires in Collision, 1800-1914

Chapter 20: Collapse at the Center, 1914-1970s

Chapter 21: Revolution, Socialism, and Global Conflict, 1917-Present

This week’s readings were really interesting, especially chapter 20, which covered the topics of the first World War, the Depression, and the next chapter which concerned the rise and fall of Communism. My father is a huge history buff with a special interest in World War II. He can tell you how many people were in certain battles and how many casualties and how it turned the tide of the war off the top of his head, so I have heard a lot about it. What was enlightening was finding out more details about the circumstances surrounding it in the previous and following events and how it effected the globe, like how World War II helped to discredit Capitalism for a time and influenced the creation of Communist states, mainly in Russia, and China. What was also interesting was seeing the shift in country alliances from World War I through to the Cold War.   

I found it striking, yet in retrospect not surprising, how women were utilized in war efforts and later in building socialism, going as far as obtaining more rights, but when met with opposition those rights were taken away. It was not surprising because it seems to follow a pattern that I have noticed thus far in past empires we have studied in this class. When there is revolutionary or empire building movements, women have more mobility economically and socially, but when things settle down, they end up being oppressed again. And often times the opposition to change is from the oppressed group itself. It is like a revolving door.

World History Chapters 16, 17, and 18

Chapter 16: Atlantic Revolutions

Chapter 17: Revolutions of Industrialization

Chapter 18: Colonial Encounters

              Reading about the Atlantic Revolutions was intriguing to me because of the little tidbits I already know about them. For example, regarding the North American Revolution, 1775-1787 (701), last year I was in a school production of the musical 1776, and got to play Lewis Morris, a continental congressional delegate from the colony of New York. It was fun to do research and get inside the characters’ heads. And though it was a dramatization, I did learn a lot about the history of the events surrounding the signing of the declaration of independence. There was real tension in the room when the matter of slavery came up in the second act. It was chilling.

The French Revolution, if I understand what I am reading correctly, never really led to a sustained republic, and if memory serves, nor did the subsequent revolution that took place later. Fun facts: Marie Antionette never actually said “let them eat cake” when she supposedly heard about the bread shortage of the common people. Also, everybody liked Napoleon until Waterloo (I think?), then kicked him out, and after he died they decided that they liked him again and now his tomb is located in the Hôtel des Invalides that houses the Musée de l'Armée. I found it kind of cool, kind of cliché when I was there, but a fitting location since it is an army museum.

But the most interesting things to come out of these revolutions, I think, were the three major movements that followed: abolition of slavery, nationalism, and feminism.

Learning more about colonialism was both interesting and horrifying, but it is not like I was not expecting that. Especially reading over the “Ways of Working” section, and about the Congo Free State governed by King Leopold II of Belgium together with the anecdotal evidence (802-803).

Ah! Chapter 18 brought up what I was talking about in my last post, which is technically called “social Darwinism” (792). Thought I would mention that…

Okay, now I can mark this week’s readings off the list. Glad I got it done.

World History Chapters 13, 14, 15

***posted late by prior arrangement

Ch. 13: Empires & Encounters

Ch. 14: Commerce & Consequence

Ch. 15: Religion & Science

These chapters together are Part 4 of Ways of the World and cover the years 1440-1750, essentially stepping into “The Early Modern Era,” or an age of empire.

The main thing to jump out at me while reading was in chapter 15, the belief in “the clockmaker god” of the religion of deism Voltaire and other “enlightenment” thinkers adhered to (671). The idea was that God does not interfere or intervene with worldly affairs. He built the world like a clock, with mechanisms to run itself. Also, the Pantheists (672), who thought God and nature were identical. I have encountered this theme before in other classes and it seems that these ways of thinking variously effected man’s relationship with the natural world and each other. By thinking of nature as mechanical, animals and other natural phenomena become nothing more than things run by mechanisms that make them move (or not move), and nothing beyond that. Those mechanisms could be used in order to progress (673, another Enlightenment theme) and improve human society. And if by changing the way people think of natural world, if they changed the way they thought about other humans, what would the consequences be? That is where the idea of race comes in, combined with people taking the concepts of the theory of evolution and survival of the fittest (674) totally out of context (which is a total a pet peeve of mine, whether people get it wrong on television or in conversation). This and other pseudo-sciences are what in big part what led to things like the horrors of slavery and generated the fuel for holocausts. Justification made easy and enforced by resultant wealth. There are definitely other factors, such as justification by traditional religious leaders (623), but these jumped out at me.

World History chapters 9, 11, 12

After last week’s readings on Christianity, it was interesting reading about Islam for this week and seeing the parallels between the two religions and the actions and ideas of the people who practiced them. Two points struck me the most. One was the division or schisms that occurred in both the Christian and Islamic worlds that were based on how worship should be carried out. For instance, the major division of Catholicism in Europe into Orthodox Catholics and Roman Catholics. Both sides saw the other’s views on theology and church practice as heretical, and their leaders even excommunicated each other. In the Islamic world, a rift emerged as well, forming two sides, the Sunni and the Shia (375). For the most part, the differences of all of these groups under the umbrella of the same faith have yet to be reconciliated. It makes one think, why did these serious rifts happen in exclusively monotheistic religions that have periodically led to conflict? In Buddhism, where some have come to worship the Buddha and others have only seen it as a way of living and thought, has there been such hostility or barriers between the two? Is there something within the ideology and exclusivity of these monotheistic religions that invites “black and white”, or, “one or the other” thinking/way of viewing the world? Does this fit into the paradigm of thought that that there must be one way of doing things? And does this contribute to the history of hostility between Islam and Christianity who themselves supposedly worship the same God?

The second thing to strike me was that not only were ideas about gender inequality, more specifically the subordination of women, not specifically cited in either the Bible of Quran, (and even in cases in the Bible where it might have been, most or all of these writings were not written by Jesus himself), but were written by later scholars of the faiths. For Muslims, these were mostly written in the Hadiths. For example, I had to give a sigh as I read about the gradual changing of the story of Adam and Eve in Islamic culture. It was like, here we go again, blame Eve why don’t you? I guess everyone needs a scapegoat?

I found reading about the “unlikely” empire of the Mongols, known for their brutality and physical and psychological warfare, refreshing because it is not something I remember really studying in depth about before. It was fascinating how Chinggis Khan was able to not only organize and mobilize warring tribes, but how he did so (469-472), especially within his army. I also realized that, had it not been for the plague, that empire could have lasted much longer. How different would things be now had it turned out that way?

I always wondered what the ideology behind the bloody sacrifices of the Aztec’s was, and so the section in chapter 12 that goes over it: (525) “Civilizations of the Fifteenth Century: The Americas: The Aztec Empire", was interesting to me. Apparently, it was this prominent official called Tlacaelel that solidified the ideology (525). Basically, the Gods, specifically the sun (called Huitzilopochtle- try saying that five times fast) needed the power of human blood to continue on its “constant battle against the encroaching darkness (525). Such a human thing to fear, the darkness. If I were someone living in that time, would I do all I could to keep the light from receding as well? It’s hard to think about, what with all of my modern sensibilities and my feeling queasy at the thought of sacrificing and blood-letting. I don’t even like vampires and can’t look when my blood gets drawn at the hospital…but I digress.

I barely got through this week’s readings, but I hope it is helpful in the long run.