DH

Dolores Huerta Speech:
It was wonderful to see Dolores Huerta speaking at Notre Dame de Namur. She is someone who is not only a role model for farm workers  women leaders and people involved in social justice but a person my own family has known for many years. My father first met her when he was a college student picking strawberries on one of the first farms organized by the United Farm Workers. Dolores Huerta was always a leader of the movement to empower agricultural workers through unionization. She worked hand in hand with Cesar Chavez to fight for the rights of some of the poorest and badly treated workers in our country. She was never held back by some of the prejudices against women in the labor movement or Latino culture. To this day Dolores Huerta is a fighter of social justice and speaks of the themes of the importance of education and fairness to immigrants. She unites many of the different parts of the social justice movement. Woman's rights, access to education, immigrant rights, freedom of speech and unionization. It was amazing to see someone who I had met in person at many democratic party meetings with my father move the crowd at NDNU. She was so passionate about her beliefs and the power of people to make change that she had the entire crowd cheering. After the speech my father and I were able to talk to her one on one. Seeing such a proud and strong Latina provided me with a powerful role model as a young Latina myself.

11

Sweet Nexus: Sugar and the Origins of the Modern World:
Sugar was known in ancient history but it only became globally important with the expansion of Islam after the 7th century and the growth of the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean trades. Sugar was introduced to western Asia and Europe in the late middle ages. Plantations were established around the Persian Gulf and Meditteranean Islands. Sugar really took off however with the European colonization of the new world. The Spanish and Portuguese explorers were familiar with growing of cane sugar and they found particularly in the Caribbean the perfect climate for sugar production. The Europeans developed a greater and greater taste for sugar and it spread from the nobility to the middle classes. Use to sweeten tea and coffee which had become a popular import from Latin America and Asia. There were two triangles involved in the Atlantic Trade. In the first one African slaves were sent to the new world plantations. Sugar and tobacco went from the Americas to Europe and finished products like iron and cloth went from Europe to Africa. The second triangle sent rum from New England to Africa slaves from Africa to the West Indies and molasses back to New England to make more rum. Plantations were at the heart of the sugar economy. African slaves planted and weeded and harvested the cane. It was terribly hard work. The first steps of processing the cane had to be done near the plantations. Crushed into juice and some what refined. The final step in producing white sugar was done in Europe of North America and that's where the big money was made.

10

Collapse by Jared Diamond Chapter 16:
This is one chapter in a book that examines how societies chose to fail or to succeed. The author discusses the serious environmental problems that face us now and in the past. The fall into twelve groups. In the present we face problems that are increasingly serious. One is that we are losing natural habitats or making them human habitats such as cities and villages. Forests are disappearing at a fast rate in places not only in the amazon but places like Montana. When other habitats such as wetlands, ocean fisheries, and coral reefs are damaged it leads to the second problem which is the loss of wild foods. Especially fish and shellfish. Farmed fish are not the answer to the decline of wild fisheries. I did not know this before this chapter but farmed fish are actually fed wild fish so they are hurting the supply of wild fish. Aqua culture causes pollution and fish that have high toxin levels. Problem three is that genetic diversity and bio diversity are being lost as many small species become extinct. What people don't understand if you lose many small species it adds up to a big problem for humans. For example even a reduction in earth worms harms the ability of the soil to support crops. I have been reading about the disappearance of bees this may not seem serious but if bees decline flowers, fruits, vegetables and other important plants are not pollinated. For every loss of a species there is some effect up and down not only the food chain but in the environment such as the soil. Problem four the author describes as the erosion and loss of soil used for farm land. Other issues affecting our environment now and therefore the future of our societies is that we are running out of major resources. For example the easy to get at oil and gas fields are being depleted. Fresh water for drinking and irrigation and industry are shrinking in supply. Over a billion people today lack access to safe drinking water. Human beings are also using too much energy from the sun with not enough left over to support natural plants and forests. In addition to shrinking supplies of essential parts of our world we are also creating harmful things that impact the environment. On of the worst is the chemicals produced by industry that are toxic and go everywhere into our bodies, the air, the plants and other animals. They can cause birth defects and hormonal changes. Many chemicals are broken down only slowly and once released they are incredibly difficult to clean up. The developing nations such as China are some of the worst polluters to the point that their air in their larger cities is toxic. We are also transferring around alien species from places they are native to places where they are not natural where they can cause terrible damage. Lampreys have devastated the commercial fisheries of the great lakes. Air pollution of course is one of the massive problems directly causing global warming. Over population is another major threat and populations are growing often in places that are considered developing nations that are trying to reach a higher standing of living that consumes more resources. All these problems are interrelated and combined together and will cause catastrophes is certain actions are not taken. This article makes me pessimistic about the future.

9

Travels in Siberia: In this chapter the author looks at the Mongols of Central Asia. One of the greatest leader was Genghis Khang. In 1220 he asked a Taoist monk to come to him from Beijing in China to the Mongol encampment far to the West. His journey took about a year and a half. The monk was honest with Genghis Khang and told him that there was no medicine of immortality. The travel of the monk to the Mongols is one of those journeys of exploration that happened much earlier than the more famous European voyages in the 1400's. Christian monks traveled to visit the Mongols from the East and Marco Polo went to the core court of Kublai Khan in 1271-75. His book described these trips and many learned about the Mongols for the first time. The conquest of the Mongols had opened up Central Asia and made it a place people could travel to. Under the leadership of Genghis Khang the mongols attacked civilizations from Beijing to Persia. The mongols were expert horseman and fierce warriors. They were basically a nomadic people use to living outdoors. By 1227 the mongols had conquered Northern China, Middle Asia, the Crimea and the Northern Caucasus. In taking over this land they killed tens of millions of people. They were heartless towards the people they captured including the women who they sent to different harems. Genghis grandson Batu led a campaign against Russia and continued to attack them year after year. They were called Tartars by the Russians meaning Asianatic horsemen.They even conquered the city of Kiev. The mongols forced the Russian population to move into the forests and towards the North. The mongols turned the attention of Russia to the East and Russians began to make journeys into Asia. In 1380 the Russians won an important battle against the mongols although the mongols still continued to attack. Over time the mongols became part of the many peoples they had overrun and the mongol empire shrank. Many mongols converted to the Tibetan version of Buddhism. The Russians sometimes boast that they saved Western Europe from the mongols by ultimately defeating them.

8

Living Justice: Part of the Catholic religion is its social teaching. These come from religious texts and the Catholic experience in the world. There are nine key themes in Catholic social teaching. The first is the dignity of every person and human rights. Catholics believed that all humans reflect the image of God in their minds and bodies. Because of this all humans should be treated with respect and dignity. God does not want humans to be enslaved or exploited. Even humans that commit crimes or are out of work, ill or disabled must be treated with respect of children of God. Because of the sanctity of life modern Catholics oppose abortion euthanasia and capitol punishment. The Catholic teachings have not always been in agreement in opposing these. You only have to think of the Spanish Inquisition where the Catholic Church put to death Jews and other non-catholics to see that Catholics have not always practiced this principle of equal dignity. The Catholics also have a distinctive view of human rights because it is based in Catholic theology in which God is the source of our rights. Unlike theories of secular rights the treatment of rights of Catholic social teaching is based on a particular view on the unity which respects the sanctity of creation and God its creative. Other themes are respect for the common good, the value of family life, the proper role of government, the rights and responsibilities of property ownership, the dignity of work and rights of workers, fairness in economic development, working for peace and providing help for the poor and vulnerable. For example, the family has a special place in Catholic social teaching. Church documents sometimes refer to the family as the "domestic church". This is where people first learn about God and the need of justice and charity. Inside the family people have to engage in self sacrifice and generosity in order to help one another. The family is like a port in a storm. Another theme the dignity of work and workers rights have led modern Catholics to support labor unions and to work against the exploitation of laborers. Labor is considered to be good for all people when it is not carried out under conditions of exploitation.

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Chapter 22: Communism was a powerful force in the world of the 20th century. Modern communism which was based on the teachings of Karl Marx and later with Lennon and Stalin led to communist nations around the world including the Soviet Union and China, Cuba and many African nations. In the decades after World War II communist countries came together in the Warsaw pact which brought together  the Soviet Union and Eastern European communist states such as East Germany in a military alliance. The Western capital countries formed the NATO alliance. The Soviet Union and China signed a treaty of friendship in 1950. In Russia the communist took power in a single year 1917, when they brought down the government of Tsar Nicholas II. Everything in Russia changed as the large land holder estates were seized and became the property "people" and under the power of the state. The aristocracy was out and the common people such as the peasants and workers came into power under the leaders of the Bolshevkis led by Lennon. The Bolshevkis were able to keep Russia out of World War I by signing a peace treaty with Germany. When the communists took over there was a civil war that put down nationalists rebellions. The communists formed a huge army called the red army and also transformed the economy by industrialization. Even though the communists were hostile to the democratic western countries the Soviet Union made huge sacrifices to help defeat the Nazis. Communism did not win in China until 1949. China did not have a socialists tradition and the Chinese communists party was not founded until 1921 with sixty people. Under the leadership of Maozedong the CCP struggled against the Japanese and defeated the nationalist party which had been governing China. This party was led by Chiang Kai-shek. The CCP gained support when Japan invaded China. The CCP brought in many reforms teaching literacy, mobilizing women and reducing rents and taxes for the poor. The nationalists called the Guomindang were forced to Taiwan and Maozedong was in complete power. Chinese communism faced large tasks to make a modern society. The communism there focused on organizing peasants, promoting the equality of women and spreading literacy. In both China and the Soviet Union industrialization came through state development of heavy industry. Over time the Russian leader Stalin became more nationalistic and power was concentrated in the communist party leadership. In China, the communist party tried to bring about industrialization on a smaller scale in rural areas and its set goals in the Great :Leap Forward. China was stricken by a massive famine that killed or injured 20 million people between 1959-1962. In the period after World War II the world was divided between the communist countries and the western democracies. Communism reached into the developing world and Marxism was taken up by many of the new nations that were throwing off their colonial rulers. A "Cold War" grew between the west (NATO) and the Soviet Union (Warsaw pact). Both the United States and the Soviet Union began an arms race to build nuclear weapons. The fact that a single nuclear bomb could destroy an entire major city was one of the reason that the cold war did not become a third world war in terms of actual fighting. There were crises such as the Cuban missle crisis where the Soviets tried to deploy missles in communist Cuba. The United States became the super power of the west with a huge military and an enormous multi national economy. The US dollar was king. The Soviet Union was the communist super power but it had to control many of the other countries it had taken over such as Hungary and Poland and these started to rebel against its control. The Soviets actually invaded Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 to crush the independence movements. In the last two decades of the 20th century communism basically came to an end. The Soviet Union broke apart in 1991 and the former Soviet republics formed their own nations. In China communists thinking changed greatly at the end of the 20th century as the CCP remained in power but there were huge economic reforms that led to private property, massive urban construction and the production of huge amounts of goods that were exported to the west and the US in particular. In part this change in the goals of the party were in reaction to Maos' cultural revolution which challenged all the priviledges of the communist leadership and forced educated Chinese teachers, doctors, artists and others into reeducation camps.

6.5

The second World War the world conflict I probably have heard about the most. This is because my grandfather was in the battle of Guadalcanal in the South Pacific and as a Jew I have studied a great deal about the Holocaust. World War II actually began in Asia with the rise of Chinese nationalism. This threatened Japans influence in Manchuria. The Japanese invaded Manchuria in 1931 and then Japan withdrew from the league of nations. It began to get closer to Germany and Italy and it made a large attack on China in 1937. The western governments such as Britain has tried to control Japan and Japan had become dependent on American sources of goods such as iron, oil and tools. Japan did not like being treated as a second rate power and it began to have military operations in colonies that belonged to the French, British, Dutch and America in Indochina, Malaya, Burma, Indonesia and the Philippines to get resources.  Japan was the dissatisfied nation in Asia. In Europe it was Nazi Germany. When Hitler and the Nazis took control Germany prepared for war. In 1938 Germany took over Austria and parts of Czechoslovakia. At the Munich conference the British and the French did not stand up to Hitler. Now Munich has the meaning of appeasement or giving in. Germany went on to attack Poland and the second World War broke out in Europe. The Germans quickly conquered France and then attacked Britain and the Soviet Union. Germany was joined by its ally Italy. The United States entered World War II when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and this began a long struggle against the Japanese all over Southeast Asia and parts of China. This part of the war only ended   when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The British were able to keep the Nazis from invading England. In the Soviet Union the Germans were finally defeated after millions were killed. One of the worst aspects of World War II was the Holocaust. Jews were rounded up in Germany and later in Poland and Hungary and other territories had conquered. The Nazis tried to exterminate the Jews and other people they saw as inferior such as gypsies, the handicapped and homosexuals. Some Jews were able to flee to Palestine where they tried to establish the state of Israel displacing many Arabs and leading to the Arab Israeli conflict that continues today. The United States came out of World War II as the strongest power. With US aid Europe did recover economically very quickly and to the United States the Soviet Union and communism became the enemy that replaced the Nazis.

6

Chapter 21: In the 20th century the world entered a new era of its history. It started with World War I 1914-1918. Europe had gained tremendous power through population growth, Industrial revolution and imperialism but the many nations of Europe were not unified. The Germans and French fought in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 leaving bad blood between these countries. By the early 20th century there were two rival groups the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria and Italy and the Triple Entente of Russia, France and Britain. When a Serbian nationalists assassinated the Heir to the Austrian thrown Austria and its ally Germany went to war against Serbia and its ally Russia. The conflicts soon spread to all the European nations and finally the United States which joined on the British side when Germans threatened American shipping. World War I was a brutal war that dragged down into trench warfare. Battles lasted months with deaths of a million or more. The war became a "total war" effort with each countries entire population involved supporting their nation in war. The war was considered irrational and tragic. After it was over there were new independent countries such as Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Finland, Turkey and Palestine. The Germans had to pay reparations that were so crushing it led to much hatred. World War I was followed by the great depression that was so severe that it seemed like the whole European-US economic system was failing. The instability of industrial capitalism and its huge social class divisions became dominant in the great depression. In the United States and elsewhere people were unemployed, hungry and bitter. In countries that supplied the industrialized nations such as Chile and Brazil the demand for their crops and the prices of the crops fell apart. With capitalism under attack many people turned to the idea of communism and socialism with more government regulation of the economy. In the United States under President Franklin Roosevelt he put in the New Deal. This was a series of projects and reforms to encourage economic growth. People were put to work building highways, bridges and parks and even paintings murals like the one in Coit Tower. There was also reforms to create an economic safety net such as social security. The Great Depression did not end though until the massive government spending required by World War II started. In Germany as a response to the depression and reparations fascism became powerful. It was an ideology that set out to "purify the nation" (page 988) and to encourage violence against enemies and stamp out individualism and democracy.  It took hold in Germany and Italy most strongly. And Italy the fascist movement was led by Benito Mussolini. He was supported by big business because they were afraid of communism. He consolidated power in the central government there was no more democracy. In Germany, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party led to the victory of fascism there. As people suffered under the reparations and defeat of World War I and the depression that followed fascism helped them find a message of German racial superiority and hatred and blame for Jews. Once Hitler gained power in 1933 all other political parties were outlawed.

5

Chapter 19: In the 19th century Europe became the center of the world economy. Europe had ties all over the world and this had an effect on the Independence of the once great empires of China, Persia and the Ottoman Empire. The Industrial Revolution increased productivity so much that there was a huge need for raw materials from around the world and also for markets to purchase all the products. Some politicians in Britain realized that conditions in the country itself such as the protests of the unemployed and poor meant that "colonial politicians must open up new areas to absorb excess population" (page 880). This response to European industrialization is called Imperialism. The European countries tried to gain economic or political control over areas of Africa and Asia to create markets, get raw materials and create an outlet for their own populations. The Europeans developed a sense of their own superiority in the late 19th century. African societies were considered primitive and the Chinese were stereotyped as "the yellow peril". This sense of superiority went hand in hand with Imperialism as a way to justify a control of areas outside of Europe as good of the people who were being "civilized". China in particular experienced internal problems that weakened it. The population had grown but there was no Industrial revolution that took place. The government could not keep pace with the growing population. Even to a collect taxes. Bandit gangs started to roam the countryside and there was a possibility of a peasant rebellion. This internal crisis of the Taiping uprising between 1850-1864.  The leaders of the rebellion called for the end to private property, redistribution of land and an end to foot binding prostitution and Opium smoking. They also had a plan to transform China into an Industrial nation. The King Qing dynasty was able to put down the rebellion but this civil war weakened China's economy. The British took advantage of this weakness by selling huge amounts of opium from India into China. China ended up with millions of addicts. The result was the opium war between the British and the Chinese. The British came out ahead. And a second opium war the British humiliated the Chinese even more. The French, Japanese, Russians and British carved up China into spheres of influence which gave these countries special privileges to build rail roads, set up military bases and set up raw materials. The Chinese tried to rise up against the crisis in their country and they began to modernize. this failed in the Boxer uprising 1898-1901 in Northern China where Western powers and Japan occupied Beijing to crush the rebellion. The Industrial revolution in Europe also weakened the Ottoman Empire which ruled most of the Arab world from North Africa to Balkans. The empire shrank through Russian, British, Austrian and French military intervention. Parts of the empire such as Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania achieved independence with support from the British or the Russians. The Ottoman Empire made reforms but this led to the rising of the young Turks that followed a secular and more modern nationalism. On the other hand unlike China and the Ottoman Empire went through its own industrial revolution and became a powerful modern nation that took on much western science and technology. Japan began its own Empire building waging war against China and Russia and gaining control of Taiwan and Korea.

4

Chapter 18: What is known as the "Industrial Revolution" occurred between 1750 and 1900. In some ways the Industrial Revolution continues today as more countries become industrialized. In its early stages the Industrial Revolution started in Western Europe and England in particular. There was a rapid growth in population in Western Europe China and Japan. This caused the main sources of energy wood and charcoal to go up in price and to go scarce. In the Industrial Revolution humans turned to fossil fuels, coal, oil and natural gas. Dependence on these continues today as the environmental costs grow higher each year. The new sources of energy and technological innovation which included the development of many new machines such as steam engines or the cotton gin and new means of communication meant that the textile industry could be developed along with iron and steal production, rail roads, steam ships, chemicals, electricity and much more. Even agriculture was changed as mechanical reapers and eventually tractors changed farming. the new nations that formed in Europe following the revolutions led to support for commerce and innovation. The states granted charters and monopolies to private trading companies and market based economies developed. Increased commerce between Europe and Asia caused inexpensive Indian textiles to flood the European market. This competition encouraged innovation in the British textile industry. Even the popularity of Chinese porcelain inspired production of imitations in England, France and Holland. The European textile industry also benefited from cheap slave-growing cotton.  Great Britain was the first center of the Industrial revolution. The government favored business by putting on tariffs to keep out cheap Indian textiles. The government passed laws to make it easy to form companies and to prevent workers from unionizing. As Britain and other countries became industrialized there was "an economic miracle" (page 832). Agriculture shrank and importance as there were huge increases in mining, manufacturing and services. The middle class benefited the most from the industrial revolution in England. Some business men got so rich they became part of the aristocratic class. For others of the middle class they felt that they had a chance to succeed and become wealthy. A lower class the laborers worked to make industrialization possible. They were drawn into the cities to work in factories. They poorly paid had no safety protections and lived in growing slums. They did protest against their conditions but had little power until trade unions were legalized in 1824. Some of the workers were drawn to various kinds of socialism such as that of Robert Owen and Karl Marx. Marx understood that industrial society was based on the capitalist class, those who owned the factories and the other means of production having power over the labor of the working class who did not own what they produced. Industrialization spread through Western Europe and at the end of the 1800's it was in progress in the United States, Russia and Japan. Everywhere the changes that happened in England happened where there was industrialization such as the creation of the middle class and a factory working class. Middle class women generally withdrew from paid labor and kept house for their working husbands. working class women did  not have that choice and suffered greatly. Socialism became popular in the United States just as it had in England as a protest against the powers of the huge companies such as the US steal corporation. There were wide spread labor protests and worker violence in the United States. One example is the strike in 1892 against the Homestead Steal Plant near Pittsburgh. American unions however were more conservative than those in Europe. Russia's industrial revolution did not really take hold until the late 19th century. It focused on rail roads and heavy industry such as steal production. As the middle class and class of factory workers grew they were attracted to Marx's socialism and built a movement that led to the Russian revolution in 1905.

3

Chapter 17:In the period 1776-1822 a number of revolutions transformed countries ruled by kings or colonial powers into nations that governed themselves. In North America, the United States was formed when it threw off British colonial rule in its war of independence. This revolution influenced the French Revolution and the French Revolution in turn influenced the Haitian revolution, the Hidalgo-Morelos rebellion in Mexico and other uprisings. In the United States the American revolution is considered to be the greatest one. In fact, the revolutionary democratic government established by it continued many of the rights of the colonists they already had. The society already did not have a real aristocracy and the great amount of land provided economic opportunity and fewer social differences than in Europe. The revolution itself came when Britain tried to tighten its control over the colonies and to get more money from them to help Britain in its struggle with France. The American Revolution did not free its slaves but did develop the ideas of a representative democracy and later the separation of Church and State. The Bill of Rights put into practice many Enlightenment political ideas. These ideas were echoed in the Revolutions that followed such as the French Revolution. In France, the Revolution came from conflicts within French society between the nobility and the middle class and peasants. The nobles oppressed both these groups. The French Revolution ended Feudalism in France and also took away power from the Church and Priests. The French Revolution had even more influence than the American Revolution because France was a world power. Napoleon Bonapart he ruled 1799-1814, led military campaigns that conquered much of Europe. In doing so he brought along the revolutionary practices such as ending Feudalism, equality of rights, religious toleration and other reforms. As a French colony originally called Saint Domingue but later renamed Haiti. Haitis revolution was inspired by the French Revolution it was the worlds richest colony and produced forty percent of the worlds sugar and almost fifty percent of its coffee. Most of its people were slaves who worked on the plantations. There were free people of color who were often mixed race and then  the plantation owners. In some ways, the rich white land owners welcomed the ideas of the French revolution because they thought it would lessen French control. What then happened was shocking to them. There was a huge slave revolt that began in 1791 where many whites and mixed race people were killed. The Haitian revolution was the only "completely successful slave revolt in recorded history". Haiti became independent in 1804 and all Haitians were considered to be Black that is there was equality regardless of race, color or class. The plantation system was destroyed and Haiti became a nation of small scale farmers. The Spanish American revolutions also echoed the American and French revolutions. Many colonies in Latin America rose up to throw off Spanish or Portuguese rule. In Mexico, the move to become independent uprising due to a need of land and buy high food prices among the lower classes. The Hidalgo-Moralos rebellion was crushed but eventually Mexico and most of the Spanish colonies achieved independence from Spain. The Atlantic revolutions contributed to the end of slavery and also to the rise of a new idea of human community-the nation. The development of the nations came about when people felt themselves to have a particular culture and to citizens of a distinct political nation.

2

Chapter 16: In the early modern era religions experienced great changes and this period also saw the rise of modern science. Christianity was divided between the Roman Catholics of Western and Central Europe and the Eastern Orthodox of Eastern Europe and Russia. The Muslims defeated the Crusaders and had expanded into parts of Europe. In the early fifteen hundreds Martin Luther began of movement against Catholicism that grew into the development of Protestantism. A powerful challenge within Christianity to the Catholic Church. Instead of the Pope and the Church controlling the religion Protestants believed that the Bible could be understood by individual Christians and they could receive Gods grace through their own belief. The Protestant faith spread through Germany into France and England and was the cause armed conflict. At the same time Christianity spread outside of Europe along with the growth of the European colonial Empires. The Puritans brought Protestant Christianity to North America and Catholic Missionaries spread Catholicism through Latin America, Africa and Asia and even as far as Siberia. In some places the religion of the Native peoples got mixed in and became apart of Catholicism such as in Mexico and Latin America and slaves combined their African religious traditions with the Christianity taught by their masters. The Christians tried to spread their faith to China through Jesuit Missionaries. They learned about China's ancient culture and tried to be respectful of it. Many fewer Chinese did become Christians. The missionaries really could offer little to China which had such a developed religious tradition of Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism. Along side the European efforts to spread Christianity there was another development in Europe, the Scientific Revolution. The origins of the spread of modern science in the West were it independent Universities in places like Paris, Bologna, Oxford and Cambridge. Withing these Universities there was freedom to explore the Scientific teachings of Greek and Roman classical thinkers and to develop new ideas. The big idea that was challenged and finally accepted was that Earth was not the center of the Universe but that it was a planet that revolved in an orbit around the sun. Kepler and Newton made the biggest advances in this. Some of the early scientists such as Galileo were forced by the Catholic Church to go back on his belief that the Earth moved around the sun and rotated on its access. Other great enlightenment figures felt that the Scientific Revolution came out of the belief that their own knowledge and study could change human society. Once ideas and experiments started to replace blind belief in religion then all kinds of concepts were up for grabs. For example, instead of believing that Kings ruled through divine right the English philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) offered "principles for constructing a constitutional government" and a contract between the rulers and the ruled that was created by human beings not God. Some of the enlightenment philosophers were Deists  They believed that God created the world but not a personal God who took apart in history, peoples lives or interfered with natural law. Progress was the central theme of the enlightenment. It is surprising to think that science was undergoing a revolution at the same time millions of Africans were being sold into slavery.

1

Chapter 15 is about Global Commerce between 1450-1750. It covers the North Atlantic Slave trade, trade between Europe and Asia and the East Indian companies. Spanish trade between the Philippines  trade within Asia and the role of precious metals such as silver and fur. To me the most interesting part of this chapter was the discussion of the Atlantic Slave trade. It is amazing to think that 12.5 million human  beings from Africa were stolen and shipped across the Atlantic to the Americas. Crossing the ocean which is called "Middle Passage" left 1.8 million who died being captured and sent across the ocean. The African men, woman, and children were treated probably worse than if they were silver coins or hides of fur. They were simply objects to be traded not people. The boats crammed so many slaves into them that the captains knew it was certain that some number could survive. The slave trade and the labor of the slaves in the new world made many Europeans and white Americans incredibly wealthy. Unlike indentured servants, white people who came of their own will or were sent as part of a prison sentence were sent to North America to work for a period of time. Slaves and their children and grandchildren would never escape slavery for the great majority. There was slavery in the Mediterranean region where mainly Slavic people were forced to work on plantations but with the rise of the Ottoman Empire the supply of Slavic slaves was cut off. The Portuguese found a supply of slaves in West Africa and the Atlantic Slave trade took off on there. One of the ways the English and Spanish and Portuguese and Dutch people justified owning slaves was that as Black people who were racially different they could think of them as inferior and "have attributes that are quite similar to those of dumb animals" (page 692). This link between slavery, race and racial inferiority has shaped the entire history of the United States to this day. Slaves were sold by fellow Africans as well as other slave traders who wanted European goods such as guns and alcohol. African people were so desperate not to leave Africa that many committed suicide by jumping in to the sea. The high point of the slave trade was between 1700-1850 as the plantation economies of the Americas grew bigger and richer. The loss of so many African people slowed the growth of nations within Africa so slavery caused harm everywhere it touched. When people say the United States is made of immigrants we can never forget that it is a country made through the killing of the Native peoples and the importation of millions of slaves from Africa.

Make Up

Chapter 14: The period from 1450-1750 are usually called "the early modern era" historians have looked at this period as having signs of the beginnings of the modern era. There was more globalization through the European explorers and the Atlantic Slave trade. Christianity was spread by missionaries through Asia and Africa. China expanded into inter Asia and the Ottoman Empire took over most of the Middle East, North Africa, Europe and southeastern Europe  There is another way to look at the early modern era for the majority of people in the world in these three centuries there was just more development of older agrarian societies. Empires did expand such as the Chinese Empire. Empires are not new though because we have to remember the Roman Empire which seemed so great but then fell apart. In the early modern empire building people traveled greater distances to take over lands that were not theirs. The best example of this is the the empires set up by Western European countries in North America and South America. The European realized they were in a less well off role in commerce with Asia and wanted another place to make their mark, control territory and get rich. The result of the Spanish and Portuguese conquest of Latin America was the almost complete extinction of its native peoples through disease and massacres. The Europeans felt that in every way they were superior in to the ancient civilizations in North and South America. The spread of disease transfer of plants and animals and the communication and migration that came from the founding of European empires is called the "Colombian exchange." The eastern and western half's of the world began tied together as never before. The Western Europeans who were losing out in the balance of power now became the dominant players through their colonies. In Latin America there was lots of intermarriage between the Spanish men and Indian women. The former Inca and Aztec empires became composed of Spaniards, Mestizos and Indians with some African slaves. Even till this day however, there is prejudice in Latin American countries against people who are more "Indio" and darker skinned. Even though the colonists in Latin America came to look for gold agriculture was what built many of the economies through the production of sugar cane. In the Carribean, sugar production depended on slavery. In contrast, in North America many people who were fleeing conditions in England wanted to make new homes and looked at the colonies as empty even though there emptiness was achieved by killing off most of the Native Americans. In the southern part of North America slavery was used to produce sugar and cotton but slaves were not needed to work in the Northern colonies because they were settled by smaller farmers. Russia also expanded its empire going into Siberia. Just as in North and South America the Russian colonists killed off most of the Native people. Many of the Native people have been nomads who traveled freely. Now the Russians charged them fees to cross agricultural lands that had once been their own territory. It took centuries for people to recognize the terrible loss of the Native populations destroyed by colonialism and these civilization's incredible culture, language and ideas.

Chapter 24

Chapter 24 deals with globalization in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. It says that 4 major processes led to a global interaction and connection that has never been seen before. These are "the transformation of the world economy, the emergence of global feminism, the confrontation of world religions with modernity and the growing awareness of human-kinds enormous impact of the environment." In this period the world economy became truly international. Technology led to the internet, shipping containers and the ability of multi-national companies to use developing countries as a source of cheap labor. Companies that were regulated by labor and environmental laws in the United States could go to India, China, Mexico or other foreign nations and squeeze money from the cheap labor and lack of environmental controls without any thought or care of the damage they might be doing. This is called global capitalism. Money moved everywhere as investors gambled trillions of dollars purchasing foreign currencies and then quickly selling them. Credit cards were everywhere. Workers themselves migrated to where they could try to find work and some of them ended up in conditions that were like slavery. Philippino domestic workers were working in 130 countries by 2003. There was international sex trafficking and a brain drain when doctors, nurses and engineers left developing nations to work in the global north. Political oppression and civil war also led to huge refugee problems and movement of populations. In 2008, the bubble of the world economic banking and housing growth burst and effected economies everywhere. One of the things about globalization is that people who were wealthy or who lived in the United States and the rest of the Western world have more possessions and gadgets and goods then ever before while millions of people in Africa and Asia and Latin America do not have clean drinking water. The West cannot escape the bad effects of globalization because the burning of fossil fuels has led to global warming and this effects everyone in the world. Even though you can say the environmental movement is global it may come too late. Global capitalism has led to instability and inequality. The dominance of the west has been challenged by Islamic movements. Feminism has spread slowly but remains an important force in the world. If women are educated and given small loans to start businesses they can bring their whole families out of poverty. But this feminism exist at the same time wars over African resources have left whole countries there without governments and hundreds of thousands of girls and women have been raped of killed. The world is more closely tied together through the internet. We can see the Arab Spring uprisings as they happened and the tragedy of the Syrian war. All these connections brought about by globalization seems to have led to more instability, suffering and environmental disasters everywhere. I fear for the future of the world and wonder what it will be like for my children.

Putin's Challenge

This is an article in a series about conflicts between "centre vs. periphery" that is between dominant powers and minorities and how these historical conflicts are looked at in the post 9/11 ideas about anti terrorism. This article discusses a group of people I have never heard of the Circassian people. They are a tribe that lived along the black sea coast and once numbered 250,000. The Russians attacked them in the 19th century and the Circassians fought back so hard that the Russians decided to get rid of them through death or deportation. Out of 3 million Circassians 1.5 million were killed and 1.5 expelled. Now the Circassians that are left live away from their homeland in Turkey and in other Russian republics. The 2014 Winter Olympic games will be in Sochi a Russian resort City. It was the site of the last stand of the Circassians in 1864 and they are outraged that the Olympics will take place in the ground that holds the bodies of their massacred people. To me I can understand this by thinking how would I feel if the Olympics were held on a German or Polish concentration camp.One of the reasons the Circassians were attacked even in the Soviet Era was that they are Muslim. When the Soviet Union collapsed there was a short period where persecution got less but recently they got attacked again with their schools being prohibited from teaching the Circassian culture. The Circassian have reacted in part by forming an Islamic uprising in the Caucasus. The author of this article feels that the powers of Moscow should understand that this kind of rebellion comes from treating peoples on the periphery as terrorist and denying their historical identity. I agree with the author that there is going to be a rebellion in Russia unless the government respects its minority groups. One of the interesting things about this article is the idea that in the name of "anti-terrorism" minority groups particularly Muslims can all be lumped together and persecuted as fanatics it is clear to me that the Circassians have a long long history in the Black Sea region and have suffered from early Genocide and continued persecution that is not really related to other Islamic revolutions. The Circassians were recognized by the Ancient Greeks by having an important heritage. They even competed in the original Olympic Games. It is hard for me to understand how the Russians can ignore this history by holding the modern Olympics at the site of the Circassian defeat. I would have never have known about the Circassians without this article. Their story of persecution and death from the Russians is familiar because it is like the extermination of Native people in the Americas.

Chapter 23: Second Half

In the second half of the 20th century the countries in Southeast Asia and Africa also threw off colonial control and became independent. As these countries moved towards independence they faced many difficulties such as extreme poverty, lack of education and weak institutions and lack of infrastructure. Many of the countries did not follow a democratic western model as they gained their independence. Countries such as China, Vietnam, Cuba, Zimbabwe were attracted to a Marxist/communist model for their new governments. I can understand why these countries would be attracted to a system that wanted to get rid of classes separated by wealth with built in inequalities. In the communist model there was an idea of the land itself did not belong to individual owners but the people themselves. Many of the African and Asian countries did not want to model themselves on the western nations who claimed they were democratic but who had ruled the colonies in a way that kept down the Native populations. Some of the countries that followed the communist model did achieve land reform and industrialization such as in China. In communist Cuba a country that is so despised in the United States the communist government wiped out illiteracy and provided basic health care to the entire population making the life expectancy in Cuba the equal of that of the United States. The collapse of the Soviet Union challenged the communist models in many former colonies and countries such as China started to put in market reforms. Central planning which was so important to many of the former colonies started to change into a more capitalist system where private ownership and private wealth became more important. In China and India this led to fast economic growth but also growing inequalities. These inequalities are very obvious today it seems that everyday in the paper there is some new scandal about corruption among Chinese or Russian or Indian officials who have used their positions to gain enormous wealth while the majority of the populations is struggling. It may be that everywhere we are in a time of growing inequality almost like taking a step backward in time. In the United States the gap between the wealthiest one percent of the population and everyone else is at a new high. In the Middle East, the anti-colonial movements started off in places such as Turkey as Nationalistic and secular. Recently Islam has become a powerful political force. In Iran the Shaw who the United States who helped put in power ruled with an iron hand but also was in favor of Modernization and redistribution of land to many or the poor peasants.  Many people felt only the oppression of the dictatorship and lack of freedom. They turned against the Western Orientation and brought about and Islamic revolution where religion and politics are joined together in a highly conservative regime. While it is hard for me as someone who has experienced freedom of religion (although this seems to be getting weaker) it is a challenge to understand a turn towards religious Islamic fundamentalism that is a especially harsh and limiting for women.

Chapter 23:First Half

At the beginning of the 20th century the European colonial empires in Africa and Asia seemed very strong but in a short time these empires began to fall apart. For example, even though the United States did not occupy Mexico it had a lot of control over it until the Mexican revolution of 1910 and then the taking back by Mexico of its oil industry. The biggest fights against colonialism however happened in Africa and Asia. The European colonial powers were weakened by fighting two world wars and as the United States and the Soviet Union became the new super powers they did not support the older European colonial Empires. The founding of the United Nations also gave the colonized countries a sense of having their own voice. The strongest force in ending colonialism was the rise of nationalist movements to throw off the colonial rulers. In India, the British themselves had promised more independent institutions in exchange for Indian support for the world wars. But the British violently put down Indian expressions of independence. Mahatma Gandhi rose to leadership in the Indian National Congress and attracted wide support for Indian Independence through his non violent approach. He reached out to the untouchables with the caste system and Muslims as well as Hindus. Gandhi inspired later fighter for equality such as Martin Luther King Jr. The biggest problem in achieving independence was the split between the Muslims and Hindus. When the British decided to give up their Indian empire in 1947 India split into Muslim Pakistan and a mostly Hindu India. This resulted in terrible violence. Although India did throw off their English colonial masters. In South Africa the freedom struggle was against a white settler minority who controlled the countries  black African majority completely. South Africa had a mature economy and great natural resources such as gold and diamonds. The ruling whites created the apartheid system to control every aspect of the lives of the black population. There was extreme segregation in urban areas and reservations called Bantu Stans that were impoverished areas that were divided along tribal lines. The African National Congress (ANC) like the Indian National Congress was started by elites but then became a powerful popular movement with leaders such as Nelson Mandela. The ANC used some of the non violent tactics like Gandhi used earlier in the century. Armed conflict and violent demonstrations made the struggle against apartheid known all over the world and supported by people of many nations. Finally apartheid was overthrown and Nelson Mandela was released from prison. National elections were held. The struggle against apartheid was very important to my parents. When my mother was in law school she organized a teach-in against apartheid and brought ANC leaders to San Francisco. Over the last few days there have been bulletins about the health of Nelson Mandela who is still admired throughout the world for his courage and leadership in ending South African settler colonialism. It will be a sad day when he is gone.

Chapter 20

What struck me about the first part of the chapter was the different ways lands became colonized. In India for example a company, the British East India Company, rather than the British government directly took the leading role in turning India and other parts of South Asia into a colony of England. As in India when the Dutch took over Indonesia the fact that there was no strong Indonesian state made it easier for the Dutch to take over. Colonization in India and Indonesia evolved over a long period of time with traders players a major role. In the second half of the nineteenth century, in Africa colonization came much more quickly as European powers went against each other trying to get as much of the continent as they could for their country. The European powers negotiated about who got what and then used force in Africa to take over and dominate their various territories. In contrast, the colonization of Australia and New Zealand followed more closely the pattern of colonization of North America. There was massive European settlement. Like in the US the Europeans brought diseases that wiped out most of the Native populations. What is most surprising to me about this second wave of colonization is not this speed of which it happened or the different paths that the European take over took. What is almost shocking is the assumption by the European powers that they had a complete right to go around the world taking over completely different populations and their lands. They had a belief that it was there right to exploit the colonized countries and to turn people into second class citizens in their own lands. The Europeans had no problem with using force against the Native peoples to keep control. The Europeans could only believe it was their right to rule over African and Asian people because they were superior beings. It is disgusting that Europeans were called African men "boy" just like slave owners in the US called their African adult male slaves "boy". Colonialism was built on racism. With no thought of European rule could be destroying ancient cultures. The Europeans used every device they could think of to impose their own structure on to the colonized society. They brought a completely different way of life that included global trading, tax collecting and bureaucracy. In Africa, the Europeans took the idea of a tribe and used it for their own good sometimes even creating tribes and making them hostile to each other. In some colonies the Europeans wanted to keep a tribal or traditional structure so that they could use the features such as the Caste System to justify putting the colonized people into different groups based on birth. In some ways, I see echoes of this type of colonization in our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have tried to shape these societies and engage in "nation building" but in fact have kept the true benefits that the west could offer such as working schools, hospitals, highway systems, electrical power and clean water that could really help people not get done while the money went to the defense contractors and to promoting blood shed.

1st Blog

Yay-I'm done!