Internal Troubles, External Threats +

It is hard to believe that given China's current economic superiority in the world, that it has had a very tumultuous relationship with a variety of countries. In a way, it is like just about every hollywood movie:

The movie opens with China as a young kid playing around with the other countries. Europe is the biggest and soon starts to pick on the other countries, taking their lunch money and beating them up when they resist. Soon the other victimized countries start to pick on any country smaller than them, and China is near the bottom of this hierarchy. Two opium wars, internal rebellions, and a dependent economy later, and China is in pretty bad shape. This is where the music winds up and we get a montage of China starting to rebuild itself. The movie ends with China as a huge superpower in the world, while most of the other countries are suffering from large economic depressions. But is this really a happy ending?

As I read about the problems that China faced, I see many of them still in their current country. The textbook talked about massive wealth disparity between the ruling elite and the huge numbers of farmers living in poverty. Even today, wealthy as China is, the majority of it's people are still living in that abject poverty. The textbook talked about the rebellions of the masses against ineffective and oppressive governments. While I would definitely not categorize the government as ineffective over-all, it is in certain aspects such as providing a decent standard of living for the masses. In terms of oppressive, I would absolutely say it fits the bill. So I guess while for the country of China, the movie seems to have a happy ending, for the people it might be considered something else. I guess we'll have to wait for the sequel to find out.



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Reading the plea from the Queen of Hawai'i, I was touched by how eloquently she managed to use many of the Christian concept that the U.S. was touting so highly to serve as arguments against the United States. Her letter is a particularly strong appeal to the United States, as it suggests similar arguments to those that the US made against England, such as dignity and the right to have their own form of government.

You say you want a revolution...: WW Chapter 17

The ideas of revolution were...well... revolutionary in the 18th and 19th centuries, if not in their concept (for the idea of revolt had existed long before then) then in their execution. I have learned about the American revolution at different stages in my education and each time I feel I learn something new. This time, the new tidbit of information came in the form of the idea that America's break from England came not so much in order to establish new freedoms, but instead to preserve the freedoms that they had already been enjoying and which England now threatened to take away. This actually makes a lot of sense, as people are even more likely to value something that they already have in the face of losing it than they are to strive to get something they don't yet have.

I also found it interesting that the French revolution was in part inspired by the American revolution. I know that the ideas of Jean Jacques Rousseau were also important in challenging the concept that man's natural state is one of subjectivity to government. I have read many books by Rousseau, and I see numerous concepts that have found their way into our government. Examples are his idea that the public should revisit the government every so often to ask two questions: Is this form of government working for us? and Are these the people we want running this government? These are questions which we now essentially revisit every election year at the ballot box.

Another interesting development which the book attributes in part to the Atlantic revolutions is the idea of nationalism. Many good things came out of these revolutions, such as a resurgence in the rights of the previously marginalized, and also the beginning of the end of slavery. Nationalism, however, I would argue has actually been a pretty dangerous thing, and I had never before thought that it would have risen out of developments which on the whole I consider positive. After all, I think that there exist numerous examples, especially in the 20th century, of nationalism being a negative thing. Would Hitler have been as successful at rallying Germany to commit such atrocities without the help of a very strong nationalistic fervor in Germany at that time? Likewise, I would argue that many of our military missteps of the last few decades have at least some basis in America's own nationalistic tendencies.

Intro to Chapter 5 and Chapter 18: Industry Cometh

I was surprised at how well the intro to chapter 5 was written. It is not often that I see a piece of writing in a history textbook that strikes me, but that first paragraph did an excellent job of capturing the strange relationship that now exists between the teachings of Confucius (I have read The Analects, and liked it very much) and the full-circle the Chinese government has come regarding their views of them. It also lays the groundwork for the unique relationship that now exists in China between a communist government and a capitalist society. This in turn, is a great segue to chapter 18, which deals primarily with the industrial revolution.

In reading about the industrial revolution, I was very interested in the book's angle regarding why Brittan was the country where it really took-off. It mentions a number of factors that affected various countries' abilities (or lack thereof) to really embrace the industrial revolution. I thought the most interesting, though, was something which is talked about a lot in the politics of America today. It is the idea of the "free market".

Of course, the book doesn't use that language, but as I saw the gist of it's argument for why Brittan was so successful between 1800 and 1900, the themes were pretty clear. "Brittish commercial life encouraged commercialization and economic innovation", "checks on royal authority...provided a freer arena for private enterprise than elsewhere", "Small groups of merchants capitalists might be granted special privileges...European merchants and other innovators from the fifteenth century onward gained an unusual degree of freedom from state control."

In the name of full disclosure, I tend to lean pretty far to the left, and a disagree with many of the pro-business arguments from the right which say that less government is better and that taxes only stifle growth, money trickles down, free market works, etc. This was an interesting read for me, then, because it gave me some insight into the other side. Sure evidence for my arguments are in the book as well (the lower class working conditions grew awful, the exploitation of natural resources grew, etc). But it does raise the question that unless the mechanics of today's society are fundamentally different that those of the 1800's (and thus the situations are not anaologous), should the government of America really back off a little and let the corporations do their thing if we want to remain a leader in terms of technological development?

WW Chapter 16: Evolution of God's Job Description

I like how the chapter begins by drawing a comparison between the intelligent design/evolution controversy that we had a few years back in schools here in the US. It helps to emphasize the fact that controversies surrounding religion that we read about in chapter 16's description of events such as the protestant reformation, are relevant today.

I especially liked reading about the early scientists who challenged religion's view of the world. Reading about Copernicus, Galileo, and Descartes made me think of the famous Nietzsche quote: "God is dead, we killed him". The ideas presented by Copernicus regarding astronomy really challenged the church's infallibility. The bible has sections which clearly suggest that the earth is still and other planets move around it, and for the bible to be wrong when taken in it's literal translation is a concept that was not tolerated at the time. Galileo was the person who made it so difficult to cast reasonable doubt on Copernicus's theory, as his invention of the telescope allowed people to plainly see and diagram the movement of the planets and ultimately determine, through reason, that the earth was not the center of our galaxy, but actually had an orbit and a spin.

This scientific revolution was, in my opinion, ultimately more important that the protestant reformation or other such challenges to the church, because it's arguments were not against the bible or for another interpretation of it, they had nothing to do with it. They did not even need to address it, only to say that the bible was not necessary to understand the world around you, only your own human faculties of observation and deduction.

I would say that Darwin ultimately dealt the death-blow to the God that had existed up until the scientific revolution. That God had been in charge of everything, however the likes of Galileo, Descartes, and Newton had come and shown that everyday events could be shown to be the result of fundamental scientific principles and not acts of God. So that left God with the sole job of having created everything, including us. Then Darwin comes along and shows that God didn't play a role in that either, and that we evolved (as did every other living thing) also along a set of scientific principles.

From then on, God has had a harder time staying relevant in the world. Today his job description for many people is limited to mostly the spiritual side of human existence and what happens to us after we die. I guess the job market is just tough for everybody right now.

Chapter 15: Commerce Goes Global

The centuries from 1450 to 1750 saw a tremendous boom in the globalization of numerous trade endeavors between many countries. Far from being a golden era of achievement, however, it became a time when more developed nations used their might to exploit those they encountered who were not as strong. The Portuguese and the Spanish strove to obtain vast amounts of riches from the East. The Spanish ended up invading the Philippines in this vain, and it paid off (for the Spanish, not so much for the natives) by proving to be a major destination for all the Silver that Spain had managed to round up from around the world. It was this drive for the acquisition of silver, along with the spice trade that really encouraged this globalization of trade. It was during this time that Chinese goods also began to be traded with increasing frequency, even at one point causing the French to pass legislation to deter it's citizens from using fabric made in China (it is interesting to see that even then, France was big on protecting the rights of it's work-force). However, other peoples did not find their rights protected as they found themselves being treated as a commodity in the developing slave-trade. The Atlantic slave trade in particular, which "took an estimated 11 million people from African societies, shipped them across the Atlantic...[and] deposited them in the Americas, where they lived out their often brief lives as slaves" is truly a dark blemish on the history of the world and of this nation.

Discovering Global Past Ch. 4 and Ways of the World Ch 14

Ways of the World speaks, in chapter 14, of the maritime expansion of Europe (which was a unique phenomenon). By the mid-18th century, the Europeans had extended their empires throughout most of the Americas. It goes on to discuss the many developments which took place there, including the enslavement of the Aztecs and the Incas (as well as the bustling cities which were developed on their land) and the importance of the American foods crops in providing nourishment to the ever-growing population of Europeans. It goes on to discuss another important crop: sugar. It is used for a variety of things from a medicine, to a sweetener, to a preservative. However, this crop came with a dire cost, as the deadly conditions those who were forced to produce it had to endure resulted in a 5-10 percent fatality rate. Other Empire also began to rise around this time, such as the Russian Empire and the Mughal Empire.

Discovering Global Past talks, in chapter 4, about sugar in even more detail. Although cheap now, at the time, sugar was actually extremely expensive and valuable. It also continued to describe the harsh conditions needed to prepare commercial sugar. This led to the necessity of forced labor in order to make it a viable business.To this day, I can think of many jobs which are relegated to those without education or other options that no one else would willfully engage in due to the working conditions. It is interesting how technology has both the promise of eliminating the need for humans to do a lot of menial labor, but at the same time it often comes (as sugar did) with a whole new set of pitfalls for humans.

MLK Day

Anyone who has not watched MLK's I have a Dream speech in it's entirety absolutely should. It is only 15 minutes long and yet is an amazing example of oratory abillity and speechwriting. Here is a link to it on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbUtL_0vAJk
I have to say, that I think my favorite part is when he speaks of a promissory note that America has written to the negro people (the promise of liberty, freedom, and equality) but when they went to cash it, it came back insufficient funds. It is such a visceral image that resonates with pretty much everyone, and yet is very clever and poignant in it's critique of America's unequal treatment of minorities.



I also re-read his Letter from Birmingham Jail, which is (in my opinion) the perfect combination of rhetoric and logic. It is amazing that he was able to craft such an impressive piece of writing on scraps of paper in a jail cell. It can be found here: http://abacus.bates.edu/admin/offices/dos/mlk/letter.html

In writing to ministers, he was careful to use biblical examples to both refute arguments against him leveled by the ministers, and also to show them that he, too, has a strong religious education. My favorite quote has to be: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

Other pieces I particularly liked were:

"Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood."

"Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will."
-a great statement against those whites who said that they agreed with MLK in principle, but not in action.

Lastly, I liked his reference to "days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. "