Ch. 13




To start off this blog, one quote that I found interesting from President Vladimir Putin regarding the Soviet collapse was, “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century…a genuine tragedy.” Usually when there is a collapse you would think that it would be a terrible thing that happened, but President Putin said that it was probably the greatest thing that could have happened. In general, I would assume this would be a negative outcome but then again when something is destroyed it can always be destined to be better than it was before. In the early 17th century there were multiple empires that included the French, Dutch, and British who all established colonial settlements alongside the eastern part of the North Americas.  On the other hand, the Europeans were expanding their colonies to take over most of the Americas. I found it very interesting that the new discovery of the Americas led to the great expansion and the starting point for most of European’s American empires.  Although the Europeans are far away from their home land they do have a lot of advantages. Something that I found very important in the reading is that the trading companies they established gave rise to materialistic resources. One thing that I already knew prior to this reading is that Jamestown was the first English settlement to take place in the early 1600s Americas. One thing I didn’t know was that the French colony was also established in Quebec around the same time. I want to end the blog by saying that something that really stood out to me in this text is when the author stated, “Contextual thinking is central to world history.” After reading this quote it really stuck to me and made me realize how to understand the concept of a world history class.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ch.18 + Documents

Image
This chapter is about Colonial Encounters in Asia and Africa. With the Industrial Revolution came many demands and productivity of materials and agriculture products. They needed to get wheat from the American Midwest and southern Russia, meat from Argentina, bananas from Central America, rubber from Brazil, cocoa and palm oil from West Africa, tea from Ceylon, and even gold and diamonds from South Africa. With all of these new demands came power from each country and the world had to rely on one another. In 1840 Britain was exporting 60% of its cotton production. They were selling annually 200 million yards to Europe, 300 million yards to Latin America, and 145 million yards to India. Europe didn't really offer Asian societies the right products they wanted to buy. Part of European and American fascination with Chine was evident back then and is still very evident now. You can see this when you look at the back of any products and it says "made in China". The lives of wo...
Read more

Ch. 22

This chapter was about the end of the empire. It talked about the Global South on the Global stage from 1914 until present. Nelson Mandela was a South Africa's nationalist leader and believed in standing up to the power of the white domination and tried to free society so all people can live together in harmony and equal opportunity. I find it inspiring that he was prepared to die for what he believed in and he was so passionate about it he spent 27 years in prison. He lived in terrible conditions and was released in 1990. He became the first black African president in 1994 and he linked South Africa to dozens of other countries across Africa and Asia that were thrown off European rule in the second half of the 20th century. I believe that especially in this day with our president equality and harmony is something that might be taken away from us. With the constant ad-vocation of building a wall and the travel ban the president is doing things that in my opinion are setting this wo...
Read more

Ch. 14 Documents

The chapter fourteen documents start off by talking about the voices that were from the slave trade. It goes on to saying that it was an enormous enterprise and enormously significant in modern world history. This is important because that is what we are going to be talking about in this class. This slave trade took over four continents and spread throughout four centuries! There were millions of people involved. The first document they talk about is the life of Olaudah Equiano who was born in 1745 what is now known as Nigeria. He was taken from his home at the age of 11 and sold into the Atlantic Slave Trade. He was passed around between three different owners and was taught to read, write, travel as a seaman and finally bought his freedom in 1766. He then became a huge voice in the emerging abolitionist movement of the late 18th century. The Business of Slave Trade is a document regarding the horror for kings and merchants of both European and African decent. The Slave Trade and the ...
Read more