Decolonization

The idea of decolonization refers to when a nation becomes independent from an empire. This happened during the twentieth century when race, as a creditable basis for political or social life declined. The idea of becoming part of a nation gives people the promise of freedom, personal dignity, abundance, and opportunity. The first decolonization happened in the Americas in which indigenous people claimed that everybody deserved an equal place in the world of national states, so they got rid of the British, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. But this event was not easy to achieve because the new nation had some challenges like their own and deep division of language, not everybody had a common language some acquired the language of the Europeans while others keep their own native language, ethnicity, as a consequence of mixing between indigenous and Europeans, religion, and class. In the Americas many colonies besides sharing an European origin, they also shared the same culture as the colonial rules so those events made the process of colonization difficult because now the natives have to find their own identity. This process did not happen with the African or Asian people because their culture was still there, it just was submerged because it was denigrate during the colonial era. Something interesting happened with the young educated men in Europe, they had the novel idea that humankind was naturally divided into distinct people or nations but all deserved to live in an independent nation of its own. They did not see the colony with the same eyes that their fathers had in which the idea of Christianity, Enlightenment thought, and material progress were reasons enough to keep their colonies. They saw those events with real eyes because there were colonial racism, exploitation, and poverty. Something else that helped to the European colonial rule to disintegrate was the decades after World War II. Historians refer to this time as “conjuncture” because the coming together of several separate developments at particular time weakened Europe. United States and the Soviet Union, the new global superpowers, generally opposed to the old European colonial empires provided the platform to conduct anti colonial agitation. After the Americans obtained its independence, Europeans could not imagine how to keep their other profitable colonies in Asia and Africa. They saw the expense and the trouble of formal colonial government that could include political reform, investments in railroads, ports, and telegraph lines, the holding of election and the writing of constitution. Eventually their independence from the European rule happened, those new nations now had to work together for a common goal in which they struggled with one another over questions of leadership, power, strategy, ideology, and the distribution of material benefits.  

World War

Apparently after Europe lost some of their colonies because they reached their independence, people realized that the only thing they have left, was their own work to reach wealth. Some countries made some alliances like Germany, Italy, and Austro-Hungarian Empire to keep national security. Also, Russia, France, and Britain get together for the same concept but those alliances were not strong enough because a minor incident happened on June 28, 1914 that transformed almost all Europe. Serbian nationalist assassinated the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne and the system of alliances tried to keep peace in Europe but it did not work because of been week so on August 1914 the war started in almost everywhere in Europe. At the beginning there was a popular support to go to war and even governments saw the war as a national unity from the class and gender conflicts in European societies. Industrialization contributed in the building of war weapons like guns submarines, tanks, airplane poison gas, and barbed wire. Labor union agreed to stop the strikes and did sacrifices for the common good, while women replace the men jobs at factories. When the war ended, the Treaty of Versailles was signed in 1919 in which Germany lost 15 percent of its territory in Europe, it was required to pay reparations to the winners and had military forces restricted. All of that left a German people with resentment besides the social and cultural changes in the rest of Europe. The integration of veterans into the civil life was not easy after they experienced horrible moments as part of been in war. Because of the casualties, there was easy to access the upper class. In some countries women receive the right to vote; new idea like consumerism came as a way to get access to the new and sophisticated products, and movies and radio appear as popular culture. Finally the war created a new united states in which it changed from debtor to creditor of Europe what make it to the center of the global power. 

Revolution from the European Government

Revolution from the European government

After Columbus discovered the Americans and the Natives received the ideas of the Enligement from the Europeans, there were world crisis at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Europe and America not just exchanged goods and people; they also exchanged ideas that came from newspapers and books that mentioned the improvement of human condition.  People from the colonies started to question the old ways of thinking like the divine right of kings, state control of trade, aristocratic privilege, the authority of a single church; all those ideas left violent revolutions and new states and societies were created with new ideas of liberty, equality, free trade, religious tolerance, republicanism, and human rationality. The idea of “popular sovereignty” (authority to govern comes from the people and not from God) was the promise that people receive as a part to participate in those revolutions of liberty from the Europeans. But woman, slaves, Native Americans, and men without properties did not gain much from those revolutions but they tough that in the future their conditions would improve because they were protesting against oppression, tyranny, and deprivation that they been suffering from long time.

Even though all the colonies were able to independence from the Europeans, between North and South America there is a difference of 50 years as been colonies among them. The reason is simple, the society were so divided by class, race, and religion. The necessity of an awake call for “nativism” was need it in which all people born in the Americas, creoles, Indians, mixed-raced people, blacks; understood that the attack was against their common enemy, the Spaniers.

To me, it is sad to see that until now those differences still exist. We know that slavery was abolish long time ago, but there is different ways to keep someone against their will like kidnaping, human traffic, prostitution, and so on. There are people that still believe in classify others depending on their wealth and power. The purpose of study history is for the people do not commit the same mistake that people in the pass did, but looks like we are repiting our same from the pass. We want to differences between the rests of the population because we believe that we are superior. What it is the point in does that if we know that we know each other for everything.

Advantages and Disadvantages.

Advantages and disadvantages

After the plague, the only things that the Europeans had were their colonies as a way to regain wealth and power. Following the Columbus voyages to the Americas, Spain was focused in gain the Caribbean land and conquers the Azteca and the Inca Empires. Incas did not see Spain as invaders; they saw them as liberators because there was a violent dispute between brothers (Atahualpa and Huascar) for the Inca throne. Certainly, Europeans came to invade them reader than to help them in that dispute that they saw as advantage for them. The increase of diseases that the Europeans brought with them also helps them to conquer these Natives societies that decline in number. Those diseases were new to the Natives Americans because they did not have contact with the Afro-Eurasian world until now. But not everything that the Europeans brought to the Americans was bad, they also brought with them animals and plants than later the Natives Americans were able to reproduce. Wheat, rice, sugarcane, grapes and other garden vegetables and fruits were introduced to them. Animals like horses, pigs, cattle, goats, sheep were able to multiply because of the large and rich environment found in the Americans.

When the Europeans went back to their origin destination, they brought with them corn, potatoes and cassava that later spread all over the place. Potatoes and corn help the Europeans to increase in number because those products were cheap and provide calories necessary for the growth of the population after the decline of people because of the plague. As a way to show wealth and power to other civilizations, Europeans also brought with them precious metal such as gold and silver from the mines of Mexico and Peru.   Native woman were also important as a part of the perpetration of futures generations of Europeans. They saw that in marry an European men the possibility to secure her children from the force work that Native Americans were impose to do as part of the encomienda system.

As we can see, there were more advantages for the Europeans than for the Natives Americans that suffered to keep the national prosperity of the Old World.  

The Islam World

Islam appeared as consequence of the cosmopolitan cities around the Mediterranean Sea. One of the most important cities was Mecca because it was the major long distance trading route and inside Mecca was Kaaba, a religious place with more than three hundreds deities. Because of the religious corruption and social inequalities Muhammad who was part of the wealthiest clan in Arabia, was against of all those things. He was the messenger of Allah who was the creator of everything and all-powerful. God choose Muhammad as a last resort to save humankind because the Jews had wrongly convinced themselves as “chosen people” while Christians made their prophet into a God and because Arabs were polytheistic the Quran that was the sacred scriptures of Islam was the corrective. According to the Quran, there is a necessity for a creation of a new Islam society called umma in which common belief and equality between men and woman would be priority rather than differences of language or tribe. There are five requirements for the believers known as the Pillars of Islam in which the first one is there is no God but Allah. The second pillar is to pray five times a day. The third pillar mentions a social justice in whom believers support the poor and needy in the community. The fourth requires for the believers, a month of fasting in which they get purification and a reminder of the needs of the hungry. The fifth encouraged a pilgrimage to Mecca at least once a year. There is another requirement for the believers that they called the sixth pillar in which it mentioned an interior personal effort against greed and selfishness. Also, the Quran authorized armed struggle against the forces of unbelief and evil as a means of establishing Muslim rule and defending the umma from its aggressors. After Muhammad died, we saw that this idea had been misunderstood because there was a civil war in the Islam world between Muslims attacking other Muslims as a way to obtain power and wealth. I do not think any God would like to see how many people use the excuse of religion as a way to kill others that do not share the same faith. It is very clear in the Quran as in other religious books that promote the equality between men and woman because they deserve the same treatment. There are crazy people all over the world but to use religion as a way to justify their action it is not acceptable and they should be in jail instead of being promoted as religious/political leaders.  

The Chinese and the Roman Political system

Both empires were well know for having a good political system because they were able to control big areas of land and a huge population, but the way that people were able to be part of the political system was different.

For the Romans, the aristocrats and people from the army should be part of politics because they represent the elite population and because of that, they would know what is best for the rest of the population. For the Chinese on the other hand, they established academies for people that want to participate in politics, they learned the Confucius ideas, they have to complete an examination and the selection is based on merit.

So, what is good for the government? From the Roman point of view, we can say that good laws make a good government. From the Chinese point of view, we can say that a good man makes a good government.

And, what would be the best for today’s society? I think we need both, but the success of any society is having good men. A good law by itself is not going to do nothing if our leaders are corrupt. Good laws are good too, so people know what could happen to them if they break them. We also need good leaders, those who have the passion to do whatever is necessary to see the community grow, those who are optimistic in the outcome of their decisions and those who see the population as their family members, because like that, they could find good solutions to any problems in society. 

The Importance of Commerce

I used to buy from online stores from time to time because I liked the idea of going to a store and look around. Now that I have two daughters, a job and I am going to school, I do not have as much free time as before.

It is amazing to see how easy is to buy online and of course you have to be very careful from which web sites you buy otherwise, you can lose the money that you have in your bank account. But commerce was not always easy, especially without the technology that we have now. In the world of 500-1500 where people used to have disadvantages in resources because everything was far from them, the idea of trade from distant societies could change their consumption and their activities of their daily life.

For them, commerce was not just a way to have things that they could not obtain in the place that they live. Because of commerce, religion spread, especially Buddhism in china and Christianity and in Europe. A new social group emerge called “Merchant” and under Chinese eyes they were suspicious because they were obtaining wealth without producing anything; but Islam was friendly with them because their prophet Muhammad was a merchant just like them. There were three major ways in which people used to transport their goods:

1. - Across Eurasia in which people transported silk.

2. - Across the Indian Ocean in which they used ships that could accommodate more things and heavier things making the price of goods lower.

3. - Across the Sahara in which people would just transport gold using camels because those animals could last several days without water.