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.