WW Ch 22 & 23

“Decolonization signaled the declining legitimacy of both empire and race as a credible basis for political or social life. It promised not only national freedom but also personal dignity, abundance, and opportunity.”(1088) Have national freedom really given all peoples’ these things? There are still many nations that are fighting for freedoms.

“Conjuncture…at the international level, the world wars had weakened Europe, while discrediting any sense of European moral superiority. Both the United Sates and the Soviet Union the new global super-powers, generally opposed the older European colonial empires, even as they created empire-like international relationships of the own.”(1091)Are the new empires (political structures) better than before? Maybe for some however there are nations still struggling for stability in current unstable economic times.

Independence comes with responsibilities that peoples of these new nations struggled with, identifying who they were, their culture, political structure and what are their economic resources in order to establish themselves as a viable nation is taking time for some nations.  

Two famous leaders emerged from these new nations, both of these men believed in non-violent reform of their nations and established movements to unify the nation yet both nations were divided even further. In India – Mahatma Ghandi made an impact on the nation for a peaceful Hindi ways of living yet faced opposition from the Muslim believers. The effect was the division of the nation into Muslim Pakistan and Hindu India. And in Africa – Nelson Mandela serviced time in prison for his attempts to unify the nation, was released from prison after twenty-seven years and became President of his nation. Africa also became divided by “race, ethnicity, and ideology that generated dissension and sometimes violence. “(1101)

“suffering is a common and bedrock human experience …derived from our own actions in the shape of war, racism, patriarchy, exploitation, inequality, expression and neglect. Is it possible that some exposure to the staggering sum of human suffering revealed in the historical records can soften our hearts, fostering compassion for our own suffering and for that of others?” (1170)

Let’s hope so. 

                                                        Cause and Effects of Actions

WW Ch 20 & 21

The most recent Century is filled with significant conflicts which had long-term effects. The long-term outcomes of WWI are;

 1) It caused “disillusionment among intellectuals with their own civilization…The war seemed to mock the Enlightenment values of progress, tolerance, and rationality “(988), I guess war can do that.

 2) It “promoted social mobility, allowing the less exalted to move into positions previously dominated by the upper classes. As the war ended, suffrage movements revived and women received the right to vote in a number of countries” (988) finally something positive from war.

 3) The idea of “national self-determination” (988) the free will of a nation to determine political structure, a concept that nations are still fighting over.

4) Treaty of Versailles in which “Germany lost its colonial empire and 15 percent of its European territory, was required to pay heavy reparations to the winners, had its military forces severely restricted and had to accept sole responsibility for the outbreak of the war” (988) many experts believe this effect was a major one that lead to WWII.

 5) “The final decline of the Ottoman Empire, creating the modern map of the Middle East” (989) the reshaping of the global map.

6) It ”brought the United States to center stage as a global power….turned the United States from a debtor nation into Europe’s creditor” (989) does not seem to be the case these days.

The fascist Mussolini stated “the state of conscious entity with ““a will and personality”” which represents the ““spirit of the nation”” (996) and Hitler’s message of intense German nationalism cast in term of racial superiority” (997) brought further a time of genocide that would forever be remembered. The Communist movements also took hold during this time change global relations for decades. Russia and China both underwent an industrialization period, with ideas of education and women’s right yet fell short on most. Decisions that these powers that be think were good for the peoples cost millions of lives, devastated economies and destroyed the trust among nations. One may say that we are not any closer to global understanding, global communication, global trust, we still have a ways to go in many aspect of global peace if that can truly exist.

Adam Gopnik sums it up best ““The First teaches us never to rush into a fight, the Second never to back down from a bully”” (1016) yet we have not learned from past conflicts.

WW Ch 16, 17 & 18

 

The European Moment 1750- 1914 was a “new kind of human society ““modern”” intersection of the Scientific, French, and Industrial revolutions, all of which took shape initially in Western Europe” (773) and sparked ideas of “social equality”.  It was a time of movements, revolutions to fight for causes such as women’s right and the freedom of slaves as well as political representation and participation for peoples. It was a time of “growing ability of these modern societies to exercise enormous power and influence over the rest of humankind” (773) all over the globe.

            Although these moments according to historians were brief and recent, they had a global effect on the areas that Europeans governed. In Asia for example the French were seen as “Liberators in the takeover of Vietnam” (776) and in India the railroad system introduced by Britain changed the country. The development of “nations” took place during this time of creating structure both culturally and politically, a time of “Enlightenment”. However these changes did not come without conflicts, mostly thru revolutions.

The Industrial Revolution attributed to the Europeans for a “commerce and cross-cultural exchange acting in tandem, sustained the technological changes of the first industrial societies.” (833) With these cross-cultural exchanges came the ideas of hierarchy of race, gender, political and social status which meant the Europeans concerned themselves the “superior race” in the regions they conquered. The Atlantic revolutions were “costly wars that strained European imperials states--Britain, France and Spain in particular—were global rather than regional. In the so—called Seven Years’ War (1754-1763)” (782), the caused highest levying of taxes to those nations wanting to break away from the Europeans.

These Revolutions went for beyond a fight for land and freedom, and although, “the Atlantic basin had become a world of intellectual and cultural exchange as well as commercial and biological interaction” (783) it also had another premise. “The idea that animated the Atlantic revolution derived from the European Enlightenment and were shared across the ocean in newspapers, books, and pamphlets. At the heart of these ideas was the radical notion that human political and social arrangement could be engineered, and improved, by human action.” (783) This notion of human action vs. actions that come from GOD are to this day questioned in most parts of the world. And without understanding and acceptance of one another we will not be able to grow as peaceful nations.