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.