Ways of the World: CH16, CH17, CH18 & CH19

(Intro)

1750-1914: "modern" era emerged from the intersection of the Scientific, French, and Industrial revolutions, all of which took shape initially in Western Europe.
Transformative new ideas:

Western Europe and their North America offspring collectively achieved global dominance by 20th century.
"Anthropocene", or the age of man - a new era in the history of the planet Earth.
Countering Eurocentrism:

to remind ourselves how recent and how brief the European moment in world history has been
to remember that the rise of Europe occurred within an international context. It was the withdrawal of the Chinese naval fleet that allowed Europeans to enter the Indian Ocean in the 16th century, while Native Americans' lack of immunity to European diseases and their own divisions and conflicts greatly assisted the European takeover if the Western Hemisphere.
The rise of Europe to a position of global dominance was not an easy or automatic process. Frequently it occurred in the face of ferocious resistance and rebellion, which often required Europeans to modify their policies and practices.
peoples the world over made active use of Europeans and European ideas for their own purposes, seeking to gain advantage over local rivals or to benefit themselves in light of new conditions. To recognize that Asian and African peoples remained active agents, pursuing their own interests even in oppressive conditions. What was borrowed from Europe was always adapted to local circumstances.
To recognize that although Europeans gained an unprecedented prominence on the world stage, they were not the only game in town, nor were they the sole preoccupation of Asian, African, and Middle Eastern peoples.

(CH16)

A century of series of revolutions worldwide, occurred in the context of expensive wars, weakening states, and destabilizing processes of commercialization.
A radical notion that human political and social arrangements could be engineered, and improved, by human action.
Conventional and long-established ways of living and thinking - the divine right of kings, state control of trade, aristocratic privilege, the authority of a single church - were no longer sacrosanct and came under repeated attack.
New ideas of liberty, equality, free trade, religious tolerance, republicanism, and human rationality.
"Popular sovereignty" in politics - the authority to govern derived from the people rather than from God or from established tradition.
The ideals that animated the Atlantic revolutions inspired efforts in many countries to abolish slavery, to extend the right to vote, to develop constitutions, and to secure greater equality for women.
After the French Revolution, women demanded equal political and social rights to men, but were met by resistance of men, and rejected.
The American Revolution inspired others as the example of its revolution and its constitution; the French Revolution spread through conquest by Napoleon Bonaparte.
Moral virtue and economic success were joined to motivate the abolition of slavery. secular, religious, economic and political.
British public opinions towards slavery: morally wrong, economically inefficient & politically unwise.

(CH17)

Industrial Revolution changed humankind's life as drastically as Agricultural Revolution. It began in the Great Britain, and spread rapidly worldwide though unevenly.
"Culture of innovation": things could be endlessly improved.
Two factors in Industrial Revolution began in Europe: rivalry between its small and highly competitive states provided an "insurance against economic and technological stagnation," & The relative newness of these European states and their monarchs' desperate need for revenue in the absence of an effective tax-collecting bureaucracy pushed European royals into an unusual alliance with their merchant classes; it was in the interest of the governments to actively encourage commerce and innovation.
The intersection of new, highly commercialized, competitive European societies with the novel global network of their own making -> IR

(CH18)

Europeans viewed the culture and achievements of Asian and African peoples through the prism of a new kind of racism, expressed now in terms of modern science.
The second wave of European empires' colonial rule's reading became such emotional reading, feeling too overwhelmed to take notes.
Large scale immigration to plantations, mines and factories.

(CH19)

More equality between women and men was one of the ideals the Taiping Uprising held, Hakka people.
The Treaty of Nanjing in 1842 was the first of the "unequal treaties" that seriously eroded China's independence.
By the beginning of the 20th century, both China and the Ottoman Empire have become "semi-colonies" within the "informal empires" of Europe, although they retained sufficient independence for their governments to launch catch-up efforts of defensive modernization.
In the second half of 19th century, Japan undertook a radical transformation of its society - a "revolution from above"- turning it into a powerful, modern, united, industrial nation. It was an achievement that neither China nor the Ottoman Empire was able to duplicate.
In building a society that was both modern and distinctively Japanese, Japan demonstrated that modernity was not a uniquely European phenomenon.
Following the elimination of shogunate, the young samurais from southern japan who led the Meiji restoration made their goals to save Japan from foreign domination not by futile resistance, but by s thorough transformation of Japanese society drawing on all that the modern West had to offer.
Both the idea of Japan as a liberator of Asia from the European yoke and the reality of Japan as an oppressive imperial power in its own right derived from the country's remarkable modern transformation and its distinctive response to the provocation of Western intrusion.

Ways of the World