The Opium Wars

The Opium Wars is result of an argument from the Chinese and the english.  What happened was is that the english were looking for something to sell to the chinese that the chinese didn't have.  So after a long time the english figured out that the chinese didn't occupy Opium.  the english offered the chinese Opium as a trade entrance ad the chinese accepted.  After a while the chinese started to realize that Opium was a very bad drug for people and people started to die because of overdose and other reasons that had to do with the drug.  The chinese realized that the drug was not only health-bad, but it was also bad in the sense that it was affecting chinas social, political, and cultural way of living.  The Chinese told the english that they did not want to buy that product anymore but seeming how the english needed chinas resources the english refused to stop trading it with the chinese until the english and the chinese had a war called the Opium War.  In this war the english won so easily they got what they wanted; the reason the english won was not because they had a vast army, but because the war was on water and the english had a very strong navy force due to their technological military advances.  Their boats were of black steel while the chinese boats were of wood.  In conclusion the english came to a truce with chine but still the english won the Opium War.

"The White Man's Burden"

The White Man's Burden is a poem that the englishes who recited it express themselves in a very conceided kind of way by saying in very specific details that all white men have a burden of "fixing" other races.  In other words since the Europeans back then thought they were the first and perfect race, they were the correct ones and anybody who did something different than them was weird.  They considered Imperialism a favor for other coutries, their strategy was to go to other countries and say : hey if u give us your resources we will teach you how to be like us! so like that the would have all the resources and think of themselves as gods.  So basically in the poem the whites are just saying that they carry a burden of "civilizing" other nations.

"The Scramble for Africa"

The Scramble for Africa was a time where the Europeans were starting to get more and more involved with africa and wanted to explore it for its resources, imperialism, territory and other things.  France, Great Britain, Germany, Spain, Italy, and Portugal were the main countries interested in this idea of exploring and conquering africa.  It's like they were all fighting for that country and they were from the same place but different explorers set their minds to trying to get africa.  Whoever would get africa would have more resources, territory, and they wouldn't even be that far away because Europe is very close to the northern part of Africa.

Film Lesson:"Mountains of the Moon".

Even though we saw very few scenes in this movie, the movie explained a lot in a short piece of time.  It was about the European explorers who were in search of the source of the nile river, and in search of Africa's most valuable natural resources.  The Europeans had a very hard job because they had few people with them and even had to take people from africa to work for them and to do there stuff.  In the movie, Speak-one of the most important protagonists of the movie- goes through alot of pain and suffering with his friend explorer.  They are living in a place they don't know and are always being ambushed by african tribes along their large journeys.  Very bad things would happen to them, like for example: the porters would run away with their belongings, african tribes would ambush,etc... Now that i mention African tribes Speak and his friend were lucky to have this one man that speaks english and served them as a translator.  If it wasn't for that man that spoke both african and english they would have all been dead, for due to the language diversity they were able to trade and communicate , make truces, avoid tragical deaths due to misunderstandings,etc... This movie was short but explained alot about imperialism in the late 1800's.

The Meiji Restoration of Japan

In 1853, Americas command commodore Matthew Perry sailed to Japan looking for benefits for the americans. He sailed there with 4 big modernized boats and proposed to the Japaneese that they open to ports so that the Americans can supply themselves. The Japaneese werent too sure about this idea but they seemed kind of threatened since the americans came proposing with advanced ships that had cannons and very good armor. I myself think the Americans brought these ships "just incase" the Japaneese didnt accept. Then again that didn't happen and the Japaneese accepted such proposal; they called this agreement The Treaty of Kanawaga. In conclusion this meant that whenever the americans needed to supply themselves on long journeys, they would pass by japan and refill. The reason the Americans picked Japan for this treaty is because Japan is out in the ocean; Japan is like a little set of islands close to each other. These are called Archipelagos. An archipelago is a chain of islands where they are all considered a part together. The Meiji era was a very bad periodof time for the Japaneese economy. Since the country was ruled by the emperor, he made all the decisions. The Japaneese had to limit themselves to trade and economic advances because the emperor was signing alot of treatys. Then after the emperor died and the meiji era had ended Japan began to restore everythign they had lost and started to regain alot of things they gave away. They began to modernize themselves more. This was a good advantage for japan because not only were they improving themselves but also other countries started to give them a little more respect and if would be very rare of a country to try to pressure them into a treaty. When the meiji era ended the Japaneese restored Themselves.

Karl Marx And The Industrial Revolution

Karl Marx was a great philosopher, social scientist, historian and revolutianary figure. He is known for creating or spreading the idea of communism. It was meant to have everybody have the same amount of money; not to make the rich richer, and the poor poorer.  He had an idea of everybody being treated equal and everybody having possesion of the same things.  This idea sounds perfect when you say it.  But when you test it, it is much more different; why? because there are the ones who work ALOT, and there are the ones who work A LITTLE.  So it really is not fair if a professional doctor makes the same amount of money as an 18 year old handing out flyers.  There is always going to be a competition or a "greedy" one who wants to make more money then the rest.  This is why Marx idea wasn't spread out world wide.

Nationalism and The Creation of Italy

For many years, Italy's separate nations (before italy) did not want to unite because they were afraid to give all their power to one central government.  Those nations wanted to be independent and did not want to have anything to do with each other.  When the idea of nationalism started to rise and spread out through Europe they started to look into it more and more.  So, Nationalism basically helped Italy unite itself; before nationalism influenced the lives of the leaders from the sole nations, those nations were small and together became a very powerful country.

Simon Bolivar and Latin American

Simon Bolivar, a.k.a. "El Libertador", was a great leader of Independence movements that happened in South America (mostly the top portion). Simon Bolivar was born in Caracas on 1783. Simon Bolivar had an apprentice called Jose de San Martin. They both had different ideas but based on the same source, to liberate South America. A victory at the Battle of Boyaca in 1819 added New Granada to the territories free from Spanish control, and in september 7, 1821 the Gran Colombia (a federation covering much of modern Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, and Ecuador) was created, with Bolívar as president. Eventually the regions of the Gran Colombia started to realize that they were all about themselves and wanted to seperate so the unity started to fall apart and Simon Bolivars dream started to fall apart; but at least he liberated the spanish countries. Simon Bolivar was a great leader.

Copernicus and the trial of Galileo

Since there was no recent technology in the time of galileo galilei and copernicus, it was hard to find out about space ad our universe; galileo had put up a theory saying that the planets and the sun revolved around earth but they revolved around the earth in an eliptical shape. and copernicus though they considered him right said that all planets revolved around the sun but that they revolved in a circular shape.  None of them were correct but copernicus was close enough so his theory stood while they put galileo on trial for his false theory. While galileo was on trial he started thinking outside the box and he did many things. like putting the scientific method in practice,  inventing a telescope, etc...

Scientific Revolution: Scientific Method

The Scientific method is method used to investigate, learn or fix old theory's. There are a couple of steps in this method that help in the investigation:

Ask a Question: Most of the time the scientific method is used to answer a question made like for example who, what, when, where, why, which or how.

Backround Research: Most of the times it isn't enough to just answer the things yourself, sometimes it's good to investigate through popular sources of research like the internet or the library and find things that might help you with what you are looking for.

Hypothesis:   Now is when you start the question that will construct your theory.  Like for ex:if i do _____ then _____ will happen...

Test your hypothesis: (Self explanatory)

Draw Conclusion: now that you have tested youre hypothesis what you have to do is analyze youre data and draw a conclusion, whether youre theory was right or wrong.

Evolution vs Creation

The theory of evolution .vs. creation is a popular debate on how, why, and when everything started; most of the general concepts in the debate are mostly on the origins of the earth, humanity, life and the universe. Now if we look at the debate i have to points of view: one where i have scientific proof that we came from the family of the apes, and another point of view where religion comes in and everything is written in the bible. In the scientific point of view it is said that when the Big Bang occurred the planets were released and that in the earth life took place, and that during the years the most simple life forms went evolving and turning complex life forms. To me that makes a lot of sense. Then there is religion, where the bible explains that god created everything. In a way both theory's depend on each other. So i really cant pick but maybe in a couple of years or decades the world will find out.

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