Tuesday, November 27, 2007

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.

Friday, November 16, 2007

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.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

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.