Week Four

The Scientific Revolution was significant in the history of the Europe and the rest of the Western World because it challenged what was generally believed to be the truth.  It made an impact on religious beliefs and on what was accepted as the truth among educated people throughout Europe in the early modern era.  Before the Scientific Revolution, the European outlook on the universe was not scientific, but religious, based on beliefs set by the Catholic Church.  It centered in the idea that the sun and the rest of the universe revolved around the earth – an idea that coincided with the Catholic emphasis on God’s plan revolving around the human inhabitants of the Earth.  On this topic, Strayer writes, “The Scientific Revolution was revolutionary because it fundamentally challenged this understanding of the universe” (742).  In 1543, when Nicolaus Copernicus argued that the earth and other planets actually revolved around the sun, he challenged accepted religious and scientific beliefs and set the Scientific Revolution in motion.

Over the next 200 years, Copernicus was followed by other scientific thinkers who broke ground in scientific fields such as anatomy, astronomy, mathematics, and physics.  One of the latest, yet most impactful and remembered to this day was Sir Isaac Newton.  Newton focused his work on the concept of universal gravitation.  This was a radical idea because it unified the heavens and the earth.  Under Newton’s laws, the planets in orbit abided by the same natural laws as did all objects on earth.  In the time leading up to and during the beginning of the Scientific Revolution, questions about the functions of the universe were answered with religious explanations of God and supernatural forces. But by the time Sir Isaac Newton died, the generally accepted truth among educated Europeans was that the universe functioned on its own according to mathematically supported scientific principals rather than God.

Week Three

In our second class we discussed which continents were most directly impacted by European colonialism and imperialism.  Given my previous knowledge of the slave trade, I assumed that Africa was one of those continents.  The second half of Chapter Fourteen of Ways of the World made clear to me that while Africa was obviously impacted by European expansion, it was impacted in different ways than I had thought and in very different ways than Australian and the Americas were. 

Europeans did not infiltrate the continent of Africa and never used military conquest like they did in Australia and the Americas.  They remained on the coast lines rather than traveling inland where they were more likely to catch tropical diseases, to which they had no immunity, and to become involved in conflict with the native people who were fully equipped and prepared to fight them off (690).  The slave trade network in Africa was made possible by the fact that African people were capturing and selling other Africans to sell to the Europeans waiting on the coast. The many independent societies in Africa did not share a common identity and were often feuding with each other.  They generally did not sell people from their own communities and societies into slavery. Instead, they sold marginalized people: prisoners of war, criminals, debtors (693).  Unlike in the Americas, where almost all of the indigenous people lost their autonomy, some people in Africa, namely those capturing others, had power and freedom in their lives.

The population in Africa was impacted but not in the same way as in Australian and the Americas.  Rather than collapsing as it did on those continents, the growth of population in Africa slowed down.  This fact can be seen in the statistic found on page 694 of the textbook: Sub-Sahara Africa represented 18% of the world population in 1600 and 6% in 1900 (694).

European presence did not eliminate entire societies like it did elsewhere, but it did not create any real economic, agricultural, or industrial booms (694).  Instead, it impacted societies differently from place to place.  In small kinship-based communities people lived in fear of the towns being raided by Africans looking to capture people to sell to the Europeans.  With access to firearms and trade opportunities, outlying parts of larger kingdoms declared their independence, causing those kingdoms to fall apart.  In contrast, some regions became heavily involved in the slave trade, taking advantage of the new economic opportunities it offered (695).

In reading this section on the slave trade, I was surprised by what I learned about its impact on Africa, especially in comparison to other continents.  While it clearly made a huge difference in the lives of the individuals and descendants of those who were captured and forced into slavery, European colonialism stalled the economic, political, and social growth of Africa, rather than completely eliminating and recreating it like it did in Australia and the Americas.

Week Two

In the current United States, ideas about race and racial identify are generally rigid and attempt to be definitive.  Often times a person of mixed race will be placed into their minority category, and many of these people struggle to find a racial identity that they feel truly fits them.  This is not the case in South America and other regions colonized by the Spanish.  In many parts of South America, race is a fluid concept, associated less with ethnic origin and more with physical characteristics.  Racial identities for South American people can change from day to day based on how tanned they are from spending time in the sun and other extraneous factors.  (Authors Lisa Gezon and Conrad Kottak discuss this point in great detail in their textbook titled Culture, which I studied in the Cultural Anthropology class that I took last semester.)

The difference in current views on race in the United States and in South America and other Spanish speaking places can be traced back to interracial relationships between European conquistadors and settlers with the indigenous people and the way that the people who were products of these relations were viewed in their time.  In general areas that were conquered and settled by the Spanish and Portuguese had and still have much less rigid ideas about racial identity than do areas that were taken by the British. 

Spanish men outnumbered Spanish women in the new colonies tremendously, so many of them married or had relationships with native women.  This led to the creation of a new mixed-race population called mestizo.  The mestizo people were not respected as much as their fully Spanish counterparts, but they did work in important roles in the economy of the colonies, earning them some prominence in society.  In Ways of the World, Robert Strayer writes, “Mestizo identity blurred the sense of sharp racial difference between Spanish and Indian peoples and became a major element in the identity of modern Mexico” (629).  This fluid sense of racial identity is prevalent today in Mexico as well as South America and other areas colonized by the Spanish.

Because the number of British settlers was so large, they did not have as many inter-racial marriages and relations as the Spanish and were less concerned with incorporating the native people into their settlements and giving them roles in the community.  Instead they separated themselves from and ostracized the native people, creating distinct groups based on race and custom.  While separate communities such as these are less common today, many people in America believe there are clear lines between racial identities – a belief that stems from interactions between the British settlers and the Native American people.  More so than those in Mexico, people of mixed-race in the United States often struggle with their own racial identities because American people in general carried such rigid ideas about race.  

First Post

I have no idea where you went over the break, but I would love to find out!