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Chapter 20 discussed the many tragedies that occurred in the early 1900s-late 70s. Some of the biggest events were the World Wars, the Great Depression, and the Rebalancing of Global Power. As discussed in class, the 'collapse of the center' was the decline of religion and power coming from Western Europe. Europe was known as the center of the world, everything began to fall apart and people realized that the ways and traditions don't have to revolve around Europe. Europe asserted its superiority in the areas of religion, politically, democracy, economically, militarily, and technology. Another great moral collapse was the Holocaust, many people were brutally tortured at the time. World War I and World War II were failures of the government to avert war, it was seen as a world war because of the system of alliances and colonial relationships, this, in turn, caused the European diplomacy to fail in stopping this. Lastly, the Great Depression challenged the idea t...

Chapter 19 discussed the Ottoman Empire, Japan, and China. The Ottoman Empire controlled South East Europe, African, and Asia. One goal of the Ottoman Empire's attempts at modernization was to better integrate the empire's many non-Muslim communities. In China, they were known to be a dependent, semi-colonial country, which they strived to change and become more independent. During the 1860s and 1870s, China developed a self-strengthening plan that sought to uplift the traditional Chinese culture while including ideas from the west. This turned out to be a failure due to the Boxer Rebellion (1898-1901). The outcome of the Boxer Rebellion was that foreign occupation of Bejing and large reparation from China's government. In Japan, they used its newfound industrial, economic, and military power to begin building its own empire in East Asia.

Chapter 18 discussed colonial encounters in Asia, Africa, and Oceania. Through this chapter, we see how slavery affected different parts of the world. Strayer states, "Many of the new ways of working that emerged during the colonial era derived directly from the demands of the colonial state. The most obvious was required and unpaid labor on public projects, such as building railroads, constructing government buildings and transporting goods." These are just some of the few things slaves encountered, in some places in Europe it was required for "native" African Americans to have ten to twelve days of labor over a year period. When it comes to Asian countries, they kept most of their trade and slave trade between their countries, which is much different from European and African countries.

Chapter 17 discussed the Industrial Revolution (1750-1914). This Revolution could be argued as one of the most important developments in human history. Many people would move away from their families in a rural area to the busy city for bigger opportunities and more money for their family. The percentage of humans to machines is much different to how it used to be without machines, many were considered craftsman working one on one with a product, now with more factories and machines, there are more people to one machine and they are doing one small part of the project. Products became more readily available and less expensive for the consumers and the owner of the company. The Revolution primarily happened in the U.S and Britain.

Chapter 16 discussed the Atlantic Revolutions and the global echoes that occurred during and after. The three revolutions were the North American Revolution (1775-1787), the French Revolution (1789-1815), and the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804). The North American Revolution was inspired by the idea of progress. The British government needed money, this made the Americans think about the enlightenment, which caused the revolution in turn. The French Revolution happened so soon after the American Revolution because they were inspired by the American Enlightenment; liberty, causality, and fraternity were all aspects that contributed to the French Revolution. During the Haitian Revolution, there were three groups that consisted of 500,000 slaves, 40,000 white people, and 30,000 free people of color. The Abolitionist movement was inspired by Haitians. The former slaves that were literate were the ones that further encouraged the movement, they made awareness campaigns and were abl...

Foundresses week here at Notre Dame de Namur celebrates our foundresses Julie and Francoise. During the week there are many different activities that have us all join as a community and give us a bit of history of our community. Julie and Francoise lived very different lives but had the same core values, Julie lived a life of luxury but had no interest in education unless it was religious. She had everything but didn't want to follow her families footsteps. For Francoise, it was much different, education and health was very important to her and her family; she just wasn't wealthy like Julie was. I found reading about the foundresses to be very eye-opening because I never knew much about who they were or what their value were. I learned from a young age about Judaism since that's what I grew up around, but now I have a new view of another religion and it showed many similarities and differences.

I found it interesting when discussing the reading was how our roles of superiors have changed over the centuries. Before it was common to have kings be our leaders with a divide in religion, region, ethnicity, or class. Now, you will most likely see a white male leading our country with less royalty and more so all business and politics. I wonder how this change began to occur and why we don't have kings or queens ruling out country like how some others do. I can see the pros and cons of both having a president and a king/queen, but I question why America has come to its conclusion with having many run for office.