WW: Chapter 14 Documents

     The first document was about an African boy who was taken away from his family near Nigeria. At a very young age, he and his sister were kidnapped from their family when they were the only two people at home and were enslaved. He goes on to recall that he and his sister were later separated. He was sold to multiple owners. He also mentioned how he was put on a ship and how he was relocated multiple times in such a short time span. 

     I thought that this must have been one of the toughest things to write about. Especially coming from a horrific time period for Africans. I think that it was a wonderful thing that he did write it because it gives us an insight on what things were like back during that time period. 

     The second document was about an English merchant who was involved in the business aspect of the whole slave situation. I was personally disgusted by how the Africans were treated. They were mere products of nature to the Europeans for which they could be used to work as slaves for essentially the rest of their lives. 

     The first visual source shows off a lady drinking tea with her child. This shows how reliant people seemed to be on tea. When the popularity of tea was rising, it was on accessible to certain people, particularly only the wealthy. However, as time went on, it because cheaper to purchase and soon everyone was drinking tea.

     The second visual source shows the Spanish indulging in their vices with chocolate. There are four men who seem to be preparing hot chocolate. Like the previous source, it makes it seem as if the Spanish were really reliant on the chocolate, just as they were with the tea.

     The third visual source portrays an image of a coffeehouse in the Ottoman Empire. I find it fascinating how addicted people were to coffee when it first came about. This image does a much better job at portraying that addiction as opposed to the previous images.

WW: Chapter 14

     The chapter starts out discussing how Europeans wanted commercial connections with Asia. Columbus among others, tried to find a route to Asia so they could establish a connection. The explorers were mainly motivated by their desire to obtain spices from the Asians. I think it's important to note that at this point in time, Europe had recovered from the Black Death (Plague). The way the governments were run were more effective than they had been before. For example, militaries were a lot more built up and weapons with gunpowder grew in popularity. In addition to that, some cities became international trade center. Economies were more lenient towards the capitalist point of view. However, there were problems with the trade system involving the Indian Ocean network, that was controlled by Muslims. 

     The country that built an empire out of commerce was Portugal. To them the Indian Ocean commerce was extremely diverse and rich. However, they lacked goods and quality in order to compete with other countries. They resorted to piracy. Their ships were equipped with cannons and were easy to use and travel with.

     In an attempt to control commerce, the Portuguese created a trading post empire. They did not attempt to control territories or populations of people.

     The Portuguese carried Asian goods to Asian ports. However, by 1600, their post suffered through a dramatic decline in success. 

     At the same time, Spain was challenging Portugal in controlling the Asian trade. As retaliation, the Spanish set up bases in the Philippines. They remained under Spanish control until the United States took over in 1898.

     There was not nearly as much European presence in Asia than there was in the Americas or there was in Africa. They were no real threat to Asia. When the Portuguese reached Japan in the mid-sixteenth century, Japan was experiencing a civil war amongst two lords.

     At first Europeans were welcome. They were able to convert approximately three hundred thousand Japanese people into Christians. 

     When Japan unified in the early seventeenth century, many people started to see the Europeans as a threat to unity that they had just formed. Missionaries were expelled and Christians were greatly persecuted. As a result of all this the Japanese were not allowed to travel abroad. 

     The Europeans were banned from ever being in Japan, with the exception of the Dutch at a small site. Despite this, Japan was closed off from Europe for two hundred years.

Ways of the World: Chapter 13

     The thing that really got my attention and had me thinking for a bit was how even after five hundred or so years, Native Americans are still upset about the arrival of Columbus. This begs the million dollar question, should we still consider disregarding Columbus Day as a holiday? I personally don't think we should, simply because people were already living here, therefore I don't think Columbus "discovered" America; however, it is an important point in history in which the course of history itself took a dramatic turn. Whether it was for better or worse is up for debate. However, we may not deny the fact that we would not be where we are today, had it not been for Columbus heading west and uncover the hidden secrets from the world he came from.
     A lot was going one while the European colonies headed out and try to conquer whatever part of the  new world that they could. At the time, the Russians were on the verge of constructing a massive empire. Meanwhile nearby, China and its Qing Dynasty nearly doubled in size.
     One of the major things that the chapter focuses on was the situation revolving around the colonization of the Americas after the arrival of Columbus. A variety of European countries headed towards the Americas and they arrived in a variety of places. The Spaniards started off with the Caribbean and then moved on to places such as Mexico, where the Aztecs were, and then to the Inca Empire as well. The Portuguese settled in Brazil. The British, French, and the Dutch all settled into a wide range of places all across North America. By the mid-nineteenth century, many of the Native American nations and empires had fallen and the Americas were controlled by European nations for the most part.
     Before the arrival of Columbus, the west side of the world consisted of a population estimating between sixty and eighty million. They had never been exposed to many diseases that had consumed much of Europe at the time. However, that does not mean that they were immune to them. Not only did the Europeans bring disease from Europe, but they also brought disease from Africa as well. People were dying at a faster rate than ever before. Native American empires suffered a devastating blow to their population numbers. It was so bad that in the Caribbean, the majority of the natives had already died out by the time disease had spread continent-wide. North America did not escape this fate. For example, in Mexico the population went from around ten to twenty million to only one million.
   

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