Chapter 23

At the end of the chapter there are visual sources and the one that really stuck with me was the image of the women in the factory folding or making the jeans. The women do not look happy, and since there are only women it can be assumed that the men are doing other jobs to make ends meet. It makes me appreciate the life I have and live in, but at the same time makes me sad at how there are still places like this. Sweatshops are the result of greed and business companies looking to make a big profit off of cheap labor. What is even more disappointing is that we know that there are places like this, but we don't take action or do anything that can make a change. I find that even I forget of the world and will think of only the world I live in. Instead of having factories in foreign nations they should be within the country possibly providing jobs/ economy growth in that country. If factories are to stay in foreign nations then the pay should be raised to something that’s reasonable to what the people are making for the company, or just get a higher pay. A reoccurring theme I have noticed in history is that when a foreign nation leaves another nation particularly the nations in Africa, the remaining nation is left in a jumble having to pick up the pieces of puzzle without a guide to look at. Hopefully the time will come where people in places of the world are living in a fair work environment.

Chapter 22

• The End of Empire in World History

• In the Americas, many of the colonized people were of European descent
• Ottoman empire collapsed after WW1,this gave a rise to the number of of new states in Europe as well as in the Middle East
• WWll ended the German and Japanese empires
• Intrusive U.S. presence was a big factor stimulating the Mexican American Revolution in 1910
• Much of Mexico's oil industry was owned by American and British investors
• Explaining African and Asian Independence
• The increasing democratic values of European states ran counter to the essential dictatorship of colonial rule
• The enormously powerful force of nationalism now played a major role in its disintegration
• World wars weakened Europe while discrediting any sense of European moral superiority
• Colonial rules began to plan for a new political relationship with their Asian & African subjects
• Planning for decolonization include gradual political reforms, investments in railroads, ports, and telegraph lines: the holding elections and the writing of circumstances
• Comparing Freedom Struggles
• Nationalism surfaced in Vietnam in the early 1900's, but the country didn't achieve full political independence until the mid 1970's
• In West Africa, nationalist relied on peaceful political pressure to achieve independence
• 8 yrs of warfare preceded Algerian independence from France in 1962
• India was among the first colonies to achieve independence & provide a model
• South Africa was among the last to throw off political domination by whites
• The Case of India: Ending British Rule
• British differed from earlier invaders in ways that promoted a growing sense of India identity
• The most important political expression of an all-Indian identify took shape in the Indian National Congress (INC) often called Congress Party, established in 1885
• INC was largely an urban phenomenon and quite moderate in its demands
• INC had difficulty gaining  a mass following among India's vast peasant population
• British attacks on the Islamic Ottoman Empire antagonized India's muslims
• Colonial India became independent in 1947 as two countries
• A muslim Pakistan itself divided into two wings 1000 miles apart
• The Case of South Africa: Ending Apartheid
• Country's black African majority had no political rights whatsoever within the central state
• Had a developed mature industrial economy by the early 20th century
• By the 1960's the economy had benefited from extensive foreign investment and loans
• Native Reserves served as ethnic homelands that kept Africans divided along tribal lines
• Established in 1912 the African National Congress (ANC), liked its Indian predecessor was led by male, educated, professional, and middle-class Africans who were "Civilized Men"
• Women were denied full membership in the ANC until 1943
• Soweto rebellion persisted, and by the 1980's spreading urban violence
• The 1994 elections brought the ANC to power
• Experiments in Political Order: Party, Army, and the Fate of Democracy
• Many developing countries were culturally very diverse with little loyal to a central state
• The British began to hand over power in a gradual way well before complete independence was granted in 1947
• Africans sometimes suggested that their traditional cultures based on communal rather than individualistic values
• Economic disappointments, class resentment, and ethnic conflicts provided the context for numerous military takeovers
• Cuba revolution of 1959 brought Fidel Castro to power, establishing in Latin American a communist outpost intent on spreading its revolutionary message
• in 1970 Chileans elected a Marxist politician, Salvador Allende, whose Popular United Party brought together the country’s socialist and communists
• Allende welcomed Fidel Castro for a month long visit in 1971in efforts to achieve genuine revolutionary change by legal and peaceful and legal means
• Experiments in Economic Development: Changing Priorities, Varying Outcomes
• Global South priority was economic development
• Economic development took place in societies sharply divided by class, religion, ethnic groups and gender in a face of explosive population growth
• Colonial rule had provided only the most slender foundations for modern development
• In China and India, the new approach generated rapid economic growth, but also growing inequalities and social conflicts
• An emphasis on city based industrial development, stirred by vision of a rapid transition to modernity, led to a neglect or exploitation of rural areas and agriculture
• Women also were central to many governments increased interest in curtailing pop growth

Chapter 21

Communism and the Cold War

1. How did Russia and China differ from Marx’s predictions in the way their communist societies developed

• Russia was rural before socialism became infinite china too
• Neither was an advanced industrialized economy
• 1042 there was a difference in the peasants, more in china than in russia
• Marx prediction...communism would rise as the evolution of capitalist industrialization, marx was an economist
• Predictions incorrect
• Aristocrat’s had to be born into it, where people in the middle class(entrepreneurs) aspired to go into aristocrat class but couldn’t
• Marx felt owners would never give up their luxuries and the laborers would get upset resulting in a revolution
• His theory was that the workers would go to work and take over the factory, kill the owners, but keep the factory and take over control determining the conditions in which they would work in
• What actually happened was reform, legislation, but this was in US and Britain
• Marx would be surprised that communism happened in rural places instead of the economically advanced places
• For mard prediction was that at some point there would be a communist utopia
• Marx came out of the enlightenment idealist era
• “For each according to their ability, for each to their need”
• Russia:  people were considered part of the land, if people inherited land, they got everything that was on it including  people that lived on the land
• Quick revolution for russia
• China: took a longer time to build support of the peasantry,

2. How did Communist societies treat women/ feminism

• Setting up laws for equality between the genders
• Laws included equality of work and education
• Women had rights: marriage , divorce, abortion, pregnancy leave
• There was more equality between genders due to the communism

3. What was the Cold War ? Was it really cold? Is it really over

• Cold war was standstill between Russia and US
• Wasn’t cold actually hot because of the nuclear weapons
• Wouldn’t be a war would just be a massacre on each side
• Not really over, still disputes between the two

4. Has communism really fallen

• China
• N. Korea
• Cuba
• Vietnam
• Cambodia/Laos

Communism now is more geared towards politics, the economy follows a more democratic capitalist set up

Chapter 20

• Making of a War
• Italy and Germany joined their fragmented territories into two major new powers around 1870
• A system of alliances intended to keep the peace, created obligations that drew the Great Powers of Europe into a general war by early August 1914
• assassination of the archduke
• Legacies of the Great War
• War went on for more than 4 years before ending in German defeat in November 1918
• became a "total war" requiring  mobilization of each country's entire population
• Treaty of Versailles concluded the WWl in 1919 but it eventually established conditions that contributed to the second world war only 20 years later
• Germany lost its colonial empire & 15% of its European territory and was required to pay heavy reparations to the winners, creating great resentment
• Brought an end to the Ottoman Empire
• World War 1 brought the United States to center stage as a global power

Capitalism Unraveling: The Great Depression

• American market  crashes, Great Depression of 1929

• World trade dropped by 62%
• Political and economic changes stimulated in Latin America by the Great Depression
• The Fascist Alternative in Europe
• Fascists condemned individualism, liberalism, feminism, parliamentary democracy, and communism because it "weakened the nation"
• During the great depression trade unions, peasant movements, and various communist and socialist parties threatened  to establish social order with strikes and land seizures
• Mussolini government suspended democracy and imprisoned, deported & executed opponents
• Hitler and the Nazis
• European fascism took shape as the Nazi Party under the leadership of Adolf Hitler
• Traditional elites attacked the democratic politicians who had the task of signing the Treaty of Versailles
• 1933 Hitler was legally installed as the chancellor of the German government
• Hitler had the major support because his ideas brought Germany out of the Great Depression
• Hitler restricted Jewish life,  had people loot their shops and exclude them from most things
• Nazi phenomenon represented a moral collapse in the West
• "Scientific racism" linked the size of the skull to human behavior and personality
• Japanese Authoritarianism
• Began its industrialization and empire-building states in the 19th century
• Did not really participate in WW1, their economy increased during this time
• Education expanded, women worked in new professions
• Shrinking world demand for silk impoverished rural dwellers who raised silkworms
• Generals and admirals exercised great political authority and projects of conquest and empire building collided with the interest of established world powers
• The Road to War in Asia
• China had deteriorated further leading to a full scale attack on heartland China in 1937 resulting with WW2 in Asia
• Japanese attack on the U.S. at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on December 1941
• The U.S. increasingly saw Japan as aggressive, oppressive and a threat to U.S. economics
• The Road to War in Europe
• Nazism was born out of WWl
• WWl was accidental and unintentional but WWll was deliberate and planned
• Hitler prepared the country for war but also pursued territorial expansion
• Germany attacked Poland triggering WWll in Europe
• Germans launched a destructive air war against Britain and in 1941 attacked the Soviet Union
• U.S. joined the struggle against Germany in 1942
• German defeat in May 1945
• The Outcomes of Global Conflict
• During the Rape of Nanjing 1937-1938 some 200k-300k Chinese were killed and mutilated
• In the Soviet Union women constituted more than half of the industrial workforce by 1945
• urban bombing, blockade, mass murder, starvation, and concentration camps in Nazi Germany
• 6 million Jews perished in a technologically sophisticated form of mass murder
• Practices of manslaughter continued in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and the Sudan
• The Recovery of Europe:
• 1948-1970's Western European economies grew rapidly, improving living standards
• European Coal and Steel Community is jointly manage the production of this critical item
• American economic, political and military security commitment to Europe
• Formed a political and military alliance known as the Northern Atlantic Theory Organization (NATO)