chapter 16 pt. 2 and docs

Enlightenment thinkers began to believe that slavery was a violation of peoples natural rights as the revolutions promoted peoples independence and following the Haitian revolution came three more slave rebellions. While it didn't come easy, the abolition of Atlantic slavery came about in the 19th century and changed a lot of moral and social interactions but didn't really improve newly freed slaves economic situations. The other thing that the Atlantic Revolutions promoted was the idea of a nation and nationalism. People began really wanting independence for their nation that they belonged to, starting with the independence of the colonies in the Americas from 1776-1825. Governments began to act on behalf of their nations and tried to intentionally engrave national loyalties in their citizens through schools, public rituals, the mass media, and military service. Unfortunately for conservatives, nationalism could be used to go against ideologies such as socialism and feminism. Their reasoning was that those movements only divided the nation by class or gender differences. Therefore nationalism created controversy instead of uniting people because it didn't make it clear who belonged to the nation or who should speak for it. The last thing that the echoes had a really big impact on were feminist ideals. The fight for the suffrage of woman was pushed and eventually accomplished therefore giving women a big push on the topic of women's roles in society. Obviously not everyone was happy about the feminist movement and they had to find extreme allies to help them. For Russia some examples of this was in the socialist and anarchist circles.

chapter 16 pt. 1

The problem of Eurocentrism 

Eurocentrism is the thought that Europe's culture and people are the center of everything. It even goes to the extent that Europe is better than everyone else. Eurocentrism is extremely biased and only gives one side of the story. It leaves out many rich cultural characteristics that aren't included in European history. The Echoes of the Atlantic Revolutions was a push, pull occurrence. It started with the Enlightenment in Europe, specifically France. The Enlightenment ideals made their way over to North America which caused an American Enlightenment. From the American Enlightenment came the American Revolution. This revolution came from the push of people wanting to become independent plus they didn't want the British to get back any kind of control or make back their money. So the American's revolted and were even partially helped by France to succeed. After the French helped the American's gain their independence, they followed and started the French Revolution and they brought ideas from North America. Their goal was to make the 2% who weren't paying taxes, the aristocrats and the church, start to help because it wasn't a fair system. The king considered this and called on the old group of the estates general to listen to all sides and help figure this problem out. When they did this, it was quickly realized that the vote was always going to be 2-1. So as a result, the third estate revolted and declared themselves as the legit government and killed the 2% by chopping off their heads. The next revolution that followed was in Haiti. Haiti had hoped to be treated better after seeing so many other revolutions going on and with their government treating them so unethically. When they saw that that's not what was happening they rose upon too and succeeded. This was one of the only successful slave revolt.

ch. 15

Religion and Science

Christianity was splintering through the Protestant Reformation. People began to realize the Catholic Church was corrupt because of things like indulgences. Indulgences were bought in order to buy someone's way into heaven which was basically doing nothing but giving money to the church. Another example of corruption in the church was buying a son a job in the church or an office. This was a bad thing because a lot of times, the job should've gone to someone who actually knew something about the job but instead in was going to rich people's kids. People were also starting to become more literate meaning they could start to read and interpret the Bible on their own rather than just accepting whatever the church told them. 

Christianity was also spreading to the Americas and into Africa through missionaries. Christianity was very adaptable as people could often take what they wanted from the religion and give it their own cultural twist. Examples of this are found in the Andean people who changed the special foods being eaten into their traditional guinea pig. Also in the Day of the Dead and also in practices of voodoo.

China on the other hand did not take up Christianity for a few reasons. One, they already had strong traditions and they were not willing to change those values. Second, they were literally just as militarily strong or even stronger so they weren't as vulnerable as people such as the Native Americans. 

When the scientific revolution happened it was because people stopped trusting in the church. From the scientific revolution came the scientific method which meant actually creating a hypothesis and doing the physical testing. Experimentation began from these questions and predictions. Copernicus was the first to actually figure out that the sun didn't revolve around the earth, but the other way around. As he was afraid of the backlash from people who couldn't handle the fact that God would put us on Earth but not make us the center of the universe, he didn't propose his finding till right before he died. Soon after him, came Galileo who created a telescope and actually could prove Copernicus's finding and he proposed it. This unfortunately ruined his life as people still didn't want to believe him. 

Then came the Enlightenment which was in some way like a light bulb switched on and for others it was like a relief from the burden of ignorance. Basically enlightenment thinkers were starting to think that humans could be better.