Ch. 18 P. 1

What I find most interesting in this reading of chapter 18 is how industrialization dramatically altered the world in only a few centuries.  Industrialization changed the entire world in less than 250 years and more than the entire recorded history of the world.  No other period has brought upon such quick change to the entire globe.  I simply find it amazing because within 250 years we have gone from an agrarian society to an industrialized society that uses all sorts of technological applications in our daily life.  We feel as if we could not live without our mobile devices, electricity, gas, and even our cars, but to think that life was entirely possible in this manner only a few centuries ago is astonishing for me. 

Ch. 17 Pg. 507-524

In this reading what really surprised me was to find out that Haiti was one of the first American countries to come about.  I never really stopped and asked myself about which countries were some of the first to gain independence but I don’t think that I would have guessed Haiti to be one.  I think what assists me in thinking that is that Haiti was so engulfed in slavery and oppressed that I wouldn’t have guessed they were one of the first to gain independence from France. 

Ch. 17 (pg. 504-7)

What surprised me from reading this section was that the French Revolution was mainly fueled by the nobility and the middle class groups.  I would have thought that it would be mainly fueled by the lower class because they are the ones typically oppressed.  This can be similar to what is occurring here in the U.S. in the present day.  The economy suffering is mainly striking the middle class and really creating a huge gap between the lower and upper class dissipating the middle class.  As we have seen this creates a much larger problem that can be expected because the upper class is comprised of a very small percent of people which means that there are more and more people falling to lower class daily.

Ch. 17 pg 499-504

What I find most interesting of this reading is that a major part of the Atlantic all of a sudden came to fight for independence in such a short period of time.  I feel that this is sort of similar to the domino effect that many democratic countries fear against communism.  I think that this theory can be similarly applied to democracy and freedom from heavily governing countries.  As this short reading has proved, many countries such as the U.S., Haiti, and Mexico fought for their independence within a fifty year span and achieved what many colonies had been trying to do but couldn’t because they didn’t have the initiative to do so. 

The Americas: A Hemispheric History

The last part of the reading from the handout by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto really caught my interest.  He mentions the question of why do we always categorize America into two; the U.S. and Canada and the rest of the American continent.  The real cut of North and South America is really south of Mexico so it doesn’t make sense to classify the U.S. and Canada as one.  If they are trying to divide it culturally by Anglo-America it doesn’t work either because there are parts of the U.S. and Canada that can technically be considered Latin America such as the Southwest of the U.S.  I believe that it mainly has to do with the social status that the counties earn.  For example Mexico and much of South America are considered third world counties while the U.S. and Canada are not therefore creating this division of continents where it really doesn’t belong. 

Primary Source: Immanuel Kant

Well, this primary source reading has been the toughest reading of the semester.  According to Immanuel Kant, there really doesn’t seem to be freedom.  He claims that yes, enlightenment requires freedom and it is basically a freedom from having someone telling man what to do and how to follow instruction.  He also comes to claiming that it is nearly impossible to achieve freedom because in religion they are told what to do, society itself tells people what to do.  I believe that in reality, no one can really have total freedom from society because of the same reasons.  In school you are told what to do, at work you are bossed around and even in your family, you have duties that you must live up to.  As secluded as you would like to be from society, you cannot be because even society tells us how to dress.

Ch. 16 P. 2

The idea of progress is clearly seen in this part of the text.  Progress was seen now in the physical world such as physics and anatomy as well as in mathematics and astronomy.  I believe that in a manner we still hold the ideas of progress to the present day.  Since progress is seen as the scientific advancement of nearly everything, I believe that it still continues because research in every aspect of science continues to improve as time progresses and new findings, cures and theories are being added to our knowledge of the physical world that helps us understand the past and the future.