Christopher Colombus and Cortez

Around the time of the late fifteen hundreds and sixteen hundreds, there were certain individuals that would change the lives of almost everyone around the world. This all started with the want to go to India and make a trade route. This was after Marco Polo and his discovery of China and the countries near it. It was originally easy for the European countries and then the rising of the Ottoman empire. This made importing goods a problem, because they were fined heavy taxes because the ottomans owned the land that they had to cross in order to get the goods and get them to their destination. The Europeans always thought that the world was flat, so the Spanish figured that if the world was flat, that if they kept sailing West, that they would reach India in no time. By the 1840's, they they had plans to try to get to India. Columbus used this idea to take three ships and thousands of men to sail their and come back to what ever country allowed the funding. The king of Portugal decided that it was to costly, and The Kings of england was too late. The Spanish had already hired Columbus to do this. On August 3, 1492, he departed on his way to sail into something no one had been on, in the history of European history. He sailed and sailed, but he had measured the distance to far, this had caused the sailors to go mad. A storm kicked in and destroyed two ships and hundreds of men. Mutiny, which means when the crew of a ship go against the orders of a captain, and usually result in the captain being thrown off the ship, was about to happen, land was spotted. This day was October 12, 1492. When he arrived, he saw the natives, this is why they called them Indians, because they believed that they were actually in India, but they were in the present day Bahamas. However, as they explored the land on his fourth voyage, they discovered Central and South America. This was when conquistadors was introduced. They were pretty much like generals, they controlled big armies and were used to conquer distant lands. Hernando Cortez was assigned to conquer the Aztecs, who were superstitious people who believed that sacrifice was necessary for the gods to favor them. The conquered these lands with no problem because of the fact that he had guns, meanwhile the natives used rocks and spears to fight. The natives had never seen, Horses, guns and these Spanish people, who they thought were originally gods. After conquering and wiping out the natives, with extreme labor and diseases such as small pox . They took the gold and other materials that they could, such as gold, silver and jade. In review, Christopher Columbus sailed to the Bahamas and The conquistadors used their superior soldiers and guns to kill the natives to take the gold and other useful items. They would hold these lands for a long time and they would be the first of their era to reach South America.

Mikhail Gorbachev and the collapse of communism

What he did was, that he made the former soviet union a better place by improving what the people like about it. An example of this was, how they sold goods. Factory owners made a certain amount of goods, after that, they would stop making until they had to make more. So he urged factory owners to make more, so that the citizens could buy more of those goods. He tried to improve economic restructuring. This was called Perestroika and he had another word which was called Glasnost which means openness. He let the people complain and let them choose what they wanted to complain about, and the government would fix it. He even said to old communist rulers that they wouldn't support them if a battle happened, because they were starting to turn into a democratic society, where they could vote for the people rather then have to just agree with whatever they elected people decide. This trend, however it did not start in the former Soviet Union, it started in Poland where they were trying to fight against the government. They started a union called solidarity and they government discussed about letting them have their way, and then they banned it. The thing that happened next was the fact that people stopped making a lot of goods, people were having shortages of food. They wanted to put military force to make them work, but they knew that it wouldn't help the economy. So they let them have elections, and the people did not want communism, but they were rejected by the Polish people and they choose solidarity members. Hearing of what the Polish had done, the Hungarians decided that they could do it too if they set there minds to it. They opened up a small enterprise so that they could be by their selves. Then they got some radicals into the party and that person made the party collapse, and in this collapse, change was made.

Collapse of Communism

The collapse of Communism happened because of the fact that places in the Soviet Union started to revolt. Another reason for the collapse is because for the fact that capitalism started to come into the country. This divided the country in half, and those who were encouraged by capitalism, started to look for higher paying jobs. The reason why is because farmers don't get as much money as those in higher paying jobs, this ruined the economy because they had to work harder for more money then they would get if they were in communism. This would cause the people to get angry at communism because of the fact that they ere getting less money in communist society rather then a capitalist society. Statues were torn down as a result, meanwhile, people in both countries knew that there weren't going to be an attack because of missiles, this theory of missiles blowing up was called MAD or mutually assured destruction. People were terrified because of the fact that nuclear war could have resulted from all of this, and the whole world would have been ceaselessly and mercilessly obliterated for no real reason. After the fall of communism, the people in Germany started to take down something that had blocked families and relatives from each other for such a long time. They started to tear down the Berlin wall because of the fact that they wanted top get across to the other side, and they had not been to the other side for about 28 years. This was the official sign that the communist reign of the now Russia was over.

Nelson Mandela and Apartheid

Apartheid is just like Segregation, except the only difference is that instead of it being in America, it was in South Africa, not the whole country. Apartheid was a very serious issue and lasted from 1948 to 1994. It pretty much gave whites rights and prevented non-white people from having rights and experiencing freedom. Nelson Mendela is on of those people who would try to get freedom from the oppressors of his country. He tried doing violent revolts, only to cause himself to be put in jail for starting an uprising. There were many groups of people that would try to stop apartheid because they felt that it was wrong to be doing segregation to African people.

African Independence

During the times after World War 2, The Africans started to really pursue independence. To do this they would have to rebel against the Europeans, but the Europeans were actually thinking of how they were going to give the country back to the people. The reason why is because after World War 2, they needed money to repair the country. This made them think, how much money is used to control these colonies that we have in Africa. They started the Negritude movement. This caused a lot of revolutions because of the fact that the European rulers had treated them so harshly. This was one of the main reasons for the revolution, the other main reason was because they wanted their independence. They started by letting more African people be able to be in the government. This wasn't a big enough change, so they rebelled, also known as the Kenya and the Mau Mau rebellion. The English had seized farmland that was really important, so they decided to take it back by means of fighting. The leader of this Kenyan rebellion was a guy named Jomo Kenyatta. Mau Mau decided that in order to gain control of the high lands, they must try to scare them off because he didn't want to start an all out war that he was probably going to use.

The Cuban Missle Crisis

The Cuban crisis was when Soviet missiles were placed in Cuba. This was very startling because Cuba is only ninety miles away from Florida, and plus the technology that the Soviets had, it would be so much easier to attack the USA from there. Since they were at war, this was assumed to be a very bad threat. At first it was just news, but then, as it was happening, JFK ordered ships and airplanes to try to see what was happening. The Soviets sent battleships of their own, violence almost seemed inevitable. It was so bad that, JFK had to send special planes to spy on Cuba, to see if they were still building bombs or if they had launched one already.It was a really intense moment because, just in case that they aimed Nukes at our cities, we did the same to theirs, we knew that they wouldn't blow it us up because then they would lose their land and so would we. All the countries were in fear of war because of World War one and two, this time it was a nuclear war. This scared every nation, even the United States and the Soviet Union, because the United states had the range for the nuclear missiles and plus, the United States had tried to take over Cuba in a failed attempt. It was an a stale mate for about eight days, but then the president made an agreement to the Soviet Union, saying that if the Soviets pulled back, then the United States would no longer try to invade Cuba, however th Soviets wanted the Americans to get their missiles out of Turkey.

NATO and The Warsaw Pact

NATO is the organization of countries to defend each other, just in case that anything should happen to another country do to the Soviet Union. This didn't go good with the Soviet Union, they saw this as a threat because some many countries against one country, so Russia made the Warsaw pact. This allied Russia with Poland and other countries. America formed these pact because they were afraid of the Russia, so they wanted allies to help them, just in case anything happened. The whole reason behind this Cold war was because of the fact that they had two different economics systems. With these pacts, they hoped to scare and intimidate the others from actually trying to attack them, they didn't want to fight because, if they did, the whole world would probably destroyed or affected by these Nuclear weapons. This was the main reason why they didn't just set off a war by nuking each other, because it would affect the whole world and would destroy these two nations.

Film Lesson - "The Right Stuff"

In the movie, the right stuff, they were competing against the Soviets because of the fact that they wanted to be in space and wanted to be in control. When the Soviets put the first satellites up, the Americans were kind of scared because they put it up before the Americans did. The soviets were winning because every time that the Americans got a little bit further then the Russians, they would do something even better, like when Americans put the first animal in space. Thats when the Russians put the first man into space. When the Americans actually reached Mach one, they were so protective of this because they didn't want the Soviets to know that they had the technology to fly at such a fast rate. The Soviets were ahead of them in the space race for a long time despite the fact that we had the best German minds developing the spaceships. A couple of scenes that will help me is when, one airplane had gotten to Mach one, and then when the spaceships kept crashing because they weren't good enough to travel into space.

Film Lesson: "Schindler's List"

This movie illustrated the version that had less of an impact on me because it wasn't as cruel as the real thing was. It was more of a movie in which the Jews weren't treated as badly and not only that, but at the end of the war, the people looked nothing like the documentary. Something that is powerful to me in the movie is how a German Nazi went from hating the Jews, to trying to save them from getting killed by working for him. They would make weapons and be feed well, unlike the Labor camps and the eventual death camps. There still were some powerful scenes in this movie, such as Auschwitz was first made, and when the little girl died and you saw her body being thrown into the giant fire. There was also when the Germans were taking the Jews out of Krakow Ghettos, the mass exterminations and sending them to the labor camps. Examples of images that will stay in my head from this movie is the little girl wondering around while everybody was getting killed. The fear and the look on her face was so dramatic and when the children were hiding, and they went as low as to go to the bathrooms and try to hide there. This scared me alot and made me realize how badly they really had it. Words could never describe how bad they had it, so the best thing to do was the movie because it inspired me to think differently about the what the Nazi's did.

Film Lesson: "Night and Fog"

Night and fog was one of the best documentaries in terms of information, despite the fact of its gruesomeness. The film was very powerful, it has changed my perspective on the holocaust. It was kind of similar to Schindlers list because of some of the scenes in some of the movies. Such scenes as the when the Jews were working in the death camps. I think that the documentary explains it more because of the fact that it is more powerful by showing the cruel images of the holocaust. The documentary also shows what the free people would do, unlike the movie, where alot of people seemed to survive. The documentary shows the severity of how they lived and how they were forced to live for such a long time.

The Treaty of Versailles (ended WWI)

The treaty of Versailles affected Germany by making it have no army. They also said that this war was all Germany's fault. They said that Germany was behinds everything because Germany was the main aggressors in World war 1. It was signed five years after Arch duke Ferdinand was assassinated. It also said that they were really bad people and they were economically depressed because of this. The reason why they were so economically depressed was because the treaty required Germany to pay reparation money to all of the Entente side. They even lost land to prevent them from gaining back the land and to prevent another war. This treaty actually encouraged another war because of its maltreatment amongst the losing side. Even after all this punishment, they weren't even allowed to join the League of Nations because of the fact that they were very dangerous and could betray the League of Nations. For a while it stayed like this until a man named Hitler came to power. He would convince the people that fascism was the way to get back up from economic depression. The people agreed, and because this worked, they named him the ruler of Germany. I think that the treaty of Versailles led to Hitler becoming ruler because of the fact that it was so harsh on Germany, that they needed someone to take over and be tough about it. This is why Hitler looked like the man to over power the others and become the ultimate ruler. I think that historians who think that the treaty Versailles led to the rise of Hitler and fascism was correct because Germany was going through some hard times.

Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) and the Modernization of Turkey

The ottoman empire was a huge kingdom, until World War 1, this was when the Ottoman empire lost most of its land. This was due to a lose to in World war 1. One man named, Mustafa Kemal is brought a new form of government. He made the Ottoman people join up and create a new country, and it known as Turkey. He wanted Turkey to be a non-secular government. He did this by convincing them that they needed a new government and his non-secular ways should be changed to make a better government. Secular is a government based non-religion and not following what it says, instead rule the government according to facts. Such examples are religious schools, they are non-secular. Another non-secular thing is any kind of religion. Out of this, women were able to vote and have more rights. Also, because of this, there economy and social relationships with other nations increased as well.

Film Lesson: "Gandhi"

Gandhi helped the people of India by civil disobedience. He tried to unite the people to make one country, he united the people by making them not hit the British soldiers. their violence caused others to agree with Gandhi. He did the great salt march. This was when Gandhi was trying to get salt, rather the have to pay for it. He also used the violence of the police against themselves. he tried to use the fact that they were hitting harmless people, this showed the cruelty of the British. I think that they would have gotten their independence anyways, because Britain didn't have the money to do it. They were using majority of their money to repair Britain from what happened. World War two led to the destruction of some part of Britain. This made it harder to run a society.

Joseph Stalin and Totalitarianism

Totalitarianism is when the government controls all aspects of the citizens lives. They do this economically, politically, and socially. He lied to the people by saying that he would be taking over temporarily, meanwhile he was planning to stay dictator until he died. The five year plan was to keep him in power for five more years, until the man who could rule that country would run it. He decided that he would run it like he did until he died, because there was always a dictator in Totalitarianism. The great purge was when he took over and started abusing the people and their rights. He also provided them with almost no supplies. Stalin was an evil cruel dictator who abused the people and their ability to have freedom.

Film lesson: Doctor Zhivago

Dr. Zhivago depicted a society in the middle of war, with itself and other countries. It depicted this by the people trying to defeat the Russian Cavalry and they ended up getting massacred. They also showed the soldiers abandoning the war so that they would not have to be there anymore. The Russian people wanted change because the government was treating the people like they were nothing. This is why people wanted to make change, tom prevent them from having to deal with a ruler who does not care about them. They depicted communism as a political system that was unorganized. They showed this by having 13 different families living in one house, even though it originally belonged to Doctor Zhivago. He was shocked when he saw it being run like this. He was also confused on how it worked.

Causes of WWI

There were many causes to World War one. The first of many is the militarism. Militarism is a nations policy to maintain strong armed forces. The reason why is because they were competing for land. As they were, there military was increasing. Great Britain and Germany were competing for the largest navies. France, Russia, and Germany were competing for the largest military. This also put pressure on other countries to increase the number of soldiers and arms that they have. Another cause of World War one is nationalism. Nationalism is when you feel that you feel extremely loyal to a nation and concern for its welfare. Some countries wanted independence from bigger countries, meanwhile, the bigger countries thought that they were greater then anybody else. They were also looking to get land that they had lost. This would result in tensions between other countries. The third cause of World War one is the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. A man from Siberia assassinated the Arch Duke of Austria, who's name was Franz Ferdinand. This set off a bunch of declarations of war. This would form two sides. The triple Alliance and the Triple Entente. This then broke the tension and resulted in war.