An important theme from both the reading and our class discussion today was the impact that Eurocentric ideas had on the history of Africa. This topic has been a highly debated subject among contemporary historians due to its contentious role in world history. Eurocentric thought on African history consists of the idea that there is no history before European colonization due to the inability of westerners to transcribe ancient African texts. On the other hand, Afrocentric ideas promote the thought that Africa is a place of vibrant history, stemming from its beginnings in ancient Egypt. As we discussed in class, the European explanation for its rule in Africa consisted of validating its actions by claiming that African nations weren’t civilized and it was the Europeans’ job to civilize them. This point can be disproved by observing Africa’s extensive history in the middle ages where it possessed a much more advanced infrastructure than anything in the west despite Europeans’ refusal to acknowledge this history and insistence on falsely referring to Africa during those times as “Medieval Africa.” Overall, it’s clear that the theme of Eurocentrism has a history of repeating itself no matter what area of the globe is in question.

In today’s class, our guest speaker described the state of Latin America today, specifically in Mexico, Brazil, and Venezuela. Some of the trends in this time include nationalism, efforts to diversify economy, and revolutionary changes. One major theme from today was how those in power act in ways that benefit themselves at the expense of their country. In Mexico, the indigenous groups had a large influence in collective land ownership. Villages or communities would collectively own the land and farm it for themselves. Then, the government made a shift to private ownership, so companies could come in and turning family farms into plantations, which lowered the residents quality of life. Additionally, the high demand for drugs and guns in the U.S. drives the power of the cartels and makes fighting corruption in government extremely difficult.

In Brazil, even someone like President Lula, a former labor organizer himself, who created successful social programs that lifted families out of poverty, still got caught in a money laundering scandal. The two presidents that followed were also involved, but the leftists were the ones who faced jail time. The speaker mentioned how politicians would utilize populism to “represent a neglected majority”, but ultimately act selfishly to remain in power. Some questions this left me with are if its possible for legitimate politicians to succeed in the systems of these countries? Is there something structural in the government that forces even those who do good things for the people to become corrupt?

Yesterday in class, Dr. Holt gave a brief rundown of 500 years in Latin America. Dr. Holt began by challenging us to think of the major influences. Latin America is diasporic, and therefore thinking about culture instead of just political nation-states, reflecting the ideas posed by the section of Holloway, is important. Think of Catholicism’s influence as a major institution of colonial power. The Tordesillas, was a treaty where the catholic church divided the world; half for Portugal, and half for Spain to colonize. Once Europeans began creating cities, they would build a prison, a town counsel building, and a catholic church. One of their main goals was to civilize Indigenous people. Dr. Holt explained the typology, or different types of colonialism. The two we focused on in reference to Latin America, were the planter and extractive types. Extractive colonialism was motivated by raw goods exemplified by gold, and silver mines in central Mexico and Peru. Indigenous peoples were forced to send their men to mine under dangerous conditions. This type of colonialism relies on local knowledge and access to resources. Planter colonialism describes the mass production of crops. It does not rely on local knowledge or people but instead the import of enslaved Africans. It involves a more direct way of enforcement, where planter colonialism can be more hands off (as long as imports and taxes are going smoothly). Brazil and the Caribbean were under this type of rule with massive sugar plantations. Brazil having the largest import of African enslaved peoples, Dr. Holt led us into race creation as a product of colonialism. Europeans created racial categories and assigned power to them to create a hierarchy in which they are at the top. As a result of this, they became highly concerned with racial mixing, particularly with Black people, the lowest on the hierarchy. One cannot understand Latin America without its African and Indigenous contributions. In trying to, you erase Latin America all together. These ideas persist today, but also existed within the Independence movements of the early 1800s. The people given power under colonial rule wanted to keep that power and were against Indigenous or Black Latin Americans gaining any. We then had to speed through the shift to neocolonialism, an indirect colonialism that rules through economic power by which beliefs and influence can be spread socially, that started by the 1880s, and the shift from European influence to U.S. majority influence in the 20^th century.

In today’s class, we went through an overview of the history of Latin America in the latest 500 years. A key take-away is that Latin America is statistically the most unequal region in the world and a rising middle class population. One reason behind this phenomenon was the entrenched structural inequalities by colonialism. Before occupation of colonial powers (Spain and Portugal), there were civilizations, such as the Aztec Empire, the Maya Empire, and the Inca Empire, throughout North and South America continent with large-scale agriculture and big urban spaces. The colonizers took advantage of Latin America as both planter and extractive colonies. This heavily influenced the economic, political, and social structure of the region. And even after the colonies gain independence in early 20th century, their economy and society were not able to break free from the control of former colonial powers (neo-colonialism).

Another take-away is that the culture of Latin America is not static. Similarly, both the place and the history of Latin America is not a result of a teleological process (Thomas Holloway). Instead of passively being influenced by the cultures of colonial powers, Latin America also impact these dominant cultures in an ongoing transculturation process.

in class on Wednesday 9/14/2022, Professor Jeff Roche was a guest speaker and discussed the changes in America during the 19th and 20th centuries.

At the start of the 19th century, America was not the world power it would soon become. There were a multitude of factors in Americas lack of power, the lack of a standing army and little interest in international affairs being among the more prevalent. America had burtsted on to the international scene by the end of the century due to “American Exceptionalism”, the belief that America was created by God in an exceptional manor and should act as a role model for the rest of the world. This newfound American identity helped the development of the country too railroads, a population boom, western expansion, industrialization and trade helped to bring America into the spotlight. America became THE industrial power in the world with an abundance of natural resources to be put towards industrial trade. Americas exportation of products made way for a major economic growth that was initially unstable. The American economy was able to find its feet and stabilize on monopoly of markets throughout the US. America would expand its democratic rights to other groups in the country and begin to imperialize by the start of the 20th century.

Teddy Roosevelt was a major factor in Americas rise during the mid-20th century. His push for a strong standing army helped to prepare America for its role in WW2. US citizens were 3for the most part very reluctant to enter WW2 and get involved in foreign affairs. with the help of strong anti-Nazi propaganda and pearl harbor the American people warmed up to the idea of helping in the war. the events of WW2 helped to develop the sense of America becoming the “world police” and intervening in other affairs, especially those that involved communism. The strong ant-communism push was what lead to the Cold War at the tail end of the 20th century. The threat of communism and nuclear annihilation sparked a major increase in American military spending, today, America spends more on its military than the next 11 countries combined.

In class today guest lecturer, Dr. Jeff Roche, spoke about the history of the United States in the late 19th century through the 20th century and the ideological changes that occurred during that time period.  

In the late 19th century, The United States was a second-rate foreign power with no standing army. There was little interest from the public in being involved in colonialism. Then this idea of American exceptionalism came to fruition employing the idea that America is a guiding light. That it is a place which every other country in the world should aspire to be like. From American exceptionalism came the idea of Manifest Destiny which stated that the expansion of the United States throughout the American continents was an order from God and was both justified and inevitable. 

Teddy Roosevelt was majorly interested in the expansion of American power. He feared that the American frontier was gone and the way to replace that was with the military. He believed that America should act as police officers of the World. There was major Anti-Imperialist backlash to Teddy Roosevelt’s mindset. Many Americans did not even want to get involved in World War II until Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. To persuade a shift in the public’s mindset the United States government released a lot of propaganda that fueled hate and fear for certain groups.  

By the beginning of the Cold War ideology within the United States had taken a drastic shift. 4/5 Americans would have preferred a nuclear war to living under Communist rule. People started to believe that the United States had the responsibility to protect other countries from falling into darkness and considered themselves the leader of the “free world”. By the end of the 20th century the United States had built the largest military the world has ever seen and now spends over $700 billion yearly to fund it. That is the price of American exceptionalism. 

We started the class off by discussing how we got to where we are today. How we look at the world through Eurocentrism and modernity. We also discussed the different regions we have discussed in class. This includes the city Jaffa, Kolkata, and Yokohama in the 20th century and how they developed throughout the century. We also asked any questions about the class on Friday about the rise of Rio de Janeiro and Dakar.

Later in class, we learned what would be on our first exam this coming Friday and how to prepare for it. The study guide can be found on our class website under the resource tab and then click handout. You should be familiar with the terms and public figures that have been mentioned throughout the first part of our class. The exam is divided into three parts. You will have 10 minutes to answer 10 one-word answer questions out of the 15 questions given. In part 2 you will also be given 10 minutes to answer 4 short answer questions out of the 8 given. Lastly, you will have 30 minutes to write a 3 paragraph short essay on 1 of the 2 topics given. If you have any questions you need to be answered from the study guide, there will be an online meeting this Thursday, September 15, at 8 pm on Teams.

For the second part of the class, Dr. Shaya lectured on “Europe and the World.” We started off this lecture with the sad news of the passing of Queen Elizabeth. We discussed how she stood for the stability of the country throughout the world wars and the following crises. We then moved into learning about the timeline of the United Kingdom which really showed a huge growth and then a decrease in its status as it started by being a set of kingdoms in the islands of Western Europe, to reach its peak as an Empire between 1910 and 1930 by controlling 25% of the world land and 25% of the world’s population to their gradual fall as an Empire after the 1930s. One of the reasons for this fall was the quick decolonization starting with India and Pakistan in 1947, then Ghana in 1957, and lastly Kenya in 1960, after an 8-year rebellion being fought.

At the end of the class, we talked about a couple of takeaways to keep in mind after today’s class. One of those was the difference between Eastern and Western Europe, especially in their political aspects post World War era. Also, we talked about how Europe represents a World Power, especially with the formation of the European Union. Moreover, we mentioned the Welfare State and the US’s help in founding the Welfare of Europe.

For the second half of class, we learned about the city of Dakar, which is the the capital of Senegal – through the presentation of Dr. Ibra Sene. We went over some background information on the city, learning that it has a population of around 3.3 million people and that it is a major tourist attraction. We also recognized that Dakar is an important economic and cultural center and acts as a global hub for multiple organizations.

We learned about how Dakar was once just a tiny village that belonged to the Kajoor Kingdom up to the late 1700s. Although the Lebou Republic had established its power over Dakar around 1795, the establishment of a French Military Post in 1857 led to the annexation of the Lebou Republic. In 1863 Dakar’s first port was installed, and 32 years later (in 1895) French West Africa (FWA) had firmly established it’s power in Dakar. A few years later Dakar would become the seat of the government general of FWA, In the early to mid 1900’s, Dakar sees the establishment of colonial medical schools and a plague outbreak. in 1960, Dakar would gain independence and become a center of protest against neo-colonialism.

Beginning our discussion of the day, we went over what we considered to be some of the overarching themes present throughout the world in the beginning of the 20th century. With imperialism affecting almost all of the countries in the world (whether it be by force, submission, or resistance), militarism and social Darwinism were also brought up. One of the most beneficial additions in the 20th century was the continued expansion of trade; a subject we saw highlighted within the Japanese city of Yokohama. Yokohama was a small port city focused on exports with a population of 200k. Under Japan’s tight regime, they were not allowed to trade with foreigners, with the exception of the Dutch and the Chinese. This all changed when the US brought gunboats to the city in 1853 and threatened them to enact trade. Lacking much in the way of options, the Japanese government was forced to comply, and Yokohama was developed as a center of trade. They made a name in selling silk and silk products, as the US wasn’t outputting as much cotton due to their civil war, and China and Europe were suffering silkworm blights. With so many people coming in and out of the city, it did not take long for disease to take root. Namely, cholera took the lives of hundreds of thousands of Japanese citizens, and the government looked to their new visitors as the cause – specifically the Chinese. This compounded with the Japanese government’s preexisting xenophobia made many citizens wary of outsiders, and helped give cause to their goals of gathering colonies. Within decades, the Japanese had set out to create “clean” communities across the Pacific, with the Chinese pictured as the root of their problem. The story of Yokohama’s past provides an interesting explanation of how imperialism can be justified (politically, not morally) by factors such as trade and social Darwinism.