Today’s class covered how two cities in India and Japan, Kolkata and Yokohama respectively, have changed, especially during the 1800s and 1900s. Kolkata is the current capital of West Bengal with 16 million people living in 700 square miles. Dr. Shaya presented on Kolkata (formerly known as Calcutta). Kolkata was located In the 1900s, the era of empires, Britain created a trading post in Kolkata through the East India Company. This was one of the first colonial cities in India when the British began injecting their infrastructures. Soon with the arrival of the British, Kolkata became the capital of British India, growing from a village to a city. One evidence of the British impact is the architecture in Kolkata, which has a combination of both Indian and British styles.

The second half of the lecture covered Yokohama, a major port city similar to Kolkata. Dr. Jim Bonk presented on Yokohama. Under the Tokugawa shogunate, trading was banned except for Dutch. The US, however, sent warships to open ports in Japan. Threatened by the US, Japan opened ports to Europe and America. The opening of the ports allowed new ideologies in Japan. Japan began expanding its trade and economy, reinforcing its military force with growing imperialism, and developing the Public Health System and biopolitics.

In Monday’s class on the 5th, we covered some common fallacies in thinking about history, such as teleology. We then covered an overview of the key forces and trends of the 1900s, after which Professor Friedman went in depth on the city of Jaffa and its surrounding influences.

Jaffa was a small port city, which became a focal point of change in the 1900s. The city was a point of contact between the European Christendom and the Ottoman Empire. During this time, a weakened Ottoman Empire was attempting reform in order to remain competent with Europe. This reform included the transformation of land from communal to private use that resulted in peasants losing land to become tenant farms. The Ottoman Empire also signed an agreement with 5 European states that allowed these nations to do trade within the Ottoman Empire without being subject to Ottoman laws. Land became commonly used to produce cash crops for export to Europe, and the land of Jaffa was no exception with it being used to produce Jaffa oranges. This trade with Europe was expedited by the invention of the steamship which made travel across the Mediterranean easier. The steamship also bolstered another significant influence on Jaffa which was the draw of tourism and religious pilgrimage to Jerusalem that caused the land outside Jaffa to be established as a Jewish agricultural community. Ultimately, by studying the city of Jaffa, we can better contextualize and understand the forces of change that were occuring more broadly between Europe and the Ottoman Empire in the 1900s.

In today’s class we were taught by two professors. As there are two bloggers we will be splitting today’s class up by the content taught by the different professor’s. I will be focusing on professor Shaya’s content, although I will not be ignoring professor Friedman’s contribution to today’s class. Today we reviewed key terms and how to think as an historian in preparation for a deep dive into the world in 1900 which Professor Friedman started today with her introduction to the port city of Jaffa. 

Some main points that professor Shaya taught us about thinking like an historian was to avoid thinking that a certain path in history was certain as you can not judge the present or the future by the past. The second point that professor Shaya discussed was how thinking about history in very simple terms can be detrimental and a disservice to the history as any historical event is inherently complex making it the historian’s job to peel back the layers of this complex nature. After these two points on being an historian, professor Shaya turned to providing a global context of the world in 1900. Professor Shaya discussed the large empires spanning the globe at this time in history China and the Ottoman Empire, and the newer empires France, Great Britain and, Netherlands. He also discusses the second industrial revolution that spurred the world to international trade leading to what he called “globalization 1.0.” After this professor Shaya ceded the floor to professor Friedman who talked about the port city of Jaffa.

In Friday’s class on the 2nd, we reviewed the past readings from previous classes and how these perspectives can be utilized to compare diverse views of other nations. Marks established interrelated themes of the contemporary world that are easier to comprehend, whereas Benedict Anderson and Dipesh Chakrabarty created elaborate theories of the modern world.

As a class, we consulted the differences between universal constructs and other countries. The “universal” construct of basic human rights were debated. One approach that a student expressed was the theory of ethical relativism- the assumption that people can share the same morals, but that they may look different from person to person. This theory is dependent on cultural differences. The context of globalization is also reliant on culture, specifically in the present day due to political discrepancies. Some countries believe that there is a wrong and right way to govern a society, which is a large reason why the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was established. By considering the differences in universal constructs, we can discover a way to assess other countries without a Eurocentric perspective.

In today’s class, we highlighted some key authors from the past two weeks. Readings from Benedict Anderson and Dipesh Chakrabarty allowed us to engage at a higher level with their theories on modernity, whereas Robert Marks’ textbook introduction and conclusion later rounded out our understanding of the modern world.

Anderson challenges the contemporary notion of a nation by describing it as a construct. Removing the structure of a nation-state provides fluidity, increasing autonomy by withholding the bounds of a particular territory or language. Nations evolve with time as a product of culture; however, our understanding of this evolution as modernity has been held through a Eurocentric lens. As such, Chakrabarty urges us to consider multiple structures of modernity. In this way, there is the freedom to adapt or translate ideas across the world based on one’s own terms. Exploring history in this way allows us to deconstruct a Eurocentric worldview and understand how the hegemonic systems of today came about.

In class on the 31st, we talked about two authors. One was Anderson, who shared the concept of a nation an imaginary one that is dicatated by a social construct. A key factor he believed played to our modern social construst was print capitalism, ie., modified media. The other author, Chakrabarty, shared more on the modernity of nations. He supposed that most concepts followed today in nations, like citizenship, stem from european countries/ influence. He suggested to translate, adapt, and remake these concepts to better suit other countries. In other words, let countries modernize themselves based on what works for them rather then the european/ western system.

Chakrabarty also brought up political modernity which the rule by modern institutions of the state, bureaucracy and capitalist enterprise. This had my group wondering how Anderson’s thinking of social construct and the relationship with capitalist enterprises affect the world and it’s overall economy. Some countries that aren’t catered to, like those in South Africa, face continued challenges related to their economy, and as such things dictated by it, like healthcare and funding for schools. Is modern capitalism, which is mostly controled by people in the west, the modern form of imperialism/ colonialism?

For class today, we discussed the reading Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson. He highlights nations as social constructs and that nations are contingent and products of history. He gives us three concepts for humans to fall away from to make an imagined nation. Those concepts are a single language of truth, belief in Devine rule, and a vision of a time in which human history was indistinguishable from cosmology.

To fast forward toward the end of class we discussed an era of globalization that either started in the 1970s or the 1980s to the present. The vast expansion of international trade and commerce. Also, the remarkable developments of the modern world. Also, trade developments and hardship in separate modern countries. For example, South America used to be super wealthy but as time went it holds some of the poorest countries in the world due to the development of trading internationally.

In today’s class we talked about the reading The Origins of the Modern World by Robert Marks. We started by looking at the 4 interrelated themes that Marks thinks define the modern world. Those themes are industrialization/capitalism, nation-states, the gap between the wealthiest and poorest parts of the world, and the impact of humans on the environment. 

We then discussed the idea of eurocentrism and the rise of the West. Eurocentrism is the view that Europe is historically advantaged with some special quality(‘s) that have allowed them to progress further than the rest of the world and become the main agent of world history. This idea that the West was uniquely gifted or special was also used to justify and explain the colonization of other countries through a narrative called the rise of the west. We then went on to talk about what is wrong with eurocentrism and how the terms contingency, accident, and conjecture are related to the dominance of the West.