If Columbus had not taken the actions that he did, the people of the new world may have overthrown him and the western influence and that could have changed the world as we know it forever. This article provides a lot of information that can resolve the controversy over Western Civilization as a whole. Western Civilization is seen as a powerful influence filled with corruption and violence, but according to the article the West has been under attack for centuries. As stated, “Whether it was the Viking, Saracen, Magyar hordes plundering the Carolingian Empire, to Al-Qaida blowing up commutes in New York, Madrid or London.” This sentence shows that the West is only a superpower because it has faced so many obstacles and overcome them all. Everyone has such negative things to say about Western influence but if one of these outside forces overthrew Western Civilization, people would be saying the bad things about that society as well.
He sees the Vietnam War on the whole as not only a waste of time, men, and resources for the Americans, but also a cause of “huge fissures …in US society” (Harman 572). In contrast, Bentley and Ziegler view the topic from a much more broad-based point of view. They do not point out America’s earlier winnings, but rather focus on
The instability and inconsistency of the “American” during bouts of contention fortifies his central claim of the mutability of national identity. America’s history of warfare is definitive evidence of the expansion and contraction of people to be considered apart of the American citizenry. Higher prominence was stressed on the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion the more substantial the rights of citizenship were. Foner articulates that the definition of these rights have changed as a result of battles at Americas illusory border- the demands of excluded groups for inclusion. For example, Foner specifies that following the Civil War and also in the 1950s and 60’s “the struggle for full citizenship by former slaves and their descendants inspired similar claims by other groups and transformed what it is to be an American.”(Pg.
Be Specific! Henry Kissinger defines history as, “History is the memory of states.” This means that the history was told through the powerful, the ones who won wars in history. Kissinger’s meaning of history is compromised of inconsistent accounts from many different people with different intentions. Howard Zinn’s approach differs from Kissinger’s because Zinn would rather history to be told through more of a peoples view. The memory of the people.
Coty Browning History 104: Section 5073 The Loewen Assignment 1. I believe that Loewen’s main argument in the chapter is to recognize that almost everything within American history textbooks is either wrong or unverifiable. He claims that we have been duped by an immense concoction of “lies, half-truths, truths, and omissions that is in large part traceable to the first half of the nineteenth century. He clearly lists mistakes that textbooks engage in such as underplaying previous explorers, debating where military expansion came from, amassing wealth and dominating other people by the means of winning esteem. Loewen states that “People from other continents had reached the Americas many times before 1492” (33).
His abhorrent policy of suppressing dissent and punishing those with opposing viewpoints. These are the values that belie the current definition of liberalism and social progression. These are the viewpoints that suggest a more complex worldview. Researching this paper I found that Wilson led a very different life than what I imagined. The time period of his presidency was subject to very different morals and viewpoints than we have today.
Americans felt that since they had no representation in Parliament, and that there were decisions being made for them without proper representation, that they were slaves to the forceful word of the British crown. Even some countrymen in Great Britain felt that the Americans were being treated unfairly. Lord Camden believed that Americans were not being given their natural born rights as men. “My position is this – I repeat it – I will maintain it to my last hour, - taxation and representation are inseparable: - this position is founded on the laws of nature,” (pg.95, Major Problems in the Era of the American Revolution, Brown). It seems there was a miscommunication, because Britain was treating the Americans different from other British and also wanted to keep major control in anyway, like restricting trade from any other country (like France and Spain).
However, the pseudo-science of climate and geography that de Pauw, in particular, had used to reframe this familiar theme presented clear and problematic implications for Creoles: if the American climate, rather than race or culture, was responsible for the Native Americans’ civilizational deficits, if, indeed, European species degenerated upon exposure to the New World’s temperature and vapors, then Creoles, too, could be described as inferior, and subjected to the treatment Europeans accorded their inferiors. Predictably, the Creole response to the threat implied by the new naturalism was furious, their cause championed by luminaries including the New Spaniard Francisco Javier Clavigero, the Chilean Giovanni Ignazio Molina, the Quiteño Juan de Velasco, the Pennsylvanian Benjamin Franklin, and the Virginian Thomas Jefferson.39 As they churned out reams of criticism of Buffon, de Pauw, and Raynal, these Creole intellectuals increasingly perceived threats, not only to their equality with European-born Britons and Spaniards, but their to their superiority vis-à-vis non-white Americans. By
Colonial America, settled by Western Europeans, initially displayed social and cultural characteristics similar to the group by which it was founded. As America grew, population density increased, government was established, and a notion of ‘civilization’ was embedded into the American mindset. The previous influences, in combination with other factors, such as America’s distance from Europe, helped the United States wage and win the Revolutionary war. The US, gaining it’s Independence, inevitably was to evolve it’s own unique cultural traits. Early America portrayed the wild frontier as part of their national identity, while common colonial American ideology stigmatized the associated Native American culture as less civilized, as savage, and as subordinate to ‘modern’ eighteenth and nineteenth century societies.
Lindsay Dick HSTA 453 Clow 18 December 2010 Final exam What is the significance of the tribal entity to Native American culture and identity? On a symbolic level, its importance is complex and often contradictory, subject to imposed definitions and expectations from white policymakers and the mainstream American public. On a pragmatic level, the tribe has overall proved an ineffective political and economical agent on the part of its individual members. It has even been argued that the tribal entity is an invented one, fabricated by policymakers to meet their own ends. The twentieth century has witnessed the defense, destruction and revival of the tribe as a political, economic and cultural entity.