Chapters 17-18-20

Chapters 17-18-20

In my opinion, the phrase that would sum up these three chapters is, “Liberty and justice for all… sort of.”  In Chapter seventeen we are introduced to the era of “revolution” and to the “enlightenment” theorists putting their money where their mouth is.  It all begins with the American Revolution in North America.  The Declaration of Independence is enacted and the British are defeated unifying the 13 colonies into the United States of America.  The Declaration of Independence was the first of its kind document, in that it guaranteed all citizens certain rights and equality… sort of.  It certainly did this for white males, but not so much for women and far less for slaves or any other ethnic group.  France quickly followed suit and many others, such as Haiti, México and South America defeated Spanish and Portuguese rule.  As a natural progression to the idea of all men being created equal, slavery was soon seen around the world as directly violating this rationale.  Slavery was soon abolished in the United States and elsewhere.  The attention was now aimed at universal suffrage and equal rights for women, which also occurred in phases around the globe.

Independence was exercised differently from country to country with different results.  The United States was exceptional in that what it was creating was a brand new nation made up of a diverse cultural background.  They knew what they didn’t want and went about making it happen relatively unhindered.  In Haiti, México and South America, the sizeable native or mixed populations resulted in a different outcome.  They had to recreate trade agreements and figure out what they were going to export and import.  They relied heavily on financing from abroad and eventually made it work, but did not come close their economic achievements pre-revolution.  By comparison, the power and wealth that the United States was building was and is unequaled.

The Industrial Revolution that followed transformed the globe.  It multiplied outputs of goods and services exponentially.  It also created unbelievable wealth for those pioneering countries.  What it mostly created was GREED.  This greed led to a new wave of colonization in Africa that resembled that of North and South America before their independence.  Africa was quickly divided up among a few different nations.  What followed was an era of unbridled slavery and brutal domination of the native Africans by the colonizing nations.  It made me sick to read all the atrocities that the natives endured in the name of capitalism.  It blows my mind how someone who is supposed to be educated and a Christian could possibly rationalize what they did in the name of the almighty dollar, pound or peso.  What was awesome was how the natives came to realize that education was their salvation.  The colonists soon realized their error but by then it was too late.  The Africans’ western education, along with the new grouping of tribes was used as an instrument of unification.  The colonizers’ grouping the natives by commonalities into tribes was meant to be derogatory, but it actually gave them a reason to come together and help one another.  It was really inspiring to see that despite the colonists’ best efforts to subjugate them, the native Africans were not going to be defeated.