Film Lesson: "Mountains of the Moon"

In class we watched a movie called "Mountains of The Moon". The movie started very intresting when Burton lived after a spear cut right through his face. This movie implied imperialism because Richard Burton and John Speke were on a mission to find the source of the Nile river. One of the fnniest parts of this movie is when the english people present the tribe with advanced technology equipment and burton gives the leader a gun, and the leader decided to shoot somone and as he did the whole tribe became terrified at the object.

On the road to find the source on of the nasties parts was when Speke was sleepin and forgot to put up his bug net and a beetle climbed up his ear. When Speke claims that he had found the Nile river problems evolve between the two explorers and Burton questions him how is Speke sure that what he has found is the source, and this leads to a trial. In the end Speke couldn't take much more and ends up killing himself.

Burton then decides not to continue saying anything after hearing that his companion has died and finalli it is proven that Speke indeed was right Lake Victoria was the source of the nile. A question that was encountered by the global class after the video was why was the lake called after the English queen when the lake was located in Africa and in the class concluded that this was due to that during that period imperialsm was occurring and since the Europeans had more better technologies they could capture and rename whatever they wanted and pleased.

Imperialism Project

Over the days we worked on a project on imperialism. What I learned was that imperialism is when one country tries to take over another country to gain control over their economic, social, and political lives. For the completion of this project we had to attach labels such as tea,cotton etc to different countries.

We also had to draw trade route to show where the products were imported from and exported from. Many of the products were transported from one place to another by ship, the main point of this project was to demonstrate which countries from Europe went to which part of the world to get thier raw materials for thier industrial revolution. Many countries went down to africa and conquered them for thier materials, others like britain n spain went to india and china south america.

When we started coloring the countries and the territory they conquered I was shocked to see so many countires from eurpoe spread all over the world to south america,north america,africa,asia. All in less than 20 years and for the purpose only to obtain slaves to do thier work and raw materials for their huge industrialization. What also outstanded me is that great countries would take advantage of their superior weapons and force people to give them the products they desierd and also trick them to give them what they want for example when british gave Chinese opium for tea, this was a trick to get the material they needed and end up leading to the opium wars.

Karl Marx and Communism

Karl Marx had an idea on starting a new idea for the working people. That idea was called communism. Communism is about the workers getting paid the same even when they all work different jobs. This also involved people not being able to own their own land or property. This was Karl Marx idea of communism and he wanted it to be spreaded all over. Karl wanted all workers to be on the same level not have different ways.

This also supported people who wanted to get the money they deserved and weren't getting. Everyone was working the same job and had to under one major owner. This is why Karl Marx wanted The "good guys" were the factory workers who didn't like the way they were being treated and workedlong hours for low wages and less time breaks. The "Bad Guys" are the Factory owners who controlled everything that happens in the factory because they controlled the workers.

Karl Marx and the industrial revolution

Karl Marx is German born in Europe. He was born a jew but his family converted to christianity. He didnt believe in god, he thought religion was a drug for the people. When he worked he thought it was unfair, unsafe and very harsh how the landlordsand owners of jobs treated the workers. From there on he urged workers to unite and fight back landlords and owners of the jobs. He felt workers rather than landlords should control the land and farms, all of his ideas were known as communism.

Communism was the term to define the communist workers of the jobs. He fought for the rights of the worker men. The ideas of Marx were not used in the communist countries. People who spoke out against the Soviet government were treated harshly. Marx died in 1883, but his ideas formed the basis of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. Mongolia became the second communist nation in 1921 and by the end of World War II many governments were overthrown by communists.

Nationalism and the Creation of Italy

Nationalism is a word used to express ones feelings for his country. Nationalism can mean many things that help supprot ones love or liking for the country. Living in the country paying government taxes voting, join military forces, getting jobs, using the countries currency, speaking the native language are many ways of nationalism. It also means that the the countrys loyalty should be represented by kings or government but by the people of the nation who live there.

Nationalism was used to create the nation of italy. Italy before it was a whole country, was separated. Each part had its own rulers, they figure this was the best way to keep democarcy alive, but the people of italy didnt approve.Giuseppe Mazzini was a ruler who supported nation states. He believed italy should be united not separated with different rulers and country laws. His goal was to unite italy, However many wars broke out because of disagreements between Giuseppe Garibaldi. Piedmont Sardinia was the largest, most powerful state in Italy. Camillo Di Cavour worked hard to expand Piedmont Sardinia's power. Giuseppe Garibaldi achieved his goal and united Italy. Now Italy was finally whole.

Simon Bolivar and Latin American Revolutions

Simon Bolivar was the main person who liberated most of the upper part of south america. With his military forces of more than 10,000 people liberated the upper part of south america. He got his ideas after making his trip to spain there he learned the ideas of the enlightenment such as Locke, Rousseau and Voltaire. Then he visited france and saw their independence. Lastly he went to United states where they had just won their independence and finally was convinced that bolivia should fight for their independence.

He lost many battles and had to retreat to many countries such as Colombia, Jamaica and Haiti, but with these defeats he gained reputation that he wanted independence. Later he made his army bigger by joining with English and Irish veterans of napoleonic wars and funds of haiti to capture bogota. By 1825 bolivar had vanished all the control of the spanish in the north of south america. Bolivar won the independence for Bolivia, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela. Bolivar was the george washington of south america.

Bolivia made named their country after Bolivar in honor of his success for defeating the Spanish army in Peru. After defeating the Spanish, Peru decided to name that territory Bolivia in honor of Simon Bolivar.

John Locke and "The Enlightenment"

The enlightenment thinkers were the first people who gathered together and decided to think of a better way of government instead of a monarchy. John locke was the one who influenced most thomas jefferson. The rights that Thomas Jefferson talks about is Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Which mean people have the right to do what without someone judging them. The power of the government comes from the people. This was made because people only were ruled by a king and only passes their crown down to their sons, and sometimes their sons weren't the best ones and failed to control a country. So thomas took the enlightenment thinkers ideas and changed them a little to form a democracy. So this way people would vote for their governments and if they saw the government was doing a bad job the people had the power to overthrow the government and replace them.

Copernicus and the trial of Galileo

There was two theories the first one was the theory of geocentrism. This theory was believed that the earth was the center of the universe and not the sun. The people just believed the word the priest said and the people also believed this theory because when they looked up to space they saw the sky going in circles(rotating).

The second theory was heliocentrism. This theory was invented in the time of the scientific revolution. This theory says that the universe revolves around the sun. Scientist saw this when they observed that different shapes were formed from the moon and planets.

Galileo believed in heliocentrism. He wanted could prove this because he invented items such as the telescope and he could see outer space from his house. The pope was believed in geocentrism so he was said to be guilty and was placed on house arrest. The time when the people found out that Galileo was right was too late. Galileo was dead.

Scientific Revolution: The Scientific Method

During the 1500's people mostly thought what Greeks believed was true. They thought the earth was the center of the universe and it revolved around us; but to the scientific proved that wrong. Scientist did experiments to prove their point such as Galileo who proved that all stones of different weights fell down at the same speed. The scientific method is based on looking at something, then you make a prediction of what could happen and then experiment on that idea a few times to prove the answer.

When these theories did not explain why something happened they had to make new theories, but this did not mean they were wrong but it could not explain all the data of the certain time. But when experiments are proven  then later there is some incompletion with the theory. For example when Newton's theory of gravity the experiments showed he was right. Then after more technology was made and Einstein proved those experiments with some errors.

Evolution Vs. Creation

Evolution

Charles Darwin thought that creatures of all kind had come from the same ancestors. He believed that we had evolved for survival of the fittest and through mutation. Also what Charles thought was that natural selection had to be involved with evolution. What Charles Darwin thought about this was that natural selection was when the animal/plant etc, had a offspring, it gave all of it's character traits to it's offspring and that would wipe out the creatures who could not survive to the environment.

Creation

This is a religious belief that the whole world, universe was made by a super natural person; but people decreased in believing in creation as scientific methods have proven much. A lot of people believe in this jewish, muslims, Islam's and christians.

In my opinion I don't believe in any theory because they all give evidence that we come from one supernatural man or we come from one ancestor. But they both have errors in their statements. For example the people who believe in creation say that we come from adam and eve but they said they had two boys. So did people expand? For creation they say keep announcing we come from one thing but where did the first thing come from?