Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) and the Modernization of Turkey

Mustafa was a very famous young man who led his people to victory and independence . It was him who founded the Turkish Republic and became its first president. Many of his people were surprised with how much he was able to accomplish in such a short amount of time. He was a military hero when he came back from the Dardanelles in 1915. It was then that he decided to lead his nation to liberation. A powerful leader, he crushed all those who opposed them. He put an end to the power of the Ottoman empire. He was president of his nation for an impressive 15 years.
Mustafa's main goal for Turkey was to modernize his nation. He didn't want his people to follow the same old ways of the surrounding lands. He wanted to give his nation a new sense of dignity, equality and happiness. One of the most important things he did was make religion an individual conscience. Christians and Jewish people were free to practice their faith as much as they pleased. He also gave his people modern equality. Even peasants, who were greatly ignored in the Ottoman Empire, were considered important. Even the sense of style became different.

They wore European hats instead of the Fez.(which was now prohibited) Citizens even got their own surnames. They even produced their own Western Calendar. Mustafa created a secular civilization. Secularism is when Religion is separated from all public affairs because they are so apart from the other country because they don't share same religion beliefs.

Film lesson:"Ghandi"

Gandhi was a very important for history, he became one of the most important person to the Indian nation from the harsh rule of Great Britain. Some of the ways things Ghandi did to oppose british rule were always acts of non-violence. Gandhi would lead a march to some near factory of some sort. There, he would protest in a peaceful way, with his followers right behind him. Another thing Gandhi did was produce his own supplies. In India, both salt and clothes were costing the people a whole bunch. To save themselves from this, Gandhi declared that all the Indian people would make their own clothes.

He also led the salt march and he did this by going to the ocean with people and taking out the salt from the ocean and this saved them money. The british did not like this because they were losing money so the sent troops to where Ghandi was and the people went up to the troops and let them beat them and this made britain look bad. Ghandi was someone people looked up to also because if a follower of him would commit violence he would fast until the violence would completely stop.

Finally India got its independence because britain was at another war so they had to start worrying about their country so they gave up on India, but Ghandi was shot by people who didn't like his ideas because Ghandi wanted everyone to live together.

The Russian Revolution

The Russian Revolution was a bunch of revolutions in Russia during the year 1917. The Russians demanded a revolution because Czar Nicholas II was preventing any change and stopped anyone who tried to take his throne. When Czar was finally removed a temporary government was created. Russia still continued to fight in WWI and refused to leave the war, the new temporary government created was a democratic government, but the peasants revolted against the landowners and factory owners.

In the revolution there was a clash between the democratic government and the Bolshevik party. The Bolshevik party then signed a treaty with Germany and left the WWI because they were no match for a country with so many power and weapons russians had never seen. The Bolsheviks used Karl Marx's idea of communism and formed their own government and this led to the first country using carl marx communism. The land part was for communism, the Bolshevik party led by Lenin who wanted all russians to revolt against landlords and factory owners and then take their land.

The Causes Of WWI

One of the main reasons of World War I was because of nationalism which means respect for ones country. Militarism also played its role in this war because it was a country who was always ready for war. The biggest cause of the war was on June 28th, 1914. It was the assassination of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand. The killing was done by a Serbian nationalist who killed the Archduke on his trip to Sarajevo.

This led to Austria blaming the Serbians for this incident and pulled this into the brink of war. One after another countries started to defend one another. Germany considered Austria to be on the same side as them so they would be able to help them out in war. Soon other countries decided to join saying if they declare war on Serbia then they declare war on the opposing country. One after another led to the beginning of World War One. Once this happened Austria allied with germany and with that power had total control over the serbians and then two alliances formed the triple alliance which consisted of Germany,Austria-Hungary,Italy and there was also the triple Entente which had the United Kingdom,France and Russia.

The Opium War

The Opium Trade in China between the British and the Chinese was the very first drug war of the 19th century and provoked a great war. It was called the Opium War Opium is a preparation made from the juice of poppy seedpods and used to produce heroin.The drug was mainly produced in and shipped from the East Indies to China by British merchants. This addictive drug had gotten many Chinese badly hooked by the early 1800s, this highly addictive drug led china to fall money wise and its army began to collapse.

This made tax collectors charge more and more to local villages and made the people poorer and poorer. These drugs used got the chinese mad and they stopped trading for opium, this raged the british and they declared war on the chinese. The british used their industrialized weapons to fight the chinese, these battles went on for three years. Finally the chinese people were defeated easily because of the more advanced technology that the British hold due to their industrialization of the industrial revolution.They made china sign a treaty that enabled china to give the British trade and obligated china to open trading ports.

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.