World History since 1500. Exam #2

Allison Brown HIST 1330 Dr. Blackler March 26, 2021 Midterm Exam #2 I.D. Questions: 1. Defenestration of Prague a. In 1618, Protestants and Boheim activists literally throw Catholic priests and officials out of the windows at the Hradčany Castle which marked the beginning of a Bohemian revolt against the Habsburg Emperor Ferdinand II. Ferdinand II, a devout Catholic wished for Bohemia to return to its Catholic roots but protestants in the country looked towards a different future. This resentment between Catholics and Protestants and the Defenestration of Prague leads to the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), primarily fought between Catholics and Protestants but other European political complexities coexisted during the conflict. The Treaty of Westphalia (January 1648) ends the conflict by building on the Treaty of Augsburg, the formal recognition of Calvinism, and created the European Conference System. 2. Toussaint Louverture a. His last name meaning “the one who opened the way”, Louverture (b.1743) was fundamental in the St. Dominique Revolution and the independence of slave and indentured labor on the island. Born into slavery in modern Hati, Louverture reads the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (1789) and is inspired by the publication to lead a revolution joining with the “Free Blacks” and even the Spanish to overthrow French rule. Louverture and the events on the island are a clear indication that the Englightenment wasn’t only a European event, and impacted different colonies globally owned by European powers. 3. General Act (1885) a. The General Act are the outcomes of the Berlin Conference (1884-1885) which rationalized the European “Scramble for Africa” that had already taken place on the continent. The 3 primary outcomes of the Berlin Conference were: (1) a vow to end slavery amongst “Black and Islamic powers” in European colonies (2) declared the Congo Free state as the private property of Belgian King Leopold II, an attempt to ally European conflict in Africa and (3) all colonial conquest must be “legal” in the eyes of the European community. This “legality” established the Principle of Effectively, that European powers can only establish power over land if they actually possess them, like flying their flag or enforcing laws, showing that they are enforcing the colony. The General Act and the Conference of Berlin divided Africa, not for its own benefit but to prevent any future conflict between European powers in colonial endeavors. 4. Maleficium a. Latin, meaning an act of witchcraft with intended harm. This term was coined to label the perceived acts of witchcraft at the time in broader Europe, a forum or version of magic that denoted wrongdoing, evil-doing, a malevolence that was considered evil by society or the Church. Heinrich Kramer, a famous inquisitioner, published the Malleus Maleficarum (1586) which translates into “the Witch’s Hammer”. Witchcraft claims and the violence that came with trials were primarily targeted towards women. Nicholas Remy (1590) stating, “It is not unreasonable that this scum of humanity [witches] should be drawn chiefly from the feminine sex.” Essay Question: 1) Both the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment supposedly generated rational and universal truths. The readings for this class, however, have complicated that picture. Using specific examples, whose viewpoints were left out of these so-called rational and universal truths? What were some of the consequences of these omissions? Throughout the historian-labeled Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment, “development” and inclusion weren’t equitably distributed, remaining on the fringes of society were women, slaves/people of color, and those in the lower-socio-economic roles. The notion of Sebastian Conrad’s “multiple modernities” complicates the picture as well, ignorance of past indigenous cultures and development outside of Eurocentric notions of what “enlightenment” was can make it difficult to see the previous advancements of indigenous and minority developments globally. Beginning with the role of women in the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment, society was changing in European spheres and outwards into the New World with documents like John-Jacques Rousseau's Social Contract (1762) with notions of private property and living in civil society alongside the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (1789) and even the United States Constitution, opening with the hypocritical statement that “all men are created equal”. However, obviously missing in some of these new-thinking documents was an idea still too radical for the Enlightenment-age thinkers, the rights and autonomy of women. In Abigal Adams’s letters to her husband John during the constitutional convention, she calls on him to “remember the ladies” when composing the constitution. Abigal wasn’t only asking John Adams to acknowledge women’s autonomy in suffrage but also in the marriage laws of the time that considered a woman to literally not be a legal person when married. Women lacked the basic autonomy at this time to be considered their own person in marriage, and John Adams as well as other leaders at the time had no inclination to address these issues. With regards to the Scientific Revolution, the literal lack of female bodies at the time, because of the lack of female cadavers that hadn’t been burnt due to witchcraft charges and just the overall lack of women being executed for capital crimes, male scientists were unable to fully understand women’s anatomy which had implications on the gender’s health and safety in society as a whole. Additionally, publications like Lady Mary Wortley Montague’s letter on Turkish Small Pox Inoculation showed promise for women scholars, however, revealed the impact of monetary and societal position on academic achievements. Absent from the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment almost entirely from academia and institutions changing were individuals from lower lower-socio-economic populations, the Proletariat or the working class. As Dr. Blackler stated in the lecture, these peoples’ lives were “... anything but fun.” These populations on the margins found themselves being unincluded from the formidable changes at the time, not truly having a seat at the table or a seat at university because of their financial state that had only widened and worsened during these time periods. This lack of representation in the thought of poorer populations would lead to the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment seemingly skipping their entire social class. Later Marx’s Communist Manifesto (1848) during the Industrial Revolution would speak to these populations ostracised by mainstream wealthy society with promises of a progressive income tax, the abolition of inheritance, abolition of child labor, free public education, and the nationalization of public transportation. Undeniably excluded in the literary sense from the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment were enslaved populations and people of color. In the “New World” though, the enlightenment reached Toussaint Louverture and France’s colony St. Dominique in 1971 during the French Revolution. Louverture’s last name meaning “the one who opened the way” was fundamental in the Islands Revolution and the independence of slave and indentured labor on the island. Louverture read the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (1789) and was inspired by the publication, believing that the document must apply to him and those enslaved/indentured on the island as well. Louverture leads a revolution against the French alongside the Spanish and after complications with changing sides and even the British becoming involved results in the French abolishment of slavery throughout the empire in February 1794 because of the events on St. Dominique. Writing in 1797 to mainland France, Louverture states, “My attachment to France, my knowledge of the blacks, make it my duty not to leave you ignorant either of the crimes which they mediate or the oath that we renew, to bury ourselves under the ruins of a country received by liberty rather than suffer the return of slavery.” The case of Louverture shows that although populations of color and those enslaved were excluded primarily from the conversation, they were undeniably impacted by it and drove change in Europe because of their thoughts and revolutions. In conclusion, this disenchantment that spread outwards from the enlightenment in Europe and the Scientific Revolution in academia is a Eurocentric event that secluded women, poor populations, and people of color, but colloquially, these fringe groups were drivers of change that impacted the new world order through revolts and independent thinking outside of their society’s norms influenced by the Social Contract, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, and the United States Constitution. Conrad inEnlightenment in Global History acknowledges this undertone of the uprising and new thinking when speaking of this time period as a coined term, “Enlightenment, in other words, has a history—and this history matters; it is not an entity, a “thing” that was invented and then disseminated.” The dissemination of the enlightenment in recent years to understand the role that women, people of color, and poor populations played is essential in understanding the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment as not solely European endeavors. The exclusion of these populations during these time periods had consequences with the mainstream understanding of their viewpoints and thoughts, but modernly, historians are recognizing the role these populations played in all major movements of the time.