Welcome to MrKleff.com's quick review of world history brought to you by Noble Review, concise review books. Let's start at the beginning with the Neolithic Revolution. One day some person realized that putting seeds into the ground would lead to food. This decreased the need to be a nomad and led to permanent settlements.
One method used was slash and burn farming where forests would be burned and the ashes would become fertilizer. Also, animals were domesticated during this time. Even economies emerged, such as traditional ones that involved barter.
Then there were civilizations. People lived near water for farming and trade. Let's talk about the fertile crescent of Mesopotamia between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. There, the Sumerians had cuneiform writing and ziggurats for religious worship. The Babylonian king Hammurabi established a code which resembled an eye for an eye.
It didn't punish equally, though. In Egypt, people lived near the Nile River for farming and trade. Its flooding was predictable.
Egyptian kings were pharaohs and ruled in a theocracy on behalf of the gods. Early civilizations emerged in China near the Yangtze and Huanghe rivers, and in India around the Ganges and Indus rivers. Advanced cities with good plumbing emerged in Harappa and Mahenjo-daro in the Indus River Valley. In China, dynasties of family rule led the country. After a warring states period, Shi Huangdi expanded the Great Wall of China to keep out invaders from the north.
You also should know that the Tang in the Song gave us porcelain, paper currency, and movable type printing. Movable type printing was similar to what Gutenberg would give us with his printing press of the 15th century. Chinese emperors rose and fell through a natural dynastic cycle. An emperor had to maintain the mandate of heaven to lead.
Also in Asia, the Mongols established the world's largest empire under Genghis and Kublai Khan, but they couldn't take over Japan. It helped out that Japan was an archipelago, or chain of islands. The Japanese had samurai warriors who fought with...
bravery according to their Bushido code. Shoguns rose to power in Japan as well. But what about religion and philosophy? Meet Rick.
He will help us with Hinduism. Reincarnation meant to be born again and again. India is where Hinduism became prevalent.
The caste system is a class ranking order where one cannot leave a caste in a lifetime. Karma is the good and bad deeds that one does in a lifetime and you should also know Dharma which is a duty to honor the caste. It's all related. If one has good karma when they die, they they will be reincarnated into a higher caste.
Meet Ben. Buddha, or Siddhartha, was looking for enlightenment. He found it and realized that everything in life was suffering and one had to rise above the pleasures of the material world.
If you follow the Four Noble Truths, the fourth truth being a moral staircase known as the Eightfold Path, one can reach nirvana and a release from suffering. Also in Asia are the philosophies of Confucianism and Taoism. Confucius looked for harmony, good conduct, and honoring the relationships.
Taoism looked to follow the way by accepting the forces of nature. In early Japan, Shintoism was popular. Some forms of Shintoism involved animism, which believed that everything in nature has a spirit. In the Middle East, you need to know about Islam.
No draft were the five pillars. A Muslim must pray five times a day, observe the holy holiday of Ramadan, give charity or alms, have faith in one God, Allah, and travel to Mecca in what is called the Hajj. The holy book of Islam is the Quran. Islam would spread through empires such as the Umayyads and the Abbasids, and would ultimately spread to the rest of the world.
Though it should be noted that after freeing itself from Islamic control, Spain had an inquisition which looked to remove influences other than Catholicism. The foundations of Western civilization come from Greece and Rome. Most important are their contributions. Greek city-states were different, as mountains isolated them.
Unlike the military polis of Sparta, Athens embraced culture and democracy. Direct democracies allowed the common citizens to govern. The Greeks gave us classical architecture which is symmetrical with columns.
Comedies and tragedies were also common in literature. The Golden Age of Greece also gave us the Olympics, which was played to honor the god Zeus. The big three philosophers were Spa. Socrates questioned everything around him and was killed for corrupting the youth of Athens. Plato wrote the Republic and Aristotle applied logic to science and philosophy.
One of his students was Alexander the Great. He amassed a huge empire, which led to the blending of Hellenistic culture from Egypt to India. Such a blending or exchange of culture is called cultural diffusion. The Silk Roads was another example of cultural diffusion.
But it's the Greek and Roman influence on world history that gives us what's called Western Civilization. The Roman Empire would thrive under Caesar and others. The Romans gave us a Senate, 12 tables of law, and they built great roads, structures, and aqueducts which transferred water.
Roman architecture even affected Islamic mosques. Eventually, the eastern part of the Roman Empire became known as the Byzantine Empire. That's the one with Justinian's Code.
Centuries later, the Byzantines split from the Roman Catholic Church and established the religion of Eastern Orthodox in Constantinople. After Rome fell, the Middle Ages occurred. You need to know about the political and economic system of feudalism, which exchanged land for military service. Knights had a code of conduct known as chivalry. This was similar to the Bushido Code of the Japanese samurai.
The Crusades were fought between Christians and Muslims for control of the Holy Land. As fighting occurred, so did the exchange of ideas. Yes, cultural diffusion is an outcome of the Crusades.
Tragically, the Black Plague killed about one-third of the population of Europe. But these dark ages led to a renaissance as culture began to thrive again and people celebrated human achievement. New art came from Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci.
The Prince was written by Machiavelli stating that absolute rulers had to govern harshly to keep people in check. With the Sahara, Sahel and grasslands, Africa has a very diverse climate. Early on, languages were spread by Bantu-speaking people. There was a thriving gold salt trade on the west coast. There, a king named Mansa Musa converted to Islam.
He went on the Hajj. Later on, other empires embraced religious tolerance, such as Akbar the Great of the Mughals and Suleiman the Magnificent of the Ottoman Empire. In Native America, the Mayans, Aztecs and Incas had impressive cultural and scientific advances. The Incas used terrace farming.
as a way to adapt agriculture to the Andes Mountains. Oh, by the way, maps that show mountains are called physical maps. That's important to know.
The Native Americans were conquered by Europeans in the Age of Exploration. Conquistadors had advanced weapons. They established encomienda as a system of forced labor. The exchange of crops and diseases was known as the Columbian Exchange.
That's cultural diffusion. Mercantilism was established to benefit the wealth of the mother country. Mother countries also began to trade for slaves, most notably with the middle passage of the Triangle Trade.
As strong as the European explorers were, Zheng He was an admiral who traveled near and far giving and receiving gifts for the Chinese Ming. He had a larger fleet of ships in Asia a century earlier. Martin Luther protested against the church with his 95 Theses. This led to the Protestant Reformation. Religion was divided as new sects of Christianity emerged.
As feudalism disappeared, absolute monarchs took over in Europe. They had complete and centralized power. Louis XIV said, I am the state, and expanded Versailles. In Russia, there were czars like Peter the Great who wanted to modernize and imitate the West.
Over time in England, the monarchy would be limited through the Magna Carta, the Habeas Corpus Act, and the English Bill of Rights. This is sometimes called a constitutional monarchy as well, as Parliament gained power. Also limiting king's power was the Age of Enlightenment.
Thinkers such as John Locke and Rousseau used logic to demand natural rights. Montesquieu wanted separation of powers. Those monarchs who looked favorably upon the Enlightenment were called Enlightened Despots. Around the same time, a scientific revolution was taking place, where Nicolaus Copernicus displayed a heliocentric model where the planets revolved around the sun. Galileo confirmed this, but he was forced to retract his statements, and, after trial, was put under house arrest.
Revolution was soon to follow. In France, they revolted because of meat. Or... team if you're a vegetarian.
The monarchy of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette was weak, many read the Enlightenment, the American Revolution was already successful, and a third estate was taxed unfairly. After the steel was stormed and the Declaration of the Rights of Man was penned, France gained the Republic. But all wasn't fair, as there was a reign of terror. Also Napoleon would become the military dictator, after seizing power in what's called the coup d'etat.
He gained much territory, but squandered it. losing his army in the harsh climate of Russia. The Congress of Vienna tried to restore peace by making alliances and bringing back monarchs dethroned by Napoleon. But still, Europe would have much war over the next century.
Revolution and independence movements spread to Latin America. There, liberators Simon Bolivar and José San Martín helped rid South America of Spanish rule. Toussaint Léovitois led a slave rebellion in Haiti against France.
Mexico became independent too. but would suffer through a revolution that resulted in a constitution in the early 20th century. Conflict continued in Europe because of nationalism.
This means to have pride in one's nation because of a common culture, interest, or history. Italy became a unified boot. German Otto von Bismarck looked to unite Germany with blood and iron. That led to wars to establish the German state.
The Industrial Revolution began in England as it had natural harbors and resources. It soon spread to the world. Much labor was done in factories.
Urbanization occurred as people moved to cities. Capitalism also emerged and Adam Smith advocated for laissez-faire, where the government would take its hands off the economy. Socialism became a popular theory, as Karl Marx wrote about the gap between the rich and the poor in the Communist Manifesto.
He favored a classless society. But his opponents argued for social Darwinism, or survival of the fittest. That played off of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, which said that species evolved gradually. His ideas were controversial and upset the church.
Nations turned to imperialism, or strong nations taking over and enforcing their beliefs on weaker countries. Britain controlled a vast empire. Though they eventually gave self-rule to Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, it would be years later that Ireland...
England a country who suffered through a horrific potato famine, would receive home rule. For Africa, the Berlin Conference divided up land among the Europeans. In China, this was done as well, and it was called spheres of influence. The Chinese were upset over an addiction to opium, so they fought a war, and lost. The Boxers protested foreign control and the spread of Christianity.
They fought a war too, and lost. Though the Takigawa shogunate closed its doors, Japan would also suffer from imperialism, but... In the Meiji era, they modernized and imitated the West.
They also became a world power. There was also protest in Britain's jewel in the crown, India. The seapoint mutiny was put down by the strong rule of the British Raj, as was the Amritsar Massacre, which led to protesters being shot in 1919. Britain would control India until Gandhi practiced passive resistance and civil disobedience. His actions helped lead to independence in 1947. Of course, the country would become partitioned. into India and Pakistan because of religious conflict.
With all of the nationalism and imperialism going on, countries grew their militaries. They also started alliances. And after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, World War I began. Russia had to drop out because of Lenin's Bolshevik Revolution which brought communism to Russia. The Ottomans would fizzle out into Turkey, where Mustafa Kemal Ataturk would later modernize.
The Germans lost World War I and were blamed for the conflict with the Treaty of Versailles. But, since the League of Nations had no army, Adolf Hitler ignored the treaty and rose to power under fascism. He began to militarize.
Europeans let him do whatever he wanted in a policy called appeasement. But, this did not prevent World War II from happening. Teaming up with another fascist, Benito Mussolini, and Emperor Hirohito of Japan, the Axis powers were formed.
They lost to the Allies. in World War II and Germany became divided after. Japan also surrendered after the dropping of the atomic bomb. The Holocaust occurred as a severe example of human rights violations. Hitler's policy of genocide led to the death of 6 million Jews.
Other human rights violations occurred in the 20th century as well, including the Armenians who were killed during World War I, ethnic cleansing which took place in Bosnia, the Tutsis who were targeted by the Hutus in Rwanda, natives who were being relocated in Darfur, and Pol Pot's communist Khmer Rouge who killed over 2 million Cambodians. World War II gave way to the superpowers of the United States and USSR. This meant the Cold War would take place. Joseph Stalin proved scary. Earlier he had a five-year plan which looked to modernize the Soviet Union.
He also purged or killed many of his opponents. In the Cold War, Stalin and the U.S. never directly had a war with bullets. Still, communism spread around the world. After a civil war, Mao Zedong established the People's Republic of China.
His great leap forward was unsuccessful in modernizing China, though. It would be years before Deng Xiaoping's implementation of the four modernizations brought China industrial success. Of course, Xiaoping was also plagued by the Tiananmen Square Massacre, which was a crackdown on Chinese students protesting for democracy. The U.S. practiced containment, which meant to stop the spread of communism.
This led to them getting involved both in conflicts in Korea and Vietnam. They didn't want countries to fall to communism like dominoes. Fidel Castro took over Cuba after the Cuban Revolution and soon brought communism there. After the U.S. failed to remove him in the Bay of Pigs invasion, they had to negotiate missiles out of their own backyard. After that, a detente did ease tensions.
By 1990, communism was falling in Europe. Germany reunified when the Berlin Wall came down. After Mikhail Gorbachev's policies of Glasnost and Perestroika, a failed August coup signaled the end of the USSR.
Afterwards, The communist bloc broke apart. Poland became free under Lekwolesa and the people of Kosovo looked to break free from Serbia. Violence occurred in Bosnia and Chechnya as people struggled for autonomy. Still the world saw conflict. Apartheid divided South Africa's majority black population from the minority white population.
World outrage led to the elimination of apartheid and freedom for Nelson Mandela. In the Middle East, Zionism created a Jewish state in Israel, but wars were fought since the 1940s between Israelis and neighboring Arab states. The Camp David Accords brought some peace in 1978 between Israel and Egypt, but conflict between Israel and its neighbors continued. Conflict has recently occurred in the Middle East as well. The fundamentalist Taliban sponsored al-Qaeda's 9-11 attacks, which led to the War on Terror.
The Iraq War took place shortly after, between 2003 to 2011. In 2011, The Arab Spring led to democracy protests and the overthrow of governments in places such as Tunisia and Egypt. Syria wound up in a civil war as the government was blamed for human rights violations. A group named ISIS gained much territory amidst global terror attacks and threats. In 2014, the United States led a coalition in airstrikes against them. Nations are still developing and westernizing.
They need oil to industrialize and are dependent on OPEC for supply. In recent decades, a green revolution brought more food to the world. The European Union was created to increase Europe's strength.
Today, nations are very dependent on one another and are oftentimes interconnected. If you are watching this video somewhere outside of the United States, that's because the Internet has linked countries together. That's yet another form of cultural diffusion.
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