Qin Shi Huang Biography

Hello class, for this years May Madness I am taking on the role of Qin Shi Huang. To better understand my ruler please take a look at the biography linked down below.

Link: Qin Shin Huangdi - Biography

Qin Shi Huang Promotional Video

Hi everybody, for this years annual May Madness, I will be taking on the role of Qin Shi Huang. Check out my promo video down below and don't for get to vote for me!

                                     

Imperialism in the Modern World, 1900

White Man's Burden

Rudyard Kipling uses adjectives such as "sullen" and "new caught", "savage" to depict the native peoples as opposed to Europeans. His usage of such worlds conveys his sense of white dominance because he words that lower the characteristics of the natives. By addressing them as "sullen" and "savage" he is referring to them as barbaric and animal like. In addition, by using "new caught" he reiterates the idea that the natives are no better than animals for the Europeans to tame. Thus Kipling expresses his sense of white superiority.

Letter of Lin Zexu to Queen Victoria Response

Lin Zeux conveys his distaste for opium in the descriptive terms he attaches to the drug by explaining how the 'poison' and it's repugnant odor has made the gods angry. By describing opium as poison it is clear that Zeux is seriously against opium and will take any means necessary to ensure it's destruction. He further adds in the letter that the gods are unhappy and that if Queen Victoria of great Britain extinguished the "evil" that is opium, the goods may be grateful and reward her with good health. Thus, he is also religiously expressing his distaste for opium. Then, the punishments inflicted on opium peddlers suggest Lin Zeux's perception of opium's threat to China by illustrating the extremity he is willing to go to in order to exterminate opium from China. In his letter he describes anybody who uses or had used opium would be executed and any British merchants who try selling opium would also be executed. His logic is that if a life is taken, the murder must give up his life as punishment but now, the same should apply to opium since many have fell victim to it. So he derived the conclusion that anybody that tries to sell opium would be executed. Therefore, the fact that he is willing to take these measures show how Zeux has massive distaste towards opium in China.

Impact of the Industrial Revolution on society

List of changes that may have come to peoples lives from the Industrial Revolution

• access to cheaper goods that are imported from other parts of the world
• better availability of products due to mass production
• better transportation for people and food
• food would no longer have to be produced locally
• gives more time for people to focus on other things
• new innovations can occur due to this
• land would no longer determine wealth 
• new jobs would emerge when machines replace handmade productions 
• people would define wealth by material possessions 
• the value of religious practices may depreciate 
• value of human labor deprecates 
• urbanization
• gender roles that existed before the revolution change

Based on the Luddite response to the industrial revolution that was splendidly described by Horrible Histories, there were people who were extreme reactionaries who opposed the change. They did not like the way machines were replacing their labor and devaluing human labor.

Response to Niall Ferguson's "The 6 killer apps of prosperity"

I feel that Niall Ferguson makes a very interesting argument on the end of the "great divergence", an event that started after the 1800s where western civilization presided grow more successful and prosperous than the rest of the world. It is a neat concept, which Ferguson uses, when he sums up the cause for the great divergence into six prim factors. The factors are essential in establishing a prosperous society. Ferguson called them the "six killer apps", and they are competition, the scientific revolution, property rights, modern medicine, the consumer society, and work ethic. He explains how throughout history Europeans have come up on top in comparison to the rest of the world because they had these six killer apps. According to Ferguson, the sequence, or rather programming of these apps are not really important, and likewise geography does not play a factor in western dominance. Due to intellectual levels being constantly being challenged and explored, European society has achieved it's sate of dominance, whereas in other parts of the world there has been either governmental, religious, or social restrictions that bound people from advancing via the six killer apps. For example, the ottomans destroyed a observatory because it was considered blasphemy to question gods domain, and China's confucian tests that determined a persons overall intellectual potential via the memorization of Confucian teachings, and many more. Although this may be, today, the tables have turned. Today, other parts of the world are able to do the same thing what Europeans did in the past and what western society is currently doing, at a much faster pace with better quality. Thus he derives the claim that the great divergence is over. In the end I want to say that I agree with what Niall Ferguson claims.