Enlightened Absolutism

          There were many monarchs that may have claimed to be "enlightened" absolutists, however many of them committed acts that could have shown them to be either more absolutists or enlightened. We decided to discuss this as a unit. Using the three rulers Joseph II, Frederick The Great, and Catherine the Great. We read a few documents on them each, and wrote a few notes on their decisions and how it either related to Absolutism or Enlightened behavior. The Venn Diagram is below. The pink font is Frederick the Great, blue is Catherine, and Green is Joseph II.

          An enlightened monarch is a ruler that exemplifies examples of enlightened behavior over absolutism. An enlightened ruler is generally a benevolent person. The choices they make are, for the most part (at least they say) for the greater good of the people. Even though they try to make choices that are of a certain belief, each one commits at least one act whether it is absolutist or enlightened. 

          I chose the ruler Joseph II. The propaganda poster I created portrays his enlightened actions because one of the major things he did was fight for the end of censorship. It was an very enlightenment driven move because it is driving for freedom of speech for everybody. However, there were some things Joseph did that could be considered absolutist. Although he did do many things for the good of the people, his motives were, ultimately, for absolute royal control. Although he sold the properties of the monasteries and convents out from under them, which is illegal, he did use it to build hospitals, which is also a very enlightened thing.

Resumes for Royals: Ivan the Terrible

The king of the nation of Absolutopia recently died without an heir and with no living relatives. Absolutopia is now seeking a new ruler to continue the previous king’s tradition of absolute rule. To fill this position, the powerful noblemen and noblewomen of the nation have posted a job opening and are seeking resumes from qualified candidates.

The monarch I am recommending is Ivan IV “the Terrible” of Russia. Ivan was born of Ivan Chetvyorty Vasilyevich on the date of August 25th, 1530. He was proclaimed king at age 3, so his reign ranged from 1533 to his death in 1584. His mother served as regent until he was 8 years old, when she died. He was crowned the Czar of Russia at age 16. It was said he was respected in public, but neglected in private, which may have led to his later attitude.

One example of divine right that Ivan has is when he was born from Vasily III. He was crowned king at only 3 years old. Ivan also created quite a powerful army. He had a goal to turn the country into a military heavyweight. He destroyed the Tatar stronghold, and later Astrakhan. However, Ivan also showed many moments of limiting power of nobility and church officials. Although Ivan was highly respected in public, he was very neglected in private by the nobles. This may have led to his further repressions against them. When his wife died, he accused them of poisoning her and and continued on a campaign of repressions. He however, did amass some wealth. He had the St. Basil’s Cathedral built for him on Red Square. However, he made a very poor decision. Because he found it so beautiful, he blinded all his workers to prevent them from building anything for anyone else.

In conclusion, I do not recommend Ivan for the role. When he was young, he was a respectable person, but as he grew, and stayed neglected, he became almost erratic in his behavior. He grew more and more constantly angry and upset, and he set many repressions on the nobles and church officials. If he were considered for the role, he would only cause harm and discomfort in it.

          The colony me and my group studied was the colony of Delaware. We first started off by learning the basics of our colony, seeing as none of us knew much about the topic. We read a brief document learning about an overview of its settlement and early years, as well as some more information in a textbook passage. Once we read up, we organized the info into bullets and answered some questions in order to organize the information better. It was easier once we got into the project. We put together a list of information that was essential to our work and began putting together our iMovie video.

          Next we began to work on our iMovie video. We started off by reading about when our colony was first founded. Delaware was first founded in the year 1638 by the Swedish. After a few years of settlement, they broke off of Pennsylvania and became their own colony. Southern Delaware was inhabited by Africans and English, and Northern Delaware was inhabited by Quakers, Scotch-Irish, and Presbyterian. They originally settled because King Charles II owed the Penn family a huge debt, so he gave a huge tract of land in the new world. Penn immediately saw possibilities. The economy focused on wheat, milling, lumber, and furs. They also performed sugar refining, distilling, shipbuilding, and trade. They originally settled for trade with other colonies. 

          Me and my group's project was mostly Logos, or logical appeal. We mostly discussed the appeals of the job opportunities and the widespread options there were for jobs and ways to live. There was not much Ethos, although we did state we accept anyone's religion, there were no strong examples of any Ethical or Religious support.

Overall, this was a very interesting project to study. I learned about William Penn, England, and more about how religions were accepted back in those times.

Puritans in America: Were they perfect?

The Puritans were a religious group that wanted to do one thing--purify the Church of England by getting rid of all traditional Catholic practices. They viewed themselves as “a model of Christian charity”, according to John Winthrop, but I don’t believe they actually were. As we study the Puritans, and what they accomplished in their time of settlement, we will answer the question of if they really were a perfect model or not. In class, we read over many documents, both primary and secondary sources. We read primary sources from John Winthrop, which read him claiming that God had claimed the land for them.

Puritans were a religious group that wanted to purify the Church of England by ridding all traces of traditional catholic practices. King Charles I was King James I's son. When he took the throne it became obvious that he had even less tolerance for religious difference than his father. Once Charles I became king, it was clear he had a very high dislike for the Puritans. The Puritans left to settle in New England because they weren't liked by Charles I at all. When they first settled there, they intended to live there in peace, to love other settlers like a brother, and to always help one another. “To do this we must work together as if we were one man. We must treat other settlers as brothers. We must enjoy each other. We must make others’ problems our own.” It was also said to make one another’s problems their own, and to work together as a community.

Before leaving England in 1630, John Winthrop and other Puritans attended a sermon by Rev. John Cotton, who said "god promised his plantation" saying they were chosen people. “The settlers can plainly see the influence of God leading them from one country to another. God makes room for a people to live there when he drives those who live there away by a just war.” He is saying that God is leading the Puritans to New England, and if there are settlers there, it is justified to wage war against them. And, after a short while in the New World, they waged war against the Pequot tribe. It was an all-out massacre, and they ended up burning the entire village down, which consisted of ⅓ of the total population. It was unjustified in my opinion because it was a complete and utterly brutal massacre that killed hundreds, if not at least thousands of Pequots for no good reason. They were too brutal with their attack. One thing that also struck my interest was how poorly women were treated in Salem. Anne Hutchinson was put on trial for speaking her mind, and defied the church by interpreting the bible for herself. She was given no rights and was put on trial immediately. As a woman, she was expected to cook, clean, and care for the children around the household. And also, related to trials, the witch trials were just as unfair, if not more so. If the girls screamed, and accused someone of being a witch, they were put on trial, but 9 times out of 10 they were executed.

So, overall, the Puritans were not a perfect model of Christian charity they thought they were. In fact, they were the near opposite. Although they left England because Charles I didn't like them, they had no religious rights in America and they didn't own any land because of God. They completely massacred the Pequot colony, because they believed that they were justified into doing so because God sent them to that land and the Pequots were blocking it. They, however, crossed the line when they waged war and burnt the village down. The women were also very highly oppressed, and treated very poorly. They had almost no rights, and some were put on trial for even speaking their mind. The Salem Witch Trials were also one big last example. Basically, no matter how religious, how well-respected that person was, if they were accused they were eventually going to be executed.

The Pequot War:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFfxRm8ZXsw (Part one)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G92duTgaZ_A (Part two)

Salem Witch Trials: Life in Salem in 1692

http://school.discoveryeducation.com/schooladventures/salemwitchtrials/life/

Jamestown DBQ

Jamestown seemed at first to be a promise of new life and a new, safe lifestyle for all. However, this was not the case, because of the 110 original settlers, only 40 survived. The reason the English came to the Americas is to establish the first permanent settlement. A group of investors called The Virginia Company. The first settlers were men of the ages 17-35. Most were lower classmen, more so poor people. Early Jamestown was a colonization of English people in America that lasted from 1607 to 1611. What is so confusing about this is why so many of the colonists died in such a short period of time.

One of the first causes of death in the Jamestown were environmental issues. One of the issues was that when the English settled, they did not settle far enough upstream. When high tide arrived, it sometimes mixed with the freshwater in the stream, creating brackish water. Brackish water causes poor health if people used it as their water supply. Also, they happened to land in it’s longest unbroken period of drought. Without rainfall, it was very difficult to impossible to water crops for food. Brackish water and lack of rainfall were a detriment to the settlers and the environment during the years 1607 to 1611.

Another cause of death in early Jamestown was the lack of settler skills. One of the issues is that, in 1607, out of the 110 settlers that traveled, 82 of them had occupations, but 47 of them were ‘gentlemen’. That is over 55% of the total people with an occupation. ‘Gentlemen’ were people born of wealth who were not used to working with their hands or working at all. Another problem is that there were no females whatsoever in both trips in 1607 and 1608. Females had many important jobs in the community, which were caring for the young in homes, creating clothing and furniture, and also for medical care. Another thing the English lacked was proper skills of organizing a trade and being civil. “In 1609 Francis West and 36 men sailed up the Chesapeake Bay to try to trade for corn with the Patawomeke Indians…” Although it sounds as if the English meant for a peaceful trade, the document also states this: “Though West was able to load his small ship with grain, the success involved ‘some harshe and Crewell dealinge by cutting of towe of the salvages heads and other extremetyes.’” It seems the English took to violence rather than negotiating or acting civil.

One last reason the English died so quickly was because of their relationships with the natives. In the previous statement, when the English were confronted with a trade of corn, they responded with violence and ended up decapitating two of them and dismembering many others. There is no evidence in the documents to support why the English used force rather than peaceful trade. Perhaps they used force because they didn’t understand the Indians and did not know how to interact with them in any other way. The surviving Indians would most likely want revenge on the people who killed their own and took their crops forcefully.

Although Jamestown seemed as if nothing could go wrong, many things obviously did. There were many, many issues in the surrounding environment, including brackish water and water with festering waste. Another problem was how poorly their settler skills were. 55% of people who had occupations were gentlemen, who had no skills with labor whatsoever. Finally, the way they treated the Natives was very poor, and the Natives most likely tried to retaliate against them and take revenge. The English were basically overall terrible and had no settler skills, lived in a bad environment, and treated the Natives poorly.

Dennis B. Blanton, “Jamestown’s Environment,” Center for Archaeological Research, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia, 2000.

Adapted from “The Lost Colony and Jamestown Droughts,” Science, April 24, 1998.

Adapted from John Smith , The Generall Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles, Book III, 1624.

Ivor Noel Hume, The Virginia Adventure, Alfred A. Knopf, 1994.

The Conquistadors

There are many sides and differences to the first meeting of Moctezuma and Cortes. However, what really happened, and what was meant is much different than what was recorded in textbooks, and many other documents written by historians. We, as a class, read 4 passages--a textbook passage, and 3 documents written by professional historians. First, the textbook excerpt gives an excerpt on the document on the arrival of Cortes. In class, we read a set of questions determining what the document was about, and what it was stating had happened. We then looked at the other three documents, and it was clear that the textbook document was very different from the other three documents, written by professional historians and first-hand sources.

Upon the arrival of the Spanish, according to the textbook edition, the Aztec, apparently very much Moctezuma, greeted Cortes with great respect, great honor, and believed him to be a god. They offered him lots of gold, and even the throne. They told him he resembled their god Quetzalcoatl, and  told him he was their true, indisputable leader. However, this is not really what happened. When the Spanish and Cortes arrived, Moctezuma did welcome them with warmth, and gave them gold and all those things, but this was not his true intention. It was a part of the Aztec culture to say the opposite of what you actually mean when meeting new people, as a way of respecting them. Cortes misinterpreted this, as he had no way of knowing that this was their custom.

Reading these different documents and learning the differences in the documents, I learned the severe importance of knowing the perspective and bias of each story. I learned that without doing research on the author or the background of that author, you may be given either false or biased information. For example, when reading the textbook’s document, I, at first, believed the information I was reading. I thought it was a bit weird, almost crazy, that Moctezuma would believe him to be their God and true ruler. Once doing more research and reading the other documents, I learned that the textbook information was either biased or false, and that I should always do research to answer my questions.

The Columbian Exchange

The Columbian Exchange was the exchange of ideas, foods, crops, people, animals, and cultures between the New World and the Old World after the discovery of the Americas by Christopher Columbus in 1492. It started after Columbus’ first expedition to America in 1492. From then on, each expedition was working bringing more newer ideas to the country at a time.

Throughout this whole exchange, there were moments of suffering, but also benefits. Many benefits. Mostly, the benefits were towards the Old World, or Europe and the African allies. One of the great benefits was the transfer of cash crops such as tobacco and cacao beans. They also enslaved lots of people, and brought them back to the Old World.

Although there was success for the Old World, there was unfortunately more suffering for the New World. So much disease was spread so quickly that an estimated 90% of the population was killed. The rest were unable to help themselves, so they suffered. The Europeans, unknowing that it was their diseases that spread to the Americas, called the Natives weak, and incompetent.

The Columbian Exchange, although it seemed to be a success for all, was really an “unequal exchange”. It was an unequal exchange because, although the Old World and the New World both received very good crops and items, the Old World receiving tobacco, cacao beans, tomatoes, and turkey, and the New World receiving livestock, citrus fruits, sugar cane, and the honeybee, the Old World gave the New World something worse: Disease. Horrible diseases such as smallpox, influenza, and malaria infected and killed an estimated 90% of the population. The remaining were unable to help themselves. So, although it may seem otherwise, the Columbian Exchange was certainly the Unequal Exchange.