Ap World History Chapter 4 Essay

1) Colonization has been prevalent since the age of mankind, likewise with economics. The economics of the world heavily correlates to the pattern of colonization that swept across the globe in the 1700’s. In the eyes of colonizers, their duties were strictly to enlighten the people of these univillied nations while retrieving goods to take back to their people. Going to places like Africa and Asia, natural resources were abundant, so colonizers felt as if taking these goods were not a disservice to the natives, but rather they were spreading the wealth to themselves. For example, the Spanish robbed the Americas of their “gold, spices, cotton palm oil their timber”(p39) all while redirecting the wealth back to Europe. Many colonizers failed to realize the century long ramifications they would create. Conversely, the natives were extremely aware that they were oppressed, attacked and abused.
Along with the amount of despair caused in their home countries, the natives were often forced to go to their “parent country” in order to be slaves. This occurrence was certainly not by
choice, “ they brought them in chains, stacked in holds of ships like sacks of flour without enough food or water”(p40). Native inhabitants were no longer human beings, but instead they were treated as cargo. Some slaves met this attack with force and tried to fight against the capture, but in the end, the loss was insufficient, “Slavery devastated western Africa”(p40). To this day, colonization has divided the world into the rich and the poor, and the countries that have suffered from imperialism still do to some extent. Bob Peterson explained this conundrum perfectly by saying “the economics of many countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America were studented. Instead of “developing” they were action “underdeveloped” by Europeans.

2) The Prentice Hall Economics textbook reads “In many less developed countries the gap between rich and poor is especially wide”(p472). I believe the author chose to speak only of less developed countries and not include the U.S because America is not commonly known as a “third world country”. The United States appears to be financially stable in the eyes of many foreigners, but in reality, the wealth disparity is just well hidden by the media. For instance, if you asked a boy in Pakistan what he thought of America, he would tell of the riches and wealth. What this boy wouldn't talk about is the the collapsing middle class, or the millions living below the poverty line. I think that the author chose to speak of less developed countries because even though America is wealthy by comparison, the focus of this passage was to discuss the extremes of wealth disparity.

3) Without reading the article “Burning Books and Destroying Peoples” the Prentice Hall Economics textbook is historically inaccurate. The background and context provided by Rethinking globalization makes me wonder why Prentice Hall neglects to reflect on a major component of the formation of the world’s economies. The slave trade, the Spanish invasion and the Portuguese attacks were all important events in the world’s history. These quests of imperialism set up the economics of a notation for a lifetime. The textbook, without historical context, seems to gloss over the “not so great” factors of our world’s history. Even though the textbook investigates how energy consumption, labor force and Per Capita GDP affect a nation's wealth, it fails to discuss why and how it got to be that way. Because the textbook only mentioned colonialism one time, It makes me wonder why the history is not given in its full entirety.

4) Andy’s lecture about the Commons, complicates the ideas told in the textbook by providing a historical context to refer to.
The Commons was described as a large open forest area that was open for anyone to utilize. In the modern world, there is no such thing as a Commons. With Andy’s lecture I can understand the comparison between the peasants of old England and the peasants of modern “poor” countries. The peasants of England were pictured as helpless, but even through all these adversities, the Commons were a place to go if all else fails. Peasants of today have no similar options, but instead are shut out of society and left to protect themselves. Something that the two parties share is that both lived (or have lived) in a society that is dominated by the rich. The wealthy have the power to control the resources the poor have access to like how the Commons were taken from the
Peasants.