Originally posted by Help
I got a few questions that will be up for discussion
in class and I'd appreciate if any of you could just give me a few
pointers in each question.
1. How did the exploration and colonisation of the new world affect
America and Africa and the domestic cultures that lived there. |
It was a major disrupton, specially for Americans, who saw their
countries invaded, exploited and colonized by very superior
civilizations (and their diseases). While America was subject to a
total transformation to fit the hunger of gold and land of Europeans,
Africa became the great producer of slave labor, specially as the
Americans got killed by overexplotation and disease (Caribbean region
mostly). In few decades most of America became colonial posessions of
Spain and Portugal, interrupting the local isolated evolution.
2. How does the Renaissance and the Reformation differ from each other and what do they have in common. |
They are both major cultural reforms in Europe and they are
relatively contemporary. Yet, while Renaissance is a lacist current (if
such name can be used in that period), Reformation is a religious
process. Renaissance lived well with the corrupt Popes and princes of
Italy, while Reformation was aimed specially against these.
Counter-refomation actually pushed the breaks on renaissance and
humanism in the Catholic countries, while Protestants, occasionally at
least, also burned on the stake some illustrated scientists of the
Renaissance, like Servet.
...
4. England had long been a constitutional monarchy where as France kept the absolutism monarchy. Discuss economical, politcal and social processes that was behind this development. |
England was a
"backward" country: it had not developed a fully formed feudalism and
therefore it was also "behind" in the ultimate Modern political
developement: absolutism. Obviously we know now that all that would
eventually turn in an advantage but at the time it was not so clear.
Obviously the
presence of a large class of freemen allowed eventually a fastest
economic progress that the feudal regions of Europ (most) would have to
catch up with.