WHITE MAN’S GOTTA RULE THE WORLD!

By Gabriel Jarman

White background, get it!! Cause it’s about white people enslaving the world and looting resources for their own personal greed.

Also it’s a white background because I’m a Minimalist.

Also it’s a white background because I hate powerpoint.

Gunpowder Begins

• Gunpowder was first utilized by the Song Dynasty (10th – 13th century AD) for rudimentary fireworks and weapons.

• Gunpowder spread to the Muslim world via the Silk Road and various Islamic nations designed firearms and muskets.

• Ottoman Janissaries finally conquer Constantinople with muskets and gunpowder artillery (and a little help from the Fourth Crusade) in 1453.

• The fall of Constantinople changed defensive engineering from favouring tall and thin walls to building very short and very thick walls to deflect cannonballs.

Which is a cooler word: Byzantium or Seljuk?

Gunpowder Continues

• Gunpowder travels to Western Europe through Spain via the Moors. The first recorded use of cannons during a Western European battle is in the Battle of Crecy in 1346.

• Gunpowder caused a military revolution in Europe leading the powers such as Great Britain, France, Spain and Portugal to completely re-organize their armies.

• Armies no longer used knights and archers but massive quantities of footmen armed with muskets. Medieval elements such as volley firing and siege warfare were maintained but altered to suit new conditions.

Metal armour did very little to stop musket balls, it was good for grating cheese afterwards though!

Colonialist Era 15th – 20th Century

• This era starts with Christopher Columbus’ voyage to the Americas and ends with the dismantling of the European empires in the Post-World War Two period. This 600 year period is littered with massacres, wars and brutal repression of local cultures. It is also an era of an expanding global community and trade structure along with advancements in medicine for exploring new areas… and then taking them.

• During this period many areas of the world saw Western expansion and brought with this expansion were settlers and gunpowder. Advanced firearms were used to conquer new lands and to keep the local inhabitants in check.

• This is the era that begins the concept of Globalism and the first strides towards a global market. Goods from across the globe were being transported back and forth and exchanged for even more exotic merchandise. Advancing ahead of these goods are waves of disease like Smallpox, Measles, Malaria and Yellow Fever causing the deaths of thousand of indigenous peoples across the globe. Those spared disease or death at the hands of Europeans were then forced to labour in the production of the goods prized by White settlers and plantation owners.

You’d think I’d have more pictures but no, only text.

Africa, 1914

Gunpowder Does America!

• The Western powers used gunpowder to revolutionize land based warfare but combined with the invention of the compass and improved ship building techniques the Europeans could export their new style of warfare across the globe.

• Europeans floated everywhere in their boats and “settled” on lands rich in resources and indigenous peoples. The main example of this is Christopher Columbus’ voyage to America, this began a struggle to stake a claim in the “New World” between Britain, France and Spain… also Russia.

Global Interactions• With the major European powers expanding their empires by any

means deemed necessary there were more than a few conflicts to be seen. The most infamous of these being the War of Austrian Succession which involved almost all of Europe.

• The Colonial system divided the world into two, the Western colonizers and the “Uncivilized” peoples of the world.

• One of the largest globally extended parts of the Colonial system was Slavery. Slaves were exported from African colonies of the European powers to all parts of the world where a cheap labour force was needed, this has led to Africans being displaced and assimilating into many different parts of the world like the Caribbean islands, North America and to Brazil.

• Population growth boomed all over the globe due to a new exchange of food items such as potatoes (sweet and otherwise) and corn. But then this leads to global overcrowding and we use too much resources, WHY CAN’T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG?

The War of Jenkins’ Ear, something worth looking up.

Trade!

• With the advent of the compass and better ship building techniques the Europeans could reach out and expand their influence on foreign shores.

• Most expansion of the European powers was for resources such as diamonds in South Africa, Textiles in India and the vast mineral and agricultural opportunities of the Americas.

• This land was occupied by the Europeans and then the harvested materials were shipped back to the home country of the colony for selling in markets. These trade routes between colony and homeland allowed for new and exotic goods to be purchased in Europe and the profits funded further development in the colonies.

• Most of the resources were mined by the indigenous people and yet all the profit went to the white plantation owners or the colonial companies set up to run the extraction and harvesting of goods. Much of these goods were cash crops (cotton, coffee, groundnuts) that would only ever be sold on European markets and not in the local area.

Not so much trade, but more extended robbery… cough nike cough, cough walmart cough.

Putting the WHY!?!?!?! in Colony.

• Colonialism is the practice of a large power taking over areas of land already occupied by a less advanced civilization. Colonization can occur because there are valuable resources present or because the larger power simply wants more land and they would take it with force or with “Treaties” enforced with guns and artillery far beyond the power of any local tribe or people.

• Usually the indigenous populations are massacred or pushed aside and put on reservations or confined to ghettos. In the case of Africa, it’s inhabitants were enslaved and used as labourers across the world for the European empires.

• Colonialism can be a very negative force, such as the Belgian brutality in the Congo, but it can also be a positive force such as the British ending the Sati practice in India. The Sati practice being the forceful immolation of Hindu widows on their husbands funeral pyres.

• Wherever European powers went they brought education, health care and infrastructure. Europe also brought slavery, theft of ancestral lands and complete culture erasing of indigenous peoples.

Lets all celebrate Columbus Day by breaking into someone’s house and then staying there for 300 years! Also give everyone in the house Syphilis and Smallpox.

Did you like my pun? COLONIALISM IS NO LAUGHING MATTER!

One point of view.

Gunpowder… It’s Helpful?

• Gunpowder did have positive benefits, however most of them came from negative situations caused by gunpowder…

• The practice of medicine improved greatly after the advent of gunpowder because of the need to care for large numbers of troops moving through hostile environments (Jungle, Desert, Steppe, Russian Winter).

• Improvements such as using bandaging over cauterizing wounds, vaccinations for malaria and other diseases and the discovery of blood flow and vitamins are just a few of the innovations of the fields hospitals and medical societies that sprang up in Renaissance and Colonial era Europe.

Everybody likes their doctors to be professional but I still say Shamans get the job done.

Gunpowder In Summary

• Gunpowder is discovered in Ancient China during the Song Dynasty, it then travels to the Muslim world via the Silk Road and then up to Western Europe through the Iberian Peninsula (Spain).

• Changes warfare from that of specialized knights and archers to massive numbers of peasants with muskets.

• Gunpowder allows European powers to conquer territory across the globe from North America, to Africa, to Asia and even Australia!

• This expansion of the European powers created huge trade networks that brought goods from across the world to Europe and European goods and technologies were transferred to the most backwards parts of the globe. Indian textiles could be found in London, Haitian sugar cane could be found in Paris, Congolese rubber in Brussels and Brazilian rubber in Lisbon, Philippine fruit could be found in Madrid.

Discussion

• 1) Why do you think gunpowder was used so heavily in Western Europe and not in China or the Muslim world?

• 2) Do the benefits of gunpowder outweigh its drawbacks?

• 3) Do the most “civilized” nations on Earth have the right to spread their brand of culture to less advanced countries or should other nations be allowed to progress at a natural pace?

One final thing, why does everyone call the white inhabitants of Australia, Australians… they really aren’t.

Bibliography• http://mikeely.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/cecil-rhodes-africa-colonialism.jpg • http://publisher.webfactional.com/media/covers/Colonialism.jpg• http://static.newworldencyclopedia.org/2/2a/ColonialAfrica.png • http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jah/88.4/images/kramer_f5.jpg • http://img15.imageshack.us/i/colonialism.jpg/ • http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_wrcpDDOLrds/TH9bd5o9vNI/AAAAAAAAOrs/qlOJFHpQWIg/s1600/reb10-1.jpg • http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0f/English_gun_used_at_Crecy.jpg • http://rlv.zcache.com/colonialism_kills_tshirt-d23506761137813212226v7p_500.jpg