Great Leaps Forward (pgs. 1-30)

Question 1

The West

Answer 1

referring to the world’s major military and industrial power - above all, Great Britain and France from 1800 on, joined by France and the U.S.

Question 2

Power

Answer 2

Not just machine guns, long-range cannons, and battleships. It included the rapid increase in capital in Europe and U.S. banking systems. Knowledge was a fundamental pillar of Western power. E.g.: Europe and the U.S. printed 90% of the world’s books. The U.S. also had 977 colleges and universities while Africa had only 5.

Question 3

Modernity

Answer 3

signals a particular type of society that came to be in the past 2 centuries.

Question 4

Modernization

Answer 4

society that is working towards modernity.

Question 5

Features modernizing countries have in common

Answer 5

Urbanization, widespread literacy, use of inanimate power, rising per capita income, involvement in political affairs, secular and scientific view of the world.

Question 6

Periphery

Answer 6

“Uncivilized world of the heathen.” “Our little brown brothers.” Periphery means all counties before the mid 20th century that relied on subsistence agriculture. They also hadn’t established successful democratic governments.

Question 7

2 Great Leaps Forward

Answer 7

when agriculture was invented 10,000 years ago and the Industrial Revolution 200 years ago.

Question 8

Industrial Revolution

Answer 8

“The culmination of a most unspectacular process the consequence of a long period of slow economic growth.” It was a result of a series of social changes. It was a 200-year process.

Question 9

Britain

Answer 9

With new wealth they built the world’s most powerful navy. Britain was the first nation to use its navy to open doors to her exports. Most of the Indian subcontinent came under British rule after 1857. British officials set Indian tariffs so low that British goods flowed into the colony. Britain forced India to sell the good that they made.

Question 10

Shock and Awe in the Periphery 1

Answer 10

Pre-modern countries wanted Western things like diplomatic protocol, private property, standards of hygiene, Western styles of journalism - in other words, their way of life.

Question 11

Shock and Awe in the Periphery 2

Answer 11

After realizing the material power of the West, intellectuals in Asia, Africa, and Latin America turned against their homeland customs and traditions.

Question 12

Pre-modern World

Answer 12

Pre-modern countries experienced scarcity of food, and material goods (wagons, clothes, furniture, and tools). There was scarcity of national identity. Nationalism changed the face of Europe. When old empires shattered, new nations were born from the fragments.

Question 13

Precocious Egypt

Answer 13

First “latecomer: to try and catch the West. Muhammad Ali led the charge.
The pasha first tried to develop agriculture (cotton). Soon, Egypt’s factories turned out wool, paper, glass, sugar, chemicals, and other textiles. Ali cared more about the wealth of his country than the well being of his own people. He would buy cotton at a cheap price from poor farmers across Egypt and proceed to sell it Europe for a much higher price. Instead of having the activity of thousands of private manufacturers, investors, and inventors push industrialization, Egypt did it from the top down. Egypt was crumbling by the time Ali died.

Question 14

Meiji Japan

Answer 14

They knew they had to transform not only their military, but their economic and political system as well. In the early 1870’s, the Meiji reformers sent out “missions” to study the more advanced areas in Western culture: shipyards, colleges and high schools, military academies and bases, railroad terminals, statehouses and churches. Japan’s war against China was it first real test of “civilization.”