Everyone seemed to be
struggling for independence including North America, Africa, Europe, Latin
America, the French and the English. Dynasties and empires that had governed
countries for hundreds of years seemed to collapse because of clashes between
ideals and major political problems. Atlantic revolutions seemed to have in
common that ideas based on European Enlightenment with regards to human action
improving political and social arrangements. This brought many concerns to the
“current chain of command” and disrupted the ways of living as they most knew
them to be. They wanted the authority
to govern them to come from the people, not God (Church) as had been the case. I think it was summed up well by John Locke: “social contract between “ruler and the
ruled” should last only as long as it serves the people well” Seems to me that
is why we have elections here in the United States today. Again, I speak of history repeating
itself. The Atlantic revolutions brought change but
from then to now, how much change, really?
An example given in the book was in 1989, Chinese students leaving their
own country to go to Paris and celebrate the French revolution as well as just
four short years ago, the uprisings in the Middle East were compared to the
French revolution. During the American revolution,
they did not want to change their liberties, they just wanted to be able to
have Americans in charge of being the rulers instead of Britain. It is said that the United States was
considered the “hope and model of human race”. There was much discontent throughout with people wanting their
independence, wanting to rule their own land and colonies or settlements. Most
of the colony of Haiti was made up of slaves, with a small amount of plantation
owners and poor whites, along with free of color people making up the rest of
the colony. Rich white landowners did
not think all whites were equal for citizenship. This really upset the poor
white people. However the poor white people,
as well as the rich white people, both groups fought the fact that “free people
of color” stated that the rights of man meant all free people regardless of
race. So what was wrong with this
picture, the poor whites were initially being discriminated against by the rich
white people. But the next time around,
the poor white people were being just as discriminatory, if not more so, to the
people of color. Later Haiti defined all
of their people as black and legally equal regardless of color but discriminated
against whites by not allowing them citizenship. So this type of discrimination was committed
by both white and black and every color in between. A vicious circle still goes round and round
today, with many people taking it back to the days of their ancestors. Things will never change until people let go
of the past, can study it for what it was, but do not take it as a personal
attack today.
No comments:
Post a Comment