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Founding of the SND by Sr. Julie and Sr. Francois Our reading for this week was about the founding of the Sisters of Notre Dame. The spirituality of the SND expressed itself in respect for the entire community, providing education to the needy, and commitment with the world through social justice. The two founders were Sister Julie Billiart and Francoise Blin de Bourdon, who could not be more different from each other. While Julie grew up as a member of the impoverished third estate, Francoise grew up in aristocracy . Julie spent her 20 and 30s bedridden, while Francoise spent her early life attending lavish parties held by the king. For this post, I wanted to really dive into the social issues of the sisters’ day. The beginning of the reading describes the atmosphere of the pre-revolutionary era. Those who attempted to change the system and make it more equitable were seen as traitors. For example, both Turgot and Silhouette, who initiated tax reforms, w...

Science and Enlightenment! *Skip to the end of the summary to view comments* Summary of My Understanding of the Birth of Modern Science Science altered ideas about the place of humankind in the cosmos and challenged the teaching of the church. It originated in Europe because it was a reinvigorated and fragmented civilization. Institutions were independent. This arose from the idea of a corporation: a group of people with rights to regulate and control its own members. The most important institution to the birth of science was the university. Its autonomy allowed its members to create its own curricula centering on the natural sciences. These universities relied heavily on the teaching of Aristotle. Another reason why Europe was able to develop science is because it drew extensively on knowledge of other cultures, as the center of a massive exchange of information It started with Copernicus’ discovery that the sun was the center and that other planets re...

Chapter 14 P2 + Docs: Slaves and Globalization Summary: This half of the chapter focused mainly on slave trade. It first went over the many types of slavery that were present in the pre-1500s, then it went on to mention how distinctive slavery in the Americas was. It was mostly different because of its identification with Africa and blackness and linked to dehumanization. It is also different because of the immense size of the slave traffic and its centrality to the plantation economy in the Americas. The slavery picked up the pace when a sugar economy started to boom. Africans were picked because they were skilled farmers, had immunities to diseases, they were close and readily available, and because they weren’t Christians. It was important that they weren’t Christians because the pope at the time gave Spain and Portugal permission to capture and subjugate those who were non-believers of God. In practice, the slave trade was mostly conducted by African author...

Chapter 14 What really interested me in this half of the chapter was the section about the fur trade in global commerce. Here is a little summary. Agricultural expansion diminished furs in the Americas, and the Little Ice Age increased its demand. The French, British and Dutch competed for furs due to its increasing value. Natives worked to obtain the furs in exchange for goods, and represented a cheap labor force. The environmental price for furs was high: depletion of species was eminent. This trade was at first beneficial for Natives. European goods were beneficial for natives who could distribute them as gifts to gain influence locally, and many of the items they received were very useful. However, trade carried diseases, which decimated populations and led to mourning  wars, where natives actually started stealing people from other tribes to support their depleting numbers. Another problem was also the dependence on european goods. Traditional crafts wer...

Chapter 13: Political Transformations For the majority of the chapter, a trend I noticed was that Strayer often compared the expansion of Europe with Russia and Asia, so I wanted to focus mainly on that for today’s blog. Europe: In this chapter, Strayer focused on British colonization, Spanish colonization, and Brazilian Portuguese colonization for Europe’s expansion. For the British colonists, one of their main goals for staying in the Americas was to escape from old European society. They were less interested than Spain in spreading Christianity. They were more or less independent because the British Parliament paid them little attention. This was because, at first, the British thought that the lands they acquired were “unpromising leftovers” that the Spaniards chose not to take. As a result, there was a tradition of local self-government. There were a lot of British settlers, and they came with women too, so there wasn’t a lot of intermarriage and racial...