Draft Teaching Manual

Secondary 3 History

Bridging Programme

Teaching Manual

Prepared on behalf of

Education Bureau, HKSAR

by David Faure and Ma Muk Chi

Centre of Comparative and Public History

Department of History

The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Content

Part I. Introductory Comments Copyright Notes of Pictures and Photos Part II. Teaching Topics

1. What is history?

2. East and West

3. The rise of civilisation

4. Heroes and myths

5. City states

6. Rome and the Roman Empire

7. The legacies of Greece and Rome

8. Revision

9. The Middle Ages

10. The Renaissance

11. Reformation

12. The rise of science

13. Voyages of discovery

14. Enlightenment

15. The French Revolution

2 16. Revision

17. Industrial Revolution

18. Old empires and new empires

19. Asia in the age of European expansion

20. The abundance of steel and the arms race

21. European nationalism

22. The World Wars in Europe

23. East Asia from the First to the Second World War

24. Post-Second World War politics

25. Advances in science, technology and livelihood

26. Revision

3 Part I. Introductory Comments

1. This manual is more concerned with helping students to understand historical

trends than with making them remember facts.

2. Understanding is not the same as defining. There is no need for students to

memorise definitions.

3. Abstract definitions do not help. For example, don’t try to define “feudalism”.

Show them how historians use the word.

4. Do not worry very much about “first hand” or “second hand” sources. Most

sources that reach the historian are indirect.

5. It is unfortunate that most textbook illustrations are not inserted with a purpose.

Illustrations are only useful if they make a point.

6. The timeline can be used throughout the course.

7. It is more important for students to state the ordering of events correctly than to

remember dates.

8. Place names are meaningless unless they can be related to maps.

9. Names of people are kept to the minimum. Students are encouraged to introduce

personal names in their projects but, except for a handful, they are not required to

remember them as part of the curriculum.

10. Documents are used in the teaching of history to give students a chance to

interpret, to weigh arguments against evidence and to develop sensitivity to

historical subjects. They are not provided simply to make a factual point. If you

want your students to learn a fact, you may as well just tell them.

11. Background knowledge is often needed to understand historical events and

documents. If you want your students to remember events, dates and names,

think of the following:

(1) Be consistent about what you want them to remember,

4 (2) Keep memory work to the absolute minimum,

(3) Draw from them what they already know; you will be surprised they

know more than you or they think.

12. We state below the objectives of what each unit is meant to achieve, and a

summary of what the unit deals with. We are serious in stating our objectives. It

is important that the syllabus is presented as a whole: topics are not isolated one

from another, there should be cross references as teaching proceeds.

5 Copyright Notes of Pictures and Photos

1. There is note attached to each picture, which reminds the users of copyright

clearing status. Please do not use any picture with a note read, “Permission to

use the picture will be sought. Please do not copy or distribute the picture until

further notice.

2. For those owned by Department of History, The Chinese University of Hong

Kong, David Faure, Ma Muk Chi and Joan Cheng, permission is granted to

copy, distribute and/or modify.

3. For those downloaded from Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia The Free

Encyclopaedia, please follow the guidelines attached to this manual when

using the picture. It is not recommended to mount them onto the Internet for

further distribution.

4. It is not recommended to mount those pictures found at the following two

websites onto the Internet for further distribution:

www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk

www.makingthemodernworld.org

Use a hyperlink instead of direct mounting.

6 Part II. Teaching Topics

Topic 1: What is history?

Objectives

To encourage students to discover for themselves what history is in daily life and why it is cited. To introduce the idea of the time line, the use of dates and difference between B.C. and A.D.

Sample teaching plan

Why do we talk about the past?

Exercise 1:

Ask two students to act out the following conversation. (The conversation can also be pre-recorded and played. It would be helpful if students have script in front of them.)

A: I can’t find my keys.

B. Where did you put them?

A: I don’t remember. I last had them yesterday when I came in.

B: Did you put them down somewhere?

A: I had them in my hand. I really don’t understand.

B: Think about what happened.

A: Well, when I came in, the telephone rang. Did I put them near the phone?

7 B: Let me see; no, they aren’t there.

A: I answered the phone. It was a wrong number. When I put the phone down, I went

into the kitchen.

B: What did you do in the kitchen?

A: I washed my hands.

B: So you weren’t holding the keys in your hand any more. Have you checked the

kitchen table?

A: No, they aren’t there.

B: Well, if you didn’t put them by the phone or on the kitchen table, why don’t you

look in your pockets?

A: Yes, oh, yes, they’re there. Why didn’t I think of that earlier?

Questions:

 What words in the conversation indicate time? (Notice three sorts: events,

sequences – e.g. “then” -- and time pointers e.g. “yesterday”.)

 Can you describe the events in a chronological order from the time A came in to

the time he found his keys?

 How long is this history?

 Why did B ask A about what happened in the past?

 Did the questions help?

Exercise 2:

Look at the front page of the Daily World of July 2, 2007, a newspaper published in

Hong Kong.

Is there any event reported on the front page that is not related to a history?

8 Headline Event Handover commemoration Handover of Hong Kong, July 1, 1997

Global warming 35 years of rising temperature

Stock Market Advance Increase of stock value over one day or one week

Tax increase proposal Not yet an event, but related to tax rates in current

and previous years Murder An event, it will be counted as an indication of law

and order in Hong Kong now and compared to

previous years.

Are these events related? Probably not. Not all events happening at the same time are related. But, together, they may have an effect on people living at the time.

How long is this history? (The longest is 30 years.)

9 10 Exercise 3:

Consider these statements (best if students hear them through a recording):

 That Westerner can’t speak Chinese.

 This is the best film I have seen.

 He has no culture.

What is the history behind these statements?

Summary so far

In this topic, we answer the question what is history by seeing how and why people

talk about the past. We think there are three ways by which they talk about the past:

they refer to events, they use words which indicate time relations and they refer to

specific times. They do this because past events relate to what they do.

Tools for talking about the past

Exercise 4:

Let us play the lost keys story again and this time, instead of asking you to write a

paragraph about it, I shall ask you to draw it on a line, like this:

Yesterday A came in A went into the kitchen Talked to B, found keys

-!------!------!------!------!------

The telephone rang Today A found he had lost his keys

Exercise 5:

11 Let us now look at the Daily World front page again:

Average temperature

!------!------!------!

July 1, 1977 July 1, 1997 July 1, 2007

Hong Kong handover Handover commemoration

Stock market rose

A murder

Talk about tax increase

Why draw the time line? Because it represents graphically what we should know, even when sometime we do not know.

Exercise 6:

What happens when the history to be covered is VERY long?

------1------

B.C. 0 A.D.

Not every society registered dates in this way. In China, years were counted from the first reign of an emperor:

12 Qianlong from 1st year to 60th year

Followed by Jiaqing from 1st year to 25th year, etc.

In the West, the Church was very influential in deciding on the shape the calendar should take. It is not surprising that it counted from what it believed to be the most important event of all, the birth of Jesus Christ.

This should raise the question why the Church was so influential in the West, and, if it was so influential, what else did it do besides deciding on the calendar? These are questions we shall address in later topics.

Summary:

Any reference to the past is a description of history. We refer to history all the time.

To talk about the past accurately, we can compile time lines. Time lines make use of calendars. The demarcation A.D. and B.C. in describing time are standard for use in

Western history.

Topic 2: East and West

Objectives

13 To introduce the view of the world in ancient times by looking at an old map, and discuss the idea of cultural similarities and variations by looking at architecture, writing systems and dress styles as examples.

Exercise 1:

Look at these two maps (Maps 1 and 2).

(Source: J.G. Barthologmew LLD, A Literacy & Historical Atlas of Asia, London: J.M. Dent

& Sons, Ltd.; New York: E.P. Dutton & Co, unknown publishing year.)

14 (Source: Department of History, CUHK.)

Map 1 was drawn in around 500 B.C. in Greece. Map 2 is a map of the twentieth century. Compare the two. (Make sure students have looked at the Mediterranean Sea,

Greece, Italy, Egypt and India. Ask them: Where is ...? Indicate 500 B.C. on a time line.)

Do you notice the similarities and differences between the two maps?

Greek map of the world Modern map of the world Centred at the Mediterranean Centred at the equator Africa and India distorted Africa and India correctly denoted No Americas, Australia With Americas and Australia No Britain! With Britain Quite accurate about the Mediterranean Mediterranean close to Greek map

Exercise 2:

If knowledge of the world to the Greeks was as indicated by the map, how do you think these different parts of the Mediterranean were connected?

15 (1) Through trade (and shipping)

(2) Through the circulation of knowledge, especially in books

(3) Through war

We can cite examples of each, but details can be left to later topics.

Exercise 3:

Nowadays many people in Hong Kong travel in this area for their holiday. There is also a lot of information about places on the map to be found on the internet. The following (Pictures 1 and 2) are only a small number of pictures which we have downloaded from the internet. Students can download a lot more themselves. (Look up Wikipedia for Greek architecture, Roman architecture.) Can they place these pictures in the right locations on the Greek map?

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:AthensAcropolisDawn06034.jpg

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Kheops-Pyramid.jpg Picture 1

16 Picture 2

Exercise 4:

We would like to know if the people around the Mediterranean Sea shared a common culture. An indication we can use is their writing. Look at the following table

(Diagram 1) and see how similar the alphabets are in the countries around the

Mediterranean (see Map 3). (Much more can be found in Wikipedia. Look under

“alphabet,” “history of the alphabet.”)

17 Reference:

Andrew Robinson, The Story of Writing, Alphabets, Hieroglyphs and Pictograms,

Thames and Hudson, 2007.

Diagram 1

(Source: Department of History, CUHK)

18 Map 3

Location of Scripts

Greek Phoenician

Exercise 5:

Nevertheless, look at dress styles and you can see that in different places, people dress differently (Pictures 3 to 6). Look under “national costume” and “history of clothing” in Wikipedia, or try http://www.siue.edu/COSTUMES/COSTUME1_INDEX.HTML.

(Also Carolyn G. Bradley, Western World Costume: an Outline History, Mineola,

NY: Dover Publications, 2001, 1st published in 1954.)

19 Picture 3 Picture 4

Picture 5 Picture 6

(Source of Pictures 3-6: Department of History, CUHK.)

Dress styles tend to be determined very much by on-going practices and religion.

National costumes are often symbolic also of status and power. They may change with government, but are often very resilient.

20 Exercise 6:

Let us compare what we have observed in the past with what you can see around

Hong Kong. Hong Kong includes a mixture of architectural styles (see Pictures 7 to

10), special ones being associated especially with religion and government. In Hong

Kong, both English and Chinese books are widely circulated, but most people read either the Chinese or the English language newspaper. Its people are dressed in ways that reflect occupational, status and religious differences. In much of the

Mediterranean surroundings, the same would have been true of architecture and dress.

In time, a development similar to that found in Hong Kong also spread over much of this area: Latin became the common written language for the west, and Arabic was the common written language of the Middle East.

Picture 7 Picture 8

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Im age:HK_WC_Stone_Nullah_Lane_Chi na_Resources_Vanguard_Shop.JPG

(Source of picture: Ma Muk Chi)

21 Picture 9 Picture 10

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Tsang_Tai_Uk_%E6%9B%BE%E5%A4%A7%E5%B1%8B_o.jpg

Summary:

In this topic, we have shown that different parts of the world have different ways of doing certain things, such as looking at the world, writing, dress and architecture.

Topic 3: The rise of civilisation

22 Objectives

To discuss how changes in technology, settlement and government together brought about the features often recognised as “civilisation”.

In “East and West”, we have seen that the diffusion of architectural styles, the use of writing, dress styles denote cultural regions (such as “the West” or “East Asia”).

There might well be other features that could demarcate cultural differences, such as food, religion and customs. We do not really know how and why these different features are brought together. It would seem that many of these features might have been related to changes in technology, settlement and forms of government.

It is very difficult to find out how governments were organised before there was writing. Historians, therefore, often refer to the period before writing appeared as

“pre-historic” (in contrast to the “historic” period, after writing has appeared.) The pre-historic period is largely investigated through archaeology. In the historic period, historians and archaeologists work hand in hand.

Archaeologists excavate ancient sites and examine material remains. Unless there is writing, these remains do not appear with a date. How do they know when the objects they found were made?

In general, there are two methods for dating archaeological remains. The first method is carbon-dating. Carbon has always been found in the air and supports life (both animals and plants). Most carbon atoms are stable (not changing over time), but a tiny

23 portion (0.0000000001 percent), known as Carbon 14, is radio-active. That is to say, this carbon atom decays over time: every 5730 years, it loses half its mass. By examining the proportion of carbon 14 in a sample of living organism (wood or bone) using very fine equipment, the archaeologist can work out the approximate age at which it died.

The other method is to record very carefully the layers in which material objects are found and to compare layers of objects in different locations. If earth has not been disturbed, the older objects are found in the lower layers. So, by noting where the layers are, and what objects have been found in each, and comparing the styles of these objects, the archaeologist is able to reconstruct the history of how these objects are transformed over time. That record can be used as a time line for measuring changes in different locations. For an interesting short film on how this happened, see http://www.mesopotamia.co.uk/time/challenge/cha_set.html.

Exercise 1:

We shall not go into the details of how archaeologists learn from their excavations.

We shall simply note what they have found and what their finds might tell us about the rise of civilisation. We shall do that by looking at the following summary of discoveries made at Uruk, in present-day Iraq, one of the oldest cities discovered by archaeologists.

For thousands of years, southern Mesopotamia (ancient Iraq) was home to hunters, fishers, and farmers, exploiting fertile soil, rivers, and abundant animals. By around

3200 B.C., the largest settlement in southern Mesopotamia, if not the world, was

24 Uruk was a true city dominated by monumental mud-brick buildings decorated with mosaics of painted clay cones embedded in the walls, and extraordinary works of art.

Large-scale sculpture in the round and relief carving appeared for the first time, together with metal casting. Simple pictographs were drawn on clay tablets to record the management of goods and the allocation of workers’ rations. These pictographs are the precursors of later cuneiform writing.

Cities such as Uruk continued to expand. During the Early Dynastic period (2900–

2350 B.C.), when city-states dominated Mesopotamia, the city rulers gradually grew in importance and increasingly sought luxury materials to express their power. These goods, often from abroad, were acquired either by trade or conquest.

Source: Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art. “Uruk: The First City”. In Timeline of Art

History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/uruk/hd_uruk.htm (October 2003)

Draw a time line to record the events described in this passage. It should include: hunters, fishers and farmers; the beginnings of a city at Uruk in 3200 B.C., the appearance of writing (early pictographs, that is, drawings which are like words); the use of metal; the Early Dynastic period and city states.

Of hunting, fishing and farming, which do you think was most important for supporting the population who lived in Uruk?

Notice the three developments which seem to have come together: the city, the use of metal and the emergence of writing. Are there reasons to think they might be related?

What are these reasons?

25 Where was Mesopotamia? Point that out in Map 1 of Topic 2.

Hint for the teacher:

Writing was needed for administration and record keeping (e.g. accounts), the use of bronze at this stage was more complicated. The early bronzes were largely ornamental or religious. Later, they came to be increasingly used for weapons and tools. In general, it might be said that both writing and metal working led to occupational specialisation. A government was beginning to appear as would be evident in the appearance of luxurious burials to be discussed in Topic 4.

Exercise 2:

Look at the following object (Picture 11) which was found in Egypt, probably dating to 3000 B.C. That was before the pyramids were built.

You can probably tell a little of the story even without the background to the pictures.

Notice that in one picture, a man is holding the head of another man, and at the bottom of the picture, two men are running away. In the other picture, the upper part shows a man in a parade, while the bodies of ten headless men lie on one side.

26 Picture 11

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:NarmerPalette_ROM.jpg.

It will not take a lot of imagination to work out that this is a battle scene followed by victory. But for the rest, you will need a little background. Look at the picture on the left, what is that bird holding a reed leading to the man’s head? If I tell you that Egypt was located along a river (the River Nile), and that this little diagram tells you where the battle was fought, do you think that was in the north or the south of the river?

(Answer: the north, in the marshes, as indicated by the papyrus plants in the diagram.)

The king in the two diagrams wears two different crowns. Historians know something about those crowns: the crown in the left-hand picture was that of upper (southern)

Egypt, and the one on the right, of lower Egypt. So, on the left-hand-side picture, you have the king of Upper Egypt conquering some enemies, and then in the right-hand- side picture, of him as the king of Lower Egypt in a triumphal procession. The bird,

Horus, represented the king. On the right-hand-side picture, the strange looking animals with their long necks entwined probably refer to the joining of upper and lower Egypt. In the picture below this, you see another battle scene, of a bull

27 trampling enemies and taking and breaking down a city wall. You see bulls’ heads at the top of the palette as well; they probably indicate the strength of the king. For more information, you can look up http://www.ancient-egypt.org/index.html.

How would a palette like this one symbolise the rise of civilisation? The same observations about Uruk in Exercise 1 can be made:

(1) The cities are there, you see one of them in the left-hand-side picture where the enemies are running away, and on the right-hand-side picture where the bull is attacking its walls;

(2) There are signs of writing, as you can see in the seal in between the bull’s heads at the top of the palette; Egyptian historians tell us that is the name of the king;

(3) The king in this battle scene Picture 12 commands an army; there must have http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Kh been a government in Upper Egypt for eops-Pyramid.jpg him to supply this army, and so, to win this war. Four hundred years later, the king of Egypt would be building the pyramid that you saw in Topic 2 (Picture 12), and that would have taken a great deal of organisation.

28 Civilisation: We have not defined the word “civilisation.” “Civilisation” is one of those words which are impossible to define. Historians use it to indicate the beginning of writing, cities, government and the use of tools. The rise of civilisation is a very long process; it indicates the gradual development of large numbers of people living together, using their own inventions to control their surroundings.

The area around Iran and Iraq, known to historians as Mesopotamia, have yielded records of many ancient cities. Other parts of the world where cities appeared by 2000

B.C. include: Egypt, the Indus Valley (in India), and North China. Locate these places on the map provided in Topic 2.

The students will notice that China comes off the map.

Summary:

At about 3,000 B.C., cities, writing, governments and, in some places, the use of bronze, began to appear in some parts of the world. They created a new environment for human beings living together. From that time on, we begin to have written records of history.

29 Topic 4: Heroes and Myths

Objectives

This topic continues from the previous in doing two things: (1) it focuses attention on sources and drawing information from them; and (2) it discusses what early government might consist of.

Every society had its great men and women. Some were thought of as kings and queens, so that their descendants might continue to be kings and queens. When writing appeared, their names and deeds were recorded in writing. Before writing appeared, how do historians know that they existed?

Exercise 1:

The following two pictures (Pictures 13 and 14) were found on the two sides of a panel in a grave at the city of Ur in Mesopotamia (see Topic 3) and dated to 2600-

2400 B.C. Where is the great man in these pictures? What do these pictures tell us about his greatness?

30 Picture 13

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Standard_of_Ur_-_peace_side.jpg

Picture 14

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Standard_of_Ur_-_War.jpg .

31 Hint for the teacher:

Notice that the panel in Picture 13 indicates the king’s economic resources, and 14 his army. In the top row of Picture 13, the king is seated in a banquet, facing a number of seated men, who are being entertained by a musician. In the second and third rows, their servants bring animals and supplies. In Picture 14, the king’s army consists of foot soldiers and chariots. Again, like the Egyptian palette we saw in Topic 3, this shows a battle scene. Enemies lying dead under the chariot indicate victory.

So, what do kings do according to these panels? They find the resources needed for their government, build armies and win wars.

Exercise 2:

Beliefs in great men, including kings, have also come down to us in the form of stories. As you know, every society has many such stories. They include stories of creation, stories of the great flood, stories of war, stories of law giving. In the following, you will find a simple story of a mother looking for her daughter told by the ancient Greeks. The mother, Demeter, was “Mother Earth”, the goddess who looked after the earth and the crops.

TALES FROM GREEK MYTHOLOGY.

32 THE SORROW OF DEMETER.

In the fields of Enna, in the happy island of Sicily, the beautiful Persephone was playing with the girls who lived there with her. She was the daughter of the Lady

Demeter, and every one loved them both; for Demeter was good and kind to all, and no one could be more gentle and merry than Persephone. She and her companions were gathering flowers from the field, to make crowns for their long flowing hair.

They had picked many roses and lilies and hyacinths which grew in clusters around them, when Persephone thought she saw a splendid flower far off; and away she ran, as fast as she could, to get it. It was a beautiful narcissus, with hundred heads springing from one stem; and the perfume which came from its flowers gladdened the broad heaven above, and the earth and sea around it. Eagerly Persephone stretched out her hand to take this splendid prize, when the earth opened, and a chariot stood before her drawn by four coal-black horses; and in the chariot there was a man with a dark and solemn face, which looked as though he could never smile, and as though he had never been happy. In a moment he got out of his chariot, seized Persephone round the waist, and put her on the seat by his side. Then he touched the horses with his whip, and they drew the chariot down into the great gulf, and the earth closed over them again.

Presently the girls who had been playing with Persephone came up to the place where the beautiful narcissus was growing; but they could not see her anywhere.

And they said, “Here is the very flower which she ran to pick, and there is no place here where she can be hiding.” Still for a long time they searched for her through the fields of Enna; and when the evening was come, they went home to tell the Lady

Demeter that they could not tell what had become of Persephone.

33 Very terrible was the sorrow of Demeter when she was told that her child was lost. She put a dark robe on her shoulders, and took a flaming torch in her hand, and went over land and sea to look for Persephone. But no one could tell her where she was gone. When ten days were past she met Hekate, and asked her about her child; but Hekate said, “I heard her voice, as she cried out when some one seized her; but I did not see it with my eyes, and so I know not where she is gone.” Then she went to

Helios, and said to him,” O Helios, tell me about my child. You see everything on the earth, sitting in the bright sun.” Then Helios said, “O Demeter, I pity you for your great sorrow, and I will tell you the truth. It is Hades who has taken away Persephone to be his wife in the dark and gloomy land which lies beneath in the earth.”

Then the rage of Demeter was more terrible than her sorrow had been; and she would not stay in the palace of Zeus, on the great Thessalian hill, because it was Zeus who had allowed Hades to take away Persephone. So she went down from Olympus, and wandered on a long way until she came to Eleusis, just as the sun was going down into his golden cup behind the dark blue hills. There Demeter sat down close to a fountain, where the water bubbled out from the green turf, and fell into a clear basin, over which some dark olive trees spread their branches. Just then the daughters of

Keleos, the king of Eleusis, came to the fountain with pitchers on their heads to draw water; and when they saw Demeter, they knew from her face that she must have some great grief; and they spoke kindly to her, and asked if they could do anything to help her. Then she told them how she had lost and was searching for her child; and they said, “Come home and live with us: and our father and mother will give you everything that you can want, and do all that they can to soothe your sorrow.” So

Demeter went down to the house of Keleos, and she stayed there for a whole year.

34 And all this time, although the daughters of Keleos were very gentle and kind to her, she went on mourning and weeping for Persephonê. She never laughed or smiled, and scarcely ever did she speak to any one, because of her great grief. And even the earth, and the things which grow on the earth, mourned for the sorrow which had come upon

Demeter. There was no fruit upon the trees, no corn came up in the fields, and no flowers blossomed in the gardens. And Zeus looked down from his high Thessalian hill, and saw that everything must die unless he could soothe the grief and anger of

Demeter. So he sent Hermes down to Hades, the dark and stern king, to bid him send

Persephonê to see her mother Demeter. But before Hades let her go, he gave her a pomegranate to eat, because he did not wish her to stay away from him always, and he knew that she must come back if she tasted but one of the pomegranate seeds. Then the great chariot was brought before the door of the palace, and Hermes touched with his whip the coal-black horses, and away they went as swiftly as the wind, on and on, until they came close to Eleusis. Then Hermes left Persephone, and the coal-black horses drew the chariot away again to the dark home of King Hades.

The sun was sinking down in the sky when Hermes left Persephone, and as she came near to the fountain she saw some one sitting near it in a long black robe, and she knew that it must be her mother who still wept and mourned for her child.

And as Demeter heard the rustling of her dress, she lifted up her face, and Persephone stood before her.

Then the joy of Demeter was greater, as she clasped her daughter to her breast, than her grief and her sorrow had been. Again and again she held Persephone in her arms, and asked her about all that had happened to her. And she said, “Now that you are come back to me, I shall never let you go away again; Hades shall not have my

35 child to live with him in his dreary kingdom.” But Persephone said, “O mother, it may not be so; I cannot stay with you always; for before Hermes brought me away to see you, Hades gave me a pomegranate, and I have eaten some of the seeds; and after tasting the seed I must go back to him again when six months have passed by. And indeed I am not afraid to go back; for although Hades never smiles or laughs, and everything in his palace is dark and gloomy, still he is very kind to me; and I think that he feels almost happy since I have been his wife. But do not be worried, my mother, for he has promised to let me come up and stay with you for six months in every year, and the other six months I must spend with him in the land which lies beneath the earth.”

So Demeter was comforted for her daughter Persephone, and the earth and all the things that grew in it felt that her anger and sorrow had passed away. Once more the trees bore their fruits, the flowers spread out their sweet blossoms in the garden, and the golden corn waved like the sea under the soft summer breeze. So the six months passed happily away, and then Hermes came with the coal-black horses to take

Persephone to the dark land. And she said to her mother, “Do not weep much; the gloomy king whose wife I am is so kind to me that I cannot be really unhappy; and in six months more he will let me come to you again.” But still, whenever the time came round for Persephone to go back to Hades, Demeter thought of the happy days when her child was a merry girl playing with her companions and gathering the bright flowers in the beautiful plains of Enna.

(Source: George W. Cox, Tales from Greek Mythology, London: Longman, Roberts, &

Green, 1863, pp.1-7.)

36 Knowing that Demeter was also “Mother Earth”, why do you think the story of her search for her daughter might also represent changes in the season and of the annual cycle of farming? Do you think a hunting community would have thought of “Mother

Earth” in quite the same way?

Notice the god Zeus. He was the king of the gods, but he also allowed Hades to take away Demeter’s daughter. You are probably used to gods standing for what is right; notice that in Greek mythology, gods were powerful but not always good.

Notice where Zeus was. Demeter went down from the Mount of Olympus after she saw Zeus. Olympus was the home of the gods. Have you seen this word or its variation? Where do you see it?

The story of Demeter, like many myths, can be read in different ways. At one level, it is the story of a mother and her daughter, and of the daughter being taken away by a stranger. At another level, it is an account of the changes of the seasons. When

“Mother Earth” was upset, crops would not grow. At the same time, it also represents the authority of kings. Zeus was the king of the gods, but other gods had powers and responsibilities which he did not have authority over: Demeter over the earth, Helios as the sun, Hades governing the underworld. In the ancient world, each city would have had its own ruler, and over many of them, there would have been a king. The king probably had little authority in many of these cities, but he could have raised his army from them, or demanded payment of taxes. What was Zeus responsible for?

When Demeter refused to look after the earth, he did not order her to return to her duties; instead, he had to solve her problem for her.

37 Zeus ruled from Olympus. The name appears nowadays in the Olympic Games. Topic

5 will again refer to sports in Greece. It may be useful here to allow students to associate the Olympic Games with Greek history.

Greek names look hard to read, but they are not. Read every vowel, e.g. Persephone is read per-se-phon-e (-e as a short “i” in English); Helios as he-li-os.

Summary:

Stories of heroes as recorded in pictures or told by word of mouth (and then written down) are records of the exploits of kings. They tell historians something about ancient governments. Kings had to find resources to build armies; they had to make sure that crops could grow, and they had to balance the interests of the powerful people under their rule.

38 Topic 5: City States

Objectives

To familiarise students with the idea of the city state, the principles of democracy practised therein, some preliminary knowledge of Greece within European history, and Alexander the Great’s conquests.

Agriculture was one of the greatest human inventions. With agriculture, human beings settled down. They had to work on the earth and to improve the rivers. They produced more food and so more people could be supported, some of whom did not farm.

Society became more varied. You saw a little of this in the cities of Uruk and Ur, in between 2000 and 3000 B.C. These cities were seats of government, where kings ruled, with the support of priests and scribes. In the next millennia, the cities multiplied, especially in Egypt and Mesopotamia.

Some of the kings of Egypt and Mesopotamia were so powerful that they conquered many cities. The cities that grew up on their edges, remained independent. In some of the cities in Greece, which were founded more than a thousand years later than Uruk and Ur, the inhabitants drove away their kings. The tradition of ruling without kings, which evolved in some Greek cities, contributed to the manner of government known as democracy.

Go back to the ancient map of Topic 2, and you can see where these Greek cities were. (For reference, Egypt and Mesopotamia can be pointed out to students.) You

39 can see that the region marked out is located on the edge of modern-day Turkey. In the 5th century B.C., Turkey came within the Persian Empire, which had taken over most of Mesopotamia. The Persian conquest stopped short of Greece because in 490

B.C. the cities put up a strong resistance and repelled the Persian invasion. You probably know the name of the place where that battle took place. It is Marathon.

What do you understand by the word “marathon” today? Why is that word used in this way?

Exercise 1:

Athens

If you go to the most famous city in Greece today, Athens, you will see on top of the hill at the city the ruins of the ancient city state (see Picture 15).

40 http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:AthensAcropolisDawn06034.jpg

Picture 15

The buildings on the mount were the main temples and the centres of government of the city of Athens. You can see from the picture that the city was located by the sea.

In fact, Athens was a naval power. It depended on trade and its people migrated to the islands off the coast, founding cities in the model of Athens itself. In 430 B.C., at the beginning of thirty years of war for the control of Greece between Athens and another city, Sparta, Pericles, who commanded the Athenian army, said the following in a speech he gave before battle:

Our form of government does not enter into rivalry with the institutions of others. We do not copy our neighbours, but are an example to them. It is true that we are called a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the many and not of the few. But while the law secures equal justice to all alike in their private disputes, the claim of

41 excellence is also recognized; and when a citizen is in any way distinguished, he is preferred to the public service, not as a matter of privilege, but as the reward of merit.

Neither is poverty a bar, but a man may benefit his country whatever be the obscurity of his condition.

And we have not forgotten to provide for our weary spirits many relaxations from toil; we have regular games and sacrifices throughout the year; our homes are beautiful and elegant; and the delight which we daily feel in all these things helps to banish melancholy. Because of the greatness of our city the fruits of the whole earth flow in upon us; so that we enjoy the goods of other countries as freely as of our own.

(Source: Leon Bernard and Theodore B. Hodges, Readings in European History, New York:

Macmillan, 1958, p. 6.)

Which sentence in the passage suggests that Athens was a trading city? Which sentence suggests that sports formed an important part of city life? He said “games”, can you name one of them? He said “regular games and sacrifice”, could the two have been related?

Pericles talked about democracy. He indicated that certain conditions were required for it to work. What were they?

42 If time permits, hold a class discussion on how democracy in Athens was different from democracy in a modern society?

Hints for the teacher:

The International Olympic Committee maintains a website which gives an interesting history of the Olympic Games. This may be found at www.olympic.org . Look under

“Olympic Games” (on the left-hand side), and then “The ancient Olympic Games” at the bottom of the page. The cartoon video is good fun to watch.

The games were held in honour of the gods. On democracy, see the second paragraph in the passage.

For classroom discussion suggested here, it would be useful to think about democracy in the city states as a direct form of democracy, in the sense that people of the city voted directly for their government. The reason they could do that had to do with their small population size, compared to most modern countries. Even then, not everybody could vote. The Greek cities permitted slavery, and slaves did not vote. In a modern society, voting is often indirect, in the sense that the electorate vote for the party rather than members of government.

Exercise 2:

Alexander the Great

Athenian democracy did not last a long time. It lasted probably just about 200 years, from the 5th to the 4th century B.C. Athens and Sparta fought and both weakened. A new city came to the fore, which not only defeated them all, but went on to conquer

Mesopotamia and Egypt. This was the city that was ruled by Alexander’s father,

43 Philip. Alexander, known in history as Alexander the Great, succeeded as king of

Macedon while a very young man in 336 B.C. He died in 323 B.C. at the age of 32.

His conquests were conducted in a little more than a decade.

(Source: Department of History, CUHK)

Can you name the three areas marked A, B and C?

Most textbooks would have a chapter on Alexander with a map of his conquests. We suggest that you look at the map and mark the conquests on the Greek map provided in this lesson (Map 5). Show your students that Alexander made himself ruler of the world. If needed, a discussion can be launched as to why Alexander could have made his conquests in such a short time. Again, the textbook may well have some pictures of the Greek phalanx (the formation of Greek foot soldiers, known as hoplites). This could be a starting point on the history of war tactic. For reference, see William H.

44 McNeill, A World History, New York: Oxford University Press, 1979, pp.93-96. A short optional section is attached below.

A note on war:

From around the 7th century, the Greeks invented a new battle field tactic which involved the use of foot soldiers in formation. The men of the Greek city were required to serve in war, but they brought their own weapons. Most farmers came with their armour and a spear. Those who could not afford this equipment helped in other ways, such as rowing boats. They had to train regularly for war. They fought in formation (known as the phalanx), that is to say in tight masses of rows of men (often eight rows) and were required to move forward and backward together. It was not easy to train and command soldiers in these formations, but when that was successfully done, they could be very effective. Alexander was a brilliant commander of men in formation. His use of formations brought him many victories in the battlefield.

Picture 16 http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Achil les_Penthesileia_BM_B209.jpg

45 Can you see a connection between the rise of the phalanx and Greek city state democracy? In the city state, which class a man belonged to depended very much on where he fought in war. The commanders were high-class men. Many men served as foot soldiers. Serving together in war provided the solidarity that made up the city state. The training needed went together with the emphasis in sports. In picture 16, you can see the drawing on a Greek vase of the hoplite foot soldier in action.

Summary:

In this topic, we looked at the essentials of Greek city state democracy as described by one of their leaders. We also noted Alexander the Great’s empire, which stretched from Greece to Egypt and Mesopotamia, and considered how his success might have been related to the emergence of the phalanx formation in battle.

Reference: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/greeks/greekcritics_01.shtml http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx_formation (interesting pictures of the phalanx here.)

Topic 6: Rome and the Roman Empire

46 Objectives

To familiarise students with the geographic spread of the Roman Empire within the context of European history, with the extension of Roman law and citizenship beyond

Rome, and the connection between coinage devaluation and the decline of the empire.

Alexander’s empire broke up as soon as he died, and the successor to it was the

Roman empire, which took from the 3rd to the 1st century B.C. (three hundred years) to build up. By the 4th century A.D., the Roman Empire itself had collapsed. Even then, it provided a sense of unity to the Western world for most of four to five centuries, and that left a tremendous influence on the history of Europe. In the next topic, we shall look at some of these consequences. In this topic, we shall trace the rise of Roman and the changes in government as an empire is built and expands.

Rome began as a city state. It expanded by accident. The Roman Empire had not been planned. In the 3rd century B.C., Rome had defeated all the Italian cities, but its expansion brought it into conflict with Carthage, the maritime power based in North

Africa. After bitter wars, Rome defeated Carthage. Some of those wars brought it into conflict with Macedonia, which had allied with Carthage. Rome defeated Macedonia.

It then turned on the area which used to be known as Mesopotamia, conquered by

Alexander but since his death had come under native rule. By the 2nd century B.C.,

Rome had conquered this area. By the 1st century B.C., Rome was already the most powerful city in the whole of the West. It continued conquering, now into Egypt and towards the north into present-day France and Britain (known as Gaul).

47 Map 6

(Source: Department of History, CUHK.)

How did Rome as a city govern such a vast territory? Most of the time, it did not. It was almost impossible to control the military commanders to begin with. That was why by the 1st century B.C. victorious military commanders were demanding power from the Roman senate, the government of Rome. One of these was Julius Caesar

(you know his name already, it is in the calendar, which month do you think was named after him?) Julius Caesar was assassinated. His nephew, Augustus Caesar

(another month was named after him, which?) became the most power man of Rome.

He became, in fact, the emperor.

Let us give you two examples by which the empire was governed. The first had to do with law, the other had to do with money.

Exercise 1:

48 Some of you know about the Bible. The Bible is divided into the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament records events that happened before the birth of Christ (1 A.D.) and the New Testament records events that happened for a few generations after the birth of Christ. So, all the events of the New Testament happened while Rome had an empire. In one of those events, Paul, who became a Christian after the death of Jesus Christ, was arrested for preaching the Christian message. Passage A is a record of what happened to him.

Passage A:

When they had tied him up with thongs, Paul asked the centurion who stood by, “Is it lawful for you to scourge a man who is a Roman, and not found guilty?”

When the centurion heard it, he went to the commanding officer and told him, “Watch what you are about to do, for this man is a Roman!”

The commanding officer came and asked him, “Tell me, are you a Roman?”

He said, “Yes.”

The commanding officer answered, “I bought my citizenship for a great price.”

Paul said, “But I was born a Roman.”

Immediately those who were about to examine him departed from him, and the commanding officer also was afraid when he realized that he was a Roman, because he had bound him. (Source: The Acts of the Apostles, chapter 22, verses 26-29, World English Bible, taken from http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/acts.html)

Paul was not tortured as soon as he said he was a Roman. He was born a Roman, and the commanding officer, who was also a Roman, had purchased his citizenship.

49 Compare that passage with Passage B, a speech given by Emperor Claudius in the

Roman Senate in 48 A.D.

Passage B:

I know, as facts, that the Julii came from Alba, the Coruncanii from Camerium, the

Porcii from Tusculum, and not to inquire too minutely into the past, that new members have been brought into the Senate from Etruria and Lucania and the whole of Italy, that Italy itself was at last extended to the Alps, to the end that not only single persons but entire countries and tribes might be united under our name. We had unshaken peace at home; we prospered in all our foreign relations, in the days when

Italy beyond the Po was admitted to share our citizenship, and when, enrolling in our ranks the most vigorous of the provincials, under colour of settling our legions throughout the world, we recruited our exhausted empire. Are we sorry that the Balbi came to us from Spain, and other men not less illustrious from Narbon Gaul? Their descendants are still among us, and do not yield to us in patriotism.

What was the ruin of Sparta and Athens, but this, that mighty as they were in war, they spurned from them as aliens those whom they had conquered? Our founder

Romulus, on the other hand, was so wise that he fought as enemies and then hailed as fellow-citizens several nations on the very same day.

(Source: History Source Book, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/tacitus-ann11a.html)

Julii, Coruncanii, etc. are names of different sorts of people in Italy. It does not matter to us exactly where they came from. The Po is a river north of Rome. The point is clear: Rome can be stronger if it accepts all these different types of people, not only in

Italy, but also from Spain and Gaul (France and Britain today). Paul was not born in

50 Rome, not even Italy. But his parents must have been Roman for him to claim to have been born Roman.

If you compare the two passages, why do you think people in the Roman Empire wanted to become Roman citizens? What advantages did including all these people as

Roman citizens give to the Roman Empire?

Exercise 2:

Look at the picture below of two coins. The one on the left is a Roman silver coin of the 3rd century A.D. The one on the right is a current United States coin. The picture on one side is that of the portrait of the emperor Severus Alexander. The equivalent picture on the United States coin is the portrait of Washington, the first president of the United States of America. What do you find similar or dissimilar in the two?

51 Picture 17

(Source: Department of History, The Chinese University of Hong Kong)

Governments issue coins and put the portrait of their kings and queens (if there are any) on them. That is one way of letting their people know who is in charge and that has been done from the beginnings of coinage. However, notice how the Roman coin is not quite a circle, but that a circle has been stamped on it.

Notice what happens round the edges of the Roman coin. The silver has been broken off, why? Should the value of the coin now remain the same? But supposing it is the

52 government that does not have enough silver and so the government has been putting less silver into the coin, what happens to its value? In Roman times, as often in history, a coin was only as good as the amount of metal put into it. When the amount of precious metal in it was reduced, the coin was devalued. This was exactly what happened in the 3rd century A.D. The Roman government found it harder and harder to find the money to pay all the needed expenses and devalued the coinage. As a result, prices soared.

The breaking up of the Roman Empire:

It was hard to govern a vast territory such as the Roman Empire. By 330, the then

Roman Emperor, Constantine, split the empire into two halves. The western half would be ruled from Rome, and the eastern half ruled from Constantinople, also known as Byzantium. Why would he do that? It is necessary to understand that throughout Roman history, the east was still wealthier than the west. Moreover, the west came under constant pressure from “barbarians” and the city government of

Rome. After the empire was split, the Roman emperor ruled from Constantinople.

What happened in the West is a complicated history. To put it briefly, “barbarian” tribes moved into Italy, some of whom served in the Roman armies, but by 476, the

Roman commanders of the West, who had come from the “barbarian” tribes, decided not to fill the post of the emperor’s deputy in Rome. The Roman Empire in the west had, therefore, fallen, but the eastern empire remained for another thousand years.

53 Hint for the teacher:

How much Roman history should one teach in a general course? The history of

Rome’s expansion is fascinating, but it involves knowledge of the geography of the

Mediterranean Sea and its surroundings and high-school students probably do not have this in their background. This lesson plan supposes that most of this history can be skipped so that the focus can be put on Rome as a world empire and some consequences of that on its government. As an exercise, students can be asked to compare the map of the Roman Empire with the map of Alexander’s empire to make the point that the extension had been towards the west.

Summary

From approximately the 3rd century B.C., Rome grew from a city state into an empire, and then declined. Its growth was characterised by the spread of Roman citizenship and law. Its decline was related to coinage devaluation and the invasion of

“barbarian” tribes.

Topic 7: The legacies of Greece and Rome

54 Objectives

To make students realise that the legacies of Greece and Rome persist to the present day and may be found within the contexts of their existing knowledge.

You know more about Greece and Rome than you realise. As you noted in the last lesson, the names of some of the emperors are in the calendar. If you think about it, there are two more months that should strike you as strange: October and December.

Let me tell you why.

“Octo” in English is usually associated with the number 8. For example, we say the octopus, the octagon, the octave (in music). Why is it used for the tenth month of the year? In the same way, “Deca” means 10, for example, in decade, decimal; so why are we using the word for the twelfth month?

How would you solve this mystery?

These months were added in the reign of Augustus Caesar; originally the Roman calendar had only ten months.

Words like octo- and deca- come from Latin, the language of Rome. Latin is different from Greek. The English language has borrowed heavily from both these two

55 classical languages. Just as English borrowed Latin words when it accepted the

Roman calendar, it borrowed Greek words when it adopted Greek teaching (for more of this, see Topic 10.

Again, you know more of them than you realise:

 Do you know anyone by the name Sophia? What does that mean?

 Add the Greek word “philo-” to the Greek word “sophia”, what do you get?

What do you think that means?

 Do you notice the prefix geo- in English? It comes in geography, geometry,

geology; what do these words have in common?

 Geometry was a Greek word. Euclid, a Greek, wrote the most popular textbook

in geometry. What do you think metria means?

 And what about the “-logy” in so many words. Where do you think that comes

Hint for the teacher: sophia = wisdom; philo = love; philosophy = love of wisdom; geo = earth; metria = to measure; geometry = measuring the earth, that is, the mathematics for measuring;

-logy comes from “logus”, which means “word”; geology, therefore, is talking about the earth, biology is talking about life, etc.)

You have been using Roman and Greek words without realising.

However, the Greeks and the Romans have not only been contributing to English words, they have also been contributing ideas. In fact, it is because they contribute the ideas that the words have come with them.

56 Ideas

In Topic 5, you saw one of these: democracy. The word demo- stands for people, and

-cracy for government. So that is government by the people. You remember that in the

Greek city state, that was an ideal.

But there is more to democracy than government. Compare these statues from different parts of the ancient world (Pictures 18, 19 and 20):

http://en.wikipedia.org/

wiki/Image:Gudea_of_

Lagash_Girsu.jpg

Picture 18: Rome, c.1st Picture 19: Picture 20: Egypt, c.1480B.C.

Century A.D. Mesopotamia 2100

B.C. (Source of Pictures 18 and 20: Joan Cheng)

57 Which one looks most human-like to you? Could it be that the Greeks wanted to say something about human beings, so much so that when they talked about their gods, even gods were very human-like. For example, they could be both good and evil at the same time.

In a religion in which there are many gods, it is usually the case that different gods are given different functions (Demeter as Mother Earth, and Hades as the God of the

Underworld, for example). However, some Greeks were not satisfied with this idea.

They took their cue from a different approach, a belief in the perfection in the universe. For example, in mathematics, you have studied Pythagoras’ theorem. Has it occurred to you that what mattered to this Greek thinker was that numbers could fit together so perfectly? He noticed that some numbers could form squares, and some numbers triangles, and he was interested in those patterns. He was also interested in music, because music could be represented by numbers. Thinkers in Greece looked for patterns that might explain even the gods, and they came up with the idea that the whole universe must be made of one, or at least very few things. The one thing which made up the universe is the atom. That was their idea.

Philosophers were interested in understanding the universe. In this sense, they were also scientists. The word “science”, however, is Roman. In Latin, it simply means “to know”.

The idea that there should be patterns in things appeared in many different ways in

Greek and Roman thought. Buildings, for example, should be well balanced. Look at the temple on the hill at Athens (http://library.thinkquest.org/23492/cgi- bin/parthenon1.cgi) and see what you think.

58 The Roman idea of law also made use of the quest for order which the Greeks invented. You might remember in the last lesson the Roman citizen came under a different law from other people. What law did non-Romans come under? You might think they would all come under different laws. That was not how the Romans thought about it. Instead, they depended on the idea that something fundamental must be common to the laws of all nations and tried to work out what those were. On this reasoning, law was not arbitrary but should be consistent, and so they codified it.

Roman law, with its codes, was very influential in Europe even after the fall of the

Roman Empire.

The idea of order also came into religion. The idea that one god rather than many gods determined the fate of human beings was not Greek in origin, but through the

Greeks’ quest for understanding the world, it made a special impact under the Roman

Empire. In the Roman Empire, it was given a meaning understandable to the Greek world. Christianity, which gained ascendance from the 2nd century A.D. taught that a single God was the creator and law-giver. When the Roman emperor also embraced this religion, from the time of Constantine (who built Constantinople), the empire and religion under a single God were merged. There was one god in heaven, and one emperor on earth, his representative.

Cultural heritage

The Roman Empire lasted for so long and embodied so much of Europe that for many years afterwards, it remained a symbol of civilisation. Especially after the fifteen century, it was looked upon as being much more civilised than the period that came

59 after, known as the Dark or Middle Ages, which we shall discuss under the next few lessons. It became a symbol of Western civilisation.

For an example of Greek and Roman culture as symbols of civilisation, look up the

Olympic Games. Look again at the official website of the Olympic movement at http://www.olympic.org/uk/games/ancient/index_uk.asp and watch the cartoon video of the history of the game. There are also examples of Greek and Roman architectural styles which you can see in Hong Kong. Look for the use of domes (more of that in

Topic 10) and granite pillars. Look at pictures of the Legislative Council building in

Central District (Picture 21).

60 Picture 21

Summary

The Roman Empire learnt a great deal from the Greeks, and, as the empire expanded,

Greek and Roman ideas and practices spread to many parts of Europe. For some examples, they made an impact on the calendar, on European words, on ideas about knowledge, on religion and on architecture. These influences are still with us today.

Topic 8: Revision

61 1. Put the following words on a time line in the correct order:

Pre-historic, birth of Jesus Christ, Roman empire, Alexander the Great, the Olympic

Games in Beijing, 2007

2. Look at this map. How do you know it was an ancient map?

3. The following passage is taken from the Greek myth about Demeter and her daughter Persephone. Demeter was the Earth Goddess, and Hades was the king of the underworld. What does this passage tell you about changes in the seasons? What does it tell you about social relationships?

So Demeter was comforted for her daughter Persephone, and the earth and all the things that grew in it felt that her anger and sorrow had passed away. Once more the trees bore their fruits, the flowers spread out their sweet blossoms in the garden, and the golden corn waved like the sea under the soft summer breeze. So the six months

62 passed happily away, and then Hermes came with the coal-black horses to take

Persephone to the dark land. And she said to her mother, “Do not weep much; the

gloomy king whose wife I am is so kind to me that I cannot be really unhappy; and in

six months more he will let me come to you again.” But still, whenever the time came

round for Persephone to go back to Hades, Demeter thought of the happy days when

her child was a merry girl playing with her companions and gathering the bright

flowers in the beautiful plains of Enna.

(Source: George W. Cox, Tales from Greek Mythology, London: Longman, Roberts, &

Green, 1863, p. 7.)

4. Which one of the two buildings below represents a Western style? Why do you

think so? Point out four features in the buildings which show that they are different.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Tsang_Tai_Uk_%E6%9B%BE%E5%A4%A7%E5%B1%8B_o.jpg

(Source of Picture B: Ma Muk Chi)

5. Compare the two maps below. Which one do you think was drawn earlier? Why do

you think so? What accounts for the differences between the two maps?

63 Map A

64 Map B

6. This is a description of the government of Athens in 430 B.C. Describe four features of the democracy of that city as indicated.

Our form of government does not enter into rivalry with the institutions of others. We do not copy our neighbours, but are an example to them. It is true that we are called a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the many and not of the few. But while the law secures equal justice to all alike in their private disputes, the claim of excellence is also recognized; and when a citizen is in any way distinguished, he is preferred to the public service, not as a matter of privilege, but as the reward of merit.

7. The following passage describes a legend about the Olympic Games recorded by the Greek traveller Pausanias in the 2nd century A.D. From what he says, were

65 women allowed to take part in the games? When one woman was caught at the games, why was she pardoned from punishment? Rewrite the legend from the woman’s point of view. Why did she go to the games? Why did she become so excited? What did it mean to her that he son won?

As you go from Scillus along the road to Olympia, before you cross the Alpheius, there is a mountain with high, precipitous cliffs. It is called Mount Typaeum. It is a law of Elis to cast down it any women who are caught present at the OlympicGames, or even on the other side of the Alpheius, on the days prohibited to women. However, they say that no woman has been caught, except Callipateira only....She, being a widow, disguised herself exactly like a gymnastic trainer, and brought her son to compete at Olympia. Peisirodus, for so her son was called, was victorious, and

Callipateira, as she was jumping over the enclosure in which they keep the trainers shut up, bared her person. So her sex was discovered, but they let her go unpunished out of respect for her father, her brothers and her son, all of whom had been victorious at Olympia. But a law was passed that for the future trainers should strip before entering the arena.

(Source: Fred Morrow Fling, ed., A Source Book of Greek History, (Boston: D. C. Heath,

1907), pp. 47-53, cited in Internet Ancient History Sourcebook, www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/greekgames.html .)

8. The following picture shows two coins. The one on the left is an ancient Roman coin, and the one on the right is a contemporary American coin. Why is the Roman coin not round?

66 (Source: Department of History, The Chinese University of Hong Kong.)

9. The two pictures shown below are found on a panel at the city of Ur and dated to

2600-2400 B.C. Write a short paragraph of 50 words about government at Ur from information you can obtain from them.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Standard_of_Ur_-_peace_side.jpg

67 http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Standard_of_Ur_-_War.jpg .

10. Look at the pictures in question 9 again. Write a paragraph of 50 words describing the life of an ordinary person living in Ur at 2,500 B.C. Make sure you state clearly if you are writing about a man or a woman.

Topic 9: The Middle Ages

Objectives

68 To present an introduction to the Middle Ages, with emphasis on the rise of feudalism and what that meant in daily life, and on the role of the Christian Church in the

Middle Ages, with some focus on the Crusades.

Sample lesson plan

Feudalism

Watch the power-point file, “The story of the Middle Ages”.

Ask students to present on a time line the following incidents:

 Conversion of the barbarians to Christianity

 The rise of Islam

 Islam’s expansion into Spain

 The emergence of the Holy Roman Empire

 The Crusades

 The rise of cities

It is more important to get the order of events than the dates right. If you must include dates, consider the crowning of Charlemagne as Roman Emperor in 800 and the First

Crusade in 1095.

Let us consider what happened to social life when all these events were taking place.

The crucial thing to remember is that the social institutions which made the Roman

Empire great were collapsing by the 4th century. What does that mean?

69 (1) The devaluation of the currency in the 4th century was destroying trade. As the

Roman Empire receded, trade receded. When there was no trade, there was little use

for money. What happens when money disappears?

What do you use money for? How would you get the same result

without using money? 1. To buy things 1. Make them yourself

2. To employ people 2. Make your family work for you

3. To get a place to live in 3. Somebody will have to give your house

to you, but what do you give in return? 4. To pay your taxes 4. Pay in goods or in service

The money society The money-less society

After you have bought things, employed You make all your own things and so you people, found a place to live in, paid your have no time left, then you work as a taxes, you can do what you want to do. member of a big family, which gives you

a place to live in but wants you to be

attached to it all the time, and the

government can demand work out of you,

there is little freedom left.

(2) As the money society collapsed, new social institutions were emerging. For an

example of such institutions, read the following, which is a description of a 12th

century ceremony of someone becoming the vassal of a lord:

70 First they did their homage thus, the count asked if he was willing to become completely his man, and the other replied, “I am willing”; and with clasped hands, surrounded by the hands of the count, they were bound together by a kiss. Secondly, he who had done homage gave his fealty to the representative of the count in these words, “I promise on my faith that I will in future be faithful to count William, and will observe my homage to him completely against all persons in good faith and without deceit.” Thirdly, he took his oath to this upon the relics of the saints.

Afterward, with a little rod which the count held in his hand, he gave investitures to all who by this agreement had given their security and homage and accompanying oath.

(Source: Homage and Fealty to the Count of Flanders, AD 1127, from Galbert de Bruges,

Chronicle of the Death of Charles the Good, ed. Henri Pirenne, Paris, A. Picard, 1891. p. 89,

Internet Medieval Source Book, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/feud-fief1.html.)

Does this description remind you of a wedding ceremony? Is it possible that the wedding ceremony was a variation of this ceremony? What does it mean to “be willing to become completely his man”? How long was the promise to last?

The wedding ceremony was exactly a variation of the investiture ceremony, in which one man became the vassal of another. To be a vassal was to become somebody else’s man, much like a woman becoming a wife or a man becoming a husband. The promise was to last for life.

71 (3) The meaning of feudalism. Feudal law was very different from our law. In our law, if I give you something, it is yours. In feudal law, I can give you something, and it remains mine, but you are allowed to use it as long as you remain my man. So, when you die, I get that thing back, although usually I would give it to your son in return for his agreeing, again, to be my man. A man so bound to another was not free.

If he was killed, the lord would be compensated. Society in which this sort of law was common was feudal. When money disappears, the binding of one person to another would be an effective way to provide benefits in return for service.

(4) You can, therefore, understand why under feudalism, some people escaped to the cities. In the cities, they became free men. Money reappeared in the cities long before it did in the countryside. Cities had charters with the king so that in return for paying a sum of money, the king would protect the city but leave it alone. Cities had their own organisations, including the guilds.

The Church

Most textbooks would have a chapter on Islam. In our power-point in the previous topic, we have referred to its conquest in the 7th century. Look at the textbook. See if it contains a map indicating Muslim advance through North Africa into Spain (Iberian

Peninsula). Look for a reference to the battle (Battle of Poitiers, 732) in which the

Franks stopped the Muslim advance.

For the three hundred years after this battle, two major developments took place in

Europe: the Church grew in strength, and with the support of the Church, the leaders of the Franks who stopped the Muslim advance were crowned Holy Roman Emperor.

The Holy Roman Emperor was a title; he did not always have power. The Holy

Roman Empire broke up very soon after it was formed, but succession to the title of

72 the Holy Roman Empire continued. The Church, however, remained a powerful institution.

The Church was powerful for a number of reasons:

1) The Church had a clear organisation under the Pope, who claimed authority from

God. (The first Pope was said to be St Peter, the disciple of Jesus Christ.)

2) From the 5th century, the Church was supported by the monasteries. The

monasteries were communities of devoted people who lived together in order to

pray and to serve the Christian religion. They lived simple lives under strict rules.

They were very wealthy institutions. They were well managed, and they received

donations, especially from people who wanted prayers said for them after they

died. You must also understand that many monasteries were linked. Some owned

land at different places on the principal highways, providing shelter for travellers.

At a time when governments were weak and money was little used, they provided

very useful services.

3) The monastic orders and the priests were among the best educated people in

Europe. Most people in the Middle Ages were illiterate. Monasteries and churches

kept books and trained people to read them. They knew how to read and write and

to keep accounts.

4) In the Middle Ages, many people were firmly religious. For most people, life was

short and they desired salvation after death.

5) Even kings and emperors had to take the Pope seriously. He had the power of

excommunication, that is, of driving them out of the church. Without the

protection of the Church, they could not legitimately be king or emperor.

73 This is likely to be one of the hardest topics to teach in the syllabus, and yet it is extremely important as background for later developments. The Church, and

Christianity, was very much an integral part of European life. Some of your students are likely to be familiar with the church through their own religious beliefs. You can by all means draw on this experience to make the above points. For some examples of what you can do:

The story of Christmas: Have you ever wondered how the shepherds could have been watching their flock by night in the middle of winter? The early Church recognized only Easter. The Church took over a pagan festival (winter solstice) to celebrate Christmas. For an interesting story, see “The real story of Christmas” at http://www.history.com/minisites/christmas/viewPage?pageId=1252. The story of the

Church’s major festivals could be an interesting classroom project.

On the question of literacy: see the picture of the chained book (Picture 22). Why was the book chained?

In the Middle Ages, books were hand-copied. They were, therefore, very valuable.

These books were chained to the bookshelves in libraries attached to churches and monasteries. The monks spent a lot of time copying books.

Picture 22

74 . http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Milkau_B%C3%BCcherschrank_mit_angekettetem_Buch_aus_der_Bibliothek_von_Cesena_109-2jpg

Because the ideas of the Church conflicted with new ideas in later periods, especially new ideas from science, the Church is often portrayed as being backward. This was not necessarily the case for most of the Middle Ages. At a time when the Church provided the principal means of education, it was a great preserver of knowledge. The university, which was founded in Paris in the by the 13th, was very much a Church institution, but it was also the centre of some of the most important intellectual discussions in European thought. The history of the universities is also another subject on which students can do a classroom project.

Remember, classroom projects should not be conducted for the sake of learning more facts. Set a problem: What celebrations were held in mid-winter, and why do we think the Church might have taken over pagan festivals in order to celebrate Christmas?

When was the first university founded? What subjects were taught there? Who were the teachers? How was the Church involved in it? We don’t advise a project on the

75 history of the book at this stage. In a later lesson, we shall discuss the invention of printing. That would be a good time for a project on the history of the book.

The Crusades

For most of 300 years, although there were wars between Christians and Muslims in

Spain, the Muslim world and the Christian world were kept apart. From the 11th century, the Christians sent the Crusades to fight in the Holy Land. What happened?

Read the following. This was Pope Urban II speaking in 1095 (at the Council of

Clermont):

Let hatred therefore depart from among you, let your quarrels end, let wars cease, and let all dissensions and controversies slumber. Enter upon the road to the Holy

Sepulcher --, wrest that land from the wicked race, and subject it to yourselves. That land which, as the Scripture says, ‘floweth with milk and honey’ was given by God into the power of the children of Israel.’ Jerusalem is the centre of the earth; the land is fruitful above all others, like another paradise of delights. This spot the Redeemer of mankind has made illustrious by his advent, has beautified by his sojourn, has consecrated by his passion, has redeemed by his death, has glorified by his burial.

(Source: James Harvey Robinson, ed., Readings in European History: Vol. I: (Boston: Ginn and co., 1904), 312-316. This text is part of the Internet Medieval Source Book. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/urban2a.html)

What was the “wicked race”? What was the place they were occupying? Why should

Christians try to get it back? What must they do in order to get it back?

The story: You have to remember that, up to now, the eastern Mediterranean (known as the Middle East nowadays), was the richest and most developed parts of the

76 Western world. The Muslims were not wicked; they were extremely civilised. After the fall of the Roman Empire, in Western Europe, scholarship declined. However, the

Muslim world preserved and advanced Greek learning. The Muslim world had the best libraries, the best scientists and mathematicians.

However, the Muslims were a threat to the Christians in two ways. Firstly, Christians travelled to the Holy Land on homage and the Holy Land was controlled by the

Muslims. Secondly, the Turks, who were now in control of the Arab world, were in conflict with their immediate neighbour, the Eastern Roman Empire (known as

Byzantium). Byzantium was also Christian, although it did not come under the authority of the Pope. When it was threatened, it called for help from the Christians in the West.

The Crusades conducted a holy war, but that war also coincided with the expansion of

Europe. Some of the groups that joined the crusade, especially the Normans, had been expanding very rapidly. Some of these were hired soldiers; they were professional and they were prepared to fight for gain. Faith counted a lot, but there were also opportunities for gain in the Crusades.

The Crusades did not conquer the Holy Land. But the movement of people increased contact between Christians and Muslims. Increasing trade and organising for war also encouraged the growth of the power of the kings in some parts of Europe, especially in England and France. In the next topic, you will see that changes followed.

Summary:

77 You have learnt how the following came together in the Middle Ages: little money was available, most people were unfree because they were given land in return for being someone else’s men, but some people escaped to the city and they became free.

Society under personal bonds is often referred to as feudalism.

The church was a very important aspect of European life in the Middle Ages. It was the major unifying force after the fall of the Roman Empire. In time, the power to organise armies and to go to war fell into the hands of the Holy Roman Emperor and the kings of individual countries, especially England and France. The Church remained its authority in education and in intellectual thought.

78 Topic 10: The Renaissance

Objectives

(1) To introduce to students some of the discoveries of the Renaissance, including humanism. For this topic, humanism will be taken to mean the revival of Greek values and learning. That revival came at the time printing was invented. The impact of that will also be considered.

(2) To demonstrate the impact humanism made on art and architecture, in particular, how Renaissance art and architecture differed from the Gothic, and how Renaissance painting made use of perspective and anatomy.

Sample lesson plan

The invention of printing and humanism

1) By 1450, a new movement was coming over Europe. This was the Renaissance.

The word means “rebirth”. Unlike many words used by historians to deal with

periods of history, this one was created by contemporaries. They believed that

after the fall of the Roman Empire, they had gone through a “Dark Age” and, by

their own time, they were emerging from that age. See Ernst H. Gombrich, A

Little History of the World, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005, chapter 26.

2) What was so new about the age of rebirth? It was the rediscovery of Greek books.

Before the Renaissance, intellectual discussions had focussed on the Bible. The

very strict religious view of life suggested that people should be bound to their

lords. The Renaissance view saw people as free agents. Education was needed to

develop their qualities. This was the Greek view.

79 3) Read the following, a passage written in 1400 (by Petrus Paulus Vergerius) on the

need of education:

We call those studies liberal which are worthy of a free man; those studies by

which we attain and practice virtue and wisdom; that education which calls forth,

trains and develops those highest gifts of body and of mind which ennoble men,

and which are rightly judged to rank next in dignity to virtue only. ...

We come now to the consideration of the various subjects which may rightly be

included under the name of “Liberal Studies.” Amongst these I accord the first

place to History, on grounds both of its attractiveness and of its utility, qualities

which appeal equally to the scholar and to the statesman. Next in importance

ranks Moral Philosophy, which indeed is, in a peculiar sense, a “Liberal Art,” in

that its purpose is to teach men the secret of true freedom....I would indicate as the

third main branch of study, Eloquence, which indeed holds a place of distinction

amongst the refined Arts. By philosophy we learn the essential truth of things,

which by eloquence we so exhibit in orderly adornment as to bring conviction to

differing minds....

(Source: Petrus Paulus Vergerius, De ingenues moribus et liberalibus studiis, trans. by W.

H. Woodward, Vittorino da Feltre and other Humanist Educators, (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1897), 102-110; This text is part of the Internet Medieval

Source Book, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/vergerius.html. )

Exercise:

Consider once again what you learnt about Greek democracy and learning (Topics 5 and 7). Do you see the similarities between Vergerius’ views on education and the

Greek ideals of life?

80 To refresh your memory, let us give you some of the sources you looked at under those topics.

Our form of government does not enter into rivalry with the institutions of others. We do not copy our neighbours, but are an example to them. It is true that we are called a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the many and not of the few. But wile the law secures equal justice to all alike in their private disputes, the claim of excellence is also recognized; and when a citizen is in any way distinguished, he is preferred to the public service, not as a matter of privilege, but as the reward of merit.

And we have not forgotten to provide for our weary spirits many relaxations from toil; we have regular games and sacrifices throughout the year; our homes are beautiful and elegant; and the delight which we daily feel in all these things helps to banish melancholy. Because of the greatness of our city the fruits of the whole earth flow in upon us; so that we enjoy the goods of other countries as freely as of our own.

Picture 23

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image :Dionysos_pediment_Parthenon_BM.jpg A Greek word Philo + Sophia = philosophia (philosophy)

81 4) Why did a revival of Greek learning take place at this time?

You might remember from the last topic that the Muslims had preserved Greek

learning. After the Crusades, by way of trade and exchange, knowledge of Greek

learning would have come to the Christians from the East. Moreover,

Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1453. Constantinople was a much more

established centre of learning than any city of Western Europe. The fall of the city

might have driven some people to move back to Christian Europe.

However, the Renaissance was also helped by the invention of printing, in the

15th century. (The printing press was invented around 1450.)

5) The invention of printing was a very important event in history. It is surprising

that it took so long, as throughout all the years without printing, people in the

West were used to the idea of making patterns from seals. In Asia, the Chinese

printed books much earlier. One problem was perhaps the lack of paper. Until

paper was invented, again an idea in which China was ahead of Europe, printing

served little purpose. Another reason might be the shortage of readers. It was

worth printing books only when there were many readers. For that to happen,

there had to be more people living in cities, using writing in their daily lives.

82 Exercise:

Contrast the picture of a 16th-century printing press in Europe (Picture 24) with the art of printing in China (Picture 25).

Picture 24 Picture 25

(Source of Picture 24: Department of History, CUHK)

(Source of Picture 25: David Faure)

It is often said that the European printing process originated in China. Would you agree?

Putting a sheet of paper on moulds would be common to both processes, but the

Chinese did not use a press. Instead, Chinese printers brushed the paper by hand while it was placed on the printing block. In contrast, from the beginning of printing,

Europeans had movable type made in metal, and, although the Chinese also had the same, the process was seldom used.

83 6) The use of vernacular: The spread of printing led to more and more books being

printed in the vernacular, that is to say, not in Latin but in the local languages,

such as English. William Shakespeare (1564-1616) produced an English literature

in his life time. The Bible, which used to be available only in Latin, was translated

into English in 1611. The first English dictionary appeared in 1604 (Robert

Cawdrey’s Table Alphabeticall). The emergence of the vernacular was very

influential in building up the nation state, to be discussed in a later topic.

History in architecture You see around you all the time building styles indicating different views of culture.

Sometimes they indicate the sense of being modern; at other times, they include features that suggest that they are related to some particular culture (such as, being

Western, or Chinese). However, you also realise that buildings must be safe. So, to design a building, the architect not only expresses a view about culture, but also makes use of existing technology to ensure that it can be inhabited safely and comfortably. Buildings, therefore, tell us a great deal about history. They reflect ideas about culture and technological changes.

We shall consider here only one simple technological question: how do you build a roof 40 feet above ground? What will hold it up? (40 feet is not very high for a building, it is about four floors by Hong Kong standard).

1) You can use timber for pillars. It is not easy to find trees taller than 40 feet (don’t forget you have to cut both ends), but it is not impossible. However, you have to think about transporting 40-foot trees to your building sites, and that is not so easy.

84 Picture 26 http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Parthen on.Southern.Side.damaged.jpg

2) You can think about using stone. Stone is also a good building material, but, again, if you do not find it near your building site, it is difficult to transport because of its weight. Even then, you can see that the taller the building the thicker the stone wall must be. City walls can be very thick, house walls less so. (See in Picture 26 how stone was used in Greek buildings in this picture of the Parthenon at Athens.)

Picture 27

85 (Source of Picture 27: Department of History, CUHK)

3) You can build walls of brick or earth. This is easy to move around (you can make the brick at the site), but brick is not nearly as strong as stone, or even timber.

4) If you have built the walls, now you have to put up the roof. The trouble with roofs is that the wider the walls, the harder it is to put them up. Again, you have the same question about the length of trees if you use wood. If you use stone, how do you build a pillar across space? Don’t forget that the roof is heavy. You can always put pillars in the building, but they take up space.

This is why the arch is so Picture 28 valuable. In Picture 27, you can http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Pantheo see how pieces of stone can be n-panini.jpg used to bridge a wide space. The Romans used the arch widely. They also turned them into domes. Look at this picture of the Pantheon in Rome, built in 125 A.D. (Picture 28) You must understand how difficult it is to build this perfect dome. Every piece on the roof had to be made perfectly before the pieces could be fitted together. The height of the dome is

86 about 140 feet, and the dome itself weighs 5000 tons. The Romans knew how to use concrete, and so that was what it was made of, not stone. This building was an amazing feat of ancient engineering.

After the fall of the Roman Empire, Europe put up no building comparable to the Pantheon for a few hundred years. The knowledge of how to build the dome disappeared in Europe. It started up again in the Middle Ages in a different way.

5) The Gothic invention: buttress walls

Picture 29

(Source of Picture: Joan Cheng)

Picture 30

87 (Source of Picture 30: David Faure)

Picture 31

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:HK_St_John_s_Cathedral_60401_6.jpg

88 In the 12th century (that is to say, during the Middle Ages), the Church of St. Denis was rebuilt using buttressed walls. You can see these buttresses in Pictures 29 and 30: the buttresses are themselves walls of stone or brick built perpendicular to the building wall and they hold up the building wall. The builders found that using the buttresses, not only could walls be made stronger, and therefore, taller, they could also put large windows into them. You can imagine how dark houses were before there could be these large windows. The idea that churches could be bright was also appealing for religious reasons, and this style caught on very quickly.

You see buttresses on a lot of European buildings. You see them in many church buildings, including modern ones that do not need the buttresses for support. Their use has become an architectural style. Picture 31 shows a side hall of St. John’s Cathedral in Hong Kong exhibiting buttresses. These buttresses were used only as decoration; the walls in this modern building in all likelihood do not depend on them for strength.

6) All the above is background. Now, let us introduce the Renaissance. The architects of the Renaissance, who were the same people as the painters and sculptors, rediscovered the Greek and Roman ideals of architecture. They recovered some of the skills of the Romans, for example, in using domes. Domes came to be very commonly used from the 16th century. However, the change was not only technological. The Renaissance artists believed they had rediscovered how mathematical proportions might be related to human lives. They believed that the classical traditions (Greek and Roman) fitted better with these proportions. Picture 32 is a beautiful example of a Renaissance building. This is St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican.

89 Picture 32

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:St._Peter%27s_Basilica_Facade%2C_Rome %2C_June_2004.jpg

History in art The same humanist thinking -- a reversion to the classical, ie Greek and Roman style -- was apparent in painting and sculpture. The objective was to capture human beings as human beings. The Greeks had considered the human form itself graceful, and were not shy of representing it in the nude. The style of the Middle Ages (known as Gothic) had departed in a different direction. Medieval artists produced many statues, but they preferred the symbolic more than the realistic. Their work expressed the beauty of lines and curves, rather than the accurate representation of the human body. This you can see by comparing the three models below:

Picture 33: Greek Picture 34: Medieval Picture 35: Renaissance

90 http://commons.wikime dia.org/wiki/Image:Dio http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:France_Paris_St-Denis_Trinity.jpg nysos_pediment_Parthe non_BM.jpg

Greek Medieval Renaissance

Source of Picture 35: Joan Cheng

Hint for the teacher: Except for the odd student with art background, you are probably better off providing these few examples as background knowledge. When there is enough time, art history is a great deal of fun and extremely informative. You might let some of your students research the Renaissance artists, or compare Italian and Byzantine paintings, but for this topic, home in on the use of perspectives and the realistic representation of the human form.

How might an artist create a realistic image of the human form?

91 One such method was the use of perspectives. Nowadays, we are so used to drawings with perspective that we do not realise that this was an art form that had to be invented. We use it nowadays not only in paintings, but also in engineering and architectural drawing and so this invention has not only enriched our artistic sense, but has also had very important practical applications.

92 Look at this painting:

Picture 36: The martyrdom of St Sebastian, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Antonio_Pollaiuolo_003.jpg by Piero del Pollaiuolo and Antonio del Pollaiuolo, 15th century

(1) Of the six men with bow and arrow, you will notice they come in two groups. The two who are bending down you see front and back. The other four you see in four different directions. Each group shows really the same model, drawn from different perspectives. (2) In the background, you see the landscape sloping away, objects towards the far end looking smaller than objects at the near end. (3) In both observations above, the artist tried to present the objects he drew as they appeared to his eyes. He allowed for the distortion of distance and the angle at which he was viewing these objects.

Allowance for perspective was an invention of the Renaissance. It had a lot to do with Humanism. It was part of the classical interest to capture the world as it was. It involved the application of mathematics to art. It also implied an interest in the human body, and the attempt to portray from it the nature of the human being. Renaissance artists studied the human anatomy to make sure they painted the body right.

The Renaissance artists were much more than painters and sculptors. They were architects, scientists, engineers and all-round scholars. They were interested in the world, and in new ways of representing it.

93 Hint for the teacher: In this lesson, we have avoided producing names of the artists, even the most famous ones. If time permits, it could be a helpful project to ask students to look up Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo. They might concentrate on a few examples of their works, for example, the Sistine Chapel, and explain how they relate to perspectives, anatomy or a reversion to classical style.

Some useful websites: http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings.html#S http://www.saintpetersbasilica.org/ http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/fnart/arch/contents_europe.html http://witcombe.sbc.edu/ARTHrenaissanceitaly.html#Italy15 http://www.davincisketches.com/Default.htm

Summary: There is a great deal that can be taught about the Renaissance. This sample lesson has concentrated on (1) the idea of the Renaissance being an idea inherent at the time; (2) the creation of knowledge had much to do with the invention of printing; (3) the architecture reveals the use of classical forms, especially the dome; (4) paintings and sculpture made use of knowledge of perspective and of anatomy; and (5) these different aspects add up to the view that the Renaissance artists were not only artists, but also thinkers and scientists, that is to say, people interested in understanding the world.

94 Topic 11: Reformation

Objectives To present the history of the Reformation in the context of other developments in the period, especially the Renaissance; to present the differences between Protestant and Roman Catholic beliefs; to relate the Reformation to state formation in the sixteenth century.

Sample teaching plan Most textbooks give an account of the Reformation in three parts: (1) Martin Luther’s revolt against the Roman Catholic Church; (2) the Peasants’ War; and (3) the separation of England from the Roman Catholic Church. Several points might be made clearer in class related to these three parts:

(1) The Reformation gave rise to the Protestants, as opposed to the Roman Catholic Church. Both Protestants and Roman Catholics are Christians.

(2) The Protestant revolt was sparked by the sale of indulgences, that is, the forgiveness of sin in return for donation. The Church had long accepted that sinners had to do penance, as a result of which sins might be forgiven. Payments of money for an indulgence were a variation of this practice.

(3) The Protestants reacted against the authority of the Roman Catholic Church. They believed that the individual could reach salvation without the intervention of the church, but they also believed that individual faith was needed in order for a person to reach salvation.

(4) The spread of Luther’s doctrines, and the writings of other Protestant leaders, was helped by the invention of the printing press.

(5) Once the doctrines against the Roman Catholic Church spread, they were seized upon by common people in the countryside (peasants) as excuses for attacking the monasteries and local lords.

95 (6) The English Reformation was another complicated event which had to do with the English king’s politics both in England and in relation to Europe. By becoming the head of the church, the English king ceased to recognise the Pope’s authority over England. He also proceeded to dissolve the monasteries, a move which broke the power of the Roman Catholic Church in England.

(7) The usual text book version of the Reformation is that the Church became corrupt, and so Martin Luther mounted a revolution. It is useful to begin a discussion of the corruption of the Church by looking at the attached page from Grombrich, A Little History of the World, chapter 28. What was it corrupt about? The object of the supposed corruption was exactly the Renaissance, on which we showered so much admiration in the previous topic.

We can see how the events of the Renaissance and the Reformation were related by comparing time charts. Use the Reformation cards provided to ask students to place major events on a time line. A summary of events is provided by the chart below.

Renaissance Reformation Voyages of Discovery and Scientific Revolution

1415: Portugal captures Ceuta 1450: Invention of printing press 1452: Leonardo da Vinci born 1488: Diaz sailed past Cape of Good Hope 1490s: Leonardo painted Last 1492: Columbus’ first voyage Supper 1498: Vasco da Gama reached India 1500s: Leonardo painted Mona Lisa 1506: Pope Julius II lays the first stone of the new basilica under the St. Veronica pier. 1508-1512: Michelangelo paints the Sistine Chapel 1513-1516: Leonardo da 1517: Martin Luther published 1519-1522 Magellan’s fleet Vinci lives in Rome at the his Ninety-Five Theses On the circumnavigated the world service of Leo X Power of Indulgences 1519 Leonardo died

96 1524-1525: Peasants’ War

1534: Act of Supremacy made 1539: Copernicus published his Henry VIII Supreme Head of heliocentric theory the Church of England 1546: Michelangelo, aged 71, is named architect of St. Peter’s. 1547: Michelangelo produced his first wooden model of St. Peter’s. 1564: Death of Michelangelo

97 Pictures for Reformation Cards: Picture 36a: Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa (1500s)

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:La_gioconda.jpg

98 Picture 36b: Martin Luther (posted 95 theses, 1517)

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Luther46c.jpg

99 Picture 36c: Michelangelo, Sistine Chapel (1508-1522)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Sistine_Chapel_ceiling_left.png

100 Picture 36d: Michelangelo, David (1504)

Source of Picture: Joan Cheng

101 Picture 36e: Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Leonardo_self.jpg

102 Picture 36f: Henry VIII Supreme Head of the Church of England, 1534

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Henry-VIII-kingofengland_1491-1547.jpg

103 Picture 36g: Peasants plundering a cloister in the Peasants’ War, 1524-1525

Source of Picture: Roland H. Bainton, Here I Stand, A Life of Martin Luther, Abingdon Press, 201 Eighth Avenue South, Nashville, Tennessee 37202, USA. Entry for p. 214 in “sources of illustrations” indicates the picture was taken from a pre-World War II journal, Propylaenwelgeschichte.

104 Picture 36h: Leonardo da Vinci, The Last Supper (1495-1498)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:The_Last_Supper_pre_EUR.jpg

105 Picture 36i: Painting of Columbus in the New World, depicting a scene of 1492 (drawn in 1893)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Columbus_Taking_Possession.jpg

106 Summary: The Renaissance led to many consequences, one of which was the Reformation. The Renaissance introduced not only new ideas, but also expensive church buildings which had to be paid for. The Reformation attacked the corruption of the Roman Catholic Church and revolted against its authority. Ideas of the Reformation spread because printing was available and the vernacular was becoming popular. Meanwhile, some new states, such as England, seized upon the religious revolt to break free from the authority of the Roman Catholic Church. Just as the Reformation was proceeding, a new era of history was beginning with the discovery of new sea routes.

107 Topic 12: The rise of science

Objectives

The rise of science was part of the movement from the Renaissance to create a new world view. In this topic, we explore what that world view might consist of and consider some reasons for its emergence.

What is science?

In your science lessons, you conducted this experiment:

Diagram 2

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Prism_rainb ow_schema.png

You passed a beam of white light into a prism (look at the drawing from the left hand side), and observed that it divided into seven colours. You could flash the seven

108 colours into another prism (look at the drawing from the right hand side), and it became a beam of white light again. What did you find out about light in this experiment?

Did you know that this was an experiment conducted by Isaac Newton in 1666? He came to the same conclusion you did. Newton came to this discovery while he was making a telescope. You can understand that making a telescope required using lenses, and he found that however fine his lenses were, there were distortions. Finally, he realised that light did not enter glass in a straight line, and it was defraction which separated the colours.

Why was this a scientific discovery? Did Newton find out something new? How did he know he was right? How did you find out he was right? What is an experiment?

Newton found out something new. He found out that he was right by conducting an experiment. We also know he was right because we can conduct the same experiment.

An experiment is a repeatable event in which we can observe the consequence of some action. An experiment requires combining reason and observation.

Another development: did the sun go round the earth?

Before the sixteenth century, it used to be thought that the sun went round the earth.

In 1539, Nicolaus Copernicus published his theory that the earth went round the sun.

What observation could have supported that the earth went round the sun?

109 We don’t expect your students will know the answer to this one. You will have to give them a nutshell history of astronomy. For centuries, the Arab astronomers had accumulated a great deal of knowledge about the movement of the planets. They noticed that Mars did not move in a straight line. It went forward, and back and forward again. This was a problem that many astronomers tried to solve, but could not, because they all believed that the sun went round the earth. That was, until

Copernicus came up with another solution.

Diagram 3

Retrograde Motion in Copernican System (see Gif image)

(Note: You may also visit http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/retrograde/copernican.html )

That was a very clever argument. Moreover, observation of the planets was there for all to see. However, was this an experiment? The history of this theory (the heliocentric theory) took a strange and political turn.

The theory went against the teaching of the Church. In the sixteenth century, the Church had decided, from its interpretation of the Bible, that it was the sun that went around the earth. The Church had for its support the Greek theory of the universe as propounded by Aristotle, who believed that the earth was the centre of the universe and the sun went round it. That did not mean the Church forbid the publication of Copernicus’ theory. Copernicus was a very well-known astronomer by the time he

110 wrote his book, and the view of the Church was merely that his explanation of the movement of Mars should be taken as a conjecture and not a definitive description.

Copernicus died in 1543 at about the time his book was published. It was widely read by scholars, but it remained a hypothesis. However, Galileo (1564-1642) took it a step further when he published an account of it in 1632 which implied that Copernicus’ theory was more than conjecture. He was required by the Church to retract his argument and was put under house arrest until he died in 1634.

Religious persecution and the rise of science

Picture 37 In the 15th and 16th centuries, the Church http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image: was very concerned about heresies. Willisau_1447.JPG Heretics were arrested and put on trial. Those found guilty were punished, some by the death sentence. One of the ways for doing that was burning at the stake. (See Picture 37.) It is important to understand that this was an age, when on the one hand, science was emerging, but on the other, the belief in magic and witches was very common. During this time, common people hunted down witches, sometimes with very little evidence, and when found guilty, they were burnt. The same treatment was given to Protestants during the Reformation. After the death of the English king, Henry VIII, England briefly reverted to Roman Catholicism, and more than 200 Protestants werePicture burnt 37 to death at the stake. However, the Church also held trials on dissenters, including scientists. Very few scientists were executed, but there was one very famous one before Galileo’s trial, Giordano Bruno, another supporter of Copernicus’ theory, who was sentenced to death and burnt at the stake in 1600. The Church also exerted a great deal of control on publication. It was common for writers such as Galileo to address their books to important people, in the expectation that they might be protected. Galileo, in fact, obtained permission from the Pope to write his book before he wrote it, but, even then, was found to have gone too far.

111 Isaac Newton and the revolution triumphant

To understand in what sense the scientific revolution succeeded with Newton, we have to go back to the Church’s argument. The Church believed that the truth about the world was revealed in the Bible, and that this revelation was more reliable than human observation. The scientists, such as Copernicus, Galileo and Newton believed that they had to explain observed facts, and that it was by understanding these observed facts they could understand the revelation. Newton appended to his major book, Principia Mathematica, the general principles of science. The first two principles may be summarised as:

1. Science accepts only causes which are true and sufficient to explain appearances.

2. Therefore to the same natural effects we must, as far as possible, assign the same

causes.

In other words, scientists observe (so they note the appearances of what they see), and they look for causes which are true and sufficient. By sufficient, they refer to the same causes giving the same effects. However, in addition, he said:

3. In experiments we draw conclusions from observations, whether or not we can

imagine other explanations. We assume these conclusions to be true until they are

proved, by experiments, to be wrong.

112 So, whether or not the Bible, or classical Greek texts, agreed with the conclusion would be irrelevant. What mattered was that scientists drew conclusions from their observations.

Newton discovered the law of gravity, and used that to explain the movement of the planets. He published his book in 1687, by which time England was well established as a Protestant country, a Revolution had occurred and Parliament had gained ascendance (more under Topic 14). The political background of the 1680s in England was very different from that of the 1630s in Italy. Science was now being encouraged and the Church no longer wielded the influence it had had.

Summary:

In this topic, the student has been introduced to the idea that it was from the 16th century that observation and experiment were made the cornerstone of science. This new approach was at one time opposed by the Church, but by the 17th century, it had clearly won.

113 Topic 13: Voyages of Discovery

Objectives To introduce to students the voyages of discovery of the 15th and 16th centuries, and account for their importance.

Sample teaching plan Again, most textbooks give an account of the major voyages of discovery in the 15th century. The most important dates are probably the following:

 1488 Diaz sailed past Cape of Good Hope, going around the tip of Africa  1492 Columbus’ first voyage across the Atlantic  1498 Vasco da Gama reached India, going round the tip of Africa and then across the Indian Ocean

Hint for the teacher: There is no need to make your students remember all these names. It is much more valuable to understand why these routes were difficult for Europeans in the fifteenth century. Make sure your students know the names of the oceans (Atlantic, Indian), the continents (North and South America, Africa), and the locations of India and China. Describe the discoveries above as the Cape of Good Hope route, the Atlantic route and the Indian route.

114 Map 7 (Source: Department of History, CUHK.)

As an exercise, plot the routes taken by Diaz, Columbus and da Gama on a world map (Map 7).

Arab traders had long known the Indian Ocean route, all the way to China. Mediterranean traders could sail from the Mediterranean to north-western Europe. With the Atlantic route and the Cape of Good Hope route, Europeans could now almost sail round the world.

Hint for the teacher: The University of Calgary has a very informative website on the voyages of discovery. Especially interesting is an animated map which shows the routes of several major explorers and how they related to wind and current. You will find the website under http://www.ucalgary.ca/applied_history/tutor/eurvoya/index.html. For the animated map, look under “Knowledge and Power”, and then “The sailing map”, or directly at http://www.ucalgary.ca/applied_history/tutor/eurvoya/map.html.

Why were these voyages difficult for the Europeans? They had to sail in uncharted waters, they had never sailed such a long distance in open sea (compare sailing by the coast to sailing across the ocean), and the Cape of Good Hope was a dangerous part of the ocean to sail round.

115 How did it all begin? Some textbooks mention Prince Henry the Navigator (1394- 1460) for promoting sea-faring but they seldom make it clear what he did. He was actually quite an important person in the history of discovery, because his efforts proved to be quite profitable early. He started a school for map-making and sailing, and he also invested in voyages which discovered Madeira and the Azores islands in the Atlantic Ocean in the 1420s. These islands were colonised by Portugal and they became very profitable as producers of cane sugar.

Hint for the teacher: It is probably worth spending some time talking to your students about sugar. Sugar cane could not grow in Europe, and so what did Europeans eat for sugar?

Another reason for the voyages was the attraction of finding a sea route to Asia. Europeans by the mid-15th century were looking for a route whereby they could import spices, which were grown in Southeast Asia. Columbus raised the capital he needed by suggesting that he could find the route to Asia. They also believed that gold might be found beyond the Sahara Desert. Many were driven by profit from trade, but there was always also a religious element in it, in the belief that the new routes could help to spread Christianity. Portuguese traders, who succeeded to control the route to India by going round Africa, made large profits from the spice trade. In the early 16th century, they reached China. By the mid 16th century (approximately 1556), they started trading in Macau.

Consequences of the new trade routes The discovery of new trade routes and new continents was a very major development in European history. In the first place, trade increased, especially for the cities on the Atlantic coast. The centre of trade and industry soon shifted away from the Mediterranean to this part of Europe. Secondly, many products, including new crops, found their way not only into Europe, but also to all parts of the world. Thus, tea was soon imported in large quantities from China, and silver from the new world was sent not only to Europe but also to China. Among the most noted new crops which originated in America were potato, sweet potato, corn (also known as maize), tobacco, and peanuts. (To appreciate the change, think about this question: what did Europeans eat before they had potato?) These came to be known as the “New World crops”. In the “Old World”, their introduction led to an increase in food supply and so, in the

116 next few centuries, a substantial increase in population. However, thirdly, contact between people who had always been kept apart also spread disease. Smallpox spread from the Old World to the New World, killing most of its population. In return, syphilis, a sexually transmitted disease, spread to the Old World, and had persisted to the present day.

Summary: New trade routes across the Atlantic and down the African coast and across the Indian Ocean to East Asia, opened up many new opportunities. More trade resulted, and new crops spread to all parts of the world. However, contact across continents also exposed large populations to diseases which they had not previously suffered.

Topic 14: Enlightenment (17th to 18th century)

117 Objectives To introduce three ideas from the Enlightenment: (1) the social contract; (2) the law of Nature, and (3) human beings being born free and equal; and to relate these ideas to the popularisation of science and the English Civil War.

Sample lesson plan

The use of money You might remember that in Topic 9 (The Middle Ages), we talked about how the use of money made an impact on social relationships:

The money-less society The money society

You make all your own things and so you After you have bought things, employed have no time left, then you work as a things, employed people, found a place to member of a big family, which gives you live in, paid your taxes, you can do what a place to live in but wants you to be you want to do. attached to it all the time, and the government can demand work out of you, there is little freedom left.

We said: in a society in which money is widely used, you can do what you want to do after you have found a place to live in and paid your taxes. Well, it is not as simple as that. There is law and order to think about (who protects you when someone wants to take over your house?), there is the question of who looks after the poor and needy (who provides medicine, or decide where people should be buried?), and how to educate young people, just to mention a few of the responsibilities we now think governments should accept. Most of these ideas came about in the 18th and 19th centuries. In the Middle Ages, most people simply did not go to school, doctors who came out of universities were few in number (medicine was not yet a single discipline), the Church provided some social service and increasingly, kings provided law courts. The gradual decline of the Church and the increasing powers of the kings was a very long process. By the 17th century (after the Reformation), some of these kings were claiming authority to rule not only because they were appointed by the

118 Church, but also because they represented a people. France, England and Spain became national states. The appearance of national states led to new ideas about social relationships.

The rise of national states Several reasons led to the rise of national states, most of which you have already come across. One of these would be the wider use of vernacular which you saw under Topic 10 (the Renaissance). Another reason would be the decline in the influence of the Church. By the time of the Reformation, Protestant churches were strong in England and some other European states. There, the rulers no longer came under the authority of the Pope. Religious independence closely supported political independence in an age when religious beliefs formed an important part of life.

However, one other reason was also very important for the rise of national states: the use of firearms. In Europe, gunpowder came to be used for warfare in the 15th century (it was used in China earlier than that). Guns were expensive, and only those monarchs who controlled sizable territories could have afforded many guns. Moreover, castles built in the Middle Ages could not defend themselves against heavy firearms, and so by the 16th century, the city states could no longer withstand the kings’ armies. Meanwhile, as the kings expanded their control, their armies also became much larger than before. The nature of war changed.

Yet another reason was that the kings had become much richer thanks to the discovery of new trade routes and the increase in trade. The new trade enriched the kingdoms in Western Europe. Prosperity shifted from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic coast. The new powers of the 16th and 17th centuries were Portugal, Spain, Holland, England and France.

119 Restraining the king

(1) Kings and parliaments:

Kings had enormous power, but throughout the Middle Ages, their power was not unrestricted. One reason their power might be restricted was that, in the Middle Ages, their power came from God. For that reason, the Church could provide some restraints.

However, in order to collect tax, kings also required the support of the wealthy. The principle came about early in England and France, during the Middle Ages, that kings and their subjects should meet to agree on the rate of taxation. The institution at which they might meet was the parliament (the word was derived from the French word “parle”, meaning to talk.) Unlike the parliaments of today, in the 15th and 16th centuries, parliament did not meet regularly. Parliament only met when the monarch called it to meeting and only when there was special business to discuss, such as raising tax. Also unlike modern-day parliaments, the parliaments of the Middle Ages were not elected. Instead, parliaments represented functional constituencies such as the Church, the nobility and commoners, many of whom were merchants.

In England, in the middle of the 17th century, the clash of Parliament with the King led to civil war (1642-51). Parliament won, executed the King, and for the next ten years, England had no king. (Monarchy was not by any means abolished. In 1660, Parliament invited the beheaded king’s son to become King of England.)

(2) The social contract:

In the Middle Ages, kings ruled because they were given the authority to do so from God. If that was the case, what justification could there be for beheading the king? More important than that, what justification could there be for the maintenance of peace after a civil war?

In this context, the theory of the social contract was born. The theory argued that the monarch and his people were bound by a contract. The people agreed by this contract

120 to accept the monarch’s rule, and believed that the monarch, in turn, should protect them and maintain order. You will recognize in this theory the generalization of the personal bond established by relationship between lord and vassal in the Middle Ages (or, for those familiar with Chinese history, the theory of tianming 【天命】 as advocated by the Chinese philosopher Mencius 【孟子】). If the monarch fulfilled his or her part of the contract, so this theory claims, the subject people should obey. If he or she did not, they might, with justification, rebel.

(3) The laws of Nature, freedom and equality:

Another very important influence on the Enlightenment was the Scientific Revolution. The Scientific Revolution discovered that there are laws of Nature, such as the colours in white light, or the force of gravity. The laws of Nature were the ways in which the universe worked, and so, the question arose if the same laws governed human beings. The search for the laws of Nature provided a beginning for the social sciences, such as psychology and economics. This line of thinking also made a very major impact on political thought.

The reason why thinking about the laws of Nature could make an impact on political thought is that it encouraged the idea that men are born free and equal. Many Enlightenment thinkers made this point; the following gives three examples:

To understand political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider, what state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man. (John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 1690.)

(Source: From John Locke, Two Treatises of Government (“An Essay Concerning the True Original, Extent and End of Civil Government”, Chapter 2 ‘Of the State of Nature’). The text is cited from the Internet Modern History Sourcebook, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1690locke-sel.html .) Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they. (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, 1762.)

121 (Source : Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, 1762. The text is taken from the Internet Modern History Sourcebook, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/Rousseau- soccon.html .)

In every government there are three sorts of power.... When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, there can be no liberty; because the same monarch or senate might enact tyrannical laws. Again, there is no liberty, if the judiciary power is not separated from the legislative and executive. Were it joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control. Were it joined to the executive power, the judge might behave with violence and oppression. (Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws, 1748)

(Source: Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, vol. 1, trans. Thomas Nugent (London: J. Nourse, 1777), pp. 221-237, passim. The text is from Internet Modern History Sourcebook, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/montesquieu-spirit.html.)

Exercise 1: Examine the passages above, which words appear most often? Would you agree that human beings are only free when they can do whatever they may do in the state of Nature? How does Montesquieu think that freedom might be protected?

(4) The American War of Independence:

By the 18th century, England had colonies in North America. In 1775, the colonies rebelled, the immediate causes being increased taxation. In 1776, the colonies declared that they would become independent. In the Declaration of Independence, they said:

We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights; that among these are

122 Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness; that, to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

(Source: The Declaration of Independence, text from http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/index.htm .)

In 1787, the states which were involved in independence produced a constitution for the United States of America, and that says from its very beginning:

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this constitution for the United States of America.

(Source: Constitution of the United States (1787), text from USINFO – The United States Department of State, http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/facts/democrac/6.htm .)

The constitution goes on to lay down the structure of the United States government. The power to make laws rested in the Congress, executive power was held by the President and judicial power should be vested in the Supreme Court.

The principles of election were embodied in the constitution. In this manner, the United States had no kings; it became a republic.

123 Exercise 2:

Which words appear most commonly in the American Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution? Would you agree that the Enlightenment made an impact on these documents?

(5) The abolition of slavery:

Another consequence from the thinking that men are born free and equal was that slavery appeared no longer reasonable. The small population of North America and the possibility of growing cotton and tobacco there on a large scale had led to the slave trade, in which Africans were exported to and sold in North America. English people were engaged in this trade as traders. By the end of the 18th century, a movement was gathering force in England to abolish the slave trade within the British Empire. In 1807, thanks to these efforts, Parliament outlawed the slave trade. In 1834, slavery was abolished in the British Empire. However, slavery persisted in America and was brought to an end there only after the American Civil War (1861-1865).

Summary:

This topic has covered the history which led up to the Enlightenment, some of the major ideas of the Enlightenment and how they influenced the United States Constitution. A new form of government was appearing, under which monarchs were governed by written constitution. The objective of the constitution was to protect liberty.

124 Topic 15: The French Revolution

Objectives To show students how the ideas of the Enlightenment were translated into action in the French Revolution.

Sample lesson plan The year 1789 was a momentous year in French as well as European history. A series of events took place in Paris which marked the end of an old order and the beginning of a new one. It was not clear when the events began to appear that they were to have the consequences they did, but in another ten years time, they became symbolic of a new age. Paris was the capital of France. It was for centuries a cultural and administrative centre. From there, the French king ruled France. The fall of Paris to a new government was highly symbolic of this change.

The events began to unfold as the French King, Louis XVI, found that he needed to raise tax. In order to do so, he called a meeting of the equivalent of the parliament, consisting of the three estates of nobles, clergy and the Third Estate. The meeting took place in Paris as the city was seized by a sense of fear. It was widely rumoured that bandits were about, and the common people were seizing arms for defence. The nobles and the clergy were unpopular with the common people of Paris, and so the Third Estate was able to establish itself as the representatives of the people. With the king’s approval, they formed the National Assembly. The countryside was descending into disorder. One of the Assembly’s first acts was to declare the rights of man and to abolish feudalism.

The National Assembly was not necessarily opposed to a monarchy. Over the next two years, it reorganised local administration, took over the land that had belonged to the Church, and drafted a constitution. It was at odds with the aristocracy, and it never won the full-hearted support of the King, who was held captive in Paris. In 1791, the King tried to escape but was stopped by the crowds. By 1792, a counter-revolutionary movement, with support from other European monarchs, brought an army to fight against the revolution. The urgency of war raised both patriotic and anti-aristocratic

125 feelings. The newly elected National Convention abolished the monarchy and established a republic.

As war continued, the National Convention itself became divided. A small faction demanded extreme measures, including the arrest and execution of large numbers of opponents. They supported government control of prices, taxing the rich, providing free and compulsory education, and they also succeeded in raising a large army which became very successful in Europe. By 1794, the committee which had been in charge was overthrown by a coup d’etat, and by 1795 the National Convention was disbanded and the extremist measures were abandoned. A new constitution provided for a Directorate of five members, which continued until 1799 when it was abolished by Napoleon Bonaparte, who was appointed “First Consul.”

Napoleon had been a very successful soldier. He conquered Italy and Egypt before he became First Consul. He became emperor in 1804, and continued to wage war against other European powers. He was successful in continental Europe but he was offset by two defeats. In 1805, he lost the sea battle at Trafalgar to Britain. In 1812, he was defeated in his Russian campaign. He finally lost to the coalition of European states in 1814. He was exiled, but he returned from exile to fight at Waterloo in 1815, and was once again defeated.

A note to the teacher: Most textbooks give a chronological account of events from the meeting of the Estate Generals (1789) to the rise of Napoleon (1799). The events are quite hard for students to grasp, let alone explain. In the teaching plan suggested here, focus is shifted to some of the lasting decisions made by the revolutionary government in 1789, and the consequences of Napoleon’s reign. The events in between have been supplied to tie the two together.

Reference: The following website provides good illustrations for an account of the French Revolution: http://www.historywiz.com/frenchrev-mm.htm .

Exercise 1:

126 The following clauses come from the Declaration of the Rights of Man by the National Assembly in 1789. Do they remind you of the ideas of any period of European history? Which period would that be? Why do you think so?

1. Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good.

2. The aim of all political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.

(Source: The Declaration of the Rights of Man (1789), text from http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_2/rights_of_man.htm l .)

Exercise 2:

The two faces of war Look at these two paintings: Picture 38

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Napoleon4.jpg

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Francisco_de_Goya_y_Luciente s_023.jpg

127 Picture 39

The upper painting (Picture 38) was painted in 1801, depicting Napoleon crossing into Italy. The lower painting (Picture 39) was painted in 1814, depicting the execution of Spanish defenders of Madrid by French troops in 1808. What do these two paintings suggest to you about war? Which one was opposed to war? What can you say about the man to be executed?

Hint to the teacher: The painting of Napoleon shows him to be a hero, full of spirit, riding into victory. The painting of the execution shows the culprit defenceless, facing a squad of well- armed soldiers. It is ironic that a revolutionary army, in support of freedom and liberty, should be executing this unarmed and helpless native. The former obviously supported war, and the latter was against it.

Summary: The French Revolution overthrew the king’s rule and implemented many ideas which were supported by thinkers of the Enlightenment. They included rule by parliament,

128 abolition of feudalism and the rights of the Church, and the pronouncement of individual political rights, including the rights to remain free and equal. Nevertheless, as the revolution proceeded, war and persecution followed. Out of this disorder, Napoleon Bonaparte became emperor of France. The wars carried on, departing from the original purposes of the revolution.

Topic 16: Revision

129 1. Arrange the following events on a time line, indicating which century in which each event occurred. Associate each event with the following names: Leonardo da Vinci, Napoleon Bonaparte, Martin Luther, Renaissance, Prince Henry the Navigator.

 Reformation  French Revolution  American War of Independence  English Revolution  Invention of the printing press  Columbus’ voyage across the Atlantic

2. Compare the following maps. Map A was drawn in the 5th century B.C. and Map B in 1598. How are the two maps different?

(Source: J.G. Barthologmew LLD, A Literacy & Historical Atlas of Asia, London: J.M. Dent & Sons, Ltd.; New York: E.P. Dutton & Co, unknown publishing year.)

130 (Source: Wytfliet’s Map of the World 1958, from The Scottish Geography Magazine, Vol.

XVI, No. 1, 1900. The map is taken from Perry-Castaneda Library Map Collection, www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical (go to “Historical Maps of The World”, then “Wytfliet’s

Map of the World 1958”.) (Used by permission of the University of Texas Libraries, The

University of Texas at Austin.)

3. Compare the three buildings below. Which one was built first, and which one last? How do you know?

Picture A

131 http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:St._Peter%27s_Basilica_Facade%2C_Rome %2C_June_2004.jpg

Picture B

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Parthenon.Southern.Side.damaged.jpg

132 Picture C

(Source of Picture: Joan Cheng.)

4. The following is a picture of the Legislative Council building in Hong Kong. Which features suggest that it is built in the Western tradition?

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Legislativ e_Council_Building,_Hong_Kong,_Mar_06.JPG

133 5. Read the following passage: We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. (Source: The Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen Colonies, July 4, 1766. The text is taken from www.law.indian.edu/uslawdocs/declaration.html .)

134 Which sentence in this passage suggests that democracy is an ideal in this document?

Which sentence suggests that it is influenced by the ideas of the Enlightenment?

When do you think this document was written, 800 A.D., 13th century (A.D.), or 18th century (A.D.)?

6. Picture A is a picture of the printing press and picture B is a picture of printing in

China. Looking at these pictures, would you argue that printing in Europe originated in China? Give your reasons.

Picture A Picture B

(Source of Picture A: Department of History, CUHK. The original picture could be found at

Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions, University of Victoria, BC,

2001-2005. http://ise.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/literature/press1.html )

(Source of Picture B: David Faure)

135 7. What is the following diagram a drawing of? In which historical period,

Renaissance, Middle Ages, the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, was it drawn? How do you know?

Diagram 4

(Source: Department of History, CUHK. The original picture could be found at Anders Piltz,

The World of Medieval Learning, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981, p.52.)

136 8. The following map shows the principal languages spoken in North and South

America. Why do you think the three European languages were spoken in those parts of the two continents indicated?

137 9. In the following passage, Pope Urban II in 1095 called for the Crusades to fight in the Holy Land:

Let hatred therefore depart from among you, let your quarrels end, let wars cease, and let all dissensions and controversies slumber. Enter upon the road to the Holy

Sepulcher --, wrest that land from the wicked race, and subject it to yourselves. That land which, as the Scripture says, ‘floweth with milk and honey’ was given by God into the power of the children of Israel.’ Jerusalem is the centre of the earth; the land is fruitful above all others, like another paradise of delights. This spot the Redeemer of mankind has made illustrious by his advent, has beautified by his sojourn, has consecrated by his passion, has redeemed by his death, has glorified by his burial.

(Source: Medieval Sourcebook, Urban II: Speech at Clermont 1095, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/urban2a.html )

How do you think a Moslem might react to this argument? Write a paragraph of 50 words to indicate that reaction.

10. Do you think the following paragraph indicates that the ideas of the Scientific

Revolution and the Englightenment might be connected? Would the following paragraph be evidence of that connection? Why do you think so?

To understand political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider, what state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man. (John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 1690.)

138 (Source: From John Locke, Two Treatises of Government (“An Essay Concerning the True Original, Extent and End of Civil Government”, Chapter 2 ‘Of the State of Nature’). The text is cited from the Internet Modern History Sourcebook, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1690locke-sel.html .)

Topic 17: Industrial Revolution

139 Objectives In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, very large-scale changes came about which were brought on by the development of industry. Under this topic, we shall look at two aspects of these changes: firstly, how they came about, and, secondly, how society changed as a result.

A. How the Industrial Revolution came about

Sample teaching plan 1. If you go down to the street and look at things that move, forget electricity (for it was applied increasingly only from the 1880s), and you are left with motor cars. Motor cars run on the internal combustion engine, as you know. That, however, was also invented in the 1880s. From the name, you can deduce that something burns in the internal combustion engine, that is, petrol. Before the internal combustion engine was invented, the machine which might have driven an engine, such as a railway engine, was the steam engine, driven by steam rather than the spark from burning petrol. The steam engine was invented in 1778. Before that, you might have pushed or pulled the cart with your own hands, or allow it to be drawn by an animal.

Exercise: Draw a timeline showing electric lighting and internal combustion engine in 1880s and the steam engine in 1778.

2. What was the steam engine?

The following diagram shows how the steam engine works. The boiler produces steam which pushes up and down the piston housed in the cylinder. Notice the valves which open and close to control the direction of steam. The downward thrust of the piston drives out steam from the cylinder, which condenses in the condenser. In this diagram, the piston is attached to the arm of a pump which pumps water from a mine.

140 Picture 40: Steam Engine

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/interactive/animations/beam_engine/index.shtml

Picture 40: Steam engine

Notice that the steam engine required precision (see how well the piston must fit the cylinder). We have had precision machines before, e.g. the clock, but this was the first precision machine on this scale. The steam engine was a sizable machine, easily taller than a person and wider than his or her hands could reach.

3. How was the steam engine invented? The inspiration did not come from watching a boiling kettle. To understand the steam engine, we have to talk about fuel from the Middle Ages. In England, the principal fuel was wood, which came from the forests. As the forests were cut back, there was a shortage of wood, and so gradually coal was used, of which there was plenty in England. However, coal had to be mined, and coal mines were often found in limestone areas. As you know from your science lessons, limestone conceals pockets of water, which would have to be extracted. The early steam engines, therefore, were water pumps. James Watt, often described as the inventor of the steam engine, effectively made it a more efficient machine.

4. The steam engine gave us a new motive force. But a motive force was only useful if it could turn something. If the steam engine was not adapted to produce circular motion, it would have remained a water pump. So what was it used for?

141 Use No. 1. Driving spinning and weaving machines in the factories

Picture 41: Spilling mill (factory) http://www.makingthemodernworld.org/stories/manufacture_by_machine /01.ST.01/?scene=1

Note how cotton came to be commonly used. Cotton was not grown in England. It was imported from Egypt, and then from America. However, there was one big problem with cotton; the fibre came with a seed. One of the first machines which revolutionalised cotton was the carding frame. After that, improvements were made to spinning and weaving machines. [Students who are interested can look into these machines. It is quite easy. See pictures in Appendix.] Here is what one writer said:

From the year 1770 to 1788 a complete change had gradually been effected in the spinning of yarns, - that of wool had disappeared altogether, and that of linen was also nearly gone, - cotton, cotton, cotton, had become the almost universal material for employment.

Source: William Radcliffe, On Power Looms, 1828. The text is from Internet Modern History Sourcebook, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1828looms.html .

How were the new machines driven? At first, by hand or water, and then the steam engine was installed at the factory.

142 Use No. 2. Railway engines

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Stephenson %27s_Rocket_drawing.jpg

Picture 42. The “Rocket”, 1829

If the steam engine could be made smaller and fitted with wheels, it would work as a motor car. That had to come later. (How could the tyres have been made until rubber was found in Malaya?). To allow the engine to move smoothly, iron rail tracks were laid and the train ran on them. However, there was a problem. The engine was so heavy that it cracked the rails. The problem was finally solved by George Stephenson, who inserted springs into the engine to spread out the weight of the machine.

Why was the railway so successful? Note that before the railway engine was invented, English people were already undergoing a transport revolution. They were building roads for horse-drawn carriages and canals. The railway was a very timely invention.

Use No. 3. Propelling steamships (or “steamers” 輪船 or 火輪船)

143 http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Clermont_illustration_- _Robert_Fulton_-_Project_Gutenberg_eText_15161.jpg

Picture 43. The “Clermont,” 1807

Just as the steam engine could be fitted on wheels for the railway engine, it could be inserted into a ship (known as a steamer) to drive a paddle wheel. Again, why were steamers needed? Note connection to import and export, and migration of people. More cotton meant more imports, but soon England exported yarn and cloth. The income from yarn and cloth more than made up for the purchase of cotton.

5. The new industries created work for a lot of people. They ceased to farm. How was it possible for so many non-farm people to be fed? Note the Agrarian Revolution, which involved better use of land, husbandry and tools. [Again, this is a very good subject for a project. For this lesson, the details can be left out.]

6. How did so many inventions come about in such a short time as a hundred years?

Nobody has a very good reason for that. We may assume that England had a less rigid class structure than Europe. Quite a few inventors were people from working class background and that did not prevent them from moving up socially when they were successful. Nevertheless, the Industrial Revolution was not planned. The various

144 developments reinforced one another. However, it was the steam engine that brought about the idea that technology could create a new world.

B. How society changed To consider how the Industrial Revolution changed society, compare the following pictures:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Hermann_Sondermann_Familie_mit_Frau_am_Spinnrad_detail.jpghttp://www.makingthemodernworld.org/stories/m anufacture_by_machine/01.ST.01/?scene=1

Picture 44: Home spinning Picture 45: Spinning mill (factory)

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/ITmanchester.htm

Picture 46: Manchester 1750 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Image%3ACottonopolis1.jpg

145 Picture 47: Manchester, first half of 19th century

For more comparative information, look up the website http://www.makingthemodernworld.org/learning_modules/history/03.TU.04/

Exercise 1: Looking at these pictures, can you imagine how:

1. The kind of work people did in the cotton industry would have changed.

2. The amount of cotton yarn and cloth produced would have changed.

3. The availability of cotton cloth for ordinary people would have changed (what did people wear before they had cotton cloth?)

4. The environment would have changed (look at the tall chimneys in Picture 47).

5. Cities would have changed.

6. Conditions in cities would have changed (would there have been enough houses to live in?)

146 Note for the teacher: Before factories became common, most workers worked at home. Machines would have been turned by hand, and work would have been organised on a small scale. When factories became common, workers worked together in a team. The machines were soon turned by the steam engine and work would have been organised on a much larger scale.

Working with machines meant that workers could be much more productive. So, much more cotton yarn and cloth was produced than when work was done by hand. That also means that yarn and cloth became cheaper and many more people could afford to use it for clothes.

Note also that England did not produce cotton. For a long long time, English people did not have cotton cloth for clothes. Instead, the most common clothing material was linen 麻布, made from flax 麻. Cotton being the softer and more comfortable clothing material, was easily popularised when its price came down. Such a result of the Industrial Revolution improved the standard of living of many people.

147 However, because the steam engine had to be driven by coal, its wide employment in the factories meant that industrial towns were extremely polluted. Manchester was such an industrial town, and you can see by comparing pictures 46 and 47 how the growth of industry must have been quite damaging to air quality, and, therefore, health.

Many more people lived in the cities as factories were set up. Factories needed regular supplies of raw material and easy distribution for their products. They were, therefore, located where transport was relatively easy. Major transport centres, especially when they were sited near supplies of fuel or raw material, grew into large cities.

Before the eighteenth century, Europe had very few large cities. Most cities would not have had a larger population than a district in Hong Kong nowadays. The rapid expansion of cities brought about many social problems. Think about the easy spread of disease when many people lived together. Think about the need to separate the supply of clean water from the sewage. There were not enough houses, and so these cities were overcrowded. Slums were left very much to themselves. Add on to these conditions periodic unemployment because many more people came into the cities than there were jobs for them. You can see that law and order was also a problem. The novels of Charles Dickens are a useful source of information for many of these issues.

Exercise 2: The pictures do not really tell the whole story. In the early stages of the Industrial Revolution, say up to the mid 19th century, the workers had quite a hard life. The rapid growth of industry created many problems. One of these problems was child labour.

Reference: You can see some telling passages in the following websites: http://nhs.needham.k12.ma.us/cur/Baker_00/2002_p7/ak_p7/childlabor.html#wages http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Twork2.htm http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/IRarkwright.htm

148 Another problem was the long working hours and harsh working conditions, not only in the factories, but also the mines. There was no legal protection for workers. Wages were also low. It took a generation for workers to organise into trade unions, and almost a century for laws of election to change so that workers might also be given the vote.

It is not difficult to understand, therefore, that in the mid-19th century, it was widely thought that the owners of factories and their workers belonged to two different classes. Karl Marx in the Communist Manisfesto, wrote the following:

Modern Industry has converted the little workshop into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of laborers, crowded into the factory, are organized like soldiers.... Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois state; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the overlooker, and, above all, in the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. (Source: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, ‘Bourgeois and Proletarians’, Manifesto of the Communist Party 1848. Text from http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html#Bourgoise .)

Remembering the pictures you looked at for Exercise 1, can you relate this paragraph to some of the features you noted there?

Summary: A series of changes came about in England, the Agrarian Revolution, the Transport Revolution, the Textile Revolution, and the invention of the steam engine, bringing about the Industrial Revolution. Among the most important inventions of the time was the steam engine. It transformed production and transport. By making it easier to produce in large quantities, and to move goods around, industrial development improved the standard of living of many people. However, it also led to pollution and the gathering of large populations into cities, and these changes created many social problems.

149 Appendix to Topic 17: Machines of the Industrial Revolution

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Spinningwheel.JPGhttp://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/TEXframe.htm

Picture 48: Traditional spinning wheel Picture 49: Spinning frame (1769)

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Spinning_jenny.jpg

Picture 50: Spinning jenny Picture 51: Loom fitted with flying shuttle (1733)

(Source of Pictures: Picture 51: PLANCHES, L' E ncyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des metiers (online), http://diderot.alembert.free.fr/PLANCHES/PLANCHES03.pdf (p. 269).)

150 Topic 18: Old empires and new empires

Objectives To show how the “old empire” (Austrian, Ottoman) had been breaking up and the “new empires” (Britain, France, German, Italian and Russia) were expanding in the 19th century.

1. The “old empires”

Look at these two maps:

Map 8: Austrian Empire (excluding land held in Italy)

151 Map 9: Europe today

(Source of Maps 8 and 9: Department of History, CUHK)

On the map of Europe today, draw the Austrian Empire and list the countries today that have been formed from it. What languages are spoken in these countries?

In a later topic, you will see that most of those countries were formed after the First World War. Italy, however, was formed in the 1860s, and Germany, in 1870. In the 18th century, much of Italy and Germany would both have come under the Holy Roman Empire, which would have included also Austria and Hungary.

Similarly, the Ottoman Empire, which used to incorporate present-day Greece, Turkey, much of the Middle East, and Egypt, was broken up slowly into many individual states.

2. The “new empires”

152 Throughout the 19th century, other countries in Europe were building empires. They did that beyond Europe, overseas. The establishment of colonies away from Europe had started from as early as the 15th century when new trade routes were discovered. In the 15th and 16th centuries, Spain and Portugal were the most energetic empire builders. By the 17th and 18th centuries, the Dutch, French and British had followed. In North America, both the British and French had colonies, but France lost its North American colonies to Britain. The most important Dutch colonies were the islands of Southeast Asia, including what is now Indonesia. Britain lost its most important American colonies after the American War of Independence, but retained Canada. In Asia, through the East India Company, it controlled India.

Map 10: Colonial empires in 1914

(Source of Map 10: Department of History, CUHK)

The Industrial Revolution provided more reason for colonial expansion. While in earlier centuries, the colonial effort had been focused on the control of trade routes and limited migration of Europeans overseas, by the 19th century, colonisation was looked upon as a means of economic expansion. Industrialised European nations required resources (cotton, metals) and markets for their industrial goods. They were

153 interested in the rights to mine and to build railways. Moreover, by the second half of the 19th century, European nations competed for colonies, each nation fearing that if its claims had not been established, the territory to be claimed would have been taken by another nation. During the 19th century, major efforts of colonisation were made by Britain, France, Germany and Belgium in Africa, by the British in Australia and New Zealand, and by France in Southeast Asia. The same nations, and Russia, established spheres of influence in China. They were soon joined by Japan in this effort.

Exercise 1 Identify the major colonial powers illustrated in Map 10? Where did Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Japan have colonies?

Note for the teacher Please keep details to the minimum. For example, it is enough to note that the British Empire extended over Canada, Africa, Australia and Malaya; France had colonies in Southeast Asia and Africa, Germany and Italy had colonies in Africa, and Japan had a colony in Taiwan.

3. Imperial expansion led to conflicts

Imperial expansion led to conflict, but these conflicts were of two sorts. Firstly, as the old empires declined, some of their territories were fought over by the newly growing empires. The part of the Ottoman Empire on the edge of Russia and the Austrian Empire was a very contentious area because Russia saw it as a passage into the Mediterranean, and Austria saw any Russian expansion there as a threat. Secondly, the new empires also competed for land and influence overseas. In Asia, they combined forces to expand their influence in China, especially after China lost in war to Japan in 1894 to 1895. In Africa, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium contested for colonies. To maintain their influence away from home, it was necessary for these governments to build a navy, and they competed to build more and stronger ships (see Topic 20).

4. The “White man’s burden”

154 The empire builders were very conscious of their technological and military superiority. These ideas of superiority appeared in many ways, especially in the fields of medicine and education. There was also religious backing for the enthusiasm to extend Western knowledge of science and medicine in that missionaries sought to preach Christianity to peoples who had not previously been exposed to the religion. In the nineteenth century, under the influence of the theory of evolution, it was thought that white people were superior to other races.

155 Picture 52 “The white man’s burden” appearing in an advertisement

(Source of Picture 52: Department of History, CUHK. The original picture could be found at Wikimedia Commons, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:1890sc_Pears_Soap_Ad.jpg )

156 Exercise 2.

Look at Picture 52. You can see it is a soap advertisement, and that is why it shows a white man washing his hands. Why does it say “The first step towards lightening the white man’s burden is through teaching the virtues of cleanliness”? Look at the pictures in the four corners. What is the story they tell?

Note for the teacher Pear’s was a very well-known brand of soap in the nineteenth century and it must have sold very well in the British Empire. Obviously, the manufacturers of Pear’s soap believed its product was much more effective as a cleaning agent than anything colonial natives might have. The two pictures at the top corners were probably meant to indicate a long period of time (from the sailing boat to the steam boat). On the bottom left, goods were being unloaded from a steamer. On the bottom right, a white man was handling out a piece of soap to a native. The white man standing up, and the native sitting on the ground probably indicated their relative social positions and power.

5. Globalisation The interest in building empires, however, promoted explorations and led to an explosion in knowledge about the world. The development of transport, especially steamships and the railway, opened many parts of the world to substantially increased trade. World trade increased by many times. The economy of the world was gradually becoming global.

Summary Under this topic, you saw how the old empires were breaking up and new empires were being formed in the second half of the nineteenth century. These changes in empire decline and empire building led to competition among countries. The expansion of Europe overseas also promoted a sense of cultural superiority. Yet, through this process, different parts of the world were becoming more intricately connected, and globalisation was taken forward another step.

157 Topic 19: Asia in the age of European expansion (From the Opium War to 1911)

Objectives

To show that before the expansion of the West into Asia, China, ruled by the Qing dynasty, was an empire to which neighbouring countries paid tribute. As Western countries expanded to Asia, China and Japan were opened under pressure and subjected to unequal treaties. Both countries underwent Westernization and reforms, with the consequences that the Qing empire gradually broke up while Japan became increasingly powerful. Japan eventually established an empire in Asia.

A. China: An Asian empire under the tribute system

158 A note for the teacher:

1. Prior to the advent of Western powers into Asia, China’s neighbouring countries were China’s tributary states. They sent regular missions to China to pay tribute. In the Qing dynasty, Southeast Asian countries, such as Annam (Vietnam) and Siam

(Thailand), Korea and Ryukyu were tributary states of China. (In the Ming dynasty,

Japan also accepted China’s conferment and paid tributes to China.) At that time,

China was an imperial overlord.

2. China and Britain came into conflict as a result of problems in trade. War between the two countries ensued when the Qing dynasty banned the opium trade.

China was defeated and signed the Treaty of Nanjing with Britain, under which Hong

Kong Island was ceded to Britain. The treaty marked the beginning of unequal treaties between the Qing dynasty and foreign powers by which China had to cede territories and pay indemnities. Japan, which, like China, had been a closed country, was also pressured to open its ports for trade. It also signed unequal treaties with many

Western countries.

3. The Tokugawa family, which headed the government of Japan at that time, had to give way to Western demands and accept unequal treaties. As a result, many local lords (known as “daimyo”) and warriors (known as “samurai”) became deeply discontented with them. They renewed their support to the emperor and demanded reforms. The army of the Tokugawa government (known as “Bakufu”) was finally defeated and it was forced to return its power to the emperor. A unified government was set up under Emperor Meiji and a reform programme was launched in which

Westernising the country was the objective.

B. Reforms

159 When faced with the armed expansion of the West, both China and Japan had embarked on various reforms. The following time lines show the political, military, educational and financial reforms carried out by the two countries.

1. 1898 Imperial University 2. 1902 Modern schools 3. 1903 New armies 4. 1908 Da Qing Bank 5. 1911 National constitution

1, 2, 3, 4 5 ┏━━━┳━━━┳━━━┳━━━┳━━━┳━━━┳━━━┳━━━┓

1870 1875 1880 1885 1890 1895 1900 1905 1910

┗━━━┻━━━┻━━━┻━━━┻━━━┻━━━┻━━━┻━━━┛

1, 2 3 4 5

1. 1872 Modern schools 2. 1873 New armies 3. 1877 University of Tokyo 4. 1882 Central bank 5. 1889 Meiji Constitution

Note for the teacher: 1 In 1889, Japan proclaimed the Meiji Constitution and the Imperial Diet

(parliament) was formed the next year. The Imperial Diet was made up of the

House of Peers and the House of Representatives. Members of the House of

160 Peers were appointed by the emperor whereas members of the House of

Representatives were elected.

2 The Qing dynasty proclaimed the preparation for a constitution in 1908 and set

1916 as the year for the election of an assembly and 1917 as the year for the

establishment of a parliament. Subsequently, local associations and chambers of

commerce petitioned and demanded the earlier promulgation of the constitution.

The imperial court finally proclaimed a constitution in 1911. However, the

revolution which broke out in the same year led to the Qing dynasty’s collapse

before parliament met.

Exercise 1

Compare the timing of individual reforms in China and Japan. Fill in the following

boxes with the approximate year in which the reforms were carried out.

The timing of reforms in China and Japan

China Japan School reforms University founded in Army reforms Bank set up Constitution pronounced

Question:

Which country, China or Japan, began reforms earlier?

Why do you think the Chinese reforms were all concentrated towards the end of the

19th century and the early years of the 20th century?

Note for the teacher:

161 The reason was that the Qing dynasty was defeated by Japan in the Sino-Japanese

War in 1895. Defeat brought a shock all over China. Reforms followed, first proposed by Kang Youwei (康有為). Those reforms (known as the Hundred Days’ Reform) were foiled by the Empress Dowager Cixi (慈禧), and a different series of reform was conducted under her dominance in the years which followed.

C. The ideology of Westernisation

Look at these two pictures:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Im http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm age:The_Emperor_Meiji.jpg ons/8/8e/The_Ci- Xi_Imperial_Dowager_Empress_ %284%29.PNG

Picture 53: Emperor Meiji, 1888 Picture 54: Dowager Empress Cixi, 1900

Questions:

Which picture related to China, which to Japan?

Who was dressed to appear Western?

162 Dress indicates culture. However, Westernisation involved more than changing the dress style. In the following passages, a Japanese thinker and a Chinese thinker wrote down what changes they thought their countries needed.

Exercise 2.

Read the passages below and write a short paragraph to describe what these two writers found impressive in Westernisation.

1. This was what Fukuzawa Yukichi (福澤諭吉) said in 1871:

“ Look at the progress of the West. Their various types of electric and steam engines are always new and changing as a result of their competition against one another for improvement. This is true not only of tangible machines, but of other aspects as well. As people become enlightened, their circles of contacts broaden. The broader the circles of contacts become, the more harmonious their relationships. Hence, international law is used to limit war. At the same time, economics becomes increasingly popular, and once political and commercial changes occur, the school system, the form of writings, government measures and meetings of assemblies are changed in an even more refined and boundless way. (Source: Fukuzawa Yukichi , “Encouraging Learning”, 福澤諭吉著，王桂譯，《福澤論吉

教育論著選》，北京：人民教育出版社，1991，頁 18。)

163 2. In “Emerging from Asia” of 1884, Fukuzawa also said:

“We cannot wait without hesitation for the civilization of our neighbours in order

to make a concerted effort to revive Asia. Let us separate ourselves from their

group and ally with Western civilization. Even the way we receive China and

Korea should not be specially courteous simply because of their status as our

neighbours. We must act in accordance with how the Westerners receive them.”

(Source: Fukuzawa Yukichi , “Emerging from Asia” 轉引自許介鱗，〈福譯諭吉：對朝鮮

的謀略〉，《近代日本論》，台北：故鄉出版社有限公司，1987 年，頁 59。

或參看 http://www.chinaelections.org/NewsInfo.asp?NewsID=9756 )

3. In 1902, Liang Qichao (梁啟超) published “On the New Citizen”. In “Explaining the Meaning of the New Citizen”, he said:

“ So there is no intention to strengthen our country today. If there is such

intention, wide references must be made to the way in which various nations and

countries established themselves and we choose and take their strengths in order

to complement our weaknesses. Commentators at present know that we must take

the strengths of others to complement our weaknesses in politics, learning, arts

and skills, but they do not know that virtue, wisdom and ability of the people are

really the biggest source of politics, learning, arts and skills.

(Source: Liang Qichao, “On the New Citizen: Explaining the Meaning of the New Citizen” 梁

啟超，《梁啟超全集》，北京：北京出版社，1999，頁 658。)

“ One of the most lacking in our citizens is civic virtue. What is civic virtue?

Thanks to civic virtue, people form into groups and nations are nations…Hence,

164 civic virtue is the source of all virtues. Qualities that are beneficial to the populace

are good whereas those that do not are wicked.”

(Source: Liang Qichao, “On the New Citizen: On Civic Virtue” 梁啟超，《梁啟超全集》，北

京：北京出版社，1999，頁 660。)

Note for the teacher: According to Fukuzawa Yukichi, apart from scientific skills, the education system, economics and commerce, government structure and the Diet system, Japan should also learn the way that Western countries treated Asian countries such as China and

Korea. Like Britain and France, Japan must play the role of an imperialist power in

Liang Qichao argued that the “new citizen” was the basis of a strong and wealthy nation. The “new citizen” was a person who identified with the nation and put the interests of the public before his or her own. In the past, Chinese people had lacked this civic virtue, and as a result, China failed to be united and reforms did not succeed.

4. The contest for power in Asia

a. Since the Opium Wars, on one occasion after another, China was forced to

cede territory, pay indemnity and accept the new political order gradually

established by Western powers in Asia. In 1881, Russia accepted a

considerable amount of land in Yili; in 1882, after the Sino-French War,

Vietnam became a French protectorate and was totally moved out of the Qing

dynasty’s influence, and in 1886, Britain occupied Burma.

b. In 1894, Japan went to war with China over Korea. Japan defeated China, and

China was forced to cede the Liaoning Peninsula, Lushun (Port Arthur),

Dalian and Taiwan to Japan, and accept its domination of Korea. Russia

165 perceived Japan’s expansion as a threat, and, under its opposition, Japan

surrendered Liaodong. In 1910, Japan annexed Korea as its colony. Fearing

the expansion of Russia, Britain formed an alliance with Japan in 1902.

Japan’s international status, which was raised by defeating China and allying

with Britain, enabled it to revoke unequal treaties it had signed with Western

powers. The conflict between Japan and Russia over the Northeastern

Provinces (known as Manchuria) finally resulted in war in 1904, in which.

Japan was victorious. As part of the war settlement with Russia, Japan

acquired Lushun, Dalian and all rights over the South Manchurian Railway.

Since then, the Northeastern Provinces became Japan’s sphere of influence.

c. The Sino-Japanese War further exposed China’s weakness and a series of

events followed in rapid succession. Foreign powers competed among

themselves for spheres of influence in China. While that went on, an anti-

foreign movement developed in North China in which “Boxers” (Yihe tuan)

attacked and killed some foreign missionaries in the Beijing-Tianjin area and

attacked the foreign legations in Beijing. Western governments, and Japan,

sent troops to Beijing, which led to the Qing court fleeing from this capital

city. The Qing government signed a humiliating treaty which confirmed the

foreign powers’ spheres of influence. The failure of the Qing government to

withstand the foreign threat promoted a revolutionary movement, just at the

Qing court began to implement yet another reform programme. The reforms

failed to re-establish the powers of the government. In 1911, revolution broke

out and the Qing dynasty came to an end.

Summary:

166 When faced with the expansion of Western powers to Asia, China was forced by military force to open its doors to trade and diplomatic relationships. Small parts of

China (such as Hong Kong) were ceded away as colonies, but much more extensive areas came under the influence of different foreign powers. The humiliation of failure to reform and defeat in war brought about the collapse of the government in 1911.

Japan, on the other hand, was able to rebuild centralized authority and carry out

Westernization reforms. The various Japanese institutional reforms came earlier than

China and were more complete. In the Sino-Japanese War and Russo-Japanese War,

Japan was able to defeat China and Russia and gain such colonies as Taiwan and

Korea. Japan became a strong and powerful empire while the Qing government was overthrown.

167 Topic 20 The use of steel and the arms race

Objectives

The popular use of steel and the use of steam as a motive power were the major factors influencing industrial development in the 20th century. They also changed the way in which European countries engaged in the armament race. This topic aims to explain these changes through the introduction of the use of weapons by various countries before the Second World War and to arouse students’ thinking about the changes in weapons and their relationship with society and the economy.

Guns and ships in the days of wind and sail

In the 18th century wind was the motive power for warships. They were made of wood. Therefore,

 They could only go as fast as the wind could carry them.

 They were small.

 Because they were small, the guns they could carry were also small. (If you fire a

cannon, as the cannon ball goes out, the gun moves backwards. This backward

movement, known as “recoil”, could upset the ship unless it was steadied by its

weight.)

An arms race in those days consisted of putting more guns on the ship. The guns were fitted on the two sides (known as the broadsides). During war, ships turned their sides towards their enemies so that they could fire their guns at them. This is illustrated in

Picture 55.

168 Picture 55: Traditional sea battle in the 17th century

(Source: Geoffrey Parker ed., The Cambridge Illustrated History of Warfare: the

Triumph of the West, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp.128-9.)

The picture shows a sea battle conducted on 25 July 1666 between 89 British and 88

Dutch warships. See how they fired at each other from their sides. Two Dutch ships and one British ship were destroyed.

Steam as a motive power

By the beginning of the 19th century, warships were built which were powered by steam. You might remember from Topic 17 that early steamers were fitted with paddle wheels. However, you can see that while paddle wheels would work for passenger ships, they were not suitable for warships. For example, paddle wheels occupied the space for guns on the broadsides and could easily be a target for enemy fire. So, the wide use of steam power on warships had to wait until the invention of the screw propeller. Screw propellers were fitted under the ship and were, therefore,

169 harder to attack. By the 1850s, warships installed with screw propellers were becoming widely used.

When the ship was driven by steam, it was no longer dependent on wind. However, early steamers were not really much bigger than wooden ships. It was not, in fact, a good idea to fit steam engines on wooden ships because the fire from the steam engine was always a fire hazard. The next major change in ship-building had to come with the wide use of steel.

Improvements in steel making

In the mid-19th century, new furnaces were invented which greatly improved the steel-making process. Before these new machines were invented, it took several days to convert iron into steel, but with the new furnaces, steel could be produced in about half an hour. Other inventions removed impurities from the iron ore much more quickly and cheaply. With these inventions, the cost of steel was greatly reduced and productivity enormously improved.

Steel is a very useful metal for machine-making. It is harder than iron and not brittle

(that is to say, it does not break easily). It became widely used in railways, engines, ships and other machines.

Steel-clad ships and their guns http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:LeRedoutablePhoto.jpg By the end of the 19th century, warships were no longer made of timber, but of steel.

Picture 56: French warship Le Redoutable in 1876

170 Steel is much heavier than wood. When ships were made of steel, they became much heavier than wooden ships. They could be fitted with heavier guns, which had a much longer range than the lighter guns fitted on wooden ships. The battleship HMS

Dreadnaught (ships belonging to the British Royal Navy are referred to as “His, or

Her, Majesty’s Ship”, HMS for short), built in 1906, became the standard for warship production among the naval powers of the period. A race was started between Britain and Germany for building the most powerful navy. Ships competed for the size of the guns, the thickness of their armour and speed. Not only the Western powers, but also

Japan, were involved in this arms race.

171 http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:HMS_Dreadnought_1906_H61017.jpgDisplacement: 18,000 tons; 18 steam boilers, 4 steam engine units, 22,000 horsepower; 10 12- inch guns; 27 12-pounder cannons and 5 18-inch torpedo tubes; armour thickness 102-279 mm

Picture 57: The HMS Dreadnaught

Transport and war

Until the steamers and railways were used for transport, it was not easy to move large numbers of soldiers around or to supply them. The difficulties in transport in the 18th century limited the scale of war. For instance, during the Napoleonic Wars, the

600,000-man strong army led by Napoleon failed to conquer Russia. The loss of men during this long conquest and the fatal blow caused by the lack of reinforcements simply showed that the means of transportation at that time was still unable to support such large-scale military campaign.

The use of steamships and railways as means of transport in the 19th century changed the scale of war. For example, during the war between France and Austria in northern

Italy in 1859, it took France only 11 days to transport 120,000 men to the battlefield.

Before the construction of railways, that would have taken two months. During the

Crimean War of 1854, the emergence of steamships enabled Britain and France to

172 transport a large number of soldiers to the Crimea. During the Franco-Prussian War of

1870, the use of railways transported 1,000,000 soldiers to the front line. In the 19th century, European nations competed in the construction of railways because railways not only promoted economic development but also played an important role in strengthening the nation’s military power. During the second half of the 19th century,

Prussia could quickly suppress uprisings in big cities by sending troops and supplies via the railway network.

Industrialisation for war

By the 19th century, war required continuous supplies of ammunition, machinery, raw material such as steel, medicine, and food. Hence, the ability to mobilize all these resources was a decisive factor in winning. In order to fight a war, it was not only necessary to recruit a large number of solders, but also to mobilize a large number of civilians to produce for war. At the same time, with the invention of the telegraph, reports of war could be sent quickly home. This meant that governments could take charge of war efforts much more effectively than in the past, and for news of the war, through the newspapers, to spread to civilians. The age had come when war would be

“total”, that is to say, involving the entire country, civilian and military alike.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Krupp_Factory_WWI.jpg

173 Picture 58: Industrialisation of war – arsenals and naval dockyards became important

venues of war

Exercise 1.

Look at the following table:

Year War Warring parties No. of men 1704 Battle of Blenheim Combined forces of 56,000

France and Bavaria

Combined forces of 52,000

Germany and Austria 1853-1854 Crimean War Combined forces of 650,000

Britain and France

Russia 1.2 million 1870 Franco-Prussian War France 500,000

North German 550,000

Confederation

174 Source:

Geoffrey Parker ed., The Cambridge Illustrated History of Warfare: the Triumph of the West, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, p.175. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Prussian_War

The scale of war in the 18th century rarely exceeded 80,000 fighting men. However, by 19th century, many more men were involved. Why did the scale of war grow rapidly after the mid-18th century? Write a paragraph of about 50 words in answer.

Exercise 2.

Look at the two pictures below. Knowing that steamers were invented in the early nineteenth century and steel became widely used only by the second half of the eighteenth century, state which ship (the upper or lower) was used in war earlier?

Describe two features of these ships that would show that one ship was more powerful than the other in war.

175 http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Redoutable.jpg

Picture 59: A battleship in the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805

176 http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:HMS_Ocean_%28Canopus-class_battleship

%29.jpg

Picture 60: A British battleship in c1855

Features of war in the twentieth century

1. In the First World War, soldiers were stationed in trenches on the battlefield.

Trenches were fortified, barbed wire and machine guns provided defence against

177 enemy attack. Advances beyond the trenches were slow.

2. The tank was invented to overrun trenches. The tank’s heavy armour gave it protection, and its tracks allowed it to move easily on the battlefield, even when there were no roads.

3. By the later stages of the First World War, aeroplanes were used to bombard the enemy’s rear, thus expanding the war into areas far away from the battlefield.

4. Submarines also came to be used widely during the First World War. Germany used submarines to fight the blockade imposed on it by the British navy. However, that meant that the submarine was used to attack commercial as well as military shipping. The German submarine (known as the “U-boat”) was a serious threat to

British and American ships. The attack on American ships ultimately brought the

United States of America into the war.

5. By the Second World War, war was waged on land and sea, and in the air.

6. The aircraft carrier, combining the ability to fight on the sea and in the air, became the centre of command, especially in the Pacific Ocean.

7. Submarines continued to be used to attack enemy shipping.

Summary

178 Through the 19th century, weapons of war became closely tied to industrial development. Advances in ship building and gun making started the arms race in

Europe, while weapons such as the battleship, tank, aeroplane, and submarine increased the cost of war. Research and development of military technology was crucial to success in the armament race. The entire population of the country was involved in their financing and development.

Topic 21: European nationalism

Objectives

179 To let students realise that nationalism was an emotional subject, that it involved individual identity, and it became a factor in European politics through the nineteenth century, leading to the First World War.

Sample lesson plan

1. Nationalism as emotion In the Middle Ages, personal allegiance would have been owed to the church, the kings and the lords. By the Renaissance, the emergence of the vernacular meant that some kings would have identified with their subjects through the written vernacular. In this connection, any sense of the nation would have been closely defined by allegiance to the kings. By the Enlightenment, when it was thought that kings ruled by virtue of a social contract, they were thought of as representing the state. By the 19th century, the increasing focus on common language and culture as the foundation of the state meant that nationalism came to be closely tied to the emotion. A nation’s people would have felt deeply about the state and its interests, especially insofar as its sovereignty was threatened. This is brought about in the story, “The last lesson”, written by French author Alphonse Daudet.

Read the following story. It may take about 10 to 15 minutes.

THE LAST LESSON

BY ALPHONSE DAUDET

180 I started for school very late that morning and was in great dread of a scolding, especially because M. Hamel had said that he would question us on participles, and I did not know the first word about them. For a moment I thought of running away and spending the day out of doors. It was so warm, so bright! The birds were chirping at the edge of the woods; and in the open field back of the saw-mill the Prussian soldiers were drilling. It was all much more tempting than the rule for participles, but I had the strength to resist, and hurried off to school.

When I passed the town hall there was a crowd in front of the bulletin-board. For the last two years all our bad news had come from there--the lost battles, the draft, the orders of the commanding officer--and I thought to myself, without stopping:

“What can be the matter now?”

Then, as I hurried by as fast as I could go, the blacksmith, Wachter, who was there, with his apprentice, reading the bulletin, called after me: “Don’t go so fast, bub; you’ll get to your school in plenty of time!”

I thought he was making fun of me, and reached M. Hamel’s little garden all out of breath. Usually, when school began, there was a great bustle, which could be heard out in the street, the opening and closing of desks, lessons repeated in unison, very loud, with our hands over our ears to understand better, and the teacher's great ruler rapping on the table. But now it was all so still! I had counted on the commotion to get to my desk without being seen; but, of course, that day everything had to be as quiet as Sunday morning. Through the window I saw my classmates, already in their places, and M. Hamel walking up and down with his terrible iron ruler under his arm. I had to open the door and go in before everybody. You can imagine how I blushed and how frightened I was.

But nothing happened, M. Hamel saw me and said very kindly: “Go to your place quickly, little Franz. We were beginning without you.”

I jumped over the bench and sat down at my desk. Not till then, when I had got a little over my fright, did I see that our teacher had on his beautiful green coat, his frilled

181 shirt, and the little black silk cap, all embroidered, that he never wore except on inspection and prize days. Besides, the whole school seemed so strange and solemn. But the thing that surprised me most was to see, on the back benches that were always empty, the village people sitting quietly like ourselves; old Hauser, with his three- cornered hat, the former mayor, the former postmaster, and several others besides. Everybody looked sad; and Hauser had brought an old primer, thumbed at the edges, and he held it open on his knees with his great spectacles lying across the pages.

While I was wondering about it all, M. Hamel mounted his chair, and, in the same grave and gentle tone which he had used to me, said: “My children, this is the last lesson I shall give you. The order has come from Berlin to teach only German in the schools of Alsace and Lorraine. The new master comes to-morrow. This is your last French lesson. I want you to be very attentive.”

What a thunder-clap these words were to me!

Oh, the wretches; that was what they had put up at the town-hall!

My last French lesson! Why, I hardly knew how to write! I should never learn any more! I must stop there, then! Oh, how sorry I was for not learning my lessons, for seeking birds’ eggs, or going sliding on the Saar! My books, that had seemed such a nuisance a while ago, so heavy to carry, my grammar, and my history of the saints, were old friends now that I couldn’t give up. And M. Hamel, too; the idea that he was going away, that I should never see him again, made me forget all about his ruler and how cranky he was.

Poor man! It was in honor of this last lesson that he had put on his fine Sunday- clothes, and now I understood why the old men of the village were sitting there in the back of the room. It was because they were sorry, too, that they had not gone to school more. It was their way of thanking our master for his forty years of faithful service and of showing their respect for the country that was theirs no more.

While I was thinking of all this, I heard my name called. It was my turn to recite. What would I not have given to be able to say that dreadful rule for the participle all through, very loud and clear, and without one mistake? But I got mixed up on the first

182 words and stood there, holding on to my desk, my heart beating, and not daring to look up. I heard M. Hamel say to me:

“I won’t scold you, little Franz; you must feel bad enough. See how it is! Every day we have said to ourselves: ‘Bah! I’ve plenty of time. I’ll learn it to-morrow.’ And now you see where we've come out. Ah, that’s the great trouble with Alsace; she puts off learning till to-morrow. Now those fellows out there will have the right to say to you: ‘How is it; you pretend to be Frenchmen, and yet you can neither speak nor write your own language?’ But you are not the worst, poor little Franz. We’ve all a great deal to reproach ourselves with.

“Your parents were not anxious enough to have you learn. They preferred to put you to work on a farm or at the mills, so as to have a little more money. And I? I’ve been to blame also. Have I not often sent you to water my flowers instead of learning your lessons? And when I wanted to go fishing, did I not just give you a holiday?”

Then, from one thing to another, M. Hamel went on to talk of the French language, saying that it was the most beautiful language in the world -- the clearest, the most logical; that we must guard it among us and never forget it, because when a people are enslaved, as long as they hold fast to their language it is as if they had the key to their prison. Then he opened a grammar and read us our lesson. I was amazed to see how well I understood it. All he said seemed so easy, so easy! I think, too, that I had never listened so carefully, and that he had never explained everything with so much patience. It seemed almost as if the poor man wanted to give us all he knew before going away, and to put it all into our heads at one stroke.

After the grammar, we had a lesson in writing. That day M. Hamel had new copies for us, written in a beautiful round hand: France, Alsace, France, Alsace. They looked like little flags floating everywhere in the school-room, hung from the rod at the top of our desks. You ought to have seen how every one set to work, and how quiet it was! The only sound was the scratching of the pens over the paper. Once some beetles flew in; but nobody paid any attention to them, not even the littlest ones, who worked right on tracing their fish-hooks, as if that was French, too. On the roof the pigeons cooed very low, and I thought to myself:

183 “Will they make them sing in German, even the pigeons?”

Whenever I looked up from my writing I saw M. Hamel sitting motionless in his chair and gazing first at one thing, then at another, as if he wanted to fix in his mind just how everything looked in that little school-room. Fancy! For forty years he had been there in the same place, with his garden outside the window and his class in front of him, just like that. Only the desks and benches had been worn smooth; the walnut- trees in the garden were taller, and the hop-vine, that he had planted himself twined about the windows to the roof. How it must have broken his heart to leave it all, poor man; to hear his sister moving about in the room above, packing their trunks! For they must leave the country next day.

But he had the courage to hear every lesson to the very last. After the writing, we had a lesson in history, and then the babies chanted their ba, be, bi, bo, bu. Down there at the back of the room old Hauser had put on his spectacles and, holding his primer in both hands, spelled the letters with them. You could see that he, too, was crying; his voice trembled with emotion, and it was so funny to hear him that we all wanted to laugh and cry. Ah, how well I remember it, that last lesson!

All at once the church-clock struck twelve. Then the Angelus. At the same moment the trumpets of the Prussians, returning from drill, sounded under our windows. M. Hamel stood up, very pale, in his chair. I never saw him look so tall.

“My friends,” said he, “I--I --” But something choked him. He could not go on.

Then he turned to the blackboard, took a piece of chalk, and, bearing on with all his might, he wrote as large as he could:

“Vive La France!”

Then he stopped and leaned his head against the wall, and, without a word, he made a gesture to us with his hand; “School is dismissed--you may go.” Source: Project Gutenberg’s International Short Stories: French http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10577/10577-8.txt

184 Hints for the teacher: Point out those parts of the stories that evoke feelings: the French language, from a little boy, the community turned out to attend the last lesson, the teacher, he had to leave (his sister was packing as the lesson went on), the Prussian troops returned from drill at midnight, “Long live France”, and a lot more (in red above). Hammer home how the story stresses that language, especially the written language, represented the nation.

Then the history: Alsace and Lorraine. What is the history here? In the last topic, we have talked about the unification of Germany, but we did not put in the details. To understand this story, we need a little detail. Alsace and Lorraine are located today in France, on the border with Germany. There have always been a mixture of French and German speakers living here. In 1870, after the Franco-Prussian War, which France lost, these two areas were ceded to Prussia. German replaced French in school.

2. The history of European nationalism (1) You might remember the appeal to Greek and Roman culture in the Renaissance and the spread of the written vernacular languages after the invention of the printing press. That was the 15th century. There was the same appeal in nationalism. It was believed that people who spoke the same language had the same culture. (2) During the French Revolution, nationalism was very much a central theme of Let us go, children of the fatherland liberation. You can see this in the French national anthem, La Marseillaise, Our day of Glory has arrived. composed during the French Revolution in 1792. For the tune in various formats, Against us stands tyranny, see http://www.marseillaise.org/english/ The bloody flag is raised, The bloody flag is raised. Do you hear in the countryside The roar of these savage soldiers They come right into our arms To cut the throats of your sons, your country.

185 Source: Modern History Sourcebook, La Marseillaise http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/marseill.html

Napoleon used the same ideas in his campaigns. Subsequent to those, in 1848, there were uprisings which were nationalist (e.g. in Hungary).

3. More schools Nationalism was also promoted by popular education. Throughout the 16th to the 18th centuries, throughout Western Europe, there were more and more schools, especially primary schools. By the 19th century, many schools were supported by the government and they taught in the national language. The spread of primary education promoted the national language, the national history and the national literature. They were very important in inculcating the national identity.

4. What would happen to empires if people speaking each language became an independent nation?

Nationalism could be a strength in those countries in which a single language dominated. It posed a dilemma for the old empires, that is Austria (the Austro- Hungarian Empire in the last decades of the 19th century) and the Ottoman Empire, in which different peoples spoke different languages. In the last years of the 19th century, this problem was particularly difficult because Russia was expanding and extending protection to its south European neighours in a Pan-Slav movement. Britain and France were worried that Russian entry into this area could threaten their security, and equally worried that an expanded Germany and Austria might be dangerous. The

186 problems arising out of this region were known as the Eastern Question and were potentially explosive.

Map 12: Austrian Empire Map 13: Europe today

Summary: Nationalism was emotional. By the nineteenth century, it became part of the personal identity of a lot of people. It became generally accepted that people who spoke the same language had the same culture and belonged to the same nation. However, if the people of the same nation were allowed to create their own country, some of the old empires might break up. The resultant changes could be politically dangerous.

187 Topic 22: The World Wars in Europe

Objectives To introduce to students how the First and Second World Wars began, noting in particular, (1) the “German problem”, (2) what objectives were posed at the beginning of the wars and (3) why the wars were so difficult to end. The Russian Revolution will be introduced along with a brief account of the First World War.

Note for the teacher The Hong Kong history syllabus has for many years put a great deal of emphasis on the First and the Second World Wars. It is important to understand why this happened. When the syllabus was drawn up in the 1950s, the Second World War was fresh in many people’s memory, and there was, therefore, a great deal of interest in what led to it. That syllabus was continued not because it was intrinsically valuable, but because it became a tradition to do so. In 2007, the Second World War is no longer an event of the recent past. There is no reason why students should be made to memorise facts, especially place names, which were familiar to people who were living in the 1950s. In this bridging programme, students should know that the wars

188 took place, and that they devastated the most powerful European nations. They should be aware of the conflicting interests which led to war and the reasons why the wars, once started, were hard to stop. They should understand various concepts related to the period: total war, the principle of self-determination and international cooperation and peace keeping. The wars should be taught as part of a long continuous history emerging out of interests formed in the 19th century and not singled out as isolated events of the 20th century.

Sample lesson plan The two world wars in the first half of the 20th century killed millions of people, toppled the governments of some of the most powerful countries at the time and changed the political map of Europe. They were such a powerful source of change because war had become much more devastating than they had ever been in history. Not only were the weapons more powerful, but also because once war was started, the combatants could not stop. They did not stop until one side was annihilated.

1. What did wars mean for soldiers? Here is a famous First World War song: It’s a Long Way to Tipperary

It’s a long way to Tipperary,

It’s a long way to go.

It's a long way to Tipperary

To the sweetest girl I know!

Goodbye Piccadilly,

Farewell Leicester Square!

It’s a long long way to Tipperary,

But my heart's right there. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It’s_a_Long_Way_to_Tipperary

(Tipperary is a town in Ireland and the location of barracks for the British army when Ireland was still part of Britain. Piccadilly and Leicester Square are places in London. Originally, the song was sung to express feelings for girlfriends at the barracks. During the First World War, it came to be sung as a marching song which evoked

189 feelings of home. An audio version may be found on the web at http://www.firstworldwar.com/audio/itsalongwaytotipperary.htm.)

Play “It’s a long way to Tipperary” as an introduction to war. It shows that soldiers did not want war; most would much rather go home.

2. When did these wars take place?

______!_____!______!______!______1914 1918 1939 1945

3. Which countries were involved on the two sides? In the First World War (1914-1918) Britain, France, Russia (known as the Triple Entente) and the USA fought Germany, Austria (known as the Triple Alliance, together with Italy), and Turkey. What happened to Italy? Although it was part of the Triple Alliance, by a secret alliance with France, it stayed out of the war until 1915, when it joined on the side of the Triple Entente.

In the Second World War (1939-1945) Britain, France, USSR and the USA (the Allies) fought Germany and Italy (the Axis). In Asia, Japan joined in the war on the side of the Axis powers. War on China by Japan began in 1937, that will be the subject of the next topic.

3. How did war begin?

To understand how the First World War began, it is necessary to be familiar with the area lying on the edge of three old empires of Europe: the re-shaped Austrian Empire, expanding Russia and the collapsing Ottoman Empire. The spot which led directly to war was Bosnia and Serbia, as indicated in the map on the right. Bosnia came within Austria, but its population was Slav, and therefore the people were linguistically close to Serbia. Serbia was backed by Russia, which also had a large Slav population, and was also interested in this area as an expansion into the Mediterranean.

190 Map 14: Austrian Empire Map 15: Europe today

Austria was backed by Germany. Germany was as yet a newly unified country in 1914. After war with Austria in 1866, Prussia occupied half of Germany. After war with France in 1870, Prussia united the German states and set up the new state of Germany. Germany was one of the major European powers from 1870 to 1914. It built an army, expanded overseas, and defended the German interest in Europe, even when such interests did not fall with Germany. It was closely allied to Austria.

In 1914, the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne, was assassinated by a Serbian while on a visit to Bosnia. Austria declared war on Serbia. Russia came to the support of Serbia. France and England came to the support of Russia. Germany supported Austria. The United States joined in on the side of the Allies in 1917.

The Second World War began because Germany, defeated in the First World War, was made to be pay a heavy indemnity and lost territory. Austria and the Ottoman Empire were broken up (see impact of war below for more). Payment of indemnity could only be supported by loans from the US and by devaluing the German currency. The result was hyper-inflation in the 1920s. The government set up after the First World War collapsed, and an ultra nationalist party, the National Socialist Party (Nazi) came to power under Adolph Hitler. The Nazi government rebuilt the economy and the army very quickly, and expanded. Once again, expansion was justified on the grounds that the German nation had the responsibility to defend German interests

191 even when they fell outside Germany. It annexed Austria and invaded Czechoslovakia in 1938. It invaded Poland in 1939. On that point, Britain and France declared war.

Map 16 (Source of Map: Department of History, CUHK)

4. What were the objectives of war and why were these wars so hard to end?

A. Look at these websites which show the two fronts during the wars: http://www.pbs.org/greatwar/maps/maps_outbreak.html http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/launch_ani_western_front.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/launch_ani_fall_france_campaign.sh tml Early in both wars, France lost substantial territories. Germany would not give up its acquisitions, nor would France acquiesce. Because neither side could back down, war could not end.

192 B. Total war:

Picture 61: This is a British poster of 1914 advertising recruitment of soldiers for the war. In the First World War, serving in the army was voluntary in Britain until 1916, after that conscription was introduced.

(Source of Picture 61: Department of History, CUHK. The original picture could be found at Wikimedia Commons, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Kitchener-leete.jpg )

193 In the following passage, Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister during the Second World War, captures the totality of the new war:

There is another more obvious difference from 1914. The whole of the warring nations are engaged, not only soldiers, but the entire population, men, women, and children. The fronts are everywhere. The trenches are dug in the towns and streets. Every village is fortified. Every road is barred. The front line runs through the factories. The workmen are soldiers with different weapons but the same courage. Source: August 20, 1940, speech by Winston Churchill to House of Commons. Text from The Churchill Centre (online), Speeches & Quotes, ‘The Few’, http://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=420 [visited 24 July 2007].

Picture 62 http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:L Compare the passage to Picture 62, which ondonBombedWWII.png shows the bombing of London from the air during the Second World War. Explain what Churchill meant by the sentence, “the whole of the warring nations are engaged”.

5. What were the consequences of the wars? The wars came to an end only when one side or the other collapsed. In the First World War, Russia yielded in 1917 when the Russian Revolution broke out. Revolution had been brought about, among other reasons, because of military and economic disaster

194 since the beginning of war. The German imperial government was also brought down by revolution in 1918, and war ceased soon afterwards.

Another important consequence was that in the treaties signed after the First World War, the victorious countries applied the principle of national self-determination in dealing with German, Austrian and Ottoman territories. Many new states were created in eastern Europe as a result.

Even countries that won suffered badly. Britain, traditionally a wealthy country, went heavily into debt, having borrowed heavily from the United States in pursuing the war.

The Second World War was also concluded in Europe only when the Allies, strengthened by the United States entry into the war, counter-attacked. Heavy bombing of Germany, economic trouble and military attack finally defeated the German armies. Hitler held out to the very end.

The end of the Second World War saw the emergence of the Soviet Union as a major world power, and the beginning of the Cold War. European powers, considerably weakened by war, gradually gave up their overseas colonies. Outside Europe, a wave of nationalism saw the establishment of many new states.

Both wars highlighted the need for an international body in which disputes might be peacefully settled. At the end of the First World War, the League of Nations was created, and at the end of the Second World War, the United Nations.

Summary This topic has dealt briefly with the First and the Second World War in Europe.

Students have been introduced to the countries involved in the war, some of the reasons which led to war, and they have distinguished between reasons leading to the outbreak of war, and reasons which caused war to continue once it had broken out.

They were also given the concept of the “total war”, and introduced to the idea that an international institution was needed for the maintenance of peace.

195 Topic 23 Asia between the Two World Wars Objectives

To explain that a constitutional monarchy was set up in Japan after the Meiji

Restoration and that a constitutional movement in the country had flourished during

196 the 1910s. To examine the reasons for Japan’s move towards militarism, the invasion of China and the launch of the Pacific War in the 1930s.

(1) A summary of events in East Asia

You might remember that in 1894, Japan went to war against China, and in 1902, it fought Russia. As a result of these wars, the Japanese empire was founded, to include as colonies Korea and Taiwan. (See Topic 19)

Japan entered the First World War on the side of the Triple Entente. At the peace settlement of Versailles after the war in 1919, Japan obtained control of parts of China which had fallen under German influence.

During the 1920s, relationship between China and Japan was peaceful. However, by the 1930s, the military was gaining influence in Japan, and the Japanese government took an increasingly belligerent stance towards China. It attacked and obtained the

Northeastern provinces of China in 1931, it attacked China in 1937, leading to eight years of bitter war. By 1941, Japan extended the war to British and French colonies in

Asia, and attacked the US naval base of Pearl Harbour in Hawaii. It surrendered in

1945 after the atomic bomb was dropped on it by the United States.

The wars of the 1930s and 1940s were connected to the rise of the military in Japan at the time. How did that happen?

(2) Japanese politics to the 1920s

An important background reason for the rise of militarism in Japan lies in some features of the Meiji Constitution of 1889. (See Topic 19.) The following summarises some articles in the Meiji Constitution:

 The empire of Japan is ruled by the emperor descended in a lineal unbroken line

for thousands of generations.

197  The emperor is sacred and inviolable.

 The emperor is assisted by the Imperial Diet and exercises legislative power.

 The emperor convenes the Imperial Diet. The Diet meets, concludes and

suspends meetings, and the House of Representatives is dissolved pursuant to the

order of the emperor.

 The emperor is the commander of the army and navy.

 The emperor determines the deployment of the army and navy and the size of the

regular armed forces.

Source: http://henryxing.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!508A09EB188BC47!895.entry

Exercise 1. The following table compares the Meiji Constitution of Japan and the

constitutional spirit of the United States. What are the differences between the two

constitutions and what do they imply?

Japan United States Divine power of the emperor who was Popularly elected President infallible Citizens were the emperor’s subjects Men are born free and enjoy liberty Legislative and executive powers vested in Separation of executive, legislative and the emperor judicial powers Military power belonged to the emperor The President is the commander-in-chief directly of the armed forces

A Note for the teacher:

For implications of the comparison above, consider the following:

Firstly, a very special feature of Japanese politics was the role of senior statesmen (the

most trusted courtiers in the early Meiji period and former prime ministers).They had

the power to nominate cabinet ministers to the emperor. These elder statesmen, and

even the prime minister or cabinet ministers, were not necessarily members of

198 political parties. So, although the parties took part in election, the results of the election did not determine who had power.

Secondly, the Meiji Constitution stipulated that the emperor was sacred and the source of all authority. The emperor was the highest commander of the army and navy and could command the armed forces directly. His constitutional power could, therefore, be used by military leaders to shield themselves from the control of the cabinet or the prime minister. As long as they were not restrained by the emperor, they could decide and act arbitrarily. As there was no external check and balance over the military structure, the military could easily and rashly dispatch their men overseas for the sake of expansion.

Thirdly, the Constitution stipulated that the posts of Army Minister and Navy

Minister must be held by current servicemen, thus virtually granting the military the right of vetoing cabinet decisions. For example, in 1912 when the newly formed cabinet refused to increase military expenditure in an attempt to deal with the economic crisis caused by rapid inflation, it aroused the discontent of the military.

The Army Minister resigned and refused to nominate his successor. As the prime minister was unable to form a cabinet, he was forced to resign.

However, in the 1910s, public opinion thought that the army had encroached upon the constitutional government. It thought that the military had failed to respect the voting power of the elected Diet over the budget, and, as a result, supported the government’s efforts to reduce the budget. The political parties also initiated a movement to safeguard constitutionalism. Riots broke out in Tokyo and other cities.

As a result, although the senior statesmen never gave up their right of appointment, elected members of the Diet came to be included in the cabinet. In fact, members of

199 minority parties, by being included in the cabinet, could gain influence, and such personal influence would, in turn, allow their parties to gain in strength.

(3) Expansion into China

Japanese politicians, including the senior statesmen, political parties and the military, endeavoured to obtain equal status for Japan with Western powers and agreed that

Japan should establish itself as an imperialist power in Asia. After the First World

War, when Japan faced economic crisis caused by serious inflation and renewed economic competitions among Western powers, imperial expansion seemed imminent.

However, through the 1920s, successive Japanese governments took a conciliatory attitude towards China. China, fragmented by internal wars, was at it weakest point in the twentieth century. In 1928, the Japanese army stationed in the northeastern provinces of China (known then as Manchuria), took matters into its own hand.

Members of the army decided, without approval from the Japanese government, to assassinate the warlord of Manchuria, Zhang Zuolin. The Japanese government knew of the event, but failed to hold the assassins to account. Instead, the Prime Minister resigned. By September 1931, the Japanese army stationed on the Manchuria-Korea border attacked Manchuria, and drove out Zhang Zuolin’s son, Zhang Xueliang. It took over Manchuria and turned it in the Manchukuo Kingdom. The Chinese government protested to the League of Nations, but the League was totally ineffective in restraining Japan, even though it condemned Japan’s aggression.

Exercise 2.

200 Look at the following cartoon. The Tiger Japan has swallowed the little human

Manchukuo. Identify what event the cartoon refers to and what the Chinese government (indicated by the man on whom the Chinese characters “zhengfu” has been written) was doing about it?

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/digital/collections/linglong/index.html)

Picture 63

(Source: Ling Long Women’s Magazine, 1932, issue no. 70.

Image from Columbia University Library, http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/digital/collections/linglong/index.html)

201 A Note for the teacher

During the economic downturn in the late 1920s, the Japanese government adopted stringent measures to reduce the government’s expenditure. One result was the reduction of the military budget. The majority of military commanders accepted this policy. At this time, the government adopted a cooperative policy with Western powers towards China. For example, Prime Minister Takashi Hara ( 原敬) agreed to return Shandong to China even though Japan retained its long-term interests over major railways. In 1924-1927, Foreign Minister Kijuro Shidehara ( 幣原喜重郎 ) refused military intervention in the anti-Japanese movement in China.

In the 1910s and 1920s, there was no controversy over whether Japan should expand, the only contention being whether expansion should proceed gradually or radically.

The gradualist faction advocated cooperation with Western powers, especially Britain and the United States. The radical faction, on the other hand, advocated acting alone, taking into account only Japanese interests, and disregarding the China policy adopted by Britain and the United States. Public opinion largely agreed the gradualists, whereas the military advocated “radical development”.

However, the dissent in policy was not limited to the political parties and the military, nor did it represent a sharp opposition between the military and the public. By the end of the 1920s, a more apparent dissent appeared. Political parties advocated

202 cooperation and consultation with powers like Britain and the United States for the resolution of disputes over China, but the military, especially the middle- or lower- ranking officers, were impatient with such conciliatory diplomacy as they became increasingly critical of the political parties. The army viewed China, in particular the problems in northern and northeastern China, as the biggest threat to Japan’s position as Asia’s leader. The navy, on the other hand, was concerned with the challenges posed by Western powers in the Pacific Ocean.

Because the Meiji Constitution did not provide for a check-and-balance system on the military, the military could ignore the opposition from the political parties and launch its own radical policy on northeastern China. That policy amounted to military invasion.

As the world economic crisis set in by the end of the 1920s, Japan’s economy was hit hard. Between 1930 and 1932, Japan’s industrial unemployment rate reached as high as 15 per cent of the labour force. The unemployment rate in the cities was even higher. Many army officers became increasingly discontented with Japan’s domestic and foreign policies. They saw the conciliatory diplomacy as cowardly. They considered the reduction in the military budget as a way of degrading the armed forces, impoverishing the soldiers and undermining their morale. They were of the view that this was the result of collaboration between big business (known in Japan as the zaibatsu) and political parties under the capitalist system.

The success of the Northern Expedition led by the Guomindang Party in China also prompted action from the Japanese military. After the fall of the Qing dynasty, China was a divided country dominated by separatist warlord regimes. The completion of

203 the Northern Expedition and the establishment of a unified Nationalist (Guomindang) government in Nanjing in 1928, could eventually lead to a stronger China. An imperialist viewing China from Japan would have argued in the early 1930s that if war was inevitable, it should be waged sooner rather than later.

The Japanese Kanto Army stationed in northeastern China was set up in 1906 to protect Japanese interests in Japan’s leased territories in China and its railway rights in South Manchuria. It had attempted to make the Japanese government adopt a more proactive Manchurian policy by assassinating the warlord, Zhang Zuolin ( 張作霖).

Although Prime Minister Giichi Tanaka ( 田中義一 ) realized that the main conspirators of the assassination of Zhang Zuolin were the Kanto Army, the Japanese government failed to impose any effective sanction on them for acting without authority. Instead, Prime Minister Tanaka was forced to resign because the emperor was dissatisfied with his handling of the event.

This event set a bad precedence for the military. It also encouraged radicalism among young army officers and right-wing nationalists. Leaders of political parties and business later became their targets of assassination. At this time, leaders of the Kanto

Army advocated that as war between Japan and Western powers was inevitable, Japan must control northeastern China because the region was rich in mineral resources, and its fertile lowland could be reclaimed for agriculture. By promoting migration to

Manchuria, Japan could also ease population pressure in the countryside. This line of thought led to the Manchurian Incident, when on 18 September 1931, the Kanto Army launched a full-scale attack on Manchuria on the pretext that the Chinese army had been responsible for an explosion on the South Manchurian Railway. Although Prime

Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi (犬養毅) did not agree to the annexation of northeastern

204 China by the Japanese army, he nevertheless allowed the establishment of a puppet government – Manchukuo (Manzhouguo) (滿州國) – by the Kanto Army. The fact that the Kanto Army could take matters into its own hands by occupying northeastern

China without the approval from the government reinforced the growth of militarism.

Between 1931 and 1936, the Chinese government in Nanjing conciliated to Japanese demands in the north of China. By 1936, in concession to public opinion, the Nanjing government pledged a hard stand in the event of further aggression. When by the

Marco Polo Bridge Incident ( 蘆溝橋事變 ) on 7 July 1937, the Japanese army captured Beijing, full-scale war broke out. In the initial few months of the war, China lost heavily and even the capital of the Nationalist government in Nanjing fell. With the fall of Nanjing to Japanese forces, the Nationalist government moved its seat to

Chongqing (重慶).

Exercise 3

On 1 January 1938, the President of the Chinese Nationalist government Lin Sen (林

森) said in a speech:

“We demand final victory, and we will fight a protracted war of resistance. In this protracted war, any temporary military retreat is only the loss of a battle. It will not affect the overall outcome of the war. During the First World War, in less than one month, the French government had to give up Paris and half of France fell into enemy

205 hands. Nevertheless, from losses France emerged in victory. Although the French situation was slightly different from our present situation, the weaknesses of Japan are too many. Its soldiers are mostly grassroots workers. Once their young men have been conscripted, students abandon school, farmers cease to farm, merchants cease to trade and workers cease to produce. As time goes by, Japan cannot hold out. The more land it occupies and the longer the frontlines of war, the sooner will come its defeat. We must drag the war on and wear down our enemy’s military and financial strengths so that its economic structure and military advantages will collapse simultaneously. The removal of the capital to Chongqing shows our determination to engage in a protracted war … to accomplish the aim of final victory.”

(Source: Zhu Huisen (朱匯森) ed. A Concise Account of Historical Events in the Republic of

China, 1938, Part 1 (中華民國史事紀要)，Taipei: Academia Historica 1989，頁 2-3.)

Answer these two questions in two short paragraphs:

According to Lin Sen, why did the Chinese government move its capital to

Chongqing? Why did he think that China would ultimately win the war?

Reference for teachers:

The Japanese government deployed 600,000 men to invade China. They could hold the cities and transport lines in the areas they occupied, but were unable to control the countryside. In March 1940, Japan set up a puppet government in Nanjing under the leadership of Wang Jingwei ( 汪精衛 ). By September, Japan tried to break the stalemate by allying with the two Axis Powers, Germany and Italy. That was preparation for its attack on Southeast Asia, as Vietnam was a French colony. When

Japan occupied northern Vietnam, the United States expanded its oil embargo against

Japan and provided cheap military supplies to China. When in June 1941, Hitler

206 declared war on the Soviet Union, Japan turned to Southeast Asia knowing that when the Soviet Union was occupied in war in Europe, it could not wage a separate war in northeastern China. Japan attacked the British and American colonies in Southeast

Asia and seized the oilfields in the region. To neutralise the United States, Japan also attacked the American naval base of Pearl Harbor. The attack of Pearl Harbor brought the United States into the war.

Summary

Japan was a constitutional monarchy in which the emperor’s power was divine and absolute. Although there was an elected House of Representatives in the Imperial

Diet, and voting right had been expanded and the cabinet was formed by political parties, the Diet was not able to control the military. Military power was placed directly in the hands of the emperor. When the Japanese government dealt with a financial crisis by adopting stringent economic measures and reducing military expenditure, the discontent of the military was aroused. The army opposed conciliation with countries like Britain and the United States. It acted alone in northeastern China, launched a military campaign and promoted a policy of advancing into southern China, hence moving Japan along the road to militarism. Topic 24 International relations after World War II

Objectives

To introduce the causes of the Cold War and the development of the rivalry between the US-led camp and the Soviet camp in the 1950s and 1970s.

207 Armed confrontations after the Second World War

The following table shows major armed confrontations involving the United States and the Soviet Union after the Second World War:

Year Confrontation Who supported whom? 1945-1949 Chinese Civil War US supported the Guomindang

government, and the USSR the Chinese

Communist Party 1948-1949 Berlin Blockade US supported West Germany, USSR

supported East Germany 1950-1953 Korean War US supported South Korea, USSR and

China supported North Korea 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis US objected to USSR building a missile

launch site in Cuba 1963-1973 Vietnam War US supported South Vietnam, USSR and

China supported North Vietnam

208 The locations of these confrontations are indicated in the map below.

(Source of Map: Department of History, CUHK)

Exercise 1. Answer these questions: f1. From the table above, which two countries appear most frequently in opposing camps?

2. Where are these two countries located in the world map?

3. From your answers to questions 1 and 2, how would you divide these countries into two camps: Britain, USA, East Germany, West Germany, North Korea, South Korea, the People’s Republic of China, France.

Unlike the First and Second World Wars, these confrontations were not total wars.

That is to say, although in the areas in which war was conducted, many people died and much property was destroyed, many countries which took sides in these confrontations, such as the United States and the Soviet Union, did not see war

209 touching their own territory. For the most part, from the end of the Second World War to the 1980s, an ideological gulf divided the United States and the Soviet Union, as the result of which, they and their allies contested for economic and military superiority. Many countries were drawn into the two camps led by them. This constant state of tension between the two camps was known as the Cold War.

Two ideologies

A. Communism

This is The Internationale, the song of the international communist movement. Listen to the song and read the words, and then answer the questions that follow:

Arise, ye workers from your slumber,

Arise, ye prisoners of want.

For reason in revolt now thunders,

And at last ends the age of cant!

Away with all your superstitions,

Servile masses, arise, arise!

We'll change henceforth the old tradition,

And spurn the dust to win the prize!

Chorus:

So comrades, come rally,

And the last fight let us face.

The Internationale,

Unites the human race.

So comrades, come rally,

And the last fight let us face.

The Internationale,

Unites the human race.

210 (Source: Wikipedia: The Internationale (British/Irish translation) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Internationale#English_lyrics)

The song addresses “workers,” “prisoners of want,” “servile masses,” and

“comrades,” which social class do you think these terms refer to?

Exercise 2:

You might remember that in Topic 21, you came across the French national anthem,

La Marseillaise, which called upon “the children of the fatherland” to oppose tyranny.

In comparison, the aim of the Internationale was to “unite the human race”. Which song do you think stands for nationalism, and which one stands for internationalism?

The word “Internationale”, used in the title of the song and referred to in the chorus, stands for the International Workers’ Union set up in 1864. The words, “workers”,

“prisoners of want”, “servile masses”, refer primarily to industrial workers, many of whom were poorly paid and subjected to harsh working conditions. The word

“comrade” refers to these people being united in the same movement, working towards the same objective of liberation. The movement, as the name of the union implies, was international in outlook.

There are different versions of this song. The version reproduced here is the English translation of the French original, written in 1870. After the October Revolution in

Russia, Lenin made Internationale the temporary national anthem of the Soviet Union anthem. The Soviet Union actively promoted international communism which was exactly the spirit of Internationale. In the 1920s, Internationale was translated into

211 Chinese.

The idea that industrial workers should be united to demand better pay and working conditions had many origins in the nineteenth century. One of the most influential books on the subject was The Communist Manifesto, written by Karl Marx in 1848. In

The Communist Manifesto, Marx made two important points about the theory of

Communism, which became closely affiliated with the international working class movement which was promoted by the Soviet Union. He said:

The immediate aim of the Communist is the same as that of all the other

proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the

bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.

The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence:

abolition of private property.

(Source: The Avalon Project at Yale Law School, http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/treatise/communist_manifesto/mantwo.htm)

The word “proletarian” means the industrial working class. The word “bourgeois” means “capitalist”, that is to say, people who owned the machines and employed workers to operate them.

In 1918, Lenin, who emerged as the leader of the Russian Revolution, declared that it was the policy of the Soviet Republic (later to become the U.S.S.R.) to abolish private ownership of land, factories, mines, railways and banks. All land, factories, mines,

212 railways and banks were to be owned by all the people within the state. The state, therefore, would be led by the working class.

Internationalism, the abolition of private property, and the control of the state by the working class, under the leadership of the Communist Party, were the essential tenets of Communism.

The U.S.S.R. was committed to promoting Communism throughout the world. At the end of the Second World War, the Soviet Union set up communist regimes in Eastern

Europe, including Poland, Rumania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany and

Bulgaria. A communist camp led by the Soviet Union was formed vis-à-vis the

Western camp led by the United States and Britain.

B. Human rights

Europe was the major battlefield of the Second World War. Both victors and vanquished were worn down by the war. As a result, the United States emerged from the war the international leader. The United States and Western Europe did not share the Communist ideology of the USSR. They viewed the spread of Communism beyond the USSR as a threat.

Some ideas of the ideological differences between the US and the USSR may be seen in President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address in January 1961. In this speech, he said,

213 We observe today not a victory of party, but a celebration of freedom –

symbolizing an end, as well as a beginning – signifying renewal, as well as

change. For I have sworn before you and Almighty God the same solemn oath

our forebears prescribed nearly a century and three quarters ago.

The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to

abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. And yet the

same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around

the globe – the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the

state, but from the hand of God.

We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution. Let the

word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has

been passed to a new generation of Americans – born in this century, tempered

by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage –

and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to

which this Nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed

today at home and around the world.

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any

price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in

order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

(Source: Inaugural Address of John F. Kennedy, 20 January 1061, http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres56.html )

214 Exercise 3. Answer this question:

In his speech, what values did Kennedy emphasize that the American new generation should maintain and preserve? Quote the relevant phrases in his speech and explain.

The relevant sentences are marked and numbered below:

(1) We observe today not a victory of party, but a celebration of freedom –

symbolizing an end, as well as a beginning – signifying renewal, as well as

change. For I have sworn before you and Almighty God the same solemn oath

our forebears prescribed nearly a century and three quarters ago.

(2) The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power

to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. (3) And yet

the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue

around the globe – the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity

of the state, but from the hand of God.

We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution. Let the

word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that (4) the torch

has been passed to a new generation of Americans – born in this century,

tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient

heritage – and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human

rights to which this Nation has always been committed, and to which we are

committed today at home and around the world.

215 Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that (5) we shall pay any

price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in

order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

Obviously, the dominant value cited in the speech was freedom and liberty. See sentences (1) and (5).

However, closely related to that is the idea of “human rights”. See sentences (3) and

(4). Notice in sentence (3), human rights are not given by governments (that is, “the state”), but by God. Without the religious implication, this sentence means that everyone is entitled to human rights by virtue of being human, whether or not governments would grant them.

Notice also the two sentences at (2). So, President Kennedy was saying that the

United States stood for freedom and human rights, but these must not be empty promises. Human beings by the 1960s had the power to abolish poverty, and so they must do that. They also had the power to destroy all human life, through war, and they must prevent war.

Exercise 4. Compare the ideology of communism with the ideology of human rights.

Why would the two be in conflict?

This is a difficult question to answer. Notice that both ideologies believe in freedom and liberty. Communism believes that private ownership of land, machines and banks

216 is necessary to liberate the worker, and that in order to do so, the working class must control the state. The ideology of human rights believes that all human beings have the same rights, and that these rights include the rights of owning property. It may be useful to refer to the Declaration of the Rights of Man during the French Revolution in 1789 (See Topic 15 Exercise 1), which described human rights as “liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression”. They agree broadly with the American

Declaration of Independence written in 1776 (See Topic 14 Section 4), which described them as “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. Notice also that

Kennedy’s speech was given after he won an election. Look at sentence (1), where he described the election as a “celebration of freedom”. The human rights ideology goes against the idea that any one social class must control the government. Karl Marx would have disagreed. He believed that elections did not guarantee the working class the right of representation.

The atomic bomb

President Kennedy continued in the speech to talk about preventing war:

We dare not tempt them with weakness. For only when our arms are sufficient

beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they never be employed.

But neither can two great and powerful groups of nations take comfort from our

present course – both sides overburdened by the costs of modern weapons, both

rightly alarmed by the steady spread of the deadly atom, yet both racing to alter

that uncertain balance of terror that stays the hand of mankind’s final war.

So let us begin anew – remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of

217 weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of

fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.

(Source: Inaugural Address of John F. Kennedy, 20 January 1061, http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres56.html )

Exercise 5. Answer these questions:

President Kennedy’s speech referred to the “two great and powerful groups of nations”. Which two groups of nations did he mean? He talked about the “deadly atom” the cost for which overburden these nations and the destructiveness of which could be described as “mankind’s final war”. What was this weapon he was referring to?

Towards the end of World War II, the United States had developed the atomic bomb and dropped two such bombs respectively on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. After the war, the Soviet Union caught up in the research on the atomic bomb and successfully tested one in 1949. It then became the second nuclear power in the world.

The destructive power of the atomic bomb was unprecedented. It can be divided into four aspects:

1 Thermal radiation: Thermal radiation is the radioactive light released during a nuclear explosion. For example, the thermal radiation released by the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki caused immediate blindness, burnt skin and skin ulcer and the

218 burning of substances in areas within 7,000-metre radius from the site of explosion.

2 Blast: Blast is an enormous air current of hyper-pressure produced by a nuclear explosion. For example, the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki completely destroyed all buildings and organisms in areas within 650-metre radius from the site of explosion.

3 Early stage nuclear radiation: This is the radiation produced during the first several dozens of seconds after a nuclear explosion. For example, the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki killed and wounded people in areas within 1,100-metre radius from the site of explosion.

4 Radioactive dust: A huge mushroom-shaped cloud will appear after a nuclear explosion and a large quantity of radioactive dust will fall when the cloud has dissipated. When in contact with human body, the dust will burn the skin and even cause death. Its destructive power is therefore shocking. The atomic bomb dropped on

Nagasaki caused the death of 40,000 people and the radiation inflicted many people.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Hiroshima_aftermath.jpg

Picture 64: The scene after the explosion of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, Japan

219 The US and the USSR competed in the race to build more powerful atomic bombs.

They also competed in building the intercontinental missiles which might effectively carry the bombs over a long distance. Previously, an atomic bomb might destroy only a single city, but now some atomic bombs can destroy entire countries.

No country had used an atomic bomb in war since the Second World War. However, if more countries might build the bomb, there was always the danger that one day some country might use it. Non-proliferation of atomic weapons has been a major item in international negotiation. Despite that concern, besides the US and the USSR, six countries, and possibly seven, had developed atomic bombs since the Second World

War. These six countries are: Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea.

Israel might also have the atomic bomb, but its government has not confirmed that

220 fact.

Summary

After the Second World War, the US and the USSR became the most powerful countries in the world. They were allied separately to many countries, which formed into two camps. The USSR camp embraced communism as a central ideology. The

US camp supported human rights as its central theme. An arms race developed between the US and the USSR, both countries seeking superiority in atomic weapons and intercontinental missiles. However, no war was fought with these weapons.

Instead, crisis or war on a smaller scale broke out numerous times in strategic areas such as China, Berlin, Korea, Cuba, and Vietnam.

Topic 25 Modern life and the environment

Objectives

To understand that while living conditions have continued to improve with advancements in technology, the new technology has also brought about new crises.

221 Sample teaching plan

Technology comes into every sphere of life. Changes in technology affect most aspects of daily life. Some examples of these changes are cited here to illustrate these changes.

1. The technology of travel

Exercise 1.

Think of a trip you took outside Hong Kong. For this trip, write down the following information on a sheet of paper: a Name of destination b Distance between Hong Kong and the destination (make use of your knowledge

in geography, mark the destination on a map and calculate the distance from

Hong Kong) c The transportation used to go from Hong Kong to your destination (boat,

aeroplane?) d The time required to reach the destination from Hong Kong

Now, note the following information about travel in the past:

Before the use of steamships, it took 120 days to travel from Britain to China on high- speed sailing boats.

With the emergence of steamships, the same journey from Britain to China was reduced to 77 days.

When the Suez Canal was opened in 1869, steamships which ran between Britain and

China in the 1870s required 50 days to complete the journey. By 1882, the fastest

222 steamship could reach go from China to Britain in 29 days.

Nowadays, it takes about 11 hours to fly to Britain from Hong Kong.

Answer the following questions:

1. Compare the time you spent reaching your destination with what someone might have taken in the past. How much time have you saved thanks to more efficient means of transport?

2. Why has faster means of transport promoted more travelling?

3. What fuel is used in aeroplanes? What happens when the fuel is consumed and gas is transmitted into the sky?

Hint for the teacher

Nowadays, most travellers abroad fly. Your students may remember how much time their journey took, or can look it up on the internet. Simple arithmetic and a map will give some idea of the time taken by a sailing ship or a steamer. Of course, it takes much less time nowadays to reach our destinations. Short travel time encourages travel, because most people cannot take off for long holidays. Also, a long journey by boat is likely to cost much more than a short flight. However, technology advances come at a cost. In the case of air travel, aeroplanes consume a great deal of petrol and emit carbon dioxide.

2 The application of electricity to everyday life

Exercise 2.

Make a list of the electrical appliances used every day in your home, e.g. electric lights, air-conditioner, television, washing machine, refrigerator, computer, telephone,

223 rice cooker, electric water heater.

Try to think what changes you must make to your life if all these appliances are not available for one day. Keep a diary for that imagined day, share and discuss it in class.

Why do electrical appliances work? What fuel is consumed to produce electricity?

What happens to the environment when the fuel is consumed?

Electrical home appliances give us a great deal of convenience, and without them, our houses will be dark and hot, and we shall find it hard to work at night. We shall also have to give up much home entertainment (the television, radio, recorded music and computer games). The washing machine will not work, and clothes will have to be hand-washed. Not to be forgotten is that without electricity, quite a lot of the work which we now conduct in factories will have to be done at home. For example, it is possible to buy ready-made clothes because it is cheaper to produce them in factories run on electricity. In the days before there was electricity, mothers made clothes for the family by hand. Cooking, cleaning and washing would take up so much time that most women would not be able to work outside the home.

Again, the convenience brought by electricity comes at a cost. Power stations consume gas or oil, and the supplies of these fuels are limited. As cost goes up, nuclear fuel becomes more attractive, but there is, as yet, no perfect solution to the disposal of nuclear waste.

3. Leading a longer life and its social consequence

224 There is little doubt that with technological changes, the quality of life has improved.

One indication of that is that we have, on the whole, been living longer.

Exercise 3

Look at the following graph of the population of Hong Kong between 1947 and 2000.

Population Census of Hong Kong, 1947-2000

Birth rate Death rate Infant Total Year (per thousand) (per thousand) mortality (per population

thousand) (million) 1947 24 8 102 1.80 1948 26 8 91 1.80 1949 30 9 99 1.86 1950 27 8 100 2.06 1951 34 10 92 2.07 1952 34 9 77 2.18 1953 34 8 74 2.30 1954 35 8 72 2.42 1955 36 8 66 2.55 1956 37 7 61 2.67 1957 36 7 56 2.79 1958 37 7 54 2.91 1959 35 7 48 3.02 1960 36 6 42 3.12 1961 35 6.1 37.7 3.17 1962 34 6.3 36.9 3.31 1963 33.5 6.0 32.9 3.42 1964 30.7 5.3 26.4 3.50 1965 28.1 5.0 23.7 3.60 1966 25.3 5.3 24.9 3.63 1967 23.7 5.4 25.6 3.72 1968 21.7 5.1 23.0 3.80 1969 21.4 5.0 21.8 3.86

225 1970 20.0 5.1 19.6 4.00 1971 19.7 5.0 18.4 4.05 1972 19.5 5.2 17.4 4.12 1973 19.5 5.0 16.4 4.21 1974 19.3 5.1 16.8 4.32 1975 18.2 4.9 14.9 4.40 1976 17.7 5.1 13.7 4.44 1977 17.7 5.2 13.5 4.51 1978 17.6 5.2 11.8 4.60 1979 17.0 5.2 12.3 4.88 1980 17.1 5.0 11.2 5.04 1981 16.9 4.8 9.7 5.15 1982 16.5 4.9 9.9 5.23 1983 15.7 5.0 10.1 5.31 1984 14.4 4.8 9.1 5.36 1985 14.0 4.6 7.6 5.50 1986 13.0 4.7 7.7 5.52 1987 12.6 4.8 7.5 5.58 1988 13.4 4.9 7.6 5.60 1989 12.3 5.1 6.9 5.69 1990 12.0 5.2 5.9 5.70 1991 12.0 5.0 6.5 5.75 1992 12.3 5.3 4.9 5.80 1993 12.0 5.2 4.7 5.90 1994 11.9 5.0 4.8 6.04 1995 11.2 5.1 4.4 6.16 1996 9.8 5.0 4.0 6.31 1997 9.0 4.9 4.0 6.49 1998 8.0 5.0 3.2 6.54 1999 7.6 5.0 3.2 6.61 2000 8.1 5.1 2.9 6.66 (Source: Hong Kong Statistics 1947-1967, Hong Kong: Census & Statistics Department,

Hong Kong, 1969, pp.39-40; Hong Kong Annual Digest of Statistics 1982-2001, Hong Kong:

Census and Statistics Department, 1983-2002; Hong Kong Population Projections 1971-

1991, Hong Kong: Census and Statistics Department, 1974.)

226 Answer these questions:

(1) In what year between 1947 and 2000 was the birth rate highest? In what year was it lowest?

(2) In what year between 1947 and 2000 was the death rate highest? In what year was it lowest?

(3) How many babies out of every 1,000 died in 1947? How many died in 2000?

(4) What conclusion can you draw about population increase from the answers to the three questions above?

(5) Why were fewer babies born in the 1970s than in the 1950s? Why did fewer people die in the 1970s than the 1950s? Why did fewer babies die in the 1970s than the 1950s?

Hong Kong’s population depends on immigration and emigration as well as on birth and death. For this reason, the vital statistics (that is, birth rates and death rates) given in the graph is not the only reason for population changes over the years, even though they remain one of the important reasons for these changes.

In general, the graph shows a rising birth rate until the 1970s and a declining death rate throughout. The decline in the birth rate during the 1970s can be ascribed to the practice of family planning, introduced from that time. The decline in the overall death rate represents better health and medical care, and that in infant mortality (death of babies at birth) the improvement in delivery service. Birth control is necessary if infant mortality falls, for otherwise, population increase will quickly outrun increases in productivity and the living standard will decline.

227 A declining death rate means that people are living longer. A falling birth rate means that fewer babies are born. Together, they imply that the population is ageing. When a population ages, the demand on social welfare services increases while the tax-paying portion of the population declines. Taxes charged on tax-payers must, therefore, increase in order to pay for the social services.

4 Diseases – A protracted war

Throughout history, epidemics have led to large numbers of deaths. The following table provides some information on various epidemics that swept large parts of the world and the number of people who died from them.

Year Main area of Disease No. of deaths

infection 1347-1352 Europe The plague 25 million 1556-1560 Europe Influenza 25 million 1855-1896 Asia The plague 10 million 1918-1919 World Influenza 25 million 2002-2003 China SARS 775 persons (Source: Wikipedia, http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%98%9F%E7%96%AB)

As you can see in the table, the plague and the spread of influenza at different times killed millions of people. Compared to them, the number of people who died from

SARS was relatively small. You might remember that SARS was identified in

Guangdong in February 2003 and spread to Hong Kong in March. For a short while, it looked as if it might spread like deadly forms of influenza in the past, but fortunately, it was controlled by June.

228 Exercise 4. Look up the newspapers or reports of SARS on the internet for what happened from March to June 2003 in Hong Kong. How was SARS put under control so rapidly?

Advances in medical technology has made it possible to identify diseases quickly and to develop cures for them. However, despite these advances, some diseases have remained incurable. An example of an incurable disease is AIDS (or HIV). Since its discovery in 1981 to 2004, 23 million people had died from AIDS. Because it is known that in many cases, the disease is transmitted through sexual contact with a person who has contracted the disease, medical agencies seek to prevent its spread by educating the public on methods of prevention. No cure is as yet available.

5. The role of NGOs (non-government agencies) in spreading the new technology

Governments deal with many of the problems that have arisen with technological advances. However, governments alone have not been adequate and many non- government agencies (NGO’s) are also involved in that effort. The following are examples of some of these organisations:

Medicines sans frontiers (Medicine without frontier)

Medicines sans frontiers is an international and humanitarian medical rescue organisation. Since its inception in 1971, it has focused on providing emergency medical assistance to victims affected by wars, natural disasters and diseases. It also provides basic medical services to regions without sufficient medical facilities and helps these regions to rebuild their medical system in order to achieve self- sufficiency. Currently, it works in more than 70 countries in the world. Every year more than 3,000 volunteers, including doctors, nurses, rear professionals, drinking

229 water and health engineers and management personnel, from more than 60 countries, go to different places to participate in humanitarian work. In 1999, it was awarded the

Nobel Peace Prize. See its website at http://www.msf.org.hk/public/main

Green Peace

Green Peace is a global environmental organisation endeavouring to protect the earth’s environment and world peace. It was set up in 1971 and currently has branches in more than 40 countries, and works with 2.8 million supporters. In order to maintain justice and independence, Green Peace does not receive any sponsorship from governments, enterprises or political organisations. It only receives direct donations from individuals and independent funds. See its website at http://www.greenpeace.org/china/en

WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature)

World Wide Fund for Nature is one of the most prestigious and largest independent non-governmental environmental protection organisations in the world. It has active networks in more than 90 countries and almost 5 million supporters throughout the world. Its mission is environmental protection. It wants to contain the deterioration of the earth’s natural environment and to create a bright future for humans to live harmoniously with nature. To achieve these aims, the organisation endeavours to protect the diversity of organisms in the world, ensure the sustainability of renewable resources, promote pollution reduction and reduce consumer behaviour which causes waste. See its website at http://www.wwfchina.org.

Exercise 5.

Answer these questions:

230 Why are governments inadequate in dealing with medical facilities in times of disasters or environmental protection? Why must these issues require international efforts?

Many governments are too poor to do very much about welfare or the environment.

Governments in rich countries may also have agendas which suit their own national interests more than those of the countries which require aid. Non-governmental organizations which cross national boundaries create a new international order which goes beyond national interests. Many environmental disasters are global in character, and they have to be dealt with outside the framework of national interests.

Summary

Technological progress has brought many conveniences. In the second half of the

20th century, we have lived longer lives. Some technological advances have been devasting to the global environment, and the danger of epidemics has not disappeared.

Much work now requires an international effort.

Topic 26: Revision

1. Compare the two following pictures of the same city in England. One of them was drawn in the eighteenth century and the other one in the nineteenth century. Which is which? Give some reasons for your answer. http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/ITmanchester.htm

Picture A

231 (Source of Picture:

Picture B

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Image%3ACottonopolis1.jpg

2. On 1 January 1938, the President of the Chinese Nationalist government Lin Sen said in a speech:

We demand final victory, and we will fight a protracted war of resistance. In this protracted war, any temporary military retreat is only the loss of a battle. It will not affect the overall outcome of the war... The weaknesses of Japan are too many. Its soldiers are mostly grassroots workers. Once their young men have been conscripted,

232 students abandon school, farmers cease to farm, merchants cease to trade and workers cease to produce. As time goes by, Japan cannot hold out. The more land it occupies and the longer the frontlines of war, the sooner will come its defeat. We must drag the war on and wear down our enemy’s military and financial strengths so that its economic structure and military advantages will collapse simultaneously.

Source: 朱匯森主編，《中華民國史事紀要》，（中華民國二十七年一至六月份），

台北：國史館，1989，頁 2-3。

In 1940, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill said to the British Parliament:

There is another more obvious difference from 1914. The whole of the warring nations are engaged, not only soldiers, but the entire population, men, women, and children. The fronts are everywhere. The trenches are dug in the towns and streets. Every village is fortified. Every road is barred. The front line runs through the factories. The workmen are soldiers with different weapons but the same courage.

Would it be fair to conclude from these two passages that both prime ministers believed that the Second World War was a “total war”? Explain what the term “total war” means and quote the sentences in these two passages which support your argument.

(Source: Winston Churchill, “The Few”, August 20, 1940 http://www.fiftiesweb.com/usa/winston-churchill-so-few.htm)

233 3. Looking at these two pictures, how would you argue that advances in industry in

the nineteenth century improved the power of weapons used on ships?

A. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Redoutable.jpg

234 B.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:HMS_Ocean_%28Canopus-class_battleship %29.jpg .

4. Some words come together because they suggest a common ideology. Which of the following words can be grouped together to illustrate the ideology of nationalism and which the ideology of communism: fatherland, abolition of private property, October

Revolution, common language, colony, decolonisation? Summarise these two ideologies using the words you have placed in each group.

5. The following points may be made about Japan’s Meiji Constitution:

235  Divine power of the emperor who was infallible

 Citizens were the emperor’s subjects

 Legislative and executive powers vested in the emperor

 Military power belonged to the emperor directly

It may be concluded from these points that the Japanese parliament (known as the

Diet) had little control over the military. Why would these observations be relevant to an explanation of war between China and Japan in the 1930s?

6. In order to sell soap, a soap company in the nineteenth century produced the following advertisement:

236 (Source of Picture: Department of History, CUHK. The original picture could be found at Wikimedia Commons, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:1890sc_Pears_Soap_Ad.jpg )

The main point of the advertisement is that “the first step towards lightening the white man’s burden is through teaching the virtues of cleanliness.” What is the “the white man’s burden”? Why does teaching the virtues of cleanliness lighten it?

7. The following cartoon depicts Japanese attack on Manchuria (China’s northeastern provinces) in 1931 and its efforts to set up a new country there known as Manchukuo.

You can see that the governments of many countries, and the world, are looking on.

What is the artist trying to say about this incident?

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/digital/collections/linglong/index.html

(Source: Ling Long Women’s Magazine, 1932, issue no. 70. Image from Columbia

University Library)

237 8. Look at the following table of Hong Kong’s population growth from 1947 to 1966.

Describe the trends in the birth rate and death rate. Why were death rates declining?

What conclusion would you draw about Hong Kong’s population growth in this period on the basis of the figures?

Hong Kong Population, 1947-1967

Year Birth rate (per Death rate (per No. of stillborn Total

thousand) thousand) babies (per population

thousand births) (million) 1947 24 8 102 1.80 1951 34 10 92 2.07 1956 37 7 61 2.67 1961 34 6 38 3.20 1966 25 5 25 3.78

9. Looking at the three passages below, why do you think Europeans and Americans believe that freedom is a human right?

238 Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they. (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, 1762.)

Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good....The aim of all political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression. (The Declaration of the Rights of Man, 1789)

We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution. Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans – born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage – and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this Nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.

(U.S. President John F. Kennedy, 1961)

10. The Japanese writer Fukuzawa Yukichi wrote in 1871:

Look at the progress of the West. Their various types of electric and steam engines are always new and changing as a result of their competition against one another for improvement. This is true not only of tangible machines, but of other aspects as well.

As people become enlightened, their circles of contacts broaden. The broader the circles of contacts become, the more harmonious their relationships. Hence, international law is used to limit war.

Fukuzawa wrote the above passage before the First and Second World Wars.

Knowing the history of these wars, would you agree with him that as science and engineering advance, people would become more enlightened and harmonious? Use

239 your knowledge of twentieth-century history as evidence for your argument.