Author: Chandler Dewitt

This week in class we revolved our lectures around the idea of innovation and the expansion of certain countries.  Throughout the lectures we learned that where the money can be earned is where the people will follow, and begin to settle there.  In contrast to the past statements, we also learned about the city of Jaffa which struggled harshly due to their limited resources and bad landscape along the port.

Jaffa was a small city on the western seaboard of the Mediterranean Sea.  The city suffered from lower levels of minerals and agriculture needs.  To make things worse the city has one of the worst ports in the Mediterranean, which is extremely shallow, has massive offshore rocks, and has natural breakwater.  This makes it impossible for larger cargo ship to port, which forces the citizens to take small boats to the anchored ship to gather the goods that are on the ship.  The city of Jaffa became the example and the vocal point of change in the 19th Century.

In Europe in the 19th century one town became the pub for industrialization. Known as the Rhineland and Ruhr Valley became known as the central location for industrialization and development.  This due to the many jobs it offered and the money it was able to produce as well the products that were being produced as well.  Another town that became famous for their involvement was the town of Cologne, which caused the mass movement of people there in order to produce steel. These massive movements helped Germany produce enormous wealth, created social dislocation, and helped get them involved in the arms race.  Another country that increased producing by the end of the 19th Century was Bombay, otherwise known as the “Mill Village.”  The country from having one mill in 1856 to having 136 by the start of the 20th Century.  The mills employed over a forth of the country giving them good lives and bring money into the country as well.  The cotton was production was very well supported by the global support of trade and Bombays port location.  Bombay was put on the map by their efforts to make the city as industrialized as possible by increasing ways of transportation by railroads. Another beneficiary is their easy access to materials and trade resources.

As you can see location means everything to the countries how how they are able to grow and develop.  As you can see countries with mainstream ports and good resources tend to adapt better and are more likely to bring in money, which isn’t the case with Jaffa.  They struggle geographically therefore life is difficult and money is hard to bring in.

As most historians seem to believe that modernization can happen in a blink of an eye, but as we read we now understand that modernization came at different times and had different outcomes.  No country was simply able to rebuild itself and become technologically advanced in one night, countries struggled with money to produce goods, being able to bring money in, and most of making living conditions better for all.

During the early 1900’s in the Country of Brazil a city named Rio de Jenario, was being reborn.  The end of formal control as well as growing globalization across not only the world but throughout the country.  This is largely do the advances in visual technologies, the peaking of migration, and the new scientific ideas.  The growing of Rio came up due the production of rubber and coffee grinds.  The money that was brought in was able to help the city grow and was able to pay for a port that allowed for more shipments and traders to come in.  This would be the complete opposite for Beijing, China. Beijing was being flooded by drug dealers from the west looking to sell opioids to the Chinese.  Although the Chinese refuse they still fell into a trap which is known as the Opium War.  China during this time periods is one of the biggest counties in terms of population size but numbers will soon decrease in the 1880 when the famine occurs along with the migration movement.  In Japan during the mid 1880’s Japan falls into an epidemic like China which was measles.  “Civilization is like  an epidemic of measles” (129).  I like this statement because it shows how fast it can spread and also shows the consequences it can bring.

While the spread of globalization and civilization is good is some cases it can also be bad.  As we learned about this we soon understood that no matter what the countries struggled to put it all together at first but in the end were successful in bringing jobs, money, people.

I believe that in most ways the world in becoming more globalized. As times progresses it seems that countries are starting to work together and help each other get through things. But on the other hand I also have seen that this really doesn’t apply everywhere.

This past summer I took a cruise to Nassau, Grand Turk, and Cozumel.
Walking around some of theses third world countries and islands I noticed that, they didn’t have the technological advances we have around here. They drive cars with no air conditioning, they have no running water in a majority of homes, majority of people sleep on the streets, and one thing that really stuck out to me was I noticed their houses weren’t built like ours back here. Seeing these things made it very clear that not a whole lot of jobs were attainable and money was limited. Therefore I believe not everyone is as caught up as all countries and I believe that there should be an organization to help these countries prosper.