Essay --

Witch-hunts occurred throughout England for centuries, so it was no surprise that the witchcraft hysteria eventually reach colonial New England in the late seventeenth century, but this wave of fear was different from any other. Beginning with two young girls, witchcraft affected every person living in the New World and by the end, over twenty men and women were convicted of witchcraft, as well as entire communities living in constant fear of being touched by the Devil. Puritans, a group of English settlers, held strong beliefs about the Devil which sparked ideas of witchcraft among the Salem community. The austere Puritan lifestyle left little room for creativity, resulting in accusations against innocent people. Women, in addition to children, were inferior and considered weak; it was believed that Satan used them to carry out his wishes, and as a result, these people became witches. The severity of Puritan religious beliefs indirectly caused the witchcraft hysteria to reach its p eak during the Salem Witch Trials. Prominent and influential among the colonies, mainly Massachusetts, Puritanism was not only a religion, but a lifestyle. Puritans left England in 1630, with the intent to reform the Church of England. These English Protestants were discontent on how the Church of England was run and they made it their mission to â€Å"purify† and eliminate the church of Catholic influences, as well as â€Å"invigorate daily practices of religion.† Overall, Puritans desired â€Å"England to be reformed as John Calvin (1509-1564) had reformed Geneva (Hall, 21).† By moving to New England, Puritans had the freedom to establish their own religious authority. Puritanism controlled every activity in order to maintain a constant unity between people and Go... ...ities. â€Å"Young women at that time had nothing at all to feed their imaginations. There were no fairy tales or stories, no art, theater, or classical music (Kallen 23).† In addition to restrictions of childhood, extreme pressure was placed on children to remain pure or suffer the potential punishments from the Devil. At young ages, fear was planted in children’s minds causing hyperawareness of Satan’s wrath to frighten a child’s consciousness (Hall 23). The combination of fear, lack of imaginative outlets, and pressures on children were catalysts to the uproar of witches and witchcraft. With little ability and opportunity to express any behavior other than obedience, it was understandable that young Abigail Williams and Betty Paris claimed that they were possessed by witches, and in turn, these accusations engulfed the entire settlement of Salem into the hysteria.

History Answers Essay

1. Liberalism is an ideological view that makes the individual, rather than the family, the nation, the crown, the state or the faith, the center of society. Human beings, on various grounds, are held to have rights that protect the individual from the state and other people. It arose concomitant with industrialism and capitalism, that is, the destruction of the high development of the feudal order from the aftermath of the black death onwards. It has its roots in the mercantile city states of Italy, especially Florence. As a matter of course, one can hold that liberalism had two branches, one based on natural rights, and traces its roots back to John Locke, and one based on utility, tracing its roots back to Hobbes and Adam Smith. The former option holds that rights need to be anchored in metaphysical principles such as natural law, or theological principles, such as God and His providence. This has the advantage of holding rights apart from social life and the state, in that they do not derive from the state or from society, but must be protected by them. In this view, the state has its origin in the protection of natural rights according to the will of God for mankind. Hence, there is always room for rebellion, in that the state has a very specific reason for being. If this is violated, then the state loses its legitimacy and can be overthrown (Hobhouse, 1964). On the other hand, the utilitarian wing rejects metaphysics as such. At least, it holds that there is no need for metaphysics, since all talk about rights and natural law actually concern utility: it is better for society if the state protects various rights, it produces happier citizens and greater production and loyalty. With this approach, one need not have recourse to metaphysics or theology, in that all of this, in actuality, is simply a more complex way of speaking about pleasure in general: a society that protects rights will be better, in the sense of producing more happiness, than one that does not (Hobhouse, 1964). But by the beginnings of the industrial revolution in England, the Scottish school of political economy came into its own. Coming from David Hume, Adam Smith rejected the metaphysical basis of rights, and in fact, rejected rights talk in all forms. Instead, he created a sophisticated model of utilitarian liberalism in the â€Å"invisible hand† of market forces. The system likely reflected what was already going on in the mercantile societies of the Netherlands or England, but it holds that human passion is the driving force of society. This passion largely centers around greed: the desire for gain and a good reputation. But this not be an evil if channeled into a proper direction. The free market is this channel. The market idea says that if competition were freely allowed to flourish, greedy people would be forced to produce good products that people actually want, at a price they are willing to pay. If they refuse to do this, the market will shift its money to those equally greedy people who do. Hence, greed is channeled into healthy outlets, and the society is served: demand is satisfied and people pay what the demand requires, rather than the price dictated by the producer. Here, a fully free economy, based on the preferences of the market in a given society, can be based, not on rights, not on God or natural law, but on human passion, but a passion that is scientifically channeled to a place where it can be put to good use. 2. European powers built a large colonial empire throughout the world in the late 19th century. By this time, the Spanish had lost most of their colonies in Latin America, but the British, the French and the Dutch colonized much of Africa and Asia, largely as a way of gaining access to raw materials, new markets and as a means of settling excess populations (Cain, 2001). In general, after the defeat of the French in the Franco-Prussian war and the ravages earlier of Napoleon, England remained at the sole major source of industrial wealth. While this motivated England to continue to expand its power into Africa and Asia, the continental powers were forced to continue the search for colonies in order to keep up. Germany was the poorest in this regard, having few colonies until the beginning of World War I, forcing the Germans to use internal resources to industrialize under the monarchy that was, at this time, involved in unifying Germany as a sort of â€Å"internal colonization† while the Austrians were busy exploiting their many subject peoples, playing one ethnic group off against another. So for the German speaking peoples, colonization was internal. For the Netherlands, Belgium and England, this was not an option, and therefore, the expansion of European mercantile interests expanded outward. The British, for their part, were concerned about the expansion of Russia to the south. Russia, only partially a European power, was also a late comer, along with Germany and Austria, to the industrial age. But Russia’s concern was porous borders to the south, which were fortified against the attacks on her territory by the Islamic powers of Central Asia and even in the Caucuses, partially armed by the British so as to stop any further Russian expansion into Central Asia. The Chinese had the advantage early on with the British, since they would only accept hard cash from the British imperialists. Unlike much of the third world, China was relatively well developed, and for a time was able to resist British expansionism. The British tactic adopted to deal with these issues, to break down the will of the Chinese to resist, was Opium, harvested from India and imported into China. The drug was legal in England, where it was popular, but many nationalist Chinese saw the spreading opium addition both as British ploy as well as a means of weakening Chinese society. Both were true. Chinese resistance to British policies in respect of Opium and the exploitation of the Chinese market and resources, led to two wars over these questions with the Quing monarchy (Chesneaux, 1977). In general, the purpose of the new imperialism was to maintain protected markets and cheap raw materials in the conquered countries. This was a way of having an edge over their European competitors. Russia and Germany were not involved in this race (they had far different concerns), but was largely a mercantile and financial policy of the more â€Å"advanced† European powers of the Netherlands, England and France. 3. Japan was more successful in modernization than China. The Meiji reforms were motivated by the desire to stand up to both American and British trading missions and military forces that defeated the Chinese in the British inspired Opium Wars. The state was centralized in Japan, and very quickly, a rapidly developing Japanese state, without any home resources, expanded as a colonial force in imitation of western models (Korniki, 1998) Japan’s development, rapid as it was, was a response to the gradual erosion of the power of the Chinese monarchy under British pressure in this same period. The fact is that Japan was not going to let Opium destroy her people, and hence, as is often the case, increasing social discipline and a centralized government were the Japanese response to the problem. This approach was one of the causes of the Civil War of 1877, but the victory of the modernist forces ensured that japan was now going to become one of the east’s great powers (Korniki, 1998). The powers that took over Japan were of two kinds: the first, the military leadership taken from the clans that favored modernization and second, the emperor himself, partially under the thumb of the military but also a power in his own right. This coalition stabilized Japanese society in this era, providing it with the peace necessary to develop into a major industrial power. To some extent, the British were involved in investing in this new state, in that the Japanese were seen in London as a necessary counterweight both to Russia and the possibility of a revival of Chinese fortunes. Hence, while the Japanese developments after 1877 were impressive, British investment must also be considered. It must be mentioned that Japan was treated as more or less an equal partner with the British rather than as a subject, partially because of the undeniable strength of the Japanese state, but also due to their value in dealing with eastern Russian expansion. This policy will bear fruit in the Russo-Japanese war of 1905-1906. But the real issue was the connection between British politics, the oligarchy in Japan and the emperor, to some extent the puppet of both. The military leaders who emerged from the 1877 war victorious realized that China was the anti-type of proper Asian development. As China lost its central authority, saw its economy fall into the hands of both the Rothschild and Sassoon bankers, the Japanese realized two things: first, that a coalition, rather than a battle, with England was necessary, and second, this coalition must be used to modernize and centralize the Japanese state, hence preserving it from colonization. But from these two realizations, it also was obvious that Japan was to become a colonizing power of its own, and in fact, took part of eastern China in this process. It is obvious because Japan, without local resources, was forced to find them in Korea and China (Korniki, 1998) 4. The end of World War I saw the fall of the German, Austrian, Turkish and Russian royal houses. It saw the creation of the USSR and Yugoslavia as attempts to reorganize society. Germany was blamed for the war by the British and French and had most of its industry liquidated and sent to the victorious powers. The Germans also had to pay huge reparations for â€Å"starting† the war (a doubtful hypothesis). Germany was humiliated, and the weak republican government was ripe for both communist and fascist takeovers. Hitler won fair elections as head of state over a prostrate and violated country. Most of Hitler’s inner circle were former World War I combat troops. Reindustrialization and rearmament to defend Germany from Stalin’s USSR was a major motive for Hitler’s plans. The rise of Hitler is understandable given the level of humiliation the Germans felt at this time. They were economically, militarily and emotionally scarred and destroyed. A strong leader with both socialist and nationalist political leanings was going to do well, especially after the communists had taken over in the USSR, Bavaria, and Hungary (these latter two for a short time, see below). Hitler was the only force in Germany politics preaching the popular doctrine of simply rejecting Versailles. This is largely what got him elected (Kershaw, 2000). But economically, France, Britain, Russia and Germany were prostrate. Yugoslavia was an attempt to pool the resources of the souther Slavs in order to compensate for this. Turkey was no longer a major power. France and England entered into a relationship in order to control Germany for the long term. America became the dominant force in European politics, and her late entry into World War I and the amount of money she forwarded to England against Germany made certain that the US was now a dominant partner on both sides of the Atlantic. At the same time, the state terror of the USSR under both Lenin and Stalin forced the European powers to also fear the huge Russian giant, and enough emigres from the USSR were in western Europe (especially Paris) to explain to European powers what exactly the Soviet revolution had in store for them. Hitler rearmed not so much in respect of England (to which the Fuhrer had a grudging respect), but against the â€Å"savage Asians† from Russia. Therefore, a rearmed and powerful Germany was able to bring country after country into her economic orbit long before Hitler’s policy of military expansion took place. Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia and even Greece were under Hitler’s control long before the mid 1930s, since either the USSR or Germany was offered to them as a trading partner. Most, quite rationally, looked to Germany for protection against Stalin. They were proven right when the latter, after World War II, built his own police states in eastern Europe. One might conclude that World War I sapped the strength of democratic government in Europe, and to add to the carnage, the Depression starting in Europe in 1930 also proved democracies not up to the task: both Stalin and Hitler took control of their respective economies and grew them tremendously, far and beyond the struggling British and American states, hence showing democracy, at least at that time, as an inferior option to the ideological politics of Berlin and Moscow, they at least had growing economies and full employment. The west could not say that (Wrigley, 1993). 5. Hitler viewed the Jews as a fifth column for Soviet expansionism. The short-lived and unpopular People’s Republic of Bavaria was run by several Jews: Kurt Eisner, Franz Lipp, Eugene Levine and Ernst Toller. The brief life of Soviet Hungary was run by four Jews: Bela Kun (Kohn), Antal Dovcsak Jeno Landler, and Matyas Rakosi. Hence, Hitler feared the Jews as being loyal to the USSR and Marxism and hence, treated them as criminals (Kershaw, 1993). Therefore, Hitler’s loathing of the Jews did not derive from his believing they were â€Å"inferior,† or a natural slave race, but solely from their being disproportionately involved in Marxist governments and states from the USSR to central Europe. Hitler’s policies make no sense unless seen in this light. While this might be uncomfortable to some, historical truth does not concern itself with comfort. For various reasons, the urban Jews of eastern Europe were heavily involved with Marxism as a means, most likely, of controlling nationalism. As a result, nationalist movements throughout central and eastern Europe were harshly opposed to Jewish political power as such, though the nationalist movement in Spain did not share this view. But Hitler’s final solution had another source, a source rarely dealt with in the literature, a little known deal called the Transfer Agreement. When Edwin Black wrote the first major work on this topic in 2001, it received mixed reviews. But a little later, few were able to argue with its conclusions. This book relates, using almost solely primary documentation, how Hitler made an agreement with the small but influential Zionist movement of Germany to move the Jews to Palestine. In return, the Zionists openly supported Hitler and his early rise to power. Black holds that the street violence between Nazis and Communists were particular harsh on the Jews (who normally backed the Communists), and, slowly, the Jews were purged from most professional positions. But Black says that the Zionists of Germany saw an opportunity. Attacks on Jews, to the Zionist mind, were not unexpected, since Jews were indeed aliens in Europe. Jews were Asians, not white, and hence, were strangers in Europe. Anti-Semitism was a natural reaction to this, and hence, morally neutral. The only solution was to unite with Hitler to promote the move of Jews out of Germany to Palestine (Black, 2001, esp ch 7). Hitler organized banks, currency transfers and generally greased the skids to facilitate Jewish emigration to Palestine. Of course, since the fall of the Ottomans, the British controlled Palestine. Hence, the agreement, while it would have saved many Jews from a gruesome fate, was stymied by British imperial power int eh Middle East. Hence the final solution was not the only solution, just the final one. Previous solutions had been mass Jewish emigration. But the Zionist movement got what they want. From a paltry 2% of the Jewish population in Germany to a mass movement, Hitler scared the Jews to such an extent that a formerly assimilated Jewish population suddenly became nationalist and themselves created a colonial state in the Middle East. In other words, Zionism could never have existed without Hitler. Therefore, Hitler is the founder of the Israeli state in more than one way. Bibliography Black, Edwin. The Transfer Agreement: The Dramatic Story of the Pact Between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine. Carol and Graf Publishers. Cain, Peter (2001). Imperialism: Critical Concepts in Historical Studies. Taylor and Francis. Chesneaux, J. et al (1977). China from the Opium Wars to the 1911 Revolution. Harvester Press. Hobhouse, Leonard (1967). Liberalism. Oxford University Press. Kershaw, Ian (1993). Hitler, 1889-1936, Hubris. WW Norton. Korniki, Peter (1998). Meiji Japan: Political, Economic and Social History. 1868-1912. Routledge. Wrigley, Chris. (1993). The Challenge of Labor: Central and Western Europe 1917-1920. Routledge.

Theme Of Ambition In Macbeth - 754 Words

One theme in Macbeth is ambition. We see all different types of ambition through out the story. The first instance is when Macbeth sends a letter to his wife tell her what the weird sisters said. He told Lady Macbeth that they said he would become king after becoming Thane of Cowdar. He also told him wife that he would to anything to make sure that comes true. After Lady Macbeth read this she wanted to make sure her husband would become king. She has a few concerns though, To catch the nearest way: thou wouldst be great, art not without ambition, but without the illness should attend it (I/5/17-19). She does not know if Macbeth will be able to go through with their plan. She talks him into killing Duncan by telling him that he will not†¦show more content†¦Guilt is another theme in this story. There are instances of guilt through out the entire story. After Macbeth kills Duncan he feels so much guilt that Ill go no more: I am afraid to think of what I have done; look ont aga in I dare not (2/2/48-50). Macbeth knows that what he did was wrong because after he says that not even the water in all the oceans can wash the blood off of his hands. Lady Macbeth has the same feelings when she begins to sleepwalk. She tries to wash all the blood off of her hands bit no matter how hard she scrubs she can’t get it all off. Also she says that all the perfume in Arabia couldn’t get rid of the smell of the blood. Lady Macbeth felt so guilty that it led her to sleepwalk and eventually kill herself. When Macduff confronts Macbeth, Macbeth says he does not want to kill Macduff because he already killed his family. This shows that he feels guilt for what he has done. Guilt can drive someone crazy if they do not fix what they have done. In addition to those three themes, nature versus the unnatural. There are a lot of things that happen that people can’t explain. Once instance is how could the weird sisters possibly know what is going to happen in the future , no human can know that. It all seems to be centered around Duncan and his death. The night he was killed we are told that â€Å"Tis unnatural even like the deed that’s done. On Tuesday last, a falcon, towring in her pride of place, was by a mousing owlShow MoreRelatedThemes Of Ambition In Macbeth1038 Words   |  5 PagesShakespeares Macbeth, means that the blood of the victim will seek out the blood of the murderer; in this case, that is Macbeth. This play is full of many central themes that display the different sides of the characters. Although Macbeth proves to be very power hungry; greed, ambition, and also revenge fuel the individuals in this play, whether it be for the right or wrong reasons. Ambition, a strong desire to do or achieve something, is a theme that shows throughout all of Macbeth. The most ambitiousRead MoreTheme Of Ambition In Macbeth1277 Words   |  6 PagesShakespeare’s play of Macbeth tells a tragedy that was caused by the major theme of ambition, which is greatly emphasized throughout the story by having Lady Macbeth, a key character whose ambition will push her husband Macbeth to the edge along with his flaw of being too ambitious where the two become the driving force of the play that will eventually seal their fate. In the play, Macbeth who is the main character has the flaw of having too much ambition but his conscience will hold back his desiresRead MoreTheme Of Ambition In Macbeth1552 Words   |  7 PagesIn the play, Macbeth, written by William Shakespeare, ambition is the key theme throughout the plot. It is the sole reason the events occur as they do. Many refer to Macbeth as the play of ambition due to this very reason. 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During the play the audience learns of several themes such as ambition, guilt, fate versus free will, nature versus the unnatural, and how things are not always as they seem. Anyone who has read or seen Macbeth knows that his great undoing was his ambition. AmbitionRead MoreTheme Of Ambition In Macbeth915 Words   |  4 PagesThe undeniable power of unbridled ambition and its ramifications are extensively portrayed within William Shakespeare’s tragedy; Macbeth. Within this play, ambition is portrayed as a corrupting and unquenchable force through the main concepts of mental imbalance, supernatural behaviors and betrayal. The consuming desires of Macbeth and their repercussions are vividly enhanced through the use of various expressive literary techniques. Ultimately, Macbeth is a play that explores and reiterates theRead MoreThe Theme Of Ambition In Macbeth And Enders Game880 Words   |  4 PagesAmbition in human nature is so powerful that it can blind one’s vision of achieving success. Both Lady Macbeth’s ambition from Shakespeare’s MacBeth and Peter’s ambition from Card’s Ender’s Game blinds judgement and logic, and they eventually end up more harming than succeeding. In the play MacBeth by Shakespeare, MacBeth is strangely met by three witches, who declares his prophecy of being king, but later losing the crown. Lady MacBeth ambitious goal for MacBeth remain king results in her going