Scholarship on Dickens Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Scholarship on Dickens - Essay Example In those days, London was described as the doomed city with unsanitary living conditions and was a galore of diseases. â€Å"There were four epidemics of cholera within Dickens’s own lifetime and, beside these mortal visitations, there were periodic and regular outbreaks of typhus, typhoid fever, epidemic diarrhoea, dysentery, smallpox and a variety of ailments which were classified only as â€Å"fevers†.2† To improve the health condition of the people of London and other cities that were the main breeding ground for all diseases that would spread later to the rural areas of England, Dickens knew that sanitary conditions of the cities should improve. We see him attending many meetings to talk on behalf of sanitary improvement. Passionately arguing the case of sanitary reform in London on May 10th 1851, Charles Dickens said: â€Å"I can honestly declare that the use I have since that time made of my eyes and nose have only strengthened the conviction that certain sanitary reforms must precede all other social remedies, and that neither education nor religion can do anything useful until the way has been paved for their ministrations by cleanliness and decency.3† Sanitary work in London and other cities started only in his latter life. He was an influential social reformer of his time in many fields and being so very well-known, his views were respected. His characters of imagination provided him ample platform to argue the social reforms that he craved to see in the difficult times of Victorian England. His magazines and speeches on social injustice show him as one of the main propagandists of the time. He advocated the reforms without being specific about them. His desire was to see any kind of relief to the sufferers. For example; the Hard Times was based on a labour dispute in the weaving industry which was referred as â€Å"The Preston Lockout 1853-54†. According to George Bernard Shaw, ‘he was a revolutionary without knowing it4’. In a

The Modern Era Essay Example for Free

The Modern Era Essay Early Modern World Historians sometimes refer to the era between the premodern (or medieval) and late modern eras as the â€Å"early modern world.† The world during this era was increasingly united by the projection of European power abroad, especially in the Americas. Although early modern Europeans still had little knowledge of, let alone hegemony (influence) over, the inland regions of Africa and Asia, the links created and dominated by Europeans made the entire world a stage for fundamental historical processes. Historians debate, or pass over in silence, the problem of determining the precise starting and ending dates of the early modern world and have produced only the vaguest consensus. Roughly, the era of the early modern world began during the fifteenth century with the Timurid (relating to the Turkic conqueror Timur) and Italian cultural renaissances. The year 1405 serves as a convenient starting date because it marks not only the death of Timur, the last great central Asian conqueror to join farmers and nomads into a single empire, but also the first of the Chinese admiral Zheng He’s (c. 1371–1435) naval expeditions to the â€Å"Western Oceans.† The era might be taken to end in the late eighteenth century with the French and Industrial revolutions, both European events of global consequence in the late modern world. The uncertainty of this periodization derives in part from the concept of an early modern Europe, with its own uncertain chronological boundaries, and in part from the unconsidered way in which both phrases entered historical scholarship. Origins of the Concept Although conceptually the phrase early modern world is an extension of the phrase early modern Europe, the initial histories of both phrases have some surprises. The earliest known appearance of the phrase early modern world occurs in Willard Fisher’s â€Å"Money and Credit Paper in the Modern Market†Ã‚  from The Journal of Political Economy (1895). Although Fisher writes, â€Å"We all know that the system of bank credits and bank money, which was introduced into the great commercial centers of the early modern world, has now attained a quite marvelous development† (1895, 391), the geographical sense of his statement is strictly, if implicitly, European. On the other hand, the phrase early modern Europe first shows up twenty years later, in Dixon Ryan Fox’s â€Å"Foundations of West India Policy† in Political Science Quarterly (1915). Fox remarks, â€Å"It was now realized by students of colonial history that in the Caribbean [the â€Å"West India† of the article’s title] might best be traced the application of those principles which formed the working basis for the old empires of early modern Europe† (1915, 663). Ironically, the phrase early modern Europe first appeared in the Caribbean, in the global context of colonialism, in an article advocating trans-Atlantic history. In their debu ts each phrase bore something of the other’s sense. Fox’s usage was an anomaly, and when the phrase early modern Europe arrived in Europe, it had come to stay. The phrase early modern world, however, for decades would imply world to mean, in an indefinite way, immediate rather than global surroundings; because this historical scholarship dealt with European subjects, the â€Å"early modern world† was in fact â€Å"early modern Europe.† The early modern world became global only with C. F. Strong’s grammar school textbook The Early Modern World (1955) and S. Harrison Thomson’s 1964 review of J. H. Parry’s The Age of Reconnaissance, in which Thomson uses the phrase to describe the â€Å"story of the successive expansion of European venture, from Africa to the reaches of the Indian Ocean by Arabs and Portuguese by sea, the movement westward to the Americas and the early transition from discovery to fishing, trading, and exploitation†(1964, 188). The first considered analysis of the early mo dern world came after the posthumous publication of Joseph Fletcher’s article â€Å"Integrative History† in 1985. Such analysis has tended to adopt either a deductive or an inductive approach. Deductive Approach A deductive approach to the early modern world compares premodernity and late modernity, devises the characteristics necessary to bridge the two stages, and only then seeks confirmation in the historical record. This approach assumes the existence of a modernizing trajectory, which the early modern world shared with (and perhaps inherited from) early modern Europe. Informed by a Marxist perspective, the essentials of the early modern world would highlight transitions from feudal to bourgeois, from serfdom to wage-earning proletariat, and from local subsistence to regional market economies. A functionalist understanding of modernity, of the sort theorized by the German sociologist Max Weber, the U.S. sociologist Talcott Parsons, or the French sociologist Emile Durkheim, explains social phenomena in terms of their ability to fulfill social needs and broadens this base beyond the mode of production. Here the critical shifts would be from belief in miracles to belief in science, from household-based craft production powered by muscle, dung, water, and wood to factory-based mass production powered by electricity and fossil fuels, and from government justified by tradition to government consciously invented. Even in the context of early modern Europe critics challenge the effectiveness of a deductive approach by condemning its implication of an inevitable progress from premodernity to modernity. A deductive approach takes little cognizance of the possibilities of various starting points, different destinations, and particular paths. In some twentieth-century cases the transition to modernity was less a progression than a violently dramatic change. When expanded to a global context this approach becomes not only teleological (assuming a design or purpose in history), but also artificially Eurocentric. Inductive Approach Rather than specify theoretical factors to be sought in the time period, an inductive approach examines what happened in different places and extracts from what happened a set of common features. Although such an approach removes the theoretical obstacle of a modernizing trajectory, the historian is left with the Herculean task of specifying processes that united all,  most, or many of the world’s peoples. Such an approach need not focus on Europe, nor need it measure the success of various regions in terms of their progress along Europe’s path. How closely do the rough chronological parameters suggested here match the conventional historiographies (the writings of history) of the various regions outside Europe?  Traditional periodizations in African and American history are directly linked to European expansion. Marked by a European presence that could not yet dominate the continent, an early modern Africa might last from the Portuguese capture of Ceuta, a port on the Moroccan side of the Strait of Gibraltar (1415), until the development of quinine and steamships in the nineteenth century. The first Niger steamship expedition returned without casualties in 1854. An early modern America might stretch from the encounters of 1492 until the period of independence movements, from 1776 to the independence of Brazil in 1822. An early modern India might begin with the fifth generation descendant of Timur, Zahir-ud-Din Muhammad Babur, whose ancestry inspired him to conquer northern India. The Mughal dynasty he founded (1526) would rule effectively for two centuries; the British would take charge of its Delhi nucleus in 1803. An early modern Japan stretches from the unification efforts of Oda Nobunaga (1534–1582) to the end of the Tokugawa shogunate (the dictatorship of a Japanese military governor) in 1867. Other regional historiographies fit less naturally. Although the Ottomans’ 1453 conquest of Constantinople (modern Istanbul, Turkey) was timely, the Chinese Ming dynasty began too early (1368) and ended inconveniently in the middle of our early modern period (1644). Worse, key modernizing revolutions came late relative to the western European timetable the Chinese Revolution in 1911, the Russian Bolshevik revolution in 1917, and the Kemalist (relating to the Turkish soldier and statesman Kemal Ataturk) revolution in Turkey in 1923. The actual use of the phrase early modern in the periodization of regional histories varies. Outside of Europe, it is most commonly used in Asia, especially in works on China, Japan, and, to a lesser extent, India. Historians of China sometimes extend the period into the twentieth century. Far fewer historians write of an â€Å"early modern Africa† or an â€Å"early modern Brazil.† This fact is due in part to the power of the word colonial to identify these time periods. Latin American periodization is so consistently divided into pre-Columbian, colonial, and national periods that there is no need for the phrase early  modern, which should correspond to the middle, colonial period. In fact, the phrase early modern Mexico sometimes refers to the period immediately after independence. The divergence of these traditional periodizations of regional histories, so often linked to high-level political history, should not surprise. The global historian in search of an early modern world can look beyond these periodizations to seek processes that enveloped wide swaths of the planet. Development of Global Sea Passages Nothing is more characteristic of the early modern world than the creation of truly global sea passages. Before 1492 the Americas remained essentially isolated from Eurasia. In 1788 the last key sea passage was completed by the first permanent settlement of Europeans in Australia. This passage also concluded the integration of the Pacific Ocean as a geographical concept, a process that began when the Spanish explorer Vasco Nuà ±ez de Balboa became the first European to see the Pacific from America in 1513. During the early fifteenth century the Europeans were unlikely candidates to fill the key role in this process of exploration. Portuguese exploration of the African coast was declining, and mariners were reluctant to sail out of sight of land. Even the overland excursions undertaken by Europeans had become more modest. Muslims still controlled southern Iberia, and in 1453 the Ottomans conquered Constantinople. Smart money would have looked rather at the Chinese admiral Zheng He, whose seven expeditions between 1405 and 1433  reached even the shores of eastern Africa. A change in Chinese imperial policy halted these expeditions, and the voyages that finally connected the world were directed by Europeans. In 1522 the survivors of the expedition of the Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan completed the first circumnavigation of the globe. During the following centuries a skilled captain and crew could navigate a ship from any port to any port and reasonably expect to arrive. In 1570 the Flemish cartographer Ortelius published what has been described as the first modern atlas, the Theatrum orbis terrarum (Theater of the World); this comprehensive yet handy and inexpensive work enjoyed immediate success. By the end of the period the best mapped region of the world would be China. Global Demographic Interconnections The world’s population doubled during the early modern period, from approximately 374 million (1400) to 968 million people (1800). Although demographic data are limited, some patterns emerge. Rapid growth was punctuated by a seventeenthcentury decline in Europe, Russia, Iran, Central Asia, China, and Korea and recovery from this decline occurred globally, even in the Americas. The more populous regions tended to grow more rapidly. The new global sea passages set the stage for a transatlantic â€Å"Columbian exchange† (the biological and cultural exchange between the New World and the Old World that began with the 1492 voyage of Christopher Columbus) and for a transpacific â€Å"Magellan exchange† of crops and disease pathogens that put the peoples of the world in a more direct demographic relationship than ever before. The arrival of American maize and potatoes in Eurasia, and later in Africa, facilitated an intensive agricultural, and thus demographic, growth, and the appearance of tomatoes in Italy and chili peppers in India had important dietary and culinary consequences. Disease also became a global phenomenon. First appearing in Europe in 1494, venereal syphilis reached India four years later, and by 1505 it had  outraced the Portuguese to China. The New World’s isolation and limited biodiversity (biological diversity as indicated by numbers of species of plants and animals) did not afford its indigenous peoples the same immunities enjoyed by Europeans, who as children were exposed to a multiplicity of infections. Measles, smallpox, and other diseases brought by Europeans triggered a long-term demographic catastrophe. The indigenous population of central Mexico declined from 30 million in 1518 to 1.6 million in 1620 a genocide unintended, misunderstood, and undesired by the Spanish who sought souls for salvation and laborers for their mines. Contact with the wider world wrought similar demographic calamities on other isolated peoples, including Pacific Islanders, Siberian tribes, and the Khoikhoi of southern Africa. Increased contacts distributed pathogens more evenly throughout the world and generally reduced susceptibility to epidemic disease. Development of a Global Economy The development of global sea passages integrated America into a truly global economy. Rapidly growing long distance commerce linked expanding economies on every continent. Dutch merchants in Amsterdam could purchase commodities anywhere in the world, bring them to Amsterdam, store them safely, add value through processing and packaging, and sell them for profit. Intensive production fueled by the commercialism of an increasingly global market gave new importance to cash crops and sparked an unprecedented expansion in the slave trade. The movement of manufactured goods from eastern Asia toward Europe and America created a chain of balance-of-trade deficits, which funneled silver from American mines to China. Regular transpacific trade developed during the decades after the founding of Manila in the Philippines in 1571 and followed the same pattern: Exports of porcelain and silks from China created a trade imbalance that sucked silver from the Americas and from Japan. Through military-commercial giants such as the Dutch East India Company (founded in 1602), European merchants disrupted traditional trading  conditions in Africa and Asia to muscle into regional â€Å"country trade.† The expansion of settled populations, as well as the new ocean trade route alternatives to the Silk Road that linked China to the West, contributed to the decline of nomadism. The agriculture of settled peoples supported large populations and tax bases that an efficient state could translate into permanent military strength. Development of Large and Efficient States The global trade in firearms and similar weapons contributed to the growth of large and efficient states, known as â€Å"gunpowder empires.† Expensive and complex, the most advanced weapons became a monopoly of centralized states, which employed them to weaken local opposition. During the mid-fifteenth century the king of France used artillery to reduce some sixty castles annually. Administrative procedures also became increasingly routinized and efficient. Ever more abstract notions of state authority accompanied the evolution of new  sources of legitimacy. From the Irrawaddy River in Asia to the Seine River in Europe, religious uniformity served to reinforce and confirm centralized rule. The ideal of universal empire was native to America, Africa, and Eurasia. The early modern unification of England with Scotland and Ireland was paralleled throughout Europe. If in 1450 Europe contained six hundred independent political units (or more, depending on the criteria), in the nineteenth century it contained around twentyfive. About thirty independent city-states, khanates (state governed by a ruler with the Mongol title â€Å"khan†), and princedoms were absorbed into the Russian empire. By 1600 the Tokugawa shogunate had unified Japan. Fourteenth century southeastern Asia had two dozen independent states that evolved into Vietnam, Siam (Thailand), and Burma (Myanmar) by 1825. The Mughals unified India north of the Deccan Plateau for the first time since the Mauryan empire (c. 321–185 BCE). Unification was also an overture to expansion. In addition to an increasing European presence worldwide, Qing China (1644–1912) invaded Xinjiang,  Mongolia, Nepal, Burma, and Formosa, and during the seventeenth century Romanov Russia stretched out to the Pacific. The new unities led relentlessly to new fragmentations and hierarchies, and resistance to such centralizing political forces was equally universal. During the century between 1575 and 1675, for example, uprisings occurred in China, Japan, India, Armenia, Georgia, Kurdistan, Ukraine, the Balkans, the German lands, Switzerland, France, Catalonia, Portugal, England, Ireland, and Mexico. At the end of the period, the French Revolution (1789) would enjoy global influence as the first revolution modern in its progressive, absolute, and sudden nature. Intensification of Land Use The concurrence of population growth, global markets, and aggressive states led to wider and more intensive use of land. Displacing or subordinating indigenous peoples, pioneers backed by aggressive states drained wetlands and cleared forests to create new lands for intensive commercial, agricultural, and pastoral regimes. (Similarly, commercial hunters pursued various species of flora and fauna to extinction for sale on a global market.) Oblivious to any land claims held by indigenous peoples, states would offer pioneers low taxes in exchange for settlement and land rights. For example, the Mughal Empire provided land grants, Hindu merchants provided capital, and Sufi (Muslim mystic) brotherhoods provided leadership for the communities of Muslim pioneers who transformed the Bengal wetlands into a key rice-producing region. These efforts compensated for the extended disobliging weather patterns that plagued temperate zones throughout the Northern Hemisphere a â€Å"little ice age† affecting climate throughout the early modern world. Religious Revival The most distinctive religious characteristic of this era was the global  expansion of Christianity. Indeed, the impetus driving the creation of global sea passages was religious as well as commercial. The efforts of Catholic religious orders predominated the great Protestant missionary societies would be founded only in the 1790s. Sufi brotherhoods such as the Naqshibandiyah expanded Islam in Africa, India, China, and southeastern Asia.Tibetan Buddhism pushed into northwestern China, Manchuria, Mongolia, Buryatia, and to Kalmikya, on the shore of the Caspian Sea, which remains today the only Buddhist republic in Europe. The increased emphasis on orthodox and textual conventions of Latin Christendom’s Reformation had a parallel in the Raskol schism of the Russian Orthodox Church during the 1650s. Elsewhere, Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab (1703–1792) founded the Wahabbi movement to reform Sunni Islam under strict Quranic interpretation. Many people believed that the era that historians call â€Å"early modern† would be the last. Franciscan apocalyptic thought inspired Columbus, and the belief that the god Quetzalcoatl would return from the East in a One Reed year led the Aztec sovereign Montezuma II to regard the Spanish conqueror Hernà ¡n Cortà ©s and his comrades as divine envoys. A Jesuit at the court of Akbar in 1581 found the Mughal ruler open to the idea of the imminent end because that year was eleven years from the thousandth anniversary of the Hijra, which was the journey the Prophet Muhammad took from Mecca to Medina in  622 CE. The Jewish Sabbatian movement expected the end of the world in 1666. In late eighteenth-century central China the White Lotus Society awaited the return of the Buddha to put an end to suffering. All these developments might best be understood in the context of notions of history in which significant change was either absent or sudden and awesome. Outlook Neither a deductive nor an inductive approach to the early modern world is  entirely satisfactory. A deductive approach expects to see the entire world following a Eurocentric roadmap to modernization (one that Europe itself might not have followed). An inductive approach respects the diversity of historical experience, but this diversity itself can frustrate attempts to delineate a discrete list of unifying features. If historians can tolerate the inconveniences of regional exceptions to every â€Å"global† process, the idea of an early modern world has its attractions. Although a perspective that twists the world around a European center is unproductive, the regions of the early modern world were increasingly named (in America) and mapped (as in China) by Europeans. Nevertheless, in its application beyond Europe the idea of an early modern world redresses the distortions of the Orientalist assumption of parochial, timeless, and conservative inertias unaltered by European expansion. It recognizes that peoples of the early modern era in some ways had more in common with each other than with their own ancestors and descendents that time unites just as powerfully as place. It facilitates comparative analysis and abets inquiry that trespasses across national boundaries. It sees the entire world as a stage, not only for comparative study, but also for the broadest possible analysis for a historian’s scrutiny. Further Reading Benton, L. (2002). Law and Colonial Cultures: Legal Regimes in World History, 1400– 1900. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Black, J. (Ed.). (1999).War in The Early Modern World, 1450–1815. London: UCL Press. Fisher,W. (1895). Money and Credit Paper in the Modern Market. The Journal of Political Economy, 3, 391–413. Fletcher, J. (1985). Integrative History: Parallels and Interconnections in the Early Modern Period, 1500–1800. Journal of Turkish Studies, 9, 37–57. Flynn, D. O., Giraldez, A. (1995). Born with a Silver Spoon: World Trade’s Origins in 1571. Journal of World History, 6(2), 201–221. Fox, D. R. (1915). Foundations of West India Policy. Political Science Quarterly, 30, 661–672. Frank, A. G. (1998). ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Goldstone, J. A. (1991). Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Goldstone, J. A. (1998). The Problem of the â€Å"Early Modern† World. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 41, 249–284. Huff,T. E. (1993). The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China and the West. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Lieberman,V. (1997). Transcending East-West Dichotomies: State and Culture Formation in Six Ostensibly Disparate Areas. Modern Asian Studies, 31(3), 463–546. Mousnier, R. (1970). Peasant Uprisings in Seventeenth-Century France, Russia, and China (B. Pearce,Trans.). New York: Harper and Row. Parker,G. (1996). The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500–1800 (2nd ed.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Pomeranz, K.(2001).The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Richards, J. F. (1997). Early Modern India and World History. Journal of World History, 8, 197–209. Richards, J. F. (2003). The Unending Frontier: An Environmental History of the Early Modern World. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Starn, R. (2002). The Early Modern Muddle. Journal of Early Modern History, 6(3), 296–307. Strong, C. F. (1955). The Early Modern World. London: University of London Press. Subrahmanyam, S. (1997). Connected Histories: Notes Towards a Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia. Modern Asian Studies, 31(3), 735– 762. Thomson, S. H. (1964). The Age of Reconnaissance, by J. H. Parry. The Journal of Modern History, 36(2), 187–188. Wallerstein, I. (1974). The Modern World-System. New York: Academic. Wiesner-Hanks, M. (2000). Christianity and Sexuality in the Early Modern World: Regulating desire, reforming practice. London: Routledge. Wills, J. E., Jr. (2001). 1688: A Global History. New York: Norton. The Modern Era The modern era is the briefest and most turbulent of the three main eras of human history. Whereas the era of foragers lasted more than 200,000 years and the agrarian era about 10,000 years, the modern era has lasted just 250 years. Yet, during this brief era change has been more rapid and more fundamental than ever before; indeed, populations have grown so fast that 20 percent of all humans may have lived during these two and a half centuries. The modern era is also the most interconnected of the three eras. Whereas new ideas and technologies once took thousands of years to circle the globe, today people from different continents can converse as easily as if they lived in a single global village. History has become world history in the most literal sense. For our purposes the modern era is assumed to begin about 1750.Yet, its roots lay deep in the agrarian era, and we could make a good case for a starting date of 1500 or even earlier. Determining the end date of the modern era is even trickier. Some scholars have argued that it ended during the twentieth century and that we now live in a postmodern era. Yet, many features of the modern era persist today and will persist for some time into the future; thus, it makes more sense to see our contemporary period as part of the modern era. This fact means that we do not know when the modern era will end, nor can we see its overall shape as clearly as we might wish. The fact that we cannot see the modern era as a whole makes it difficult to specify its main features, and justifies using the deliberately vague label â€Å"modern.† At present the diagnostic feature of the modern era seems to be a sharp increase in rates of innovation. New technologies enhanced human control over natural resources and stimulated rapid population growth. In their turn, technological and demographic changes transformed lifeways, cultural and religious traditions, patterns of  health and aging, and social and political relationships. For world historians the modern era poses distinctive challenges. We are too close to see it clearly and objectively; we have so much information that we have difficulty distinguishing trends from details; and change has occurred faster than ever before and embraced all parts of the world. What follows is one attempt to construct a coherent overview, based on generalizations that have achieved broad acceptance among world historians. Major Features and Trends of the Modern Era The modern era is the first to have generated a large body of statistical evidence; thus, it is also the first in which we can quantify many of the larger changes. Increases in Population and Productivity Human populations have increased faster than ever before during the modern era, although growth rates slowed during the late twentieth century. Between 1750 and 2000 the number of men and women in the world rose from approximately 770 million to almost 6 billion, close to an eightfold increase in just 250 years. This increase is the equivalent of a growth rate of about 0.8 percent per annum and represents a doubling  time of about eighty-five years. (Compare this with estimated doubling times of fourteen hundred years during the agrarian era and eight thousand to nine thousand years during the era of foragers.) An eightfold increase in human numbers was possible only because productivity rose even faster. The estimates of the economist Angus Maddison suggest that global gross domestic product rose more than ninety fold during three hundred years, whereas production per person rose nine fold. These astonishing increases in productivity lie behind all the most significant changes of the modern era. Productivity rose in part because new technologies were introduced. In agriculture, for example, food production  kept pace with population growth because of improved crop rotations, increased use of irrigation, widespread application of artificial fertilizers and pesticides, and the use of genetically modified crops. However, productivity also rose because humans learned to exploit new sources of energy. During the agrarian era each human controlled, on average, 12,000 kilocalories a day (about four times the energy needed to sustain a human body), and the most powerful prime movers available were domestic animals or wind-driven ships. During the modern era humans have learned to harvest the huge reserves of energy stored in fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas and even to exploit the power lurking within atomic nuclei. Today each person controls, on average, 230,000 kilocalories a day—twenty times as much as during the agrarian era. A world of planes, rockets, and nuclear power has replaced a world of horses, oxen, and wood fires. City Sprawl As populations have increased, so has the average size of human communities. In 1500 about fifty cities had more than 100,000 inhabitants, and none had more than a million. By 2000 several thousand cities had more than 100,000 inhabitants, about 411 had more than a million, and 41 had more than 5 million. During the agrarian era most people lived and worked in villages; by the end of the twentieth century almost 50 percent of the world’s population lived in communities of at least five thousand people. The rapid decline of villages marked a fundamental transformation in the lives of most people on Earth. As during the agrarian era, the increasing size of communities  transformed lifeways, beginning with patterns of employment: Whereas most people during the agrarian world were small farmers, today most people support themselves by wage work in a huge variety of occupations. Innovations in transportation and communications have transformed relations between communities and regions. Before the nineteenth century no one  traveled faster than the pace of a horse (or a fast sailing ship), and the fastest way to transmit written messages was by state-sponsored courier systems that used relays of horses. Today messages can cross the world instantaneously, and even perishable goods can be transported from one end of the world to another in just a few hours or days. Increasingly Complex and Powerful Governments As populations have grown and people’s lives have become more intertwined, more complex forms of regulation have become necessary, which is why the business of government has been revolutionized. Most premodern governments were content to manage war and taxes, leaving their subjects to get on with their livelihoods more or less unhindered, but the managerial tasks facing modern states are much more complex, and they have to spend more effort in mobilizing and regulating the lives of those they rule. The huge bureaucracies of modern states are one of the most important byproducts of the modern revolution. So, too, are the structures of democracy, which allow governments to align their policies more closely with the needs and capabilities of the large and varied populations they rule. Nationalism—the close emotional and intellectual identification of citizens with their governments—is another by-product of these new relationships between governments and those they rule. The presence of democracy and nationalism may suggest that modern governments are more reluctant to impose their will by force, but, in fact, they have much more administrative and coercive power than did rulers of the agrarian era. No government of the agrarian era tried to track the births, deaths, and incomes of all the people it ruled or to impose compulsory schooling; yet, many modern governments handle these colossal tasks routinely. Modern states can also inflict violence more effectively and on a larger scale than even the greatest empires of the agrarian era. Whereas an eighteenth century cannon could destroy a house or kill a closely packed group of soldiers, modern nuclear weapons can destroy entire cities  and millions of people, and the concerted launch of many nuclear weapons could end human history within just a few hours. A subtler change in the nature of power is the increased dependence of modern states on commercial success rather than raw coercion. Their power depends so much on the economic productivity of the societies they rule that modern governments have to be effective economic managers. The creation of more democratic systems of government, the declining importance of slavery, the ending of European imperial power during the twentieth century, the collapse of the Soviet command economy in 1991, and the ending of apartheid (racial segregation) in South Africa in 1990 and 1991 all reflected a growing awareness that successful economic management is more effective than crudely coercive forms of rule.

Various stages in outsourcing

Various stages in outsourcing Various Stages in Outsourcing The companies have many processes that have to be integrated while manufacturing, selling, buying, customer sourcing etc.   It has to decide on what level it has to outsource so as to be a profitable organization. It has to identify analyze and maximize outsourcing opportunities. The stages for outsourcing can be different for different customers but the The outsourcing process can be put into three phases: (these stages have been put out after going through how many companies decide to outsource Analysis Stage perations stage Implementation stage model by author Analysis Stage(ch.2 pg 33. Decision to outsource book: black book of outsourcing) There are various decisions that the company has to make while thinking of outsourcing. One of the biggest questions that arises in the mind of the company is to make or buy the required service or product for the company. The company mostly uses cost benefit analysis with the help of the make or buy model to come to a conclusion whether to buy or make. The analysis stage acts as foundation stone where the company decides if it wants to outsource its function or not. The model helps us understand whether the company wants to make or buy. Its possible that they get into joint venture, subsidiaries or allied services could be obtained.   It depends on the cost analysis that the company decides mostly on what they want for their business. Comparative analysis of the make or buy decision is regarded the highest degree of analysis for taking such a step. The company has then to scan all the places where they could get service providers for their company for outsourcing. For example: If a company like S.Oliver in Germany wants to see where it can get the cheapest labour and manufacturers for their apparel the have many South Asian countries that they can depend on as their main concern for cost is labour and that is the cheapest in the countries down Asia. There are various political hassles that happen when the company wants to enter and obtain services from another country. The company would always like to enter a country that is politically stable and does not create any problems for them to setup and establish their roots. The make decision will involve the company to look at the economy of the countries that they want to outsource. The economy should be stable and should not be better than the companys own country or there is no point in outsourcing. The company would like to look at the cost and also if there are future potential to sell in the same country the products that they are making. The main infulncers in this category will be the GDP and the per capita income of the people. Operations Stage At the operations stage the company will identify and shortlist the service providers and negotiate the terms and conditions with them. The company will undergo this process with various service providers so that they can get the best deal out of the minimum problems. The company will then select some service providers that the company feels would be the most profitable. The company will negotiate the terms and conditions and keep the format clear on what they are looking for and what is the way the payments would be made the staff the operational strategies, raw materials, etc The most important thing that arises while coming to outsourcing is the communication or logistics channel that the company wishes to use for outsourcing. For e.g. S. Oliver has to ship back its apparel from India to Germany to get the apparel checked and branded if they are made as per the requirements. So for such process the cost of logistics and operations are also looked for if the it works out cheaper for the company to outsource its services to other countries. Implementation Stage This stage is the most important and the most difficult stage. The company have to send across managers and consultants to actually implement the business process and design how they actually want the production to go on. The company lays down the framework in place and puts the integration process right. Construction of the business is setup the communication lines are setup, the total integration of all the businesses together. This stage will determine the future flow of the business. The company can also run a simulated run so that they will come to what all flaws are there and they can improve it later. Advantages, Benefits and Opportunities There are various advantages of outsourcing; some of them are listed below: Outsourcing can save money Economies of scale can save money for the service providers can produce in large volumes because they get orders from multiple companies and the volumes are high. The pharmaceuticals industry can be used to illustrate economies of scale in relationships. Clinical trials of experimental drugs require just the right patients healthy in most all respects but the one indication being treated, and willing to submit themselves to experimentation. It takes a significant investment of time and money to develop relationships with the hospitals and clinicians (and the triage nurses in their emergency rooms) that supply patients for the trials. Clinical trials also require just the right medical investigators doctors and medical researchers who are well respected in their industries. Again, it takes size to attract the best investigators. The most sought-after investigators look for organizations that can supply them with interesting and publishable research projects and with support services (such as data collection and well-managed processes) that make their jobs easier and their results more reliable. And so a lucrative outsourcing industry has evolved to manage clinical trials of experimental drugs for pharmaceutical companies. [The author thanks Patricia Seymour, Covance Biotechnology Services, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, for this case study.] Outsourcing allows concentration on core business The company has to also to concentrate on its back office activities by outsourcing such activities to other companies the company can avail benefits of concentrating on core business activities. For e.g. A company in has to look after large purchasing orders in a short span of time for its increase in volumes of production, it can outsource its purchasing process to some service provider and thus concentrate on its core business activities. Technology advantage at lower rates The company can avail http://www.enotes.com/management-encyclopedia/make-buy-decisions http://www.sourcingmag.com/content/c051011a.asp

Admiral Jarroc as a Traitor :: Star Trek Essays Papers

Admiral Jarroc as a Traitor In the Star Trek episode of "The Defector," Admiral Jarroc betrayed the Romulans by giving out his own empire state's information concerning a base being built in the neutral zone. For the sake of Admiral Jarroc's circumstance, he did not know whether he was being tested for his loyalty. According to R. H. Webster College Dictionary, a traitor is someone who commits treason by betraying his or her country. A loyal person will not reveal vital information to gain his or her personal advantages as Jarroc did to protect his family. Jarroc displayed his dishonesty first when he gave a false name and then destroyed his vessel before the Federation could examine it. This incident causes Captain Jean-Luc Picard and his crew members to have doubts regarding Jarroc's honesty. Then Admiral Jarroc told the Federation about an illegal base being built. The Romulans are building a military base too close to the Federation and this will cause a war to break out instantly. Jarroc also has no real evidence about the plans of a base being constructed in that area. On the other hand, he told Picard that he saw reports and work orders for the military base being planned out by the chief of the Romulans. Not only did Jarroc commit treason, his emotions played an important role in his decisions. To the Romulans officials, Jarroc is a traitor because he revealed secret information pertaining the illegal base to the their enemy. The reason why Jarroc betrayed his country is to save his daughter. For the safety of his daughter and the other Romulans, Jarroc released the information to the Federation hoping they can stop the construction of the military base that can cause war. Any loyal soldiers would have sacrifice anything for their empire. Jarroc let his emotions interfere with loyalty according to Joe Chung, "The Romulans are a race which the same ancestors as the Vulcans. The main difference between these two races is that the Vulcans are 100% logical and the Romulans act on their feelings." As you can see Romulans react to their emotion too and Jarroc is not any different from the rest of them. This explains why Jarroc's action committed this treason. Emotions can influence a person's decision and Jarroc happens to fallen within the characteristic of a traitor. According to my beliefs, Jarroc is a traitor because he betrayed his country or empire within the boundaries of danger.

How to prevent Teenage Pregnancy

Each year the United States is acknowledged for having the highest number of pregnant teens in the industrialized world. We have clueless teenage females of every race having children while they are in high school. Sex is on the minds of so many teenagers that they forget that they are not yet at a stage of having children. Since it is difficult for adolescent girl to resist the temptation of having sex; a while abstinence is the best form of prevention, birth control and other forms of protection are reliable ways to prevent teenage pregnancy. Abstinence is the best and safest way to preventing pregnancy at a young age.Abstinence is avoiding sex or any type of sexual activity. â€Å"If two people don’t have sex, then sperm can’t fertilize an egg and there’s no possibility of a pregnancy†(Hirsch1). â€Å"Only one-third of teen mothers will complete high school†(pike1). Many teenagers have sex before they leave high school catching STDs and becoming pregnant before graduating. Becoming abstinent is one of the best ways for preventing pregnancy because your not doing anything but avoiding peer pressure. Abstinence has a lot of peer pressure but it has a great ending in the long run.â€Å"Peer pressure and things you see on TV and in the movies can make the decision to practice abstinence more difficult†(Hirsch2). Even though it may be difficult for couples to resist having sex due to peer pressure it has its benefits in the end. They have a better chance of not receiving any type of STDs and most important not having children. â€Å"Abstinence is 100% effective in preventing pregnancy. Although many birth control methods can have high rates of success if used properly, they can fail occasionally. Practicing abstinence ensures that a girl won’t become pregnant because there’s no opportunity for sperm to fertilize an egg†(Hirsch1).Even though abstinence is 100% affective not everyone has the ability to resist the powerful peer pressure that comes with it. Birth Control is the next best thing that is accepted by teenage girls. Birth control or contractive pills are pills that are taken orally to help stop the release of an egg every month. â€Å"In simple terms, all methods of birth control are based on either preventing a man‘s sperm from reaching and entering a woman‘s egg (fertilization) or preventing the fertilizes egg from implanting in the woman‘s uterus and starting to grow†(Stoppler1).Birth Control is 99. 9% effective when it comes to preventing teenage pregnancy. However birth control doesn’t permanently stop fertilization after you are on it. The contractive pills may also fail if a teenager was to miss one day of taking the pill after her period. â€Å"If pills are skipped or forgotten, a girl is not protected against pregnancy and she will need a backup form of birth control, such as condoms. Or she will need to stop having sex for a whi le. Do not take a friend’s or relative’s pills† (Hirsch1). Condoms are the most popular way of preventing teenage pregnancy.Condoms block the sperm from fertilizing the egg inside of the female. Condoms have different brands and types for females and males. â€Å"Condoms are absolutely the best birth control for teenagers. They protect against pregnancy and diseases. They are used at the time, so there is no need to fret over whether you forgot to take our pill last Tuesday. They are relatively inexpensive, and easily available (regardless of your age). Both genders can take responsibility for procuring and using them† (Rayne1). These outstanding items work unless someone was to use them the incorrect way.Condoms are made of latex or polyurethane. The best one to choose is the condom made out of latex because they are slightly more reliable. Polyurethane condoms are mostly made out of plastic. â€Å"The most common reason that condoms â€Å"fail† i s that the couple fails to use them at a. Still, it is possible for a condom to break or slip during intercourse. Condoms can also be damaged by things like fingernails and body piercing† (Hirsch2). Condoms are a very reliable source for preventing teenage pregnancy if they would just use them.Even though it may be hard for teenage girls to resist the not having sex; becoming abstinent, using different forms of birth control and condoms are the best way for preventing a unplanned pregnancy. We can stop the United States from having the highest rate of teenage pregnancy each year if the girls will do their part. So many youths have failed to live their life due to the fact that they have had children at a very young age. Having sex can wait, but if they do decide to take the risk of becoming a parent at a very young age, there are always three things they can do to prevent it from happening.

Hello Shanghai

Hello Shanghai The sun wakens up in the morning, putting on his crimson cloak while emerging on the rise of East-mountain peak. The chirpy larks have always been early birds, dancing in the park, lauding the glamour of the sun. Then, rising gradually kitchen smoke, accompanied by people greeting remarks, horse neighing, and siren whistling, the whole Shanghai comes around from the merry and lively slumber. Looking out of the window, an overwhelming feeling comes over me, forcing me to say: "Hello, Shanghai!"Shanghai, I'd like to say hello to your miraculous, breath-taking development over the years. Known as the financial center of China, called the pearl of the Orient, you are showing your fascination to the whole world everyday. Yes, we have found that you are developing faster and faster these years. Look! Located in the Pudong New Area, Jing Mao Tower is the third tallest building in the world.The Oriental Pearl Tower in Shanghai, China.Having the height of 1379 feet, it cannot be too proper fo r us to call the building "tower". Near the Jing Mao Tower, there is a real tower, that is the Oriental Pearl Tower. And from either of the top storey of these two constructions, we can have a clear look at youShanghai. The Yangpu and Nanpu Bridges are just like two dragons lying over our mother river and link you from Pudong Area and Puxi Area. These, together with the classical building on the Band, add quite a lot of beauty to you. Talking of the beauty of you, we must think of the new culture scenes in youShanghai Museum and the Grand Theatre. In Shanghai Museum, we can learn a lot such as the culture and life style of our ancestors, while the Grand Theatre leads us into the palace of music, opera and dance.Shanghai, I'd...