Week 3 Journal Entry

For the first session of the week, we looked at the Atlantic Slave Trade. This topic is the second portion of Chapter 14. I was fascinated to know that the word "slave" was derived from "Slav," which was the first group of people to be enslaved in Europe. The chapter described the roles slaves played before the discovery of the "New World." I learned that slavery can be traced back to the first settled civilizations. Enslavement was practiced in two different ways: conquest or debt. Conquests during the Paleolithic Era usually ended up in large numbers of prisoners of wars, who eventually became slaves. People in early modern times would often become slaves as a result of debt. They would become slaves to pay off their debts. It was also interesting to see how different slavery was in North America compared to the rest of the Americas as children of slaves inherited their parents' status. We also explored "indentured servitude," which was a viable option for building a labor force; most indentured servants had contracts that stipulated a specific number of years' work to their masters. One of the points that I found to be intriguing was the different lifespans of slaves across the Americas. Slaves in the Caribbean and Brazil had the shortest lifespans, while slaves in North America led longer lives. It was during the Atlantic Slave Trade where slavery, unfortunately, became tied to race. During that mass exportation of slaves in Africa, one comes to think of the religious conscience during that time, which struggled with Christian superiority. That eventually led to the relation of race and slavery.

Chapter 15 discusses cultural transformations during the globalization of Christianity. It starts off with a historic description of the rivalry that existed between Western European Catholics and Eastern European Orthodox Christians– who both opposed expansive Islam. The Protestant Reformation was an important time in history as it created a schism within Catholic Christendom, which ultimately led to political, economic, and social tensions all around Europe. The Reformation renewed and revitalized Christianity as it expanded to different areas on the globe. The main aspect of the reformation was denying the Pope's authority, who oversaw a corrupt institution at the time. Christianity, along with the rising modern scientific viewpoints, motivated European political and economic expansions. The chapter goes on to elaborate on the differences in practices of Christianity among different groups around the world. Islamic expansion was a fascinating topic for me as I am a Muslim, and often have misconceptions of Islamic history. I learned that "continued Islamization was not usually the product of conquering armies and expanding empires" (pg. 659), which I found to be compelling. I also explored the Wahhabi movement, which was a major renewal of the Islamic faith in the 1700s. Lastly, the chapter discusses the scientific cultural revolution, which enabled humans to accurately learn about the solar system in which our world exists.