The postings on this page are designed to familiarize you with the KEY ELEMENTS of lectures so that you will be prepared for essay and ID questions that will come up on the mid-term and final exams. 

 
ÔHumanism is a broad category of ethical philosophies that affirm the dignity and worth of all people, based on the ability to determine right and wrong by appeal to universal human qualities — particularly rationality. It is a component of a variety of more specific philosophical systems and is incorporated into several religious schools of thought. Humanism can be considered the process by which truth and morality is sought through human investigation. In focusing on the capacity for self-determination, humanism rejects the validity of transcendental justifications, such as a dependence on belief without reason, the supernatural, or texts of allegedly divine origin. Humanists endorse universal morality based on the commonality of the human condition, suggesting that solutions to human social and cultural problems cannot be parochial.

LUTHER'S "BIG THREE"

SOLA FIDE - By faith alone does man attain salvation.

SOLA SCRIPTURA - Man comes to faith by a reading and understanding of holy scripture on his own.

THE PRIESTHOOD OF ALL THE FAITHFUL - Each person is responsible for his own salvation. Therefore, he is his own priest/minister. This negates reliance on popes, bishops, priests, etc. as necessary elements in man's quest for eternal life with God.

The Peace of Westphalia

The term Peace of Westphalia refers to the two peace treaties of Osnabrück and Münster, signed on May 15 and October 24 of 1648 respectively, which ended both the Thirty Years' War in Germany and the Eighty Years' War between Spain and the Netherlands. The treaties involved the Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand III (Habsburg), the Kingdoms of Spain, France and Sweden, the Dutch Republic and their respective allies among the princes of the Holy Roman Empire.

The Peace of Westphalia resulted from the first modern diplomatic congress and initiated a new order in central Europe based on the concept of national sovereignty. Until 1806, the regulations became part of the constitutional laws of the Holy Roman Empire. The Treaty of the Pyrenees, signed in 1659, ended the war between France and Spain and is often considered part of the overall accord.

 

Jean-Baptiste Colbert (August 29, 1619 — September 6, 1683) served as the French minister of finance from 1665 to 1683 under the rule of King Louis XIV.  His relentless hard work and thriftiness made him an esteemed minister. He achieved a reputation for his work of improving the state of French manufacturing and bringing the economy back from the brink of bankruptcy. Historians note that, despite Colbert's efforts, France actually became increasingly impoverished because of the King's excessive spending on wars. Colbert worked to create a favourable balance of trade and increase France's colonial holdings. Historians of mercantilism consider Colbert a key figure.

 
ÔMercantilism
]Mercantilism is an economic theory that the prosperity of a nation depends upon its capital, and that the volume of the world economy and international trade is unchangeable. Government economic policy based on these ideas is also sometimes called mercantilism, but is more properly known as the mercantile system. Some scholars conceive the mercantile system as a subset of, or synonymous with, the early stages of capitalism, while others consider mercantilism to be a distinct economic system.

 

ÔNationalism refers to an ideology, a sentiment, a form of culture, or a social movement that focuses on the nation. While there is significant debate over the historical origins of nations, nearly all specialists accept that nationalism, at least as an ideology and social movement, is a modern phenomenon originating in Europe. Precisely where and when it emerged is difficult to determine, but its development is closely related to that of the modern state and the push for popular sovereignty that came to a head with the French Revolution in the late 18th century. Since that time, nationalism has become one of the most significant political and social forces in history, perhaps most notably as a cause of both the First and Second World Wars.
ÔAs an ideology, nationalism holds that 'the people' in the doctrine of popular sovereignty is the nation, and that as a result only nation-states founded on the principle of national self-determination are legitimate. Since most states are multinational, or at least home to more than one group claiming national status, the pursuit of this principle has often led to conflict, and nationalism is commonly associated with  (both external and domestic), secession, and even genocide in contexts ranging from imperial conquest to struggles for national liberation.
 
 
Sunni Islam is the largest denomination of Islam . Sunni Islam is also referred to as Sunnism or as Ahl as-Sunnah wa’l-Jamā‘h (Arabic: أهل السنة والجماعة) (people of the example (of Muhammad) and the community), or Ahl as-Sunnah (Arabic: أهل السنة ) for short. The word Sunni comes from the word Sunnah (Arabic : سنة ), which means the words and actions or example of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.

Historically, Sunni Islam has often been defined only in contrast with other denominations or schools of thought, such as Shia Islam, hanafiyah, Mu'tazila and others, considering itself to be the orthodox form of Islam first civil war in Islam from 656 to 661. However, in terms of doctrine and theology, and in the sense of considering itself a separate denomination, Sunni Islam is younger than that, making it somewhat misleading to talk about Sunnites in a 7th century context.

Sunni Islam was under the authority of the Caliph from Muhammad's death in 632 until the abolition of the caliphate by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1924. Since then, no central international authority exists; many countries have a Grand Mufti or other official who holds the highest religious authority in the country. However, during all of Islam's history, independent religious scholars - the ulama - have held great influence in religious matters. During the first centuries of Islam, when the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphs were the worldly rulers of the Muslim world as well as the highest religious authorities of Sunni Islam, this led to some power struggles between the caliphate and the ulama. As the worldly power of the caliphate declined from the 9th and 10th century onwards, and as the religious law became more codified and exhaustive due to the efforts of the ulama, the caliphate's religious influence decreased as well.

Shi'a Islam (Shī‘a Arabic: شيعة; šīa is collective; Shī‘i, šīi, is singular), is the second largest denomination of Islam, after Sunni Islam. Shi'a Muslims, though a minority in the Muslim world, constitute the majority of the populations in Iran, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, and Iraq and over 20% of the Muslim populations in Lebanon, Yemen Kuwait, Brazil, Albania, Turkey, and Pakistan.

The Shi'a adhere to the teachings of founder of Islam, Muhammad, and in contrast to other Muslims, believe that his family, the Ahl al-Bayt meaning People of the House, including his descendants known as Shi'a Imams, have special spiritual or political rule over the community. Unlike Sunni Muslims, the Shi'a believe that Ali ibn Abi Talib, Muhammad's cousin and husband of his daughter Fatimah, was the true successor to Muhammad who was appointed by God and his prophet, and thus reject the legitimacy of the first three Rashidun caliphs.

The Shi'a faith is vast and inclusive of many different groups. There are various Shi'a theological beliefs, schools of jurisprudence, philosophical beliefs, and spiritual movements. Shi'a Islam embodies a completely independent system of religious interpretation and political authority in the Muslim world. The Shi'a identity emerged soon after the death of Muhammad, and Shi'a theology was formulated in the second century. after the death of the Prophet and the first Shi'a governments and societies were established by the end of the following century. There are an estimated 130 to 190 million Shi'a, 10-15% of the world's Muslim populatation.

Shi'a Islam is divided into three branches. The largest and best known are the Twelver (اثنا عشرية ināašariyya) which forms a majority of the population in Iran, Azerbaijan, Bahrain and Iraq, and the phrase Shi'a often refers to Twelver Shi'a only. Other smaller branches include the Ismaili and Zaidi, who dispute the Twelver lineage of Imams and beliefs.

 

ÔShari’a is the dynamic body of Islamic religious law. The term means "way" or "path to the water source"; it is the legal framework within which the public and some private aspects of life are regulated for those living in a legal system based on Muslim principles of jurisprudence.
ÔShari’a deals with many aspects of day-to-day life, including politics, economics, banking, business, contracts, family, sexuality, hygiene, and social issues.
ÔThere is no strictly static codified set of laws of shari’a. Shari’a is more of a system of devising laws, based on the Qur'an (the religious text of Islam), hadith (sayings of Muhammad), ijma, qiyas and centuries of debate, interpretation and precedent.
ÔBefore the 19th century, legal theory was considered the domain of the traditional legal schools of thought. Most Sunni Muslims follow Hanai, Hanbali, Maliki or Shafii, while most Shia Muslims follow Twelvers
 
Religion
After the invasion of Persia by the Mongol Empire, a regional Turko-Persio-Mongol dynasty formed. Just as eastern Mongol dynasties intermarried with locals and adopted the local religion of Buddhism and Chinese culture, this group adopted the local religion of Islam and Persian culture. The first Mughal King, Babur, established Mughal dynasty in India. Upon invading India, the Mughals intermarried with local royalty once again, creating a dynasty of combined Turko-Persian, Indian and Mongol background.
ÔThe language of the court was Persian although most of the subjects of the Empire were Hindu. The dynasty remained unstable until the reign of Akbar, who was of liberal disposition and intimately acquainted, since birth, with the mores and traditions of India. Under Akbar's rule, the court abolished the jizya (the poll-tax on non-Muslims) and abandoned use of the lunar Muslim calendar in favor of a solar calendar more useful for agriculture. One of Akbar's most unusual ideas regarding religion was Din-i-Ilahi ("Faith-of-God" in English), which was an eclectic mix of Hinduism, versions of Sufi Islam, Zoroastrianism, Jainism and Christianity. It was proclaimed the state religion until his death.
ÔThese actions however met with stiff opposition from the Muslim clergy, especially the Sufi Shaykh Alf Sani Ahmad Sirhindi. The Mughal emperor Akbar is remembered as tolerant, at least by the standards of the day: only one major massacre was recorded during his long reign (1556–1605), when he ordered most of the captured inhabitants of a fort be slain on February 24, 1568, after the battle for Chitor. Akbar's acceptance of other religions and toleration of their public worship, his abolition of poll-tax on non-Muslims, and his interest in other faiths bespeak an attitude of considerable religious tolerance, which, in the minds of his orthodox Muslim opponents, was tantamount to apostasy. Its high points were the formal declaration of his own infallibility in all matters of religious doctrine, his promulgation of a new creed, and his adoption of Hindu and Zoroastrian festivals and practices.
ÔReligious orthodoxy would only play a truly important role during the reign of Aurangzeb Ālamgīr, a devout Muslim and the man responsible building beautiful buildings and taking the Mughal empire to its zenith; this last of the Great Mughals retracted the liberal policies of his forbears. Although under Aurangzeb the empire extended to its largest, his rule was thus less popular with the Hindu Rajputs.
 
 
]Dyarchy: a society or an organization with two rulers on an equal standing. Diarchies are known from ancient Sparta, Rome, Carthage as well as from Germanic and Dacian tribes. Several ancient Polynesian societies exhibited a diarchic political structure as well. Ranks in the Inca Empire were structured in moieties, with two occupants of each rank, but with different prestige, one hanan (upper) and one hurin (lower).
 

 

ÔCharles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755)
ÔSpirit of the Laws (1748) - In this political treatise Montesquieu advocates constitutionalism and the separation of powers, the abolition of slavery, the preservation of civil liberties and the rule of law, and the idea that political and legal institutions ought to reflect the social and geographical character of each particular community
]Natural laws
]Structure of government - executive, legislative, and judicial functions of government should be assigned to different bodies, so that attempts by one branch of government to infringe on political liberty might be restrained by the other branches. This leads directly to…..
]Checks and Balances and the separation of powers
ÔFrançois-Marie Arouet, Voltaire (1694-1778)
]Criticism of traditional religion – Oppressive and cruel
]Favored religious toleration
]Deism – Reflects the idea that man cannot “know” god, but god “is”
]Spread the ideas of the Enlightenment – Will be of paramount importance later in the Americas.
 

Bertha Von Suttner

 
Suttner became a leading figure in the peace movement with the publication of her novel, Die Waffen nieder! ("Lay Down Your Arms!") in 1889 and founded an Austrian pacifist organization in 1891. She gained international repute as editor of the international pacifist journal Die Waffen nieder!, named after her book, from 1892 to 1899. Her pacifism was influenced by the writings of Henry Thomas Buckle, Herbert Spencer, and Charles Darwin. Though her personal contact with Alfred Nobel had been brief, she corresponded with him until his death in 1896, and it is believed that she was a major influence in his decision to include a peace prize among those prizes provided in his will, which she won in 1905.
 

Efforts at Reform

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The theocratic and militaristic regime arising from the Taiping Rebellion instituted several social reforms, including strict separation of the sexes, abolition of foot binding, land socialization, suppression of private trade, and the replacement of Confucianism, Buddhism and Chinese folk religion by a peculiar form Christianity, holding that Hong Xiuquan was the younger brother of Jesus Christ.

ÔSelf-strengthening efforts at reform after Xiuquan included………
]Adoption of Western technology combined with the retention of Confucian principles and institutions
ÔProponents of more radical reform
]Wang Tao (Wang T’ao) (1828 – 1897) During his ten-year career as editor in chief of Universal Circulating Herald, Wang Tao penned close to a thousand editorials calling for the reform of the Chinese political system, by adopting a British style parliamentary monarchy. He also called for reform of the educational system by introducing western science to the curriculum; he called for the establishment of textile, mining, railway, machinery and mining industries. His reformist editorial articles reached a wide audience. He was the de facto forerunner of the reformist movement in China
 
 

The Schlieffen Plan

ÔThe forensic plan was the German General Staff's overall strategic plan for victory both on the Western Front against France and against Russia in the east, taking advantage of expected differences in the three countries' speed in preparing for war. It was executed to near victory in the first month of World War I; however, a French counterattack on the outskirts of Paris, the Battle of the Marne (combined with surprisingly speedy Russian offensives), ended the German offensive and resulted in years of trench warfare. The plan has been the subject of debate among historians and military scholars ever since.
ÔThe Schlieffen Plan was created by Alfred Graf von Schlieffen.
 
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The Balfour Declaration

 

An official letter from the British Foreign Office headed by Arthur Balfour, the UK's Foreign Secretary (from December 1916 to October 1919), to Lord Rothschild, who was seen as a representative of the Jewish people. The letter stated that the British government "view[ed] with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country".
 
Fascism is an authoritarian political ideology (generally tied to a mass movement) that considers individual and other societal interests inferior to the needs of the state, and seeks to forge a type of national unity, usually based on ethnic, religious, cultural, or racial attributes. Various scholars attribute different characteristics to fascism, but the following elements are usually seen as its integral parts: nationalism, authoritarianism, militarism, corporatism, collectivism, totalitarianism, anti-communism, and opposition to economic and political liberalism.

Effects of the Treaty of Versailles

The treaty evoked an angry and hostile reception in Germany from the moment its contents were made public. The Germans were outraged and horrified at the result - since Wilson's idealistic fourteen points had painted the picture of a different outcome. They did not feel that they were responsible for starting the war nor did they feel as though they had lost. The German people had understood the negotiations at Versailles to be a peace conference and not a surrender.
Regardless of modern strategic or economic analysis, resentment caused by the treaty sowed fertile psychological ground for the eventual rise of the Nazi party. Indeed, on Nazi Germany's rise to power, Adolf Hitler resolved to overturn the remaining military and territorial provisions of the Treaty of Versailles. Military build-up began almost immediately, in direct defiance of the Treaty, which, by then, had been destroyed by Hitler in front of a cheering crowd. "It was this treaty which caused a chain reaction leading to World War II" claimed historian Dan Rowling (1951).Various references of the treaty is found throughout many of Hitler's speeches and in pre-war German propaganda.

FASCISM

Fascism is an authoritarian political ideology (generally tied to a mass movement) that considers individual and other societal interests inferior to the needs of the state, and seeks to forge a type of national unity, usually based on ethnic, religious, cultural, or racial attributes. Various scholars attribute different characteristics to fascism, but the following elements are usually seen as its integral parts: nationalism, authoritarianism, militarism, corporatism, collectivism, totalitarianism, anti-communism, and opposition to economic and political liberalism.

 

 
ÔGeorge Frost Kennan (February 16, 1904 – March 17, 2005) was an American advisor, diplomat, political scientist, and historian, best known as "the father of containment" and as a key figure in the emergence of the Cold War. He later wrote standard histories of the relations between Russia and the Western powers.
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Era of Equivalence

 

ÔOctober 1964 Khrushchev was replaced by party chief Leonid Brezhnev (1906-1982) and Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin (1904-1980)
ÔSoviet relations with China and Vietnam
ÔThe Brezhnev Doctrine - In practice, this meant that "limited sovereignty" of communist parties was allowed, but no country would be allowed to leave the Warsaw Pact, disturb a nation's communist party's monopoly on power, or in any way compromise the strength of the Eastern bloc. Implicit in this doctrine was that the leadership of the Soviet Union reserved, for itself, the right to define "socialism" and "capitalism". The doctrine was used to justify the invasions of Czechoslovakia that terminated the Prague Spring in 1968 and of the non-Warsaw Pact nation of Afghanistan in 1979.
ÔAn Era of Détente
]Détente, reduction in tensions between U.S. and U.S.S.R.
]SALT I that limited antiballistic missile systems, 1972
ÔU.S. policy of “equivalence” (balance of power)
ÔPresident Nixon pursues a policy of “linkages” through trade and cultural contacts
ÔHelsinki Agreement, 1975
]Acknowledged the Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe
]Recognize and protect human rights of signatories’ citizens
 
ÔMargaret Thatcher (b. 1925), 1979-1990
]Thatcherism - "Thatcherism" is characterized by decreased state intervention via the free market economy, monetarist economic policy, privatization of state-owned industries, lower direct taxation and higher indirect taxation, opposition to trade unions, and a reduction of the size of the Welfare State. "Thatcherism" may be compared with Reaganomics in the United States, Rogernomics in New Zealand and Economic Rationalism in Australia . Thatcher was deeply in favor of individualism over collectivism, with self-help as a mantra.