w. 14 - present /future + free trade pros and cons

List of free trade (pros and cons) + Information to help you with "present" and "future" goals

If you are still working on demonstrating skills of connecting the past with the present, read the text below, and consider the question:

How can the economic and/or political policies of the Cold War be connected to Europe today?

-       For an E, you present one example of how historical developments of the past can be understood to be connected to today, and you provide a logical possible development for the future.

-       For a C, you present two examples of how historical developments of the past can be understood to be connected today, and you provide one logical possible development for the future

-       For an A, you present two examples of how historical developments of the past can be understood to be connected today, and you provide two logical possible developments for the future.

Please provide some specific example to illustrate your point – so that you are not merely copying what I have written below.

Bring in relevant terms into your discussion, for example: capitalism, market economy, communism, planned/command economy, liberal democracy (democratic political systems), free trade, NATO, Cold War, Iron Curtain.

****

During this year, you have

- built up the ability to select and use different sources,

- understand basic historical time periods

- use different historical terms

- see different perspectives

- discuss different processes of change

- discuss and explain causes and consequences connected to processes of change.

With these skills, you want to now be able to understand how events of the past are connected to the world today (the present). That is, you want to see that history is relevant to creating the world you live in today.

At a basic level, this is fairly easy to do with the Cold War material you are currently working with. Because we have seen the outcomes of the different economic and trade policies of East and West since the late 1940s, we can see how eastern and western Europe developed differently during the Cold War.

The economic developments of the West led to enormous prosperity. States in western Europe participated in the Marshall Plan, but probably more importantly, they adopted various degrees of free market strategies (capitalism) and they freely traded with one another and encouraged private businesses. They also developed democratic systems.

These countries that traded with each other and embraced democratic systems eventually built up the EU.  

The wealth that developed in the West during the Cold War is still in many ways seen in the economic strength of western states today. And those countries that were behind the Iron Curtain have been able to make new economic and political decisions since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the end of the Cold War. But even 26 years later, these countries are still catching up with the West economically.

Some of the key problems for the countries that were behind the Iron Curtain were

-corruption

-lack of free institutions

-no free elections

Today most of the former communist countries have free markets, although they don’t necessarily function quite the same as free markets in western European countries because of high levels of corruption. And democratic institutions, such as a free press and free of speech, don’t necessarily work as well as in countries such as Sweden and France and Great Britain.

So you can see connections between the past and the present. But what about the future? For example, based on what you know about the past, do you think that eastern Europe will continue to embrace capitalism and democratic systems? 

Places such as Russia, which experienced freedom of information and free (or at least freer) elections after 1991, have seen in the past fifteen years greater and greater restrictions on democratic institutions. Freedom of the press is becoming more and more limited. Free elections do not exist because political candidates are frequently imprisoned or killed.

Russia is not in the EU and is not in NATO. But most of the other European countries that used to be behind the Iron Curtain are now in the EU and NATO (or are trying to get into to both). (Belarus and Ukraine are clear exceptions.) On the other hand, Great Britain is in the process of leaving the EU (but not NATO). What sort of arguments can you make about where Europe will develop in the future – based on what you know about the past and the present?

*****
The table below is for those who feel that they would like to better understand issues connected to free trade. I'll remind you that there is no country where there are no taxes on imports and exports. Every country has tariffs on goods imported into their country. But some have lower tariffs and regulations, thus encouraging trade. Today, the U.S. has some of the lowest import taxes -- but it still has tariffs and laws regulating imports.

w. 12 - NATO + Warsaw Pact

Here is some material that we used in class on Friday, 24 March


The informational video about NATO

w. 11

After our enriching week in Berlin, it's time to get back in the saddle and continue with our unit on the Cold War.

We lose Monday's lesson to the studiedag. So Friday is our first lesson, and we will be starting with the Marshall Plan speech, and then we will read the Soviet response to the Marshall Plan. You will find both of these in one document on Vklass. If you find that you usually need a little extra time to read English texts, you can go ahead and get a head start on the MP text.

Also, surprise! -- well, not really, because I'm telling you here -- there will be a little map quiz on Friday. So have a look at Europe during the Cold War.

Marshall Plan

Here's a documentary about the Marshall Plan:

The Cold War and the Olympics

While in Berlin, we heard from one museum (maybe it was the Stasi Museum, so then it would be only Sa that heard this, I'm not sure) about the state-sponsored doping programs that East Germany had. The links below will lead you to some wonderful graphics that compare the number of medals won by each country. First off, I'll note that sports, and the Olympics in particular, became one of the fields where Cold War adversaries tried to outdo their "enemies," so sports became very serious business in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. In the countries behind the Iron Curtain, the government was in charge of the various training programs for the Olympic teams. In the U.S., however, the coaches and training programs were not under the management of the government.

The winter Olympics, from 1924 to 2010 (which is the last time I found this graph).
The summer Olympics, from 1896 to 2008

In these graphics, look at what happens to  East Germany from the 1968 to 1980. During these years, France and Great Britain had populations more than three times that of East Germany. Today we know that state-sponsored doping was behind the remarkable improvement in East German performances.

If you scroll down below the graphic, you can find a list of the medal breakdown for each country.

As a side note, you can look at the state-sponsored doping that appears to still be going on in Russia, as many sources have presented over the past year.

Here's a screen shot of the graphic -- but you can make it "play," so that the bubbles move and change from year to year.

w. 6

words for w. 6

blockade
airlift
partition
occupation zones
sector
plunder
submission
atomic bomb

Iron Curtain
Truman Doctrine
containment
U.S. Congress (United States' bicameral legislative body)
totalitarian
oppression 
 
people:
Winston Churchill
Harry Truman
 

w. 5 - Cold War - Russian Revolution - Atlantic Charter

Words for FRIDAY, 3 February. See below for slides.

hostility
rivalry
trade barrier
tariff
liberate
capitalism
Iron Curtain

names:
Winston Churchill
FDR, Franklin D. Roosevelt
Josef Stalin
Harry Truman  

On Friday we discussed the following:

- the Soviet-German non-Aggression Pact (1939)
- the Katyn Massacre (1940)
- the 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union
- the Atlantic Charter (1941)
- overall death figures for WWII, where the Soviet Union had a loss of life of over 20 million people
- and we started talking about Germany and its role in a post-WWII Europe

We also line up the Allies and the Axis powers of WWII

Allies: GB, France, U.S., USSR
Axis: Germany, Italy, Japan

***************
MONDAY, 30 Jan., we'll talk about the Russian Revolution and the Soviet Union. There are  discussed in Chapter 30, Sections 1 & 2.

Here are terms connected to that event.

Bolshevik
proletariat
communism
czar
dictatorship
legislature (the body of the government that makes laws)
civil war
Red Army (Bolsheviks)
White Army (supports the czar)
abdicate
discontent
provisional (temporary)
captialist, capitalism 
communal
totalitarianism
collectivism, collective farms
command economy /planned economy
five-year plan
ideology


Names we'll discuss
Czar Nicholas II (Romanov)
Vladimir Lenin
Josef Stalin
Leon Trotsky 
Karl Marx
Friedrich Engels 

 

 

SOVIET HISTORY

bodies from the Katyn Massacre in Poland, 1940

w. 4 - Cold War

On Friday, 27 Jan., we'll start working with the Cold War. I'm going to start a list of words that are relevant to this unit -- which will have many terms that are needed to work with the material in it. I'll keep this list at the top of the blog.

Cold War terms:

• anti-Semitism
• Soviet Union, USSR, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
• xenophobia - främlingsfientlighet
• acquisition - förvärv
• annex - add to one's own territory through appropriation (taking)
• prosperity - välstånd; prosperous     
• atrocity/atrocities - illdåd
• ally/allies, the Allies
• alliance
• charter (kontrakt)
• treaty (avtal, pakt)
• devastate - ödelägga
• seize 
• Holocaust - Förintelsen
• ideology
• reform
• satellite (used to talk about countries in associated with the Soviet Union.) (definition:   something that is separated from or on the periphery of something else but is nevertheless dependent on or controlled by it: satellite offices in London and New York.) 
• reparations - gottgörelse
• armaments - rustningar
• occupation
• currency - valuta
• dissolution - upplösning
• bloc - block (Soviet bloc - Sovjetblocket)

 

 

w. 50

12 December 2016, Monday (posting 10:30 a.m. Tuesday -- may make some further additions/changes)

A first set of slides has been uploaded on Vklass.


ENGLISH
We've been focusing on abbreviations that you can use when writing your notes.

Here is a table of abbreviations you can think about incorporating into your notes:

Brief summary of material we've gone through regarding Swedish history:
(See also slides in pdf files on Vklass)

1 - Gustav Eriksson coming to power in Sweden, and taking Sweden out of the Kalmar Union. Sweden is now independent. As a result of the warring against Christian II, large debts are created.

 Sweden by the end of Gustav I's reign:

-Sweden united
-Sw. centrally governed
-Sw. has own foreign policy
-Sw. has own military force
-Sw. has substantial degree of self-subsistence
-Sw. has stable transfer of power
-Sw. is still independent

I noted that all of these are still true today with the possible exception of the high degree of self-sufficiency. And, indeed, three days after I said this to you, the Swedish news came with this report. Here's the webpage with the story from P1.

2 - Gustav I (today known best as Gustav Vasa) introduces the Reformation to Sweden, changing the state religion from Roman Catholic to Lutheran.

3 - GV centralizes power in Sweden, in large part through his ability to weaken the power that regional leaders had, and by creating a tax and administration system that was centrally governed.

4 - Succession of the throne: In 1544, GV, with the help of the Riksdag, introduces a new law establishing transfer of power to the monarch's eldest son, and then following by age and sex, the other children of the monarch. Sweden becomes a hereditary kingdom (arvsrike), which contributes to a more stable transfer of power.

Here's a link to the Swedish Royal Court's webpage with information about the laws of succession.

And here is the Riksdag's page on the Swedish Constitution. It explains things such as the lack of freedom of religion for the monarch, and that the government must give consent to prince and princesses of the royal house before they can marry -- otherwise they risk forfeiting the right to the throne.

5 - Expansion of territory/loss of territory.
We discussed various issues that can be associated with the addition of territory -- including economic issues (taxes, trades, resources as well as defense). We will connect back to the point that Swedes are "out and about" when in connection to intellectural development. One thing I want you to see is that by reflecting on issues (e.g., what does it matter if Sweden has control over Skåne and Bohuslän) you can come up with different ideas. You might not always have the historical information to back up an idea, but you have something that can then be tested, discussed, analyzed.

Here's a website where you can see the change of territory over time -- different maps than what I have put in the pdf of slides: Time Maps

Here are maps of Sweden from the webpage:

6. Literacy: We discussed how the switch from Catholicism to Lutheranism can be connected to an increase in literacy. We will contine and discuss how this high rate of literacy can be connected to intellectual development, political change, and industrialism in Sweden.

Gustav Vasa Bible:

7. Change in political power over time. I am planning on discussing this on Friday.

w. 49

Monday, 5 December 2016

I handed back the papers, along with comments.

One of the things I noted was the importance of avoiding opinion. Even though opinion is not allowed in history writing, it is still possible to present a point of view through logic and to then support that view with evidence. For example, here is an opinion:

It is wrong for women not to be able to have control of their own bodies.

 Here is an argument that can then be supported with specific information:

Women who are denied access to birth control are in many cases prevented from being able to decide if and when they want to bear children. And unplanned pregnancies can result in women being forced to abandon their education, it can create economic hardships, and it can interfere with the ability to get and keep a job or to develop a career.

The second example is in line with the opinion, but it uses logic based in evidence (which would then need to be provided further in the text to support these statements). 

SWEDISH HISTORY

We started with Swedish history. I can provide you with the slides I showed in class. If you missed class, you want to get notes and ask questions about what isn't clear. I will wait until after Friday's lessons before I put up the slides on Vklass.

w. 48

ENGLISH

In the last two lessons we've brought in sounds that are commonly problematic for Swedish speakers. The first step is realizing that these sounds are different. The second step is actively practicing them -- even looking at yourself in the mirror or filming yourself so that you can see and hear yourself.

th

all four of these sounds are different

1 - three, thing, think

2 - that, there, then

3 - free, fling, fink

4 - tree, ting, tinkle


y and j

Y: Yale, yet, yellow

J: jail, jet, Jello


SAVING THE BLACK RHINOS

One of the student papers written this fall was about the poaching of rhinoceroses, which is a practice in which the horn is hacked out of the rhino's body, and the animal then dies. Because of poaching these animals are under extreme threat.

 But the horn of a rhino can be cut off (albeit not easily) and it will grow back -- just like our fingernails. Here's a story about a South African veterinarian Mike Toft, who has been working with a group to de-horn the rhinos in a particular reserve in order to save the animals' lives. The horns are tehn stored in a undisclosed location, to keep them safe from poachers and illegal markets.

The story explains how the process of removing the horns works, and how this is considered the best option in the current climate. The hope is that once attitudes and regulations gradually change (particulalry in societies such as Vietnam and China, which are pushing the illegal trade), there will no longer be a need for these measures. Listen here.

w. 47

Source Evaluation Assignment

I am in the process of putting up information on Vklass for the Source Evaluation assginment. This includes

• the assignment
• a handout with information regarding things to reflect upon in your analyses
• the slides from class from w. 46
• a sample assignment from a former student (which is by no means perfect but which has many good qualities)

YOU and YOUR

Many students used the word "you" in their history papers. This is understandable (it feels like using man in Swedish), but it's something to be avoided. It's not good writing, and when writing about history, it can be very, very strange. ("When you torture someone . . . " Excuse me?)

The trouble is, it can be hard to figure out how to rephrase to avoid "you." Usually the trick is to re-cast the sentence -- to turn things around in the sentence. Here are some examples that I hope that help.

 

It gives you information that you can not find so much about

--> It offers information that cannot easily be found elsewhere

It is a site with a lot of information. It takes you from the 19^th century through World War One and World War Two, which gives you a broad picture of the roles of women at this time.

--> It is a site with information ranging from the 19^th century through World War One and World War Two, offering a broad picture of the roles of women during these times.

If you then click on the tab “A,” you will find all of the assignments by Mr. Z.

--> Clicking on tab “A” leads to a site with all the assignments by Mr. Z.

When you read the text you can’t see any author, but after looking around on the website you can read that they have two authors.

--> No author is indicated for the text, but elsewhere on the website there is information noting that the text has two authors.

Either / Neither

For those who would like a little more information to help figure out the differences between the words either and neither, here's a webpage that may help.

 And here are some sreen shots from that page:

 

w. 42

Friday, 21 October

Here's some information that I'll present at the beginning of class on Friday:


FOOTNOTES:

In your paper you need to have footnotes and a bibliography (källförteckning). I have uploaded a file to help you with how to write your footnotes. BUT, as I will say in class on Friday, it is okay if there is a certain messiness to your footnotes when you turn in your paper. I still need to see where your information came from, but if the notes or bibliography are not done completely to style, we can fix that on Monday after the break.

So, to summarize:

1 – You have to have footnotes and a bibliography when you turn in the paper.

2 – The notes and bibliography can be inconsistent in style.

3 – We will have time to polish the notes and bibliography on Monday after the break.

If you are using your book as a source, you can use the following reference:

Roger B. Beck, Linda Black, et al. World History: Patterns of Interaction,  Orlando, FL: Holt McDougal, 2012, p. #.

You need to add the proper page # or page numbers that you have used. For example:

p. 630

pp. 630–631.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The bibliography is alphabetized by the LAST NAME of the author, or the name of the organzation group behind the information.

Example:

Bassiouni, Mahmoud Cherif. “The Social System and Morality of Islam.” Middle East
Institute. http://www.mei.edu/content/social-system-and-morality-islam (accessed 2013-10-
12).

Calhoun, Craig. Dictionary of the Social Sciences. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Dictionary of World History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Clearly Cultural. “Individualism.”  http://www.clearlycultural.com/geert-hofstede-culturaldimensions/individualism, (accessed 2014-01-30).

Groothuis, Rebecca Merrill. “The Bible and Gender Equality.” Christians for Biblical
Equality. http://www.cbeinternational.org/files/u1/resources/14-groothius-pdf.pdf (accessed
2014-01-28).

TIP FOR ORGANIZING YOUR PAPER

This is something I do when I write a paper. I write a draft of the paper. I then print it out and cut apart the paragraphs, and I lay out these paragraphs on a table and I test out different orders that I could put the material in, in an attempt to find a logical order for how to present my material.

Doing this often requires that I think about new ways to create bridges (transitions) between the paragraphs.

CAPITALS

Make sure you have capitalized historical periods, proper nouns, religions, countries, ethnic and national groups

All of the following are capitalized:

Scientific Revolution

Enlightenment

Renaissance

Middle Ages

Industrial Revolution (but industrialization)

American Revolution, French Revolution

England, English, Britain, British, United Kingdom, UK

United States, U.S., America, American

France, French

Sweden, Swedish

Are you unsure? Look in the dictionary you have in the dock on your computer?

PAGE NUMBERS

Make sure you have page numbers

HEADER

Have a header with your name

TITLE

Have a title for your paper

TIP FOR CATCHING ERRORS IN YOUR SENTENCES OR SPELLING

Read you paper out loud. This tactic will often help you catch errors – which we often hear even the eyes don’t see them.

Monday, 17 October

ENGLISH:

When quoting material, use quotation marks: “   ”

Do not use italics.

Thus:

Sandy Smith said, “Always use quotation marks for quotes.”

Not:

Sandy Smith said, Always use quotation marks for quotes.

And definitely not:

Sandy Smith said, “Always use quotation marks for quotes.”

Save italics for emphasis:

Sandy Smith said, “Always use quotation marks for quotes.”

w. 41

Monday, 10 October

ENGLISH

All of the following are capitalized

continents – Europe, Asia, Africa, North America . . .

countries – England, China, United States, France . . .

cities – London, Trollhättan, New Delhi

nationalities and ethnicities – British, Sámi, Indian, Bosnian . . . (exception: black and white)

religions – Christianity, Islam . . . (as well as Christian, Muslim, Jew . . .)

 ****

As you write your paper, here are some things to help you:

-       Figure out what your main point (or main thesis) is and then determine which historical material helps you make that argument. 

For example, if your thesis is

Campaigns for equal rights have been one of the main driving forces leading to laws expanding LGBT rights and laws in Sweden

then you want to bring information and issues connected to

o   campaigns for equal rights

o   examples of expanding rights/laws for the LGBT community

Examples of “campaigns for equal rights” could include

          -groups formed to lobby for LGBT rights

          -groups formed to lobby for women’s rights

          -groups formed to lobby for workers’ rights

          -protests or demonstrations in favor of LGBT or women’s or workers’ rights

          -speeches or editorials or petitions in favor of LGBT or women’s or workers’ rights

          -proposed laws. When laws are proposed but not adopted, they often broaden the public discussion about a topic

          -etc.

         

Examples of expanding rights/laws for the LGBT community could include

          -laws about access to education and jobs

          -laws limiting discrimination

          -laws permitting adoption, marriage, or other legal procedures

          -laws connected to medical treatment

          -proposed changes to law. Even if a law doesn’t get adopted, a proposed law often