The Modern World in Five Pictures

I thought this would be something interesting I would try out. I'd describe how the Modern world has formed in 5 interesting pictures. Perhaps I'll do this more often involving other topics but here goes.

This picture depicts the Storming of the Bastille during the French Revolution. This was a very fascinating time in world history. A country's citizens rose up to toss out the old oder and bring in a new order which would bring happiness to alll. The revolution tries to bring ideals to people everywhere but ultimately it flops due to the chaos of revolution and the self-interested nature of humanity. The Revolution officially ended when Napoleon returned from Egypt to seize power from the Directory and the Little Corporal soon became the Emperor of the French Empire. As thousands of French young men were conscripted to die all over Europe, the Revolution did devour its' young.

The above picture displays the brutality of slavery and the Atlantic Slave Trade which tens of millions of Africans were sold to bondage in the New World. Through the intelligence of very effective scholars, doctors, politicians such as William Wilberforce the Slave trade was stamped out by the British navy and slavery in the Empire was elimated in 1833. No Empire is perfect but an entire nation decided to care about the enslavement of foreigners and the money that was created by it. From Sierra Leone, to Jamaica to the "Slave Coast" the British Empire found a vehicle to expand it's laws..and it's might.

In 1853, when black-hulled ships blowing steam entered Tokyo Bay the Japanese universe was flipped upside and inside out. The country had been ruled by a Shogun for centuries, it was a pirate island archipelago which raided China and Japan occasionally and it had kept out foreigners like the Portuguese..until now. What makes a nation modern? Modern science? Modern medicine or modern warfare..note that 100 years before the United States had been a collection of British provinces along the eastern seabord of North America numbering less than 2 million people. Maybe Japan had to emulate the Europeans (and Americans) to avoid the fate of China and it did by creating a "modern" government...and a modern Empire in East Asia. Japan was now...modern.

How does science operate usually? One day a primate was slapping rocks together just to see what will happen. A chip flakes off, a finger is cut. They primates starting breaking rocks on purpose to make tools for food and other stuff. They also use these tools to kill their enemies. Is it worth it? The scientific revolution had produced a weapon that could vaporize cities and kill millions of people and all of it came from examining how light works. Electromagnetism gave us telegraphs, telephones, electric currents, generators and the atomic bomb that ended a world cataclysm and started another one between two groups of primates that had the Atom bomb.



On September 11th, 2001 the world did change. Back in 1897 when the British were launching a punitive measure against the Pashtuns near the Khyber Pass they never thought that the Arab allies of the Pashtuns would be able to launch a strike against Whitehall which would kill 3000 Britons. Such a thought was unimaginable. Also like thinking about the economic collapse of the USSR in the 1970s, a wealthy China in the 1960s, a European Union in the 1910s, the State of Israel in 1850s. Times change. People remain the same. A Mullah Omar existed 100 years ago, it's just that the he couldn't lead Jihad on the back of a Toyota pick up truck. Such is history.